Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa
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CHAPTER SIX
Falling Apart
Here again were unmistakable echoes: Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost, p. 88.
Abundant hydroelectric potential already existed: Jonathan Kwitney, Endless Enemies: The Making of an Unfriendly World (New York: Penguin, 1986), p. 23.
“The Domain, with its shoddy grandeur”: V. S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River (New York: Vintage, 1989), p. 103.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Where Peacocks Roam
The aversion to the word “genocide”: Samantha Power, “Bystanders to Genocide: Why the United States Let the Rwandan Tragedy Happen,” The Atlantic, September 2001, p. 96.
The music grew ever louder: Crawford Young and Thomas Turner, The Rise and Decline of the Zairian State (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), p. 153.
By the time most of the dust had settled: The International Rescue Committee, April 8, 2003: “The four and a half year war in the Democratic Republic of Congo has taken more lives than any other since World War II and is the deadliest documented conflict in African history, says the International Rescue Committee. A mortality study released today by the IRC estimates that since August 1998, when the war erupted, through November 2002 when the survey was completed, at least 3.3 million people died in excess of what would normally be expected during this time.”
“Despite Rwanda’s size”: Philip Gourevitch, “Forsaken: Congo Seems Less a Nation Than a Battlefield for Countless African Armies,” The New Yorker, Sept. 25, 2000, p. 56.
“Valuable real estate for a while”: Naipaul, A Bend in the River, p. 27.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Castles in the Sand
Like General Touré before him: Robert M. Press, “Mali Elections Break New Ground,” Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 2, 1992.
Washington’s spending patterns were no mere abstraction: Howard W. French, “In France, Savvy Candidates for President Take a Trip to Africa,” New York Times, Mar. 13, 1995. Speaking to a colloquium of Francophone mayors, held in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Jacques Chirac, then mayor of Paris and a former prime minister, said: “For developing countries, multiparty politics is a political error . . . a sort of luxury that developing countries, which must concentrate their efforts on economic growth, cannot afford.” Albert Bourgi, “Jacques Chirac et le sens de l’histoire,” Jeune Afrique, no. 1523, Mar. 12, 1990, p. 18.
The whole process reeked of cynicism: Joseph E. Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents (New York: Norton, 2002), p. 6.
CHAPTER NINE
Tough Love
Washington and its European partners were preoccupied: United States State Department, USIA Electronic Journal, vol. 2, no. 2 (May 1997) and the United Nations.
“We deployed a large marine amphibious force”: Bill Berkeley, The Graves Are Not Yet Full (New York: Basic Books, 2001), p. 83.
On the ground in Liberia, American officials rejected all requests: Neil Henry, “Doctors’ Group Criticizes U.S. for Not Intervening in Liberia,” Washington Post, Aug. 16, 1990.
CHAPTER TEN
Long Knives
Week after week, though, the American Embassy in Kigali: Peter Rosenblum, “Irrational Exuberance: The Clinton Administration in Africa,” Current History, May 2002.
Just days before, the United Nations had reported: Hrvoje Hranjski, “100,000 Refugees Are Missing in Eastern Zaire,” Associated Press, Apr. 26, 1997.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said: Ibid.
Che Guevara, who had come to the Congo: Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959–1976 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), p. 154.
Ultimately, Kabila forced his way: William B. Cosma, Fizi 1967–1986: Le Maquis Kabila (Brussels: Institut Africain-CEDAF, 1997), pp. 111–12; my translation from the French.
In the months immediately prior: United States Department of Defense, Reports to Congress on U.S. Military Activities in Rwanda, 1994–August 1997.
Senior officials from the American Embassy: Joseph Farah, “Did U.S. Help Zaire’s Rebels?” WorldNet Daily, May 5, 1997.
Later I learned that Ambassador Simpson: A colorful account of Ambassador Simpson’s role as catalyst and intermediary is contained in Michela Wrong, In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in the Congo (London: Fourth Estate, 2000), p. 276.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Le Roi Est Mort (Long Live the King)
“Oddly, a number of recent reports”: Philip Gourevitch, “The Vanishing: How Congo Became Zaire, and Zaire Became the Congo,” The New Yorker, June 2, 1997.
“For weeks now, the U.N. sleuths”: Philip Gourevitch, “Stonewall Kabila: Why the U.N.’s Word Is as Unreliable as the Congo Leader’s,” The New Yorker, Oct. 6, 1997. (Emphasis mine. To speak of “Kabila’s forces” is to prudishly avert one’s eyes from the generally acknowledged reality that the AFDL rebellion was essentially conducted by an army on loan from Rwanda.)
“Townspeople say they little suspected”: Robert Block, “Blood Stains: Kabila’s Government Is Tainted by Reports of Refugee Slaughter—Rwandan Troops That Aided Congo Leader in Victory Sought Tribal Vengeance—Deal Made or No Control?” Wall Street Journal, June 6, 1997.
“It aggressively worked to block”: Samantha Power, “Bystanders to the Genocide: Why the United States Let the Rwandan Tragedy Happen,” The Atlantic, September 2001, p. 86.
“He is not a politician,” Kabila said: Transcribed from the author’s notes, supplemented by BBC Worldwide Monitoring.
Three years later, long after Rwanda had turned: Philip Gourevitch, “Forsaken: Congo Seems Less a Nation Than a Battlefield for Countless African Armies,” The New Yorker, Sept. 25, 2000, p. 54.
“The ‘new African leaders’ policy”: Peter Rosenblum, “Irrational Exuberance: The Clinton Administration in Africa,” Current History, May 2002, p. 196.
“This is the most sordid time”: Sony Labou Tansi, L’Anté-peuple (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1983), quoted from John Updike, “A Heavy World: Fury Haunts a Late Writer’s Work,” The New Yorker, Feb. 5, 1996.
Acknowledgments
Space does not allow me to thank all of the many people whose intelligence, friendliness, love and criticism helped me carry this project to fruition.
Because this book is in some sense the work of a lifetime, my thanks must first go to my parents, David and Carolyn French, and to my wife, Avouka Koffi, who, in their different ways, introduced me to the continent.
I also cannot express enough thanks to my sons, William and Henry. They put up with many long absences as small children, and yet encouraged me to persevere in the writing of this book as they developed into young men.
Robert Grossman, whose pictures illustrate my text, was a fine and steady traveling companion throughout much of the story that unfolds here. His questions often prodded me to challenge my assumptions.
Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, another colleague and frequent travel companion, did much the same. Her pluck and her grace with language, like her respect for the facts, inspired me greatly.
For whatever defects and shortcomings that are contained herein, I alone am responsible. This book has been immeasurably improved, however, by the comments and suggestions of a core group of readers, starting with Robert and Ofeibea, who began reading the earliest pages of the manuscript when I was still plagued with many doubts. Their generosity helped sustain me.
Other critical readers whose patience and thoughtfulness helped me improve this work include James French, my brother, whose love of Africa is equal to my own; Peter Rosenblum, associate projects director of Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program, whose knowledge of Central Africa is matched by his knowledge of African policy circles in Washington; and René Lemarchand, of the University of Florida, whose work on democracy and authoritarianism has always challenged conventional wisdoms about Africa. As someone who has traveled widely in Asia, but never to Africa, Stuart Isett, a close colleague in Tokyo, helped me eliminate many
points of potential confusion. The suggestions of Daniel Sharfstein, my former stringer in Ghana, inspired countless refinements.
Bill Keller, who was my foreign editor at the New York Times, showed a rare appreciation for Africa that helped make the hardships of the road worthwhile.
Thanks also go to my editor, Jonathan Segal, whose deftness often amazed me, and to production editor Ellen Feldman, for her exemplary care for detail.
Finally, thanks to my agent, Gloria Loomis, who believed early and persisted.
The Grand Mosque of Djenné (Mali)
General Sani Abacha, president of Nigeria, addresses the nation.
An unclaimed body lies on the roadway in Lagos, Nigeria.
Fela Anikulapo Kuti performs at the Shrine, in Lagos.
Shell Oil flares unwanted gas near a village in Nigeria’s Delta region.
An open-pit diamond mine in Mbuji-Mayi, (Congo)
National Highway No. 1, just outside of Kinshasa, Zaire
Sony Labou Tansi, the late Congolese novelist, in Foufoundou
A victim of the Ebola virus being wheeled to a grave in Kikwit, Zaire
The Liberian president Charles Taylor at James Spriggs Payne airfield, Monrovia, Liberia
Lawrence Moore, a Liberian boy soldier, Broad Street, Monrovia
Children wandering across the runway at Spriggs Payne
Squatters in Monrovia
President Mobutu Sese Seko: The Leopard, The Helmsman, The Guide
Hutu refugees on the run, Tingi-Tingi, Zaire
A Serbian mercenary training a Zairian soldier in Kisangani, Zaire
A pro-democracy march in Kinshasa led by Etienne Tshisekedi (center), dismissed as prime minister by Mobutu
Borrowing a page from Mobutu, President Laurent Kabila built a personality cult in Congo before his death in 2001.
The former Foreign Ministry headquarters, Monrovia, now a home for squatters
Howard W. French
A Continent for the Taking
Howard W. French is a senior writer for The New York Times. After teaching at the University of Ivory Coast in the early 1980s, he began his journalism career writing about Africa for The Washington Post, Africa News, The Economist, and numerous other publications. Since 1986, he has reported for The Times from Central America, the Caribbean, West and Central Africa, Japan, Korea, and now China. In 1997, his coverage of the fall of Mobuto Sese Seko won the Overseas Press Club of America’s award for best newspaper interpretation of foreign affairs. French was born in Washington, D.C., and now lives in Shanghai with his wife and their two children.
www.howardwfrench.com
FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, APRIL 2005
Copyright © 2004 by Howard W. French
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
French, Howard W.
A continent for the taking: the tragedy and hope of Africa / Howard W. French.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Africa, Sub-Saharan—Description and travel. 2. Africa, Sub-Saharan—Social
conditions—1960– 3. Africa, Sub-Saharan—Politics and government—1960–
4. United States—Foreign relations—Africa, Sub-Saharan. 5. Africa, Sub-Saharan—
Foreign relations—United States. I. Title.
DT352.2.F74 2004
967.03’2—dc22
2003058920
Photographs © Robert Grossman
Map by Jeffrey Ward
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eISBN: 978-0-307-42430-3
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