“The horror! The horror!” - Joseph Conrad, The Heart of Darkness
Is it possible to exorcise an entire country? Could the Roman Catholic Rite of the Exorcism rid the Congo of the ghost of King Leopold? Probably not, but it is a lovely thought. That an Exorcist could pray and command the demons that haunt the Congo to retreat with the Lord's Prayer, the Hail Mary, and the Athanasian Creed …
If only.
There are few places on the planet with more raw, unrelenting human suffering than the Congo. But offhand I could not come up with any. Pope Francis has his work cut out for him as his remarkable three-day visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo comes to a close.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo, the fourth most populous country in Africa, is about two-thirds the size of Western Europe. It is also, almost literally, suffused with treasure. Like, the entire country, but especially the east, where the Pope wanted to visit, but it was too dangerous because of inter-border militia fighting. The ethnic rivalries that make the eastern part of the country so dangerous are a legacy of colonialism, of incredible poverty — even for this part of the world — of ancient rivalries stirred up by the Belgians (“divide and conquer”) and of neighboring governments (Uganda, Rwanda) trying to loot the Congo’s vast natural resources sitting along their shared borders.
The DRC is considered the richest country in the world as far as mineral resources go. Mining, in places like Katanga province in the mineral-rich east, produces almost nine-tenths of total exports. The Democratic Republic of the Congo has around 3.5 million metric tons of cobalt reserves (think: electric car batteries). A lot of that, unfortunately, involves modern-day slavery and child labor. And not just Cobalt — Gold, Diamonds, Emeralds and Oil. Despite all of this mineral wealth, the Congo is ranked 153 out of 191 countries in the Human Development Index. And, in 2018, over 70% of Congolese — about 60 million people — lived on less than $1.90 a day. WTF?!
Léopold Louis Philippe Marie Victor, who had the blood of about 10 million Africans on his hands at the time of his death in 1909, is largely — but, of course, not entirely — responsible for the predicament of present-day Congo. He became the richest man in his day by turning the “Belgian Congo” into his own personal colony. The chopping off of limbs by the tens of thousands was a form of punishment for when Leopold’s rubber quotas were not met by the Congolese. As a result, the young men were instantly impoverished and so were their families. If there is any human being that deserves to be cancelled it is Leopold. From Paul Gordon Lauren’s review of King Leopold’s Ghost, in Human Rights Quarterly:
Like many other Europeans and Americans of his day, he viewed the continent as if it were without Africans: a vast expanse of uninhabited space, just waiting with unlimited possibilities for prestige and profit. The Congo appeared ripe for the taking. With charm, seductive rhetoric, political guile and deviousness, propaganda and sham organizations, bribes, hidden accounting, manipulation, the ruthless use of the military power of the state, and boundless greed, Leopold set out to make the Congo his personal fiefdom. Brutal exploitation and the forcible extraction of tons of ivory, and then shiploads of rubber, soon brought him staggering wealth.
Like all oppressive regimes, of course, the success of Leopold’s operation required those willing to follow orders. He needed explorers, military officers and men, steamboat captains, state functionaries, concession company officials, foremen, and soldiers of fortune, among others, willing to accept the prevailing attitudes of racial superiority over indigenous peoples, to do exactly what the system told them to do without asking troublesome questions, to inflict pain or kill, and to keep quiet. He had no difficulty finding such people. Indeed, an important measure of his success in this regard can be seen in the fact that he was able to hide the brutality of his operation and actually portray himself as a philanthropic monarch and the Congo as a veritable model of progress and civilization for years without challenge.
The former colonial rulers, classically trained, were following the nihilistic stratagem of Tiberius, who had Caligula succeed him on the grounds that after being ruled by such a monster, Rome would ultimately re-assess his own leadership and long for the days of Good Old Tiberius. By the same principle, the British left Uganda under the charge of an illiterate sadist like Idi Amin, in the hopes of an historical re-assesment of British colonialism down the road. “(The Congo) was set up to fail, many historians say, by its colonizing power, Belgium, which for decades ruled Congo with an iron fist, extracting its vast natural wealth,” writes Ruth McLean in The Times. “Belgium left abruptly after independence in 1960, denying Congo the transition period its leaders had asked for.” The concessions in the Congo were described by Joseph Conrad as “the vilest scramble for loot that has ever disfigured the history of human conscience.”
(Above: The Good King Leopold liked to chop off Congolese arms as punishment, thereby consigning the punishee to a lifetime of poverty, for inability to do manual labor)
But what happened after Belgium’s abrupt departure? What happened in lieu of a transition period? “Strongmen,” is the answer. African Caligulas. It has only been 60 years since Congolese independence. And in the vacuum of Belgium colonialism another demonic entity — “Strongmen”— came to take up residence in the weakened host. Strongmen like President Mobutu, who took power in 1965, replaced the Belgians. In order to finance his “African Dictator Chic” lifestyle, Mobutu made mining concessions — hugely unfavorable to the Congolese economy — to Belgian-owned mining companies, like Union Minière du Haut-Katanga (UMHK), under the auspices of “economic nationalism.”
It must have been like Christmas to the Belgians, to maintain their own profits without the baggage of imperial management and the bad PR of limbs-a-chopping. What did Mobutu care, anyway? The money went straight into his pocket and the pockets of his ruling junta. And anyone who disagreed could be easily disappeared. Strongmen are not stewards of their nation’s economy; Strongmen are stewards of their Chateaus on the French Riviera, their Swiss chalets and Russian sex workers.
Mobutu’s successors, to be sure, were not much better. Financial corruption runs rampant. “The largest leak of financial documents from Africa shows how a private bank in the Democratic Republic of Congo was used to channel at least $138 million of public funds to former President Joseph Kabila’s family and associates,” write William Clowes and Michael Kavanagh of Bloomberg. Nowadays, China is neo-colonialist power of record, pouring money into the bank accounts of the present leadership claque, for mining concessions. And the ethnic warfare in the mineral-rich eastern provinces has led to mass rapes. “No one has been harder hit than Congo’s women, for almost all the warring factions have used rape as a calculated method of sowing terror,” writes Adam Hochschild in the New York Review of Books. He continues:
An hour and a half southwest of Goma on bone-jolting roads stand several low buildings of planks and adobe; small bleating goats wander about and a cooking fire burns on one dirt floor. There is no electricity. A sign reads Maison d’Écoute (Listening House). The office of the forty-two-year-old director, whom I will call Rebecca Kamate, extends from the side of one of the buildings; its other three walls are of thin green tarpaulin with a UNICEF emblem, through which daylight filters. The floor is gravel. Kamate pulls out a hand-written ledger to show to Anneke, her colleague Ida Sawyer, and me. Ruled columns spread across the page: date, name, age of the victim, and details—almost all are gang rapes, by three to five armed men. Since the center started, it has registered 5,973 cases of rape. The ages of the victims just since January range from two to sixty-five. On the ledger’s most recent page, the perpetrators listed include three different armed rebel groups—plus the Congolese national army.
So — what is the Pope’s message to all this? How could a three-day visit make a dent in all of this human suffering? Ethnic rivalries; economic imperialism; poverty; child labor; lack of education. What is to be done?
I honestly don’t know. And I am certainly not going to try to answer one of the biggest questions of our time in a thousand words. The Congo is perhaps the most problematic country on the planet. Its vast wealth attracts all of the most malevolent, acquisitive entities planet-wide. There are even rumors that the Wagner Group has set up shop in the mineral-rich eastern provinces (Is that really a surprise?). But it is heartening that one million Congolese celebrated in perhaps the largest open air Mass in history, in which the Pope inveighed against economic imperialism, saying, loudly: “Hands off Africa! Stop choking Africa: it is not a mine to be stripped or a terrain to be plundered.”
There is always room for Hope. Even in the Heart of Darkness.
Pope Francis Visits Congo: What to Know (NYT)
Death in Memphis: Racism, dehumanization and the corrosion of America (Salon)
“The Chinese-built light rail network in Ethiopia’s capital is on the brink of collapse, with only a fifth of its trains still in service seven years after its launch.” (SEMAFOR)
Republicans Remove Ilhan Omar From House Foreign Affairs Committee (Huff Post)
“Though Sen. Joe Manchin has not officially announced his plans, the reality is that any Democrat, even as one as successful as Manchin, faces a daunting challenge in West Virginia … But the Democratic floor continued to sink in West Virginia. In the state legislature, Republicans now hold an astonishing 88 seats in the 100-member state House and 31 of 34 state Senate seats.” (Sabatos Crystal Ball)
Bware the BeyHive! Ticketmaster Faces Next Big Test With Beyoncé ‘Renaissance’ Tour. (THR)
“Just last week, Comcast reported that Peacock had added an eye-popping 5 million paid U.S. subscribers during the last quarter of 2022, far exceeding industry expectations given the overall softness in the domestic streaming market.” (Vulture)
"The Academy loves Netflix’s pandering war porn. Its homeland knows better." (Slate)