Public Agenda (Accra)
Dr. Kwame Osei
8 June 2009
opinion
I have been compelled to write this feature as a result of an article featured in this paper entitled "Light in Congo's Darkness". The article was slightly economical with the truth about the real reasons why there is instability in the Congo.
This article seeks to inform the reader of the circumstances behind the instability that is rife in the Congo. However we need to inform the readership of the history of the Congo.
The current problems that beset the Congo can be traced right back to the infamous Berlin Congress of 1884/1885 where the European and American powers sought to divide Afrika into neo-political and economic entities that would serve their imperialistic needs on the continent.
This conference in which no Afrikans were invited to take part saw the death nail of the Afrikan continent and sowed the seeds for the future conflicts that have engulfed the continent.
It was quite unacceptable and arrogant of the Europeans and Americans that no Afrikan would be invited to a meeting that would have a great effect on the future of Afrika and its people.
This is because the Europeans and Americans created artificial borders that kept families apart and forced indigenous peoples whose religion, culture and value and belief systems were different to live under "one country". This is emphasized by the Hutus and Tutsis who were separate indigenous groups with their own culture, value and belief systems including their own land mass.
However what the Berlin Congress sought to do was to force people of different groups to live together - this would be the beginning of the tribal war fare that has gripped Afrika ever since.
In the aftermath of this greedy land grab by the Europeans and Americans, they each had their lion's share of the Afrikan real estate. The French got the biggest share with the bulk of North Afrika and West Afrika under their control.
The British got the second biggest share with the bulk of Southern and Eastern Afrika with important parts of West Afrika such as Nigeria and Ghana. The Germans got strategic parts of Afrika such as Togo land, Cameroon and Namibia, the Portuguese got territories like Angola and Mozambique, The Dutch got South Afrika and the Belgians got Afrika's richest country The Congo.
The King of Leopold II of Belgium, who was part of those that attended the congress of Berlin, ran the Congo as if it is as his own personal play thing rather than a Belgian colony. The king was willing to fund the project from his own resources and from concessions to private Belgian companies. The Belgian government had no interest in what seemed likely to be an expensive exercise.
In the early years it proves so. In 1890, and again in 1895, the king has to appeal to his government in Brussels for help. He is granted large interest-free loans, in return for the right of the Belgian government to annexe the territory if it so wishes in 1901.
In fact, at the time of these loans, the economic prospects are improving dramatically. There is a simple reason. One of the Congo's two most valuable commodities is latex, from wild rubber trees. The other is ivory. In the early years of the Congo Free State ivory seems likely to be the more profitable. But in 1888 John Boyd Dunlop patents the pneumatic tyre for the most popular and useful new machine of the age, the bicycle and subsequently the car.
It was the invention of the car that changed the fortunes of Leopold and Congo forever.
The effect on Leopold's fortune is dramatic. The Congo Free State exports less than 250 tons of rubber in 1892, more than 1500 tons in 1897. Leopold is suddenly flush with wealth. He spends much of it on lavish public projects in Brussels and Ostend to impress his Belgian subjects. (So all the buildings, state homes, streets etc in Brussels and Ostend is built with blood money)
In spite of this turn of events, the Belgian government does not exercise its option in 1901. The Congo Free State seems set to continue as one man's private business.
However in the early years of the century ugly rumours begin to circulate that all is not well in this part of Afrika. There are stories of gross atrocities practised on the Congolese people by King Leopold and his private army.
At first such travellers' tales, impossible to substantiate, are easily dismissed by Leopold and his spokesmen. But in Britain (where rumours of Belgian restriction of free trade cause almost equal indignation) a campaign to discover the truth about the Congo steadily gathers momentum.
In 1903 Roger Casement, living in Boma as the British consul to the Congo Free State, receives an encrypted telegram from the foreign office. It instructs him to travel into the interior to investigate the supposed abuses. He sets off up the Congo in a small steam launch, the Henry Reed, hired from some American Baptist missionaries.
What he discovers is blood-curdling. He finds villages depopulated, people terrified, gruesome tales of death and torture, and a strangely large number of victims whose hands have been amputated.
The pattern which emerges is one of systematic and brutal exploitation by the concessionary Belgium companies, in all of which King Leopold has a 50% share. Their system for boosting rubber production is simple. Villages are given an ever higher quota of latex to be collected as it oozes from the trees in their vicinity or further afield.
If the target is not met, reprisals are savage. Villages are looted by King Leopold's army and burnt, families butchered. The severed hands reflect the companies' wish to be certain that their barbaric militia are maintaining control and not wasting ammunition. Hands are portable evidence of disciplinary activity.
Casement's report causes a sensation when published in Britain, though international statesmen - eager not to upset each others' colonial applecarts - are less prone to outrage. Nevertheless a commission is set up in Belgium to investigate the charges. It confirms Casement's facts, while condemning the failure of the many missionaries in the region to make the abuses publicly known.
Leopold fights a strong rearguard action to keep hold of his treasure trove, but by 1908 his position is untenable. Under international pressure the Belgian government annexes the Congo Free State - meanwhile adding to Leopold's fortune by paying him 50 million francs, to compensate for his "sacrifices" on behalf of the nation.
During King Leopold's reign of Terror in the Congo, it is estimated that he was responsible for the murder of over 10 million Congolese Afrikan people and it is quite strange that the families of those he murdered did not receive one franc in compensation whilst on the other hand Leopold looted the Congo with impunity and made himself a huge fortune in the process.
Volume II will deal with the road to Independence and how the West killed people like Patrice Lumumba who was for the people and installed their puppet Mobutu who looted the country and allowed the West to strip Congo bare by attaining its huge vast natural resources cheaply.
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