Congo
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When the manuscript was finished, I asked a few experts to read through it. Vincent Viaene, Guy Vanthemsche, and Filip Reyntjens examined the chapters dealing with the Free State, Belgian Congo, and independent Congo, respectively, while Frans Buelens double-checked the passages on economics. I am deeply indebted to all of them for their careful comment.
In the world of Dutch-language letters it is uncommon to thank one’s editor (“Only doing my job,” is the slightly embarrassed comment one usually hears from them), but that rule does not apply to Wil Hansen, for the simple reason that he was much more than an editor, but un honnête homme of the rarest and most noble sort, and a great pleasure to work with.
I wrote Congo: A History at my studio in Kuregem, the oft-cited “problem neighborhood” in the Brussels district of Anderlecht, although I must add right away that I was bothered more by the noise of the police helicopters circling the neighborhood as part of the city’s zero-tolerance policy than by anything in the neighborhood itself, where I have worked with pleasure for more than four years. I could never have dreamed of finding in Europe a better place to write about Congo: my studio has a view of the street where every day dozens of second-hand cars are bought and sold before being shipped to Central Africa. The street corners are adorned with posters for concerts by Werrason or services by faith healers. From the outside this neighborhood seems so poorly integrated into Belgian society, I am sometimes told, but from here it seems more like Belgium is poorly integrated into the world. Kuregem is a lesson in globalization, but also in empathy and involvement.
The best classroom for such lessons is probably the Royal Flemish Theater in Brussels. My research on Congo began more or less simultaneously with the start of that theater’s artistic Congo project, a long-term exchange program between Congolese and Belgian artists. I was involved in the start of it; I taught several workshops for Congolese authors in Kinshasa and Goma, and meanwhile worked on my theater monologue Mission, which had its premier at that same theater. The wonderful work of people like Jan Goossens and Paul Kerstens convinced me that broad social debate is often carried on with greater urgency at such sanctuaries for critical thought than at many universities or in the increasingly commercialized media. It was in that context that I met a number of my dearest Congolese friends. I think in particular of the writers Bibish Mumbu and Vincent Lombume, of dramaturgists Papy Mbwiti and Jovial and Véronique Mbenga, of the actresses Starlette Mathata and Dadine Musitu, of filmmaker Djo Munga, choreographer Faustin Linyekula, visual artist Vitshois Mwilambwe, and sculptor Freddy Tsimba. Not only have they helped me to understand their country, but also to love it, for a country that brings forth such intelligent and courageous artists is far from being lost.
This book could also not have been written without the proximity of a number of very dear friends in Europe: each in their own way, Natalie Ariën, Geert Buelens, Emmy Deschuttere, Jan Goossens, Maaike Pereboom, Grażyna Plebanek, Stephan Vanfleteren, Francesca Vanthielen, and Peter Vermeersch supported me in the long process of writing this text. But above all I would like to thank Bernadette De Bouvere and Tomas Van Reybrouck, my mother and brother, for their untiring wisdom and warmth.
Brussels, April 2010
SOURCES
GENERAL
Congo: A History is the product of much listening and reading. In the notes to this volume, I have listed my sources as comprehensively as possible, yet a number of them deserve special notice. Either because I am so greatly indebted to them, or because they may help curious readers to perform their own research, or simply because I wish to overtly express my enthusiasm.
The first time I flew to Congo, the book I had with me was The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People’s History by Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja (London, 2002), an excellent and animated introduction to the country; unfortunately, I left that first copy in the magazine compartment of the seat in front of me. But the margins of the copy that subsequently replaced it are also scored with pencil marks. The same goes for Isidore Ndaywel è Nziem’s classic: Histoire générale du Congo (Paris, 1998). A great deal more academic than the former, it has nevertheless often impressed me with its comprehensiveness, its abundant exegeses, and its numerous maps. As I was writing this book, it always lay within arm’s reach. Another useful reference work through which I thumbed regularly was the Historical Dictionary of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by Emizet Kisangani and F. Scott Bobb, the third edition of which appeared only recently (Lanham, 2010). Jean-Jacques Arthur Malu-Malu’s Le Congo Kinshasa (Paris, 2002) constitutes a readable and personal overview, and one which deserves to be more widely known.
To get my bearings when it came to new periods and subjects, I started with the better-known reference works. Twenty years after their writing, the chapters dedicated to Central Africa in the seven-volume Cambridge History of Africa remain excellent. I read them alongside the entries in the eight-volume Histoire générale de l’Afrique, which were often written by African researchers. The recent A Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures: Continental Europe and Its Empires (Edinburgh, 2008) by Prem Poddar et al. helped me along with its thematic résumés and useful bibliographies.
A few older books are still very useful indeed, including The River Congo by Peter Forbath (New York, 1977) for the precolonial period and Leopold to Lumumba by George Martelli (London, 1962) for colonial times. Robert Cornevin wrote Histoire du Congo (Léopoldville) (Paris, 1963), a lucid but rather Eurocentric work whose lovely maps make up for a great deal. The collection of Jean Stengers’s articles in Congo: Mythes et réalités (Paris, 1989) remain extremely important, particularly by reason of his analyses of the Free State.
Concerning the workings of the colonial economy, the reader of Dutch now has an excellent reference work: Congo 1885–1960. Een financieel-economische geschiedenis by Frans Buelens (Berchem, 2007). In addition to historical information dealing with colonial enterprises, it also provides a good overview of the background of colonial capitalism. For the social aspects of that capitalism, refer also to the classics by Pierre Joye and Rosine Lewin, Les trusts au Congo (Brussels, 1961) and Michel Merlier, Le Congo: De la colonisation belge à l’indépendance (Paris, 1962). Specifically concerning the social aspects of Katangan mining, the works of Congolese historian Donatien Dibwe dia Mwembuie, Histoire des conditions de vie des travailleurs de l’Union Minière du Haut-Katanga/Gécamines (1910–1999) (Lubumbashi, 2001) and Bana Shaba abandonnés par leur père: Structure de l’autorité et histoire sociale de la famille ouvrière au Katanga, 1910–1997 (Paris, 2001) make extensive use of oral sources.
For a long time, colonialism was seen as a form of one-way traffic between metropolis and colony, from Europe to Africa. In recent years that view has begun to change, and researchers have started looking at the repercussions of the colonial adventure on Europe. In his interesting book Congo: De impact van de kolonie op België (Tielt, Belgium, 2007), Guy Vanthemsche demonstrates convincingly that it was not only Belgium that formed Congo, but also vice versa. He focuses particularly on the Belgian economy and domestic and foreign policies. Along with Vincent Viaene and Bambi Ceuppens I helped to compile a reader that looks at the colonial impact on other parts of Belgian society, such as culture, religion and science, Congo in België: Koloniale cultuur in de metropool (Louvain, Belgium, 2009). In addition to this two-way traffic, attention is now being paid increasingly to the diversity of the colonial presence. Besides Belgians, after all, there were also Greeks, Portuguese, Scandinavians, and Italians active in the Belgian Congo. Works such as Pionniers méconnus du Congo Belge (Brussels, 2007) by Georges Antipas, about the Greek community in Congo, and Moïse Levy, un rabbin au Congo (1937–1991) (Brussels, 2000) by Milantia Bourla Errera, broaden the historical view.
Fascinating diachronic studies exist on various themes. Their cross-sectional perspective makes them worth noting here. Concerning education and science one has the work of Ruben Mantels, Geleerd in de tropen: Leuven, Congo, en de wetenschap,
1885–1960 (Leuven/Louvain, Belgium, 2007), as well as that of Benoît Verhaegen, L’enseignement universitaire au Zaïre: De Lovanium à l’Unaza, 1958–1978 (Paris, 1978). Kuvuande Mbote has written about architecture, as has Bruno De Meulder in Een eeuw koloniale architectuur en stedenbouw in Kongo (Antwerp, Belgium, 2000) and Johan Lagae in Kongo zoals het is: Drie architectuurverhalen uit de Belgische kolonisatiegeschiedenis (1920–1960) (Ghent, Belgium, 2002). For Congolese pop music (which is always more than just music), see Gary Stewart: Rumba on the River (London, 2000). Silvia Riva has written about Congolese literature in Nouvelle histoire de la littérature du Congo-Kinshasa (Paris, 2000). For film and visual culture, see Guido Convents’s Images et démocratie: Les Congolais face au cinéma et à l’audiovisuel (Leuven/Louvain, Belgium, 2006). And for the visual arts and some truly marvelous illustrations, see Roger Pierre Turine’s: Les arts du Congo, d’hier à nos jours (Brussels, 2007). Contemporary artists often provide the viewer with multiple layers of commentary on the history of their country. That certainly applies to the Congolese poets assembled in Antoine Tshitungu Kongolo’s lovely anthology Poète ton silence est crime (Paris, 2002).
A few other books amazed, surprised and baffled me with their images: Congo Belge en images (Tielt, Belgium, 2010) by Carl De Keyzer and Johan Lagae derails all the existing clichés concerning the Congo Free State by means of its sublime selection from the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren’s collection of photographic plates. Every bit as unsettling when it comes to present-day Congo is Congo (Belge) (Tielt, Belgium, 2009) by Carl De Keyzer, and Congo Eza (Roeselare, 2007) by Mirko Popovitch and Françoise De Moor, a collection of work by contemporary Congolese photographers. It is because I value photography highly as an autonomous form of discourse that the only illustrations found in my own book are maps.
INTRODUCTION
The broad geographical sketch contained in this introductory chapter was gleaned from a wide variety of sources on the Internet and from my own bookshelves. A useful source, replete with maps, is Géopolitique du Congo (RDC) by Marie-France Cros and François Misser (Brussels, 2006).
My own first attempt to write a “bottom-up history,” based on interviews with those whose perspectives usually do not make it into the written sources, took place in a convalescent home in Brugge/Bruges, Belgium, in 2007. There I spoke to elderly people who had never themselves been to Congo concerning their memories of colonialism, about what they had thought at the time, and above all about what they had done (collecting silver paper, as it turned out, in addition to sewing and patching clothes for the missions, fishing for prizes at the mission-benefit carnival, and doing a great deal of praying for the “poor Congolese”). That study, and the methodological (im)possibilities presented by that combination of oral history and material culture studies, were expanded upon in the collection I edited with Vincent Viaene and Bambi Ceuppens: Congo in België: Koloniale cultuur in de metropool. But my analysis was in fact no more than the explicit formulation of the method I have been using for a long time in my earlier journalistic and literary work (e.g., the play Mission). And of my conviction that the most highly underestimated archives in Congo are the people themselves.
In addition to my background as archaeologist of pre-history, the importance I attach to the precolonial period is due to Eric Wolf’s classic Europe and the People without History (Berkeley, CA, 1982). The earliest human population of Congo is virtually unknown, as Graham Connah has shown in Forgotten Africa: An Introduction to Its Archaeology (London, 2004). Even the more recent surveys serve only in part to fill in the blanks; see, among others, African Archaeology: A Critical Introduction, edited by Ann Brower (Oxford, 2005), and above all Lawrence Barham and Peter Mitchell’s The First Africans: African Archaeology from the Earliest Toolmakers to the Most Recent Foragers (Cambridge, UK, 2008). I therefore based my snapshot of life some ninety thousand years ago on the excavations at Katanda performed by John E. Yellen: “Behavioral and Taphonomic Patterning at Katanda 9: A Middle Stone Age Site, Kivu Province, Zaïre,” Journal of Archaeological Science (1996). For a good survey of the rise of modern human behavior in Africa, see Sally McBrearty and Alison S. Brooks, “The Revolution that Wasn’t: A New Interpretation of the Origin of Modern Behavior,” Journal of Human Evolution 39 (2000). My snapshot of Pygmy life around 2500 BC makes grateful use of recent studies by Julio Mercader, “Foragers of the Congo: The Early Settlement of the Ituri Forest,” in Under the Canopy: The Archaeology of Tropical Rain Forests, edited by J. Mercader (New Brunswick, NJ, 2003).
The period around the year AD 500 and the phenomenon of the Bantu migration became more familiar to me through reading Jan Vansina’s impressive Paths in the Rainforest: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa (Madison, WI, 1990), supplemented by the painstaking archaeological work of Hans-Peter Wotzka, Studien zur Archäologie des zentral-afrikanische Regenwaldes: Die Keramik des inneren Zaïre-Beckens und ihre Stellung im Kontext der Bantu-Expansion (Cologne, 1995). Concerning gongs and drum languages I turned to John Carrington, La voix des tambours (Kinshasa, 1974) and Olga Boone’s Les tambours du Congo-belge et du Ruanda-Urundi (Tervuren, Belgium, 1951).
A better understanding of the rise of the first states I gained after reading Jan Vansina’s unique ethno-historical work. My own far-too-summary sketch of the local kingdoms of the savanna was based on his classic Les anciens royaumes de la savane: Les états des savanes méridionales de l’Afrique centrale des origines à l’occupation coloniale (Léopoldville, 1965) and his How Societies Are Born: Governance in West Central Africa before 1600 (Charlottesville, VA, 2004). Concerning the Kongo Empire around the year AD 1560, I turned to Anne Hilton, The Kingdom of Kongo (Oxford, 1985), to David Northrup, Africa’s Discovery of Europe (New York, 2002) and to Paul Serufuri Hakiza, L’évangélisation de l’ancien royaume Kongo, 1491–1835 (Kinshasa, 2004).
For the section on 1780 and the impact of the Atlantic slave trade, I made extensive use of Robert W. Harms’s masterful River of Wealth, River of Sorrow: The Central Zaire Basin in the Era of the Slave and Ivory Trade, 1500–1891 (New Haven, CT, 1981).
CHAPTER 1
This chapter relies in part on a booklet that is not available outside Africa: Makulo Akambu’s La vie de Disasi Makulo, ancien esclave de Tippo Tip et catéchiste de Grenfell, par son fils Makulo Akambu (Kinshasa, 1983). That book presents the life’s story of old Disasi Makulo, as dictated to his son. It fell into my hands through a stroke of sheer luck.
Although an enormous amount has been written about the African explorers (see, among others, Christopher Hibbert, Africa Explored: Europeans in the Dark Continent, 1769–1889 [London, 1982]), there is no truly integral overview of the period 1870–85. Tim Jeal’s wonderful Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer (London, 2007), however, is more than an unusually richly documented and thoughtful biography: it paints the panorama of an entire age. Insight into the wild and wooly mid-nineteenth century I gained through Jan Vansina’s, “L’Afrique centrale vers 1875,” in La conférence de géographie de 1876 [Bijdragen over de Aardrijkskundige Conferentie van 1876] (Brussels, 1976), as well as through Jean-Luc Vellut’s, “Le bassin du Congo et l’Angola,” in Histoire générale de l’Afrique, vol. 6: L’Afrique au XIXe siècle jusque vers les années 1880 edited by J. F. Ade Ajayi (Paris, 1996) and David Northrup’s “Slavery and Forced Labour in the Eastern Congo, 1850–1910,” in Slavery in the Great Lakes Region of East Africa, edited by H. Médard and S. Doyle (Oxford, 2007). More about the Muslim slave trade can be found in Edward A. Alpers, Ivory and Slaves in East Central Africa (London, 1975), Abdul Sheriff’s Slaves, Spices, and Ivory in Zanzibar (London, 1987), and Ronald Segal’s Islam’s Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora (New York, 2001). Regarding the life and work of the two most powerful Afro-Arab traders in Congo, see François Bontinck, L’autobiographie de Hamed ben Mohammed el-Murjebi: Tippo Tip (ca. 1840–1905) (Brussels, 1974) and Auguste Verbeken, Msiri, roi du Garenganze: “L’h
omme rouge” du Katanga (Brussels, 1956).
For the native reactions to the European explorers, see Frank McLynn, Hearts of Darkness: The European Exploration of Africa (London, 1992). Johannes Fabian turned the anthropological gaze 180 degrees with an impressive ethnography of the European explorers: Out of Our Minds: Reason and Madness in the Exploration of Central Africa (Berkeley, CA, 2000). I was able to document my findings on the first generation of missionaries with the help of E. M. Braekman’s Histoire du protestantisme au Congo (Brussels, 1961) and Ruth Slade’s English-Speaking Missions in the Congo Independent State, 1878–1908 (Brussels, 1959).
A very great deal has been written about the division of Africa. Thomas Pakenham wrote the hefty The Scramble for Africa, 1876–1912 (London, 1991), but H. L. Wesseling’s crystal-clear and entertaining Verdeel en heers: de deling van Afrika, 1880–1914 (Amsterdam, 1991) helped me the most in understanding the international context within which Leopold II maneuvered. Wesseling in turn made great use of Jean Stengers’s still-indispensable Congo, mythes et réalités: 100 ans d’histoire (Paris, 1989). Stengers’s article “De uitbreiding van België: tussen droom en werkelijkheid” in Nieuw licht op Leopold I en Leopold II: Het archief Goffinet, edited by G. Janssens and J. Stengers (Brussels, 1997) provides an update based on unique archive materials. Belgium’s Royal Academy for Foreign Studies published two important collections dealing with the events between 1876 and 1885: Bijdragen over de Aardrijkskundige Conferentie van 1876 (Brussels, 1976) and Bijdragen over de honderdste verjaring van de Onafhankelijke Kongostaat (Brussels, 1988).