Greed and exploitation: DR Congo's 50th anniversary

On 30 June 1960, the 'Belgian Congo' obtained its independence, at a time in which a number of former African colonies were achieving the same goal.

The beginnings were inauspicious, with the visit of King Baudouin being marred first by Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba’s inaugural speech, which departed from the agreed text and contained a scathing – if well articulated and well deserved – attack on the 'white rulers' of the Congo, and secondly by an incident which appeared comical at the time, but somehow was an omen of things to come: in the course of the royal motorcade, a Congolese citizen eluded security barriers, leapt into the king’s limousine and made off with the ceremonial sword.

I was posted there – my first diplomatic posting – shortly after the murder of Patrice Lumumba. Mobutu’s (then Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Désiré Mobutu) first military takeover had taken place and had ended with his returning power to the civilians, as he had promised. A 'moderate' democratic government was then already in existence, which, by its composition and actions, gave rise to justifiable optimism for the county’s future.

Over the distance of all these years, I still occasionally ask myself 'what went wrong?', and why a land so rich both in natural and human resources (Congolese art and music are second to none in Africa, and already then there was an effervescent intellectual middle class) ended up sliding further and further into chaos and senseless violence.

It is hard to pin down a turning point. The violent rebellion in the east, with the consequent addition of foreign (mainly white) mercenaries to the equation of violence, Moise Tchombe’s seizing of power with the help of Belgian (and other Western) interests – the same figure who some years earlier had brought about the Katanga 'secession' – and the rather suspect death of UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld were all dramatic events causing a rise in existing tensions, but none of them seemed decisive.

Then, in November of 1965, Mobutu (by now General Mobutu) seized power again. Those of us who had met Mobutu and who really thought we knew (and liked) the man heaved a sigh of relief. He asked for 'five years' and then he would return power to the civilians, and, of course, because of the historic precedent, we believed him. There was much enthusiasm during those first heady times – Congolese musical geniuses came up with songs and ditties such as 'Cinq ans, cinq ans, Mobutu au gouvernement' – and even normally sceptical observers, the so-called 'seasoned diplomats', had to admit that he had introduced a new dynamic style in Congolese political life, proclaiming to enthusiastically cheering crowds that he was about to abolish tribalism, corruption, poverty and other ills.

AGAIN, WHAT WENT WRONG?

Even after all these years, Lumumba’s speech is well worth listening to, and for those of us who were in Congo in the period immediately following his assassination, it had a feeling of authenticity and appeared still applicable to many – certainly not all – European residents. This could relate especially, but not exclusively, to those Belgians – mainly Flemish – who had decided to 'stay on' after a precipitous flight caused by the first 'troubles', an army mutiny, shortly after independence.

Some did not hide their contempt for the 'natives', and spoke with open nostalgia of the 'good old days' and of the recent Katanga 'secession'. In the months preceding Mobutu’s takeover, these were ardently hoping and actively working for the creation of a Tchombe government, which they felt would be more 'sensitive' to their demands. The racism, so eloquently depicted by Lumumba, was still very active, and how often did I hear the tired joke of those who would go to South Africa because they were dreaming of a 'white Christmas'.

I have read, with more than usual interest, that Louis Michel, a very influential Belgian MEP (member of the European Parliament) and a former European Union commissioner, has been trying to rehabilitate the figure of King Leopold, to whom, instead, most historians and observers attribute the responsibility for the Congolese disaster. These statements certainly appear shocking to most of us, but I believe that still today, as indeed in the 1960s, there is a hardcore school of thought in which the Congo atrocities are minimised, indeed justified, and the responsibility for the disastrous outcome of Congolese independence is attributed to a hopelessly 'primitive' mentality and to the work of well-intentioned but misinformed 'do-gooders' who have conspired to instil wrong ideas into the minds of the Congolese people.

Michela Wrong some years ago wrote an extremely pleasing and important book on the end of the Mobutu regime, and gave it the evocative title 'In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz', with, of course, a reference to Joseph Conrad’s 'The Heart of Darkness'. The temptation to explain current political events through historical analysis is always strong, but has its pitfalls and needs to be controlled. In the case of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, however, retracing, as it were, Conrad’s Congolese journey could be a useful exercise – as indeed, a swift perusal of the Congo’s incredibly cruel 19th century ordeal could show the reasons for its weak and fragile social structure.

It would be a mistake, however, to attribute the Congolese tragedy entirely and exclusively to King Leopold or to the subsequent Belgian colonial rule. Indeed, in later years, the colony received a rather valid infrastructure system, no worse than that which was left by other colonial powers, and, thanks to reforms in the education system, a literate, cultured middle class was also emerging.

The tragedy of the Congo, from the days of Stanley to the present, has been its immense, almost unbelievable wealth, and the uncontrolled, unbridled greed with which it has been – and is being – exploited. It has to be added that if this exploitation was perpetrated exclusively by Europeans as long as the Congo was a colony and in the immediate aftermath of its independence, in later years the scramble for the country’s riches has included many Congolese themselves working either with foreigners or on their own.

I saw this cancer growing when I was there, starting in Katanga and then spreading to the rest of the country, corrupting all those it touched, and finally bringing about the country’s total ruin.

Many of us, in 1965, really believed that Mobutu would be able to turn things around, and I am rather convinced that he, in good faith, actually believed so himself. For a while, after seizing the presidency, Mobutu remained, at least in appearance, immune from the megalomania and the paranoia so often associated with absolute power: he still was a seemingly unassuming, intelligent, humorous individual, to all appearances earnestly dedicated to the welfare and development of his country.

One of the first signals of incipient paranoia came the following year, when a former prime minister and three former cabinet ministers, clad only in their underwear, were publicly hanged for allegedly conspiring to overthrow Mobutu. Such was his charisma, however, and so deep the feeling that he was basically a 'good guy', that until the very last many of us – Congolese and foreign – were sure that a last-minute reprieve would be issued. The men, instead, were duly executed and it can be said that the spiral of megalomaniac paranoia and of absolute corruption and accumulation of wealth began more or less concurrently, although very few if any of us, the foreign observers, had an inkling of what was to come.

The last memory I have of Kinshasa is that of waiting for my final flight, in the blistering heat of Ndjili airport, thinking to myself, quite confidently, that 'things could not get any worse', while instead the deterioration was constant and lasted almost four decades, bringing the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the verge of becoming a 'failed state'.

Europeans and successive American administrations share a lot of responsibility, if nothing else for having bolstered and thus encouraged, for many years, the misdeeds of a regime such as Mobutu’s in the name of security and anti-communism. But human greed was and is the prime culprit of the situation there. We can only hope that the solemn occasion of the 50th anniversary of independence will give the Congolese and their friends the strength and the means to reverse the situation.

I can’t help, however, being obsessed by a nagging doubt, and I keep asking myself if a similar fate is, for instance, being prepared for Afghanistan. Why was the 'discovery' of vast riches there given so much publicity at a moment when Afghan civilian social structure has been weakened by three decades of conflict? The lessons of history are there, but few seem interested in learning from them.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* Carlo Ungaro is a retired senior Italian diplomatic officer, who has spent many years of his career in Asia (Central Asia, Afghanistan) and Africa (Congo, Somalia).
* Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at Pambazuka News.