Mikey B.'s Reviews > Congo: The Epic History of a People

This book provides us with a history of Congo from the days of the Belgian King Leopold II to the present day. It is a history of the exploitation of natural resources. One could at least say that the British in India, for example, provided some education for the indigenous population – whether it was military training or a formal education.

The Belgians just took – first the rubber from the trees, which they didn’t even bother to cultivate like the British did in Malaysia, forcing the Congolese to extract the rubber in the jungle.

Page 95 (my book)
“We ran away, because we could no longer live with the things they did to us. Our village chief was hanged, we were murdered and starved. And we worked ourselves to death to find rubber.”

At the turn of the century, in 1908, the world had learnt enough of Leopold’s exploitation of Congo – and it became the Belgian Congo - meaning that it was now to be administered by the Belgian government. This is not saying that anything improved. The extraction of rubber was replaced by mining of copper, zinc, uranium... Very little of the profits from this trickled down to the local population.

Page 125
Only one out of every eight workers was there voluntarily, the rest had been press-ganged in local villages: human trafficking in other words, and forced labor...They were bound together at the neck by a wooden yoke or a noosed rope.

Essentially a system of slavery existed during the entire Belgian domination of Congo. Sometimes there were uprisings and many turned to religion as a form of rebellion – these were offshoots of Christianity and some were tribal in nature.

There was a strict segregation between the Congolese and the whites – even graveyards were segregated.

The author provides us throughout with many first-hand accounts. And for the most part these are from Congolese people. As much as possible the book tries not to be Euro-centric.

Page 227
In 1955 not a single native organization dreamed of an independent Congo. Five years later that political autonomy was a fact.

Congo was totally unprepared for independence which occurred on June 30, 1960. By this time the Belgian colonialists were leaving by the thousands. The army had not a single black officer.

Page 266
There was not one native physician, not one engineer, not one lawyer, agronomist, or economist.

Many disasters happened after independence. The army was in total disarray after Lumumba (the first Prime Minister) dismissed all the white officers. Due to increasing violence against the white population Belgian troops invaded. At this stage Lumumba asked for intervention by the U.N. – then he asked for aid from the Soviet Union. Some provinces of Congo declared their independence. On January 17, 1961, hardly more than six months after independence, Lumumba was murdered.

Eventually in 1965 Mobutu took over and the country became a dictatorship. It was also renamed Zaire. This was to last to the end of the 1990’s. Mobutu became one of the richest men in the world – along with several of his cohorts. Corruption became endemic, along with the cult of Mobutuism. Most bank notes had a picture of Mobutu.

Page 383 (a letter from some members of parliament)
“On one side we have a few scandalously wealthy members of a privileged caste. On the other we have the masses of the people who live in darkest misery and can depend at most only on international charity to survive after a fashion. And if that charity happens to reach Zaire, these same wealthy few make arrangements to claim it to the disadvantage of the needy masses.”

Then the catastrophe of Rwanda happened. After the genocide over 1.5 million refugees – many of them Hutu fled to Zaire to escape the Tutsi forces of Paul Kagame. Later Rwanda decided to invade Zaire – finally forcing Mobutu from power.

Congo became a fragmented country with militias, child soldiers, exploitation from its neighbors Rwanda and Uganda. In fact all adjoining neighbors (there are nine) of Congo joined in the plunder, extracting its vast mineral wealth like diamonds, gold, coltan (used in mobile phones, computer games...). Suffice it to say that this became the Second Congo War (1997 – 2002) – and it hardly made the news anywhere.
Page 440
The great African or Second Congo War developed into the deadliest conflict since World War II. Most of the casualties were civilians... dying of malnutrition, dysentery, malaria and pneumonia – afflictions that could not be treated because of the war.

When the U.N. finally intervened and monitored elections were held in 2006 there seemed to be hope. To illustrate how impoverished the country still is:

Page 501
When the polls closed the counting began... "we had no electricity and the flashlights they had given us did not work.”

Page 508
But the hospital itself [in Lubumbashi], the country’s second largest, had not had a drop of running water for the last four years.

As the author states on page 512 “Peace, security, and education should go before [elections] ... local elections can stimulate the formation of a grassroots culture of political accountability...Western political experts often suffer from electoral fundamentalism.”

So as all this sadly illustrates Congo has a long journey ahead. And China is now involved, having signed a multi-billion dollar resource deal.

This book gives us a startling view of a country exploited by a European colonial power and falling into total disarray after. It is very readable and personal despite the long historical period it narrates. The translation, from Dutch, is at rare times somewhat awkward.