Congo: 50 years of independence, centuries of oppression

The Democratic Republic of Congo in Africa

Yesterday marked the celebration of 50 years of independence for the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In 1960, Congo was finally able to free itself from one of the most brutal regimes in all of colonial Africa: Belgian control. Of all the European colonial powers, the Belgians were notorious as the worst for their ruthless exploitation of the Congo’s resources, and their horrendous violence against its people.

Since independence, there’s not been much for people to celebrate, with a 32 year brutal dictatorship followed by a state of total civil war which is the second worst war in the history of humanity, and has claimed for more victims than world war one.

Around the world, not many people think about the almost unimaginable death toll of the wars in Congo, and when they do it’s only to confirm racist stereotypes about independent Africa. The Congo today is not only the home of a devastating war, but also unbelievably high rates of sexual violence, preventable disease, illiteracy and poverty.

But the blame for the disastrous state of the Congo today shouldn’t be put at the door of the Congolese people. Rather, its European powers, and later the US, that must accept responsibility for turning swathes of Central Africa into a hell on Earth.

The horrors of colonialism began for Congo in the 15th century with the arrival of the first European explorers. Portuguese and others pressed inland to the country from the Atlantic coast, and at the same time Muslims from Zanazibar and East Africa came from the East. They both sought slaves for selling into the highly profitable system of the Atlantic slave trade. The profits that made Europe into the richest continent on Earth came from the forced capture of Africans for sale in the Americas and Carribbean, and from the commodities that their forced labour produced: sugar, cotton, tobacco. At the same time, Muslim slave traders from the East sold those captured to the middle east.

To enslave people the Europeans and their African partners used the methods of total war. They would go to an area, burn a village to the ground, kill all those who were to old or incapable of being productively put to work, and take the rest to the coast for sale in chains. The forces that did this are the direct ancestors of the genocidal forces that continue to devastate the country today. The slave gangs became the Belgian administrations enforcers, who then became the police and military of the post-independence dictatorship, and today the descendants of these same groups are the militia men conducting the Congolese civil war.

Despite these raids, the European powers were for a long time reluctant to actually colonise the Congo because it was mostly rainforest, with heavy rainfall, and not generally good land for agriculture and long term settlement. This started to change in the 19th century, when the growth of European industry led to a demand for raw materials that could be procured in the area, mainly rubber, but also copper and ivory. The various European powers quarreled over who would control the region, until it was resolved at the Berlin Conference in 1884. The one man who emerged as ruler of Congo was the Belgian King Leopold II.

Genocidal mass murderer: Belgian King Leopold II

Leopold’s rule was extraordinary: a gigantic country bigger than western Europe was effectively his own personal property. He controlled it through a dummy organisation, the Association Internationale Africaine, of which he was the sole shareholder and chairman. He employed white agents, who then commanded black troops who had mainly been kidnapped as children and raised as slaves. It’s easy for people today to ignore how the system of conscripting child soldiers into a brutal militia had its origins in the colonial period.

The white agents, known as the Force Publique, were responsible for fulfilling quotas of rubber and other commodities, which were sold for the profit of King Leopold. These were produced by forced labour of the Congolese population. Men were forced to work while their wives were held hostage and sexually assaulted. Any areas that resisted were burned to the ground, and the people slaughtered: troops were paid by the number of human hands they could present to prove who they had killed.

The process of extracting the rubber itself was brutal. The rubber came from wild vines in the jungle, which workers would be forced to slash, then lathering their bodies with the rubber latex. When this hardened it was painfully scraped off the skin, taking workers’ body hair with it.

The period of the turn of the 20th century set the pattern for Congolese history down to modern times: a brutal regime of violence to enforce ruthless exploitation of the region’s natural resources. Of course, none of the profits were seen by the people but instead enriched foreign elites such as the Belgian Royal family. What’s extraordinary is that the colonial regime was justified on the basis of bringing “civilisation” to Africa, when in fact it was the most brutal, uncivilised regime possible.

The mistreatment of the Congolese people came to be acknowledged even in Europe as a tremendous crime against humanity. A British report estimated that at least 10 million people had been killed as a result of Leopold’s regime, both directly and through the spread of tropical diseases in his miserable work camps. Authors like Joseph Conrad and Arthur Conan Doyle brought attention to the conditions there.

Victims of Belgian militias, who were paid by the hand

As a result control was transferred from the the royal family to the Belgian parliament in 1908. However, the regime remained pretty similar, with brutal exploitation, with mining of copper and other minerals becoming more important. The people were deliberately kept undereducated, and what education they did receive emphasised the importance of European history and Christianity, as part of Belgium’s “civilising mission” in the country.

But throughout the 20th century resistance began to grow to colonial rule, with periodic armed revolts and riots. From the ’50s onwards, the independence of other former European colonies in Africa spurred the Congolese to get more socially and politically organised and demand independence from Belgium.

Over time one group became the most politically influential: the left wing Mouvement National Congolais, led by Patrice Lumumba. Lumumba favoured a unitary government for the entire territory of Congo, and was a fierce critic of imperialism throughout Africa. He argued for social justice, and using the resources of Congo for the benefit of the people.

In 1960, following a series of riots, the Belgians were forced to concede that they had lost control of the situation, and Congo was granted independence with Lumumba as Prime Minister. At the independence day celebrations, Leopold’s descendant King Baudouin spoke smugly about the good the Belgians had done in the country. Enraged, Lumumba got up to make unrehearsed, impromptu speech that blasted the horrors of the colonial regime.

“We have witnessed,” he said, “atrocious sufferings of those condemned for their political opinions or religious beliefs, exiled in their own country, their fate truly worse than death itself.” Lumumba continued: “We have seen that … a black traveled in the holds, at the feet of the whites in their luxury cabins. Who will ever forget the massacres where so many of our brothers perished, the cells into which those who refused to submit to a regime of oppression and exploitation were thrown?”

You can hear Lumumba’s independence day speech, with English subtitles here.

Patrice Lumumba

Belgian capitalists were terrified about what the new government would do, as were the rich of the other European countries and the US. They feared that Lumumba would nationalise the mines and rubber plantations. Both the Belgians, and the US, through the CIA, began to formulate plots to have him overthrown. Various ideas were considered, including giving him CIA made poisoned toothpaste. In the end, he was arrested by Congolese soldiers and shot, after which his body was dissolved in acid. Today, a group of lawyers and investigators are attempting to prosecute former Belgian civil servants (now in their 90s) for complicity in the murder.

After this, the chief of the army, Mobutu Sese Seko, rose to power with the backing of the US and western interests. He began a brutal one man dictatorship that was to last until 1997. The wealth of Congo continued to be looted for the benefit of western companies, with Mobutu getting his own substantial cut. He used this to flaunt spectacular consumption, such as his legendarily sumptuous private jet, one of the most expensive in the world because of how it was furnished.

He also brutally suppressed all opposition, imprisoning, torturing and executing anyone who tried to stand up to him. He was only able to do this because of the military and financial support of western powers, primarily the US, who backed him because he was anti-communist, and stood up to liberation forces in neighbouring countries that wanted to take Africa in a socialist direction.

Mobutu was finally overthrown in a rebellion that swept to power in 1997, largely unopposed because no one wanted to fight for the hated dictator, and died in exile.

Meeting his boss: Western backed brutal dictator Mobutu with Ronald Reagan

Since then, Congo has been in a state of near total war. In addition to the old commodities, it is now a key site for global capitalism because it holds reserves of coltan and other rare minerals that are crucial for making mobile phones and other electronic devices. As the world demand for electronics has rocketed, these have become ever more valuable. The leaders of the countries surrounding Congo have scrambled to support their own militias in the country in order to get access to these resources. They can’t be sold directly by the militias, so they are sold through countries like Rwanda or Uganda, whose exports of coltan are way higher than should be possible through their natural reserves. They then make their way into the hands of multinational electronics corporations, who go on to use them to manufacture devices, one of which you are probably using right now to read this article.

The direct connections between capitalist industry and the war in Congo can be seen through facts like the spike in violence there was around 2000, as militias scrambled to take advantage of the increased demand for coltan caused by the launch of the Playstation 2.

The impact of the ongoing war has been devastating. The pattern that was established by western colonialism has continued down to the present day, and the same companies (in many cases the same families) now control the country today, but through local clients rather than directly. Brutal militias enforce control of key resources, and annihilate anyone that gets in their way. Rape is used systematically as a weapon of war. This is all conducted by people who themselves have been brutalised by years of war and dictatorship. Congo has been a place where this kind of violence and torture has been normalised by the official regime for a long time. The blame for that lies with Belgium and the western powers.

Known as Africa’s world war, the war in Congo has claimed more lives than any other war in history apart from World War Two. Many establishment observers will claim this is because “the west doesn’t care”, or “we stand by and let it happen.” But this is neo-colonialist logic that wants to blame “the natives” for all the problems, and claims that the only real problems is that white westerners aren’t there to sort everything out.

The truth is that the west is there. Although we hear very little about this war in the news, and it isn’t on most people’s radar, Congo is very much a part of the global capitalist system. The other African powers that control different militias are able to do so with the support of the US and its allies, who provide military aid and financial support to ensure their interests are upheld in Central Africa. The Rwandan government for instance has been hailed as heroic by the west despite its leaders complicity in mass killings in the 1990s. It’s not that our governments stand by and let genocides happen. It’s that these genocides wouldn’t be possible unless the people carrying them out were serving the interests of the western elites.

Coltan mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Congo today is a very, very long way from the dreams that some of its people had for the future had 50 years ago, at the time of independence. Socialism is a far off prospect – just peace and basic decent living conditions for the people at this point look like a utopia. The solution to Congo’s problems is for an end to come, finally, to the imperialist foreign interference that has brought them such misery. Although we might not realise it, our fate as people of the richer part of the world is intertwined with peoples like the Congolese who produce the resources that keep our economies going, under horrific conditions, away from our understanding and attention. The best way we can help them is work here for the overthrow of our imperialist government, and a move away from an economy based on the neo-colonial exploitation of the poor world.