Jean "Black Jack" Schramme (25 March 1929, Bruges, Belgium – 14 December 1988, Rondonópolis, Brazil) was a Belgian mercenary and planter. He managed a vast estate in the Democratic Republic of the Congo until 1967. Planter Schramme was born into an upper-middle class family in Bruges, where his father was a successful lawyer. In 1947, Schramme moved to the Belgian Congo at the age of 18, where he worked as an apprentice for a planter. Schramme had a strong entrepreneurial streak and by the age of 22 had already owned his own plantation covering 22 acres at Bafwakwandji in the eastern half of the Belgian Congo. Schramme performed his national service with the Force Publique, which provided him with his military training. Schramme deeply loved Africa and called himself un Africian blanc ("a white African"). Schramme ran his estate along militaristic lines, having a very authoritarian and paternalistic leadership style as he took to calling himself a père ("father") to his black African workers. Schramme thought that he understood the Congo far better than the Congolese, and believed that the country should remain a Belgian colony forever. He hated the évolués (Western-educated Congolese) who for him were not real Congolese at all; his ideal Congolese were his workers on his estate who called him père. In Schramme's viewpoint, he and the other Belgian settlers should provide the strict, but loving paternalistic care that he believed was what the Congolese needed. Congo Crisis In January 1959, riots erupted as hundreds of thousands of Congolese took to the streets to demand independence, which led the Belgian state to agree that the Belgian Congo would become independent on 30 June 1960. Unwilling to accept Congolese independence, in the spring of 1960, Schramme started to stockpile arms and ammunition while he attached metal plates and a machinegun to his car to create a makeshift armored car. On 30 June 1960, the Belgian Congo was granted independence, and shortly afterwards the Congolese Army mutinied against the Belgian officers who had been placed in charge owing to the lack of Congolese officers. With the Congo falling into chaos, Schramme provided an armed guard to move Belgian settlers into the British colony of Uganda. Schramme claimed to have been arrested twice and to have seen 8 white settlers hanged without a trial, through the historian Christopher Othen noted that Schramme was prone to lies and exaggerations, and