Congo

by David Van Reybrouck

  A thoroughgoing study of the Katangan succession was written surprisingly soon after the events themselves is by Jules Gérard-Libois, Sécession au Katanga (Brussels, 1963). For the historical roots of that secession, see Romain Yakemtchouk, Aux origines du séparatisme katangais (Brussels, 1988).

  The uprisings in Kwilu and the east of the country have been dealt with exhaustively in the studies by Benoît Verhaegen, Rébellions au Congo (Brussels, 1966–1969), and the two-volume collection of abstracts, Rébellions-révolution au Zaïre 1963–1965, edited by Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch et al. (Paris, 1987). See Les rébellions dans l’est du Zaïre (1964–1967), edited by Herbert Weiss and Benoît Verhaegen (1986), an important thematic issue of Les Cahiers du CEDAF, a periodical publication by the Centre d’Etude et de Documentation Africaines. Ludo Martens wrote two sympathetic biographies about Pierre Mulele and his wife Léonie Abo, Pierre Mulele ou la seconde vie de Patrice Lumumba (Berchem, 1985), and Une femme du Congo (Berchem, 1991). An excellent journalistic account of the Congolese rebellion is by Jean Kestergat, Congo Congo: de l’indépendance à la guerre civile (Paris, 1965).

  The social and economic conditions during the First Republic have received much less attention than the political and military infighting, yet there is a highly accurate picture of life in the big city by J. S. Lafontaine, City Politics: A Study of Léopoldville, 1962–63 (Cambridge, UK, 1970). Concerning the complex question of the colonial stock portfolio and the negotiations dealing with its return to Congo, see Jean-Claude Willame, Eléments pour une lecture du contentieux belgo-zaïrois (Brussels, 1988).

  CHAPTER 9

  An outstanding, even formidable, introduction to Mobutu’s life and work can be gleaned from the documentary by Thierry Michel, Mobutu, roi du Zaïre (Brussels, 1999). Readers wishing to dig more deeply into that period would do well to start with the highly illuminating chapter about the Second Republic by Jacques Vanderlinden in Du Congo au Zaïre, 1960–1980, edited by A. Huybrechts et al. (Brussels, 1980). To see how a political elite plundered the national economy, consult Fernard Bézy et al., Accumulation et sous-développement au Zaïre 1960–1980 (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, 1981), and David J. Gould, Bureaucratic Corruption and Underdevelopment in the Third World: The Case of Zaire (New York, 1980). But no one out to make a serious study of the era should omit the bulky study by Crawford Young and Thomas Turner, The Rise and Decline of the Zairean State (Madison, WI, 1985). That book focuses on the first half of the Mobutu regime, the period 1965–80, and provides a very convincing picture of how the state first became omnipresent and omnipotent, then fell into total disarray. Its style is sober, yet it contains a wealth of documentation. By far the most important book about this era.

  Original Zairian sources from that period are numerous, but consistently fettered by fear of the regime. There is propaganda in abundance, without a drop of critical analysis. It was only outside the borders of the national territory that one could curse out loud. In Paris, Cléophas Kamitatu, cofounder of the Parti Solidaire Africain, wrote two well-documented works that also provide virulent critique of the regime, La grande mystification du Congo-Kinshasa: Les crimes de Mobutu (Paris, 1971), and Zaïre: Le pouvoir à la portée du peuple (Paris, 1977).

  Two recent American books have provided a backstage glimpse. Mobutu’s personal physician, the American William Close, father of actress Glenn Close, published his recollections of a turbulent period, Beyond the Storm (Marbleton, WY, 2007). Although his analysis is not always profound, the anecdotes are often highly revealing. For a better understanding of the ties of friendship between America and Zaïre, readers can best turn to Romain Yakemtchouk, Les relations entre les États-Unis et le Zaïre (Brussels, 1986), and the memoirs of CIA agent Larry Devlin, Chief of Station, mentioned above.

  Kinshasa’s staggeringly explosive growth has been described well by Marc Pain, Kinshasa, la ville et la cité (Paris, 1984), and René de Maximy, Kinshasa, ville en suspens (Paris, 1984). Both books devote attention not only to urban and demographic processes, but also to their social and cultural consequences.

  In this burgeoning and youthful city, music played a major role. The Congolese music scene was probably never so vital as in the early 1970s, thanks in part to Mobutu’s campaign of authenticité. Gary Stewart’s exhaustive Rumba on the River (London, 2000), deals with this in detail. Also highly worthwhile is the recent Rumba Rules: The Politics of Dance Music in Mobutu’s Zaire (Durham, NC, 2008), with as main theme the closely knit ties between politics and popular music. For the descriptions of the match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman I made use not only of clips on YouTube, but also of Norman Mailer’s classic The Fight (Boston, 1975), one of the best sports books ever written. In addition, I greatly enjoyed Leon Gast’s Oscar-winning documentary When We Were Kings (1996), which also deals with the musical aspects of “The Rumble in the Jungle.” Concerning the intertwining of the black emancipation struggle and boxing, I referred to several excellent essays in Gerard Early, Speech and Power (Hopewell, 1992).

  CHAPTER 10

  Accessible and well-documented works dealing with the madness of the Mobutu regime from 1975 exist in a number of languages. Jean-Claude Willame wrote the serene but shrewd L’automne d’un despotisme (Paris, 1992) and Colette Braeckman, journalist for Le Soir, the readable and in Congo highly influential Le dinosaure (Paris, 1991). In Flanders two journalists from the public broadcasting company wrote down their experiences and analyses in Mobutu, de man van Kamanyola by Walter Geerts (Leuven/Louvain, Belgium, 2005) and particularly Mobutu, van mirakel tot malaise by Walter Zinzen (Antwerp, 1995). The latter is extremely worthwhile, even if only for the chapter on the Shaba wars. The American historian Thomas Callaghy saw a parallel between the Mobutu regime and the ancien régime in France in The State-Society Struggle: Zaire in Comparative Perspective (New York, 1984). With her In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in the Congo (London, 2000), the British journalist Michela Wrong has written a wonderful page-turner with a wealth of information about the 1990s. And more than twenty years after publication, the oft-translated Terug naar Congo by Lieve Joris (Amsterdam, 1987) still provides a very tangible and gripping picture of life under the dictatorship.

  Jean-Claude Willame deals with the “white elephants,” Mobutu’s senseless building projects, in Zaïre, l’épopée d’Inga: chronique d’une prédation industrielle (Paris, 1986). Contrary to what the title seems to suggest, the book deals with more than the notorious hydroelectric station. Information about the German rocket program, I assembled piece by piece from the documentary Mobutu, roi du Zaïre by Thierry Michel (1999), the above-mentioned book by Walter Geerts, but above all from Otrag Rakete, the website of Bernd Leitenberger, http://www.bernd-leitenberger.de/otrag.shtml.

  The standard work on the Shaba wars was written by Romain Yakemtchouk, Les deux guerres du Shaba (Brussels, 1988). He devoted a great deal of attention to the ties maintained by Belgium, France, and the United States with Mobutu’s Zaïre. Before starting in on Sean Kelly’s Les relations entre les états-Unis et le Zaïre (Brussels, 1986), I read his less technical work with the title-as-synopsis, America’s Tyrant: The CIA and Mobutu of Zaire: How the United States Put Mobutu in Power, Protected Him from His Enemies, Helped Him Become One of the Richest Men in the World, and Lived to Regret It (Washington, DC, 1993).

  Achieving an understanding of the economic and monetary policies of the period 1975–90 is no mean feat, especially in view of the absence of a good survey of the role of the IMF, the World Bank, and the Paris Club. Winsome J. Leslie focused on one of the key players in his The World Bank and Structural Adjustment in Developing Countries: The Case of Zaire (Boulder, CO, 1987). The work of Jean-Philippe Peemans, Zaïre onder het Mobutu-regime (Brussels, 1988), was lucid and interesting to read, not least of all because of his early warning for the undesired effects of the IMF measures. Kisangani Emizet further refined the arguments and provided important and convincing graph material in the fi
rst chapters of his Zaire after Mobutu (Helsinki, 1997). My verdict on the work of the IMF is greatly indebted to the bestseller Globalization and Its Discontents by Nobel-Prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz (London, 2002).

  The dramatic consequences of the crisis and the rise of a “second,” informal economy were examined by Janet MacGaffey and her team: The Real Economy of Zaire (London, 1991). For the role of women in that new economy, see Benoît Verhaegen, Femmes zaïroises de Kisangani: Combats pour la survie (Paris, 1990). Striking accounts are also found in Manières de vivre: Économie de la “débrouille” dans les villes du Congo/Zaïre, edited by G. de Villers et al. (Tervuren, Belgium, 2002).

  For an understanding of the repressive state apparatus, the reader may turn to the bleak reports from Amnesty International and to the Sovereign National Conference’s Rapport sur les assassinats, as reissued by Abdoulaye Yerodia (Kinshasa, 2004). A more academic approach is found in Michael Schatzberg’s The Dialectics of Oppression in Zaire (Bloomington, IN, 1988). Urban legend, rumors, and news from the radio-trottoir were compiled by Cornelis Nlandu-Tsasa in La rumeur au Zaïre de Mobutu: Radio-trottoir à Kinshasa (Paris, 1997). Regarding popular painting, see Art pictural zaïrois, edited by Bogumil Jewsiewicki (Paris, 1992), and Johannes Fabian, Remembering the Present: Painting and Popular History in Zaire (Berkeley, CA, 1996).

  The six thousand reports written after the 1990 “people’s meetings” have never been released, but the best work dealing with the start of the process of democratization is that by A. Gbabendu Engunduka and E. Efolo Ngobaasu, Volonté de changement au Zaïre: De la consultation populaire vers la conférence nationale (Paris, 1992).

  CHAPTER 11

  A succinct but highly illuminating introduction to the turbulent period of transition between the Second and the Third Republics can be found in Flemish radio journalist Guy Poppe’s De tranen van de dictator: Van Mobutu tot Kabila (Antwerp, 1998). Many of those actively involved have written about their vision of the political struggle and had it published by L’Harmattan in Paris. For years, that publisher has served as the major display case for the intellectual Francophone African diaspora; its noncritical publishing policy, however, sometimes makes it seem more like a glorified copy shop than any systematic distributor of knowledge. One of the more balanced works is that by Dieudonné Ilunga Mpunga, Etienne Tshisekedi: Le sens d’un combat (Paris, 2007), which chiefly examines the role of the UDPS. Loka-ne-Kongo wrote a critical retrospective about that chaotic period of democratization, Lutte de libération et piège de l’illusion: Multipartisme intégral et dérive de l’opposition au Zaïre (1990–1997) (Kinshasa, 2001). Axel Buyse summed up the major events of the initial years in Democratie voor Zaïre: De bittere nasmaak van een troebel experiment (Groot-Bijgaarden, Belgium, 1994). The most detailed work is that by Gauthier de Villers, Zaïre: La transition manquée (1990–1997) (Paris, 1997), the first volume of a highly valuable trilogy about the democratic transition.

  The most complete study of the suppression of the student protest in Lubumbashi comes from Muela Ngalamulume Nkongolo, Le campus martyr: Lubumbashi, 11–12 mai 1990 (Paris, 2000). Concerning the quashing of the big peace march in Kinshasa, see Marche d’espoir, Kinshasa 16 février 1992: Non-violence pour la démocratie au Zaïre, edited by Philippe de Dorlodot (Paris, 1994). There is, to the best of my knowledge, no standard work dealing with the Sovereign National Conference, but I supplemented the information I gained from talks with Régine Mutijima with the historical survey by Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, who was also a participant, The Congo from Leopold to Kabila (London, 2002).

  It was my privilege on several occasions to talk with Baudouin Hamuli, the veritable godfather of Congo’s société civile. He was the first chairman of the national council for NGOs and recorded his analyses in two interesting studies, Donner sa chance au peuple congolais: Expériences de développement participatif (1985–2001) (Paris, 2002), and, with two coauthors, La société civile congolaise: État des lieux et perspectives (Brussels, 2003).

  The extremely precarious situation in which the common people lived has been dealt with in the compilations by Manières de vivre: Économie de la “débrouille” dans les villes du Congo/Zaïre, edited by Gautier de Villers et al. (Tervuren, Belgium, 2002), and Chasse au diamant au Congo/Zaïre, edited by L. Monnier et al. (Tervuren, Belgium, 2001). These books examine the rise of such phenomena as the cambistes in Kinshasa, the bicycle taxis in Kisangani, and diamond smuggling in Kasai. Concerning the opulence still enjoyed by Mobutu in the 1990s, one can learn a lot from the stories of his Belgian son-in-law, Pierre Janssen, Aan het hof van Mobutu (Paris, 1997). Concerning the rise of the new religiosity, see Isidore Ndaywel è Nziem, La transition politique au Zaïre et son prophète Dominique Sakombi Inongo (Québec, 1995). Anthropologist René Devisch wrote an important article about finding moral and social meaning in times of crisis, “Frenzy, Violence, and Renewal in Kinshasa,” Public Culture (1995). Lieve Joris’s Dans van de luipaard (Amsterdam, 2001) is definitely the best-known work of literary journalism dealing with the end of the Mobutu era.

  Entire libraries have been written about the Rwandan genocide. The standard work was and remains Leave None to Tell the Story by Human Rights Watch researcher Alison Des Forges (New York, 1999), who died far too young. In addition, I would recommend to the reader the classic by Gérard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis (London, 1995). Several hefty tomes have recently appeared, dealing with the conflict in the area around the Great Lakes: Thomas Turner, The Congo Wars: Conflict, Myth, and Reality (London, 2007), René Lemarchand, The Dynamics of Violence in Central-Africa (Philadelphia, 2008), Filip Reyntjens, De Grote Afrikaanse Oorlog: Congo in de regionale geopolitiek, 1996–2006 (Antwerp, Belgium, 2009), and Gérard Prunier, Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe (Oxford, 2009). While Turner is somewhat chaotic, Lemarchand tells a fascinating and well-organized story, Reyntjens provides an admirable overview, and Prunier a detailed analysis.

  Dealing specifically with the advance of the AFDL is the excellent compilation by Colette Braeckman et al., Kabila prend le pouvoir (Brussels, 1998). Erik Kennes wrote a substantial biography of Kabila’s life before his move to seize power, Essai biographique sur Laurent Désiré Kabila (Tervuren, Belgium, 2003). Unparalleled in its evocative power is once again a documentary by Egyptian filmmaker Jihan El-Tahri, L’Afrique en morceaux: La tragédie des Grands Lacs (2000), which can be viewed in its entirely on the Internet.

  CHAPTER 12

  The run-up to and course of the Second Congo War have been dealt with in detail in the above-mentioned surveys by Prunier and Reyntjens. An excellent introduction to the conflict has also been provided by Olivier Lanotte in his Guerres sans frontières en République Démocratique du Congo (Brussels, 2003). More analytical, but with a wealth of information, is the work by Gauthier de Villers, Guerre et politique: Les trente derniers mois de L. D. Kabila (Tervuren, Belgium, 2001). Concerning Kabila’s regime before and after the invasion, see the critique by Wamu Oyatambwe, De Mobutu à Kabila: Avatars d’une passation inopinée (Paris, 1999). A great deal more hagiographic, almost to the point of being burlesque at times, is the compilation edited by Eddie Tambwe and Jean-Marie Dikanga Kazadi, Laurent-Désiré Kabila: L’actualité d’un combat (Paris, 2008). With regard to the motives of the countries taking part in that war, The African Stakes of the Congo War by John F. Clark (New York, 2002) appeared quite soon after the facts themselves. The toilsome peace negotiations leading to the agreements at Lusaka (1999) and Pretoria (2002) are discussed by Jean-Claude Willame, Les “faiseurs de paix” au Congo (Brussels, 2007). The book also grants a good deal of attention to the motives of combatants both domestic and foreign, and the role of the international UN peacekeeping force MONUC. The definitive study of the MONUC remains to be written, but Xavier Zeebroek recently wrote a useful report, La Mission des Nations Unies au Congo: Le laboratoire de la paix introuvable (Brussels, 2008), and Julie Reynaert produced a clear and
concise master’s thesis, “De balans na tien jaar Monuc in Congo” (Leuven/Louvain, Belgium, 2009).

  The massive theft of raw materials has been proven irrefutably by consecutive reports from the United Nations panel of experts (www.un.org/News/dh/latest/dr congo.htm). An overall, quantitative analysis is lacking, but Stefaan Marysse and Catherine André carried out pioneering calculations for the years 1999 and 2000 in “Guerre et pillage en République Démocratique du Congo,” L’Afrique des Grands Lacs (2001). The L’Afrique des Grands Lacs yearbooks, currently edited by Stefaan Marysse, Filip Reyntjens, and Stef Vandeginste, provide a wealth of information for all those wishing to study the more recent periods in Congolese (but also Rwandan and Burundian) history. Back issues can be downloaded in their entirety from the University of Antwerp website.

  Marvelous work has also been done by a number of independent NGOs. Human Rights Watch documented the smuggling of gold by Uganda in two reports, Uganda in Eastern DRC (2001) and above all The Curse of Gold (2005). Global Witness investigated Rwanda’s role in the smuggling of tin, Under-Mining Peace: Tin, The Explosive Trade in Cassiterite in Eastern DRC (2005). In a two-part study, IPIS looked at the international markets for coltan: Supporting the War Economy in the DRC: European Companies and the Coltan Trade (2002). Pole Institute, a Congolese studies center in Goma, published The Coltan Phenomenon (2002), with extensive interviews with mineworkers. All these reports are also available online.