“He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision—he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath–“The horror! The horror!”
–Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Introduction:
In 1899 Joseph Conrad wrote a novella Heart of Darkness that readers assumed took place in a private colony of King Leopold II, the Congo Free State. Some of Conrad’s experiences in the Congo, and the story’s historically tragic background, were recounted in Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost.
Conrad felt that it was fallacious to assume that Europeans represented “the light of civilization” and Black Africans were barbarians. Instead, Conrad worried that mankind had a malevolent nature. Indeed for over one hundred and fifty years, the Congo has been literally washed in blood. Even now, the Congo suffers from an on-going strife that has been euphemistically described as the Second Congo Civil War or Africa’s World War.
Let me share with you some dire statistics about this deadliest conflict since World War II:
5.4 million people killed either outright or from malnutrition and disease
8 Nations Directly Involved
25 Armed Groups
Millions of refugees seeking safe harbor from barbaric tribal generated genocide
Despite tremendous natural resources, its sixty-four million people
suffer from malnutrition
median life expectancy 54
live in dire poverty
After reading about the holocaust or the rapacious history of the Congo, one might ask “why should we believe in God?” My response is “why should we believe in man?”
Background:
Sadly, the Congo Free State or The Democratic Republic of Congo are hoaxes. Freedom from the brutal colonial rule of Belgium was succeeded by equally repressive regimes by Black leaders, including the more than thirty year role by the sadistic, rapacious, and corrupt Joseph-Désiré Mobutu. His regime was propped up by the American Central Intelligence Agency and European states who were both anxious to plunder the Congo of its natural resources and forestall communist advances in central Africa. Mobutu’s successors have unfortunately shared his shortcomings.
1884 – In November 14 European nations (Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Holland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden and Turkey) and the US met at the Conference of Berlin to carve up central Africa among them.
1885 – The Conference of Berlin gave France 670,000 square kilometers on the north bank of the Congo (modern Congo-Brazzaville and the Central African Republic), Portugal 910,000 square kilometers to the south (modern Angola), and gave personally to Leopold II (not Belgium) 2.3 million square kilometers.
Under the terms of the ‘General Act of Berlin’ Leopold promised to suppress the slave trade, “watch over the preservation” of the 20-30 million Congolese now subject to his personal rule and improve “their moral and material conditions of existence.” He was supposed to encourage missions and other philanthropic and scientific enterprises without any “restriction or impediment whatsoever” and guarantee free trade. Leopold II throughout his rule violated these elegant principles.
1885-1908: Leopold amassed a huge personal fortune by exploiting the Congo. Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost documented that during these twenty-three years Leopold II embraced policies that led to some of the worst atrocities ever committed on the African continent. Leopold never visited the region, ruling instead by decree from Belgium. In 1908, the European States forced the Belgium nation to replace Leopold II’s personal rule
Among the Congolese the Congo Free State became known as ‘Bula Matadi’ (‘He who breaks rocks’ in the language of the Congo people), a reference to the brutality of Leopold’s regime.
1960: Belgium rule ended, leaving the country totally unprepared for independence. Only a handful of the natives were even high school graduates. Moreover, the country became a pawn in the superpowers’ Cold War struggle.
1960-1995: After its early leader, Patrice Lumumba was assassinated at the behest of the CIA; the country was run by a small clique led by Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, who ultimately seized complete power in 1965. Mobutu, whose 30 years of dictatorial rule spawned the term “kleptocracy (rule by thieves),” renamed the nation Zaire and presided over an increasingly unstable nation rotted through by corruption and complete suppression of human rights. It was estimated that Mobutu amassed a personal fortune of $4 billion dollars, stored away in private bank accounts in Switzerland.
He used the slogan “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer still” to describe his tactic of co-opting political opponents through bribery.
1995-Present: The country effectively has lapsed into anarchy. That is, Democratic Republic of the Congo has suffered through two brutal civil wars. These wars have devastated the population, continued massive corruption, and stifled foreign investment.
Economy of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
Continuous warfare since the mid-1980’s has wreaked the economy of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a nation endowed with vast potential wealth.
The Congo is the world’s largest producer of cobalt (as ore), and a major producer of copper and industrial diamonds. It has significant deposits of tantalum, which is used in the fabrication of electronic components in computers and mobile phones. The movie Black Diamond captured the banality of evil of the Congo where young children, mostly orphans, are raised without any moral compass to become wanton killers.
People
Congo, Democratic Republic of the
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Population:
66,514,506
note: estimates for this country explicitly take into account the effects of excess mortality due to AIDS; this can result in lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality, higher death rates, lower population growth rates, and changes in the distribution of population by age and sex than would otherwise be expected (July 2008 est.)
Age structure:
0-14 years: 47.1% (male 15,711,817/female 15,594,449)
15-64 years: 50.4% (male 16,672,399/female 16,875,468)
65 years and over: 2.5% (male 674,766/female 985,607) (2008 est.)
Median age:
total: 16.3 years
male: 16.1 years
female: 16.5 years (2008 est.)
Population growth rate:
3.236% (2008 est.)
Birth rate:
43 births/1,000 population (2008 est.)
Death rate:
11.88 deaths/1,000 population (2008 est.)
Net migration rate:
1.24 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2008 est.)
Sex ratio:
at birth: 1.03 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.01 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 0.99 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 0.68 male(s)/female
total population: 0.99 male(s)/female (2008 est.)
Infant mortality rate:
total: 83.11 deaths/1,000 live births
male: 91.14 deaths/1,000 live births
female: 74.83 deaths/1,000 live births (2008 est.)
Life expectancy at birth:
total population: 53.98 years
male: 52.22 years
female: 55.8 years (2008 est.)
Total fertility rate:
6.28 children born/woman (2008 est.)
HIV/AIDS – adult prevalence rate:
4.2% (2003 est.)
HIV/AIDS – people living with HIV/AIDS:
1.1 million (2003 est.)
HIV/AIDS – deaths:
100,000 (2003 est.)
Major infectious diseases:
degree of risk: very high
food or waterborne diseases: bacterial and protozoal diarrhea, hepatitis A, and typhoid fever
vectorborne diseases: malaria, plague, and African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness)
water contact disease: schistosomiasis
animal contact disease: rabies (2008)
Nationality:
noun: Congolese (singular and plural)
adjective: Congolese or Congo
Ethnic groups:
over 200 African ethnic groups of which the majority are Bantu; the four largest tribes – Mongo, Luba, Kongo (all Bantu), and the Mangbetu-Azande (Hamitic) make up about 45% of the population
Religions:
Roman Catholic 50%, Protestant 20%, Kimbanguist 10%, Muslim 10%, other (includes syncretic sects and indigenous beliefs) 10%
Languages:
French (official), Lingala (a lingua franca trade language), Kingwana (a dialect of Kiswahili or Swahili), Kikongo, Tshiluba
Literacy:
definition: age 15 and over can read and write French, Lingala, Kingwana, or Tshiluba
total population: 67.2%
male: 80.9%
female: 54.1% (2001 est.)
