CONGO
The Epic History of a People
David Van Reybrouck
Translated by Sam Garrett
Ecco/HarperCollins Publishers
639 pages; $29.99
On June 5, 1978, the Congolese dictator Joseph-Desire Mobutu stood on a hot grassy bluff in the south of his vast country - then named Zaire - and watched as the engines on a space rocket ignited. "Slowly, the rocket rose from the launching pad. A hundred kilometres into the atmosphere, that's where it was headed, a new step forward in African space travel." After a few moments, though, "the rocket listed, cut a neat arc to the left and landed a few hundred meters away, in the valley of the Luvua, where it exploded". For David Van Reybrouck the rocket represents Mobutu's regime: "A parabola of soot.... After the steep rise of the first years, his Zaire toppled inexorably and plunged straight into the abyss."
Mr Van Reybrouck, a Belgian historian, spent years working on this overview of the Congolese people. Its translation from Dutch, by Sam Garrett, is a piece of luck for English-speaking readers. This is a magnificent account, intimately researched, and relevant for anyone interested in how the recent past may inform our near future.
He patiently reminds us that Congo will always be a case apart because of its wealth. From Congo have come the materials of modernity: rubber for tires, copper and iron for industry, diamonds, uranium for nuclear warheads, coltan for cellphones.
The recorded history is short, dramatic and one-sided. Whatever Congo had was fed into the maw of the world - and the world was indifferent. In 1874, The New York Herald and The Daily Telegraph of London financed Henry Morton Stanley, a Welsh explorer and journalist, to travel the length of the Congo River. Stanley arrived at the Atlantic in 1877. He was taken on the payroll of King Leopold II of Belgium, whose ministate had been created in 1830 as a buffer between France and Prussia. Leopold wanted a large slice of Africa and got it the Belgian way: Congo would be a free trade buffer between other colonial interests. Some villagers rose against the whites because they were white as bones; they must have come from the land of the dead. (Echoes of that feeling persist.) Traders and missionaries followed in Stanley's footsteps. A third of the early Baptist missionaries died in the field. It was the Catholics who mostly won out. Catholic schools, Scout troops and sports clubs provided the basis of the Congolese elite.
Leopold's bet paid off. John Boyd Dunlop's invention of the inflatable rubber tire created a demand for Congolese rubber. The profits went to build Belgium at the cost of Congolese lives. Murder was casual. Since bullets were in short supply, there was a habit of cutting off the hands of those who had been shot as proof a bullet had been used to shoot a person and not an animal. It was worse than slavery: "For while an owner took care of his slave... Leopold's rubber policies by definition had no regard for the individual."
Leopold's dynastic rule could not last. In 1908 Belgium assumed full responsibility. The Belgian Congo was racist, objectionable in its inequity and plunder. Colonial officers and particularly commercial officers were skittish; tiny numbers held the enterprise together. Yet many older Congolese today remain wistful for it. Compared with what followed, the colony was in some ways admirable. Mortality fell, education rose. A large chunk of the colonial budget was locally raised. Working conditions became better than in most other places in Africa. A gold miner in the Kilo-Moto mines, for instance, received a daily ration of meat or fish, beans, rice, bananas, salt and oil - a diet many Congolese today can only dream of.
But back in Belgium an obscure article in a Flemish Catholic workers' magazine suggested Congo should become independent in the year 1985. The article was a sensation in Congo. It was the first time a date had been mentioned: Independence was suddenly not a matter of if, but when.
As late as 1959, the handover still looked years away: "Of the 4,878 higher-ranking positions, only three were occupied by Congolese in 1959." That explained the desire for independence, but also showed how unprepared the country was. Independence came on June 30, 1960 - so fast, like a craft careening over a waterfall. The Congolese Army under the command of General Émile Janssens, "the most Prussian of all Belgian officers," collapsed after only a few days.
There were four Congolese leaders - Joseph Kasavubu, Moïse Tshombe, Patrice Lumumba and Mobutu - who triumphed. Lumumba was canonised as a peerless anticolonialist by Pan-Africanists after being executed by Tshombe, with Mobutu's connivance.
Alas, there is no space here to go into Mr Van Reybrouck's treatment of the presidency of Kasavubu, the early Mobutu years, the rotting out of the state, the horrors of the first and second Congolese wars, the entry of China into Congo. Nor can justice be done to the numerous personal stories of Congolese that Mr Van Reybrouck tells.
He sought out elderly Congolese to get their memories. That was how he met Étienne Nkasi in a shack in Kinshasa. Mr Van Reybrouck went into the dimness and was greeted with a Roald Dahl scene. Nkasi sat up in bed. "His glasses were attached to his head with a rubber band. Behind the thick and badly scratched lenses I made out a pair of watery eyes." How old was he? "Je suis ne en mille-huit cent quatre-vingt deux." I was born in 1882. A 126-year-old man, one of the oldest men who ever lived? Born three years before King Leopold took control of Congo? Mr Van Reybrouck checked and double-checked. Nkasi knew the names of missionaries apparently held only on records in Belgium. He personally knew Kimbangu, who was born in a nearby village. "Kimbangu was greater than me in pouvoir de Dieu, but I was greater in years." Nkasi died in 2010, aged 128. Mr Van Reybrouck says he met Nkasi for the first time right after Barack Obama won the presidency. "Is it true," Nkasi asked in wonderment, "that a black man has been elected president of the United States?"
The Epic History of a People
David Van Reybrouck
Translated by Sam Garrett
Ecco/HarperCollins Publishers
639 pages; $29.99
On June 5, 1978, the Congolese dictator Joseph-Desire Mobutu stood on a hot grassy bluff in the south of his vast country - then named Zaire - and watched as the engines on a space rocket ignited. "Slowly, the rocket rose from the launching pad. A hundred kilometres into the atmosphere, that's where it was headed, a new step forward in African space travel." After a few moments, though, "the rocket listed, cut a neat arc to the left and landed a few hundred meters away, in the valley of the Luvua, where it exploded". For David Van Reybrouck the rocket represents Mobutu's regime: "A parabola of soot.... After the steep rise of the first years, his Zaire toppled inexorably and plunged straight into the abyss."
Mr Van Reybrouck, a Belgian historian, spent years working on this overview of the Congolese people. Its translation from Dutch, by Sam Garrett, is a piece of luck for English-speaking readers. This is a magnificent account, intimately researched, and relevant for anyone interested in how the recent past may inform our near future.
He patiently reminds us that Congo will always be a case apart because of its wealth. From Congo have come the materials of modernity: rubber for tires, copper and iron for industry, diamonds, uranium for nuclear warheads, coltan for cellphones.
The recorded history is short, dramatic and one-sided. Whatever Congo had was fed into the maw of the world - and the world was indifferent. In 1874, The New York Herald and The Daily Telegraph of London financed Henry Morton Stanley, a Welsh explorer and journalist, to travel the length of the Congo River. Stanley arrived at the Atlantic in 1877. He was taken on the payroll of King Leopold II of Belgium, whose ministate had been created in 1830 as a buffer between France and Prussia. Leopold wanted a large slice of Africa and got it the Belgian way: Congo would be a free trade buffer between other colonial interests. Some villagers rose against the whites because they were white as bones; they must have come from the land of the dead. (Echoes of that feeling persist.) Traders and missionaries followed in Stanley's footsteps. A third of the early Baptist missionaries died in the field. It was the Catholics who mostly won out. Catholic schools, Scout troops and sports clubs provided the basis of the Congolese elite.
Leopold's bet paid off. John Boyd Dunlop's invention of the inflatable rubber tire created a demand for Congolese rubber. The profits went to build Belgium at the cost of Congolese lives. Murder was casual. Since bullets were in short supply, there was a habit of cutting off the hands of those who had been shot as proof a bullet had been used to shoot a person and not an animal. It was worse than slavery: "For while an owner took care of his slave... Leopold's rubber policies by definition had no regard for the individual."
Leopold's dynastic rule could not last. In 1908 Belgium assumed full responsibility. The Belgian Congo was racist, objectionable in its inequity and plunder. Colonial officers and particularly commercial officers were skittish; tiny numbers held the enterprise together. Yet many older Congolese today remain wistful for it. Compared with what followed, the colony was in some ways admirable. Mortality fell, education rose. A large chunk of the colonial budget was locally raised. Working conditions became better than in most other places in Africa. A gold miner in the Kilo-Moto mines, for instance, received a daily ration of meat or fish, beans, rice, bananas, salt and oil - a diet many Congolese today can only dream of.
But back in Belgium an obscure article in a Flemish Catholic workers' magazine suggested Congo should become independent in the year 1985. The article was a sensation in Congo. It was the first time a date had been mentioned: Independence was suddenly not a matter of if, but when.
As late as 1959, the handover still looked years away: "Of the 4,878 higher-ranking positions, only three were occupied by Congolese in 1959." That explained the desire for independence, but also showed how unprepared the country was. Independence came on June 30, 1960 - so fast, like a craft careening over a waterfall. The Congolese Army under the command of General Émile Janssens, "the most Prussian of all Belgian officers," collapsed after only a few days.
There were four Congolese leaders - Joseph Kasavubu, Moïse Tshombe, Patrice Lumumba and Mobutu - who triumphed. Lumumba was canonised as a peerless anticolonialist by Pan-Africanists after being executed by Tshombe, with Mobutu's connivance.
Alas, there is no space here to go into Mr Van Reybrouck's treatment of the presidency of Kasavubu, the early Mobutu years, the rotting out of the state, the horrors of the first and second Congolese wars, the entry of China into Congo. Nor can justice be done to the numerous personal stories of Congolese that Mr Van Reybrouck tells.
He sought out elderly Congolese to get their memories. That was how he met Étienne Nkasi in a shack in Kinshasa. Mr Van Reybrouck went into the dimness and was greeted with a Roald Dahl scene. Nkasi sat up in bed. "His glasses were attached to his head with a rubber band. Behind the thick and badly scratched lenses I made out a pair of watery eyes." How old was he? "Je suis ne en mille-huit cent quatre-vingt deux." I was born in 1882. A 126-year-old man, one of the oldest men who ever lived? Born three years before King Leopold took control of Congo? Mr Van Reybrouck checked and double-checked. Nkasi knew the names of missionaries apparently held only on records in Belgium. He personally knew Kimbangu, who was born in a nearby village. "Kimbangu was greater than me in pouvoir de Dieu, but I was greater in years." Nkasi died in 2010, aged 128. Mr Van Reybrouck says he met Nkasi for the first time right after Barack Obama won the presidency. "Is it true," Nkasi asked in wonderment, "that a black man has been elected president of the United States?"
©2014 The New York Times News Service