CONGO DRC

The man sitting on the floor, one hand on his cheek and the other holding his
stomach watching the fingers of his hand cut down and the piece of his daughter's leg
thrown in front of him because he did not go to harvest the rubber, is called Mr.
Nsala of the Belgian Congo. After his daughter was killed, the soldiers also killed
Nsala's wife and then ate her parties of the body collected the bones put in the bag
and handed it over to the man (Harford, 2019).

You may think it is a dream, but it is a true story from Congo during the reign of King
Leopold II of Belgium who made Congo his own property  Ewans, Sir Martin (2001). He
used the wealth of the country to kill the Congolese for the wellbeing of Belgium and
Europe! He killed half of the country.

The conflicts of DRC date back to the day when Prince Henry the Navigator and the
inventor of the slave trade in the Atlantic Ocean region set his foot on the land. In 1415 the
Prince and his father, King John I, invaded Morocco to find out where the gold-carrying
ships were coming from (Iliffe, 2007). They were told that the ships came from Muslim
countries in West Africa. Henry went to spy those countries. It was through this
investigation that Portugal found some places unknown to other European countries. By
then they believed that the world ended in Morocco. What they found in Africa was very
strange. They found beautiful people and civilization of all kinds.

In 1460 Henry died and exploration stopped. Twenty years later, i.e. in 1481 when King
John II came to power in Portugal, he began his work by reverting to the good deeds of his
predecessors (Cartwright, 2021). King John II employed the Portuguese explorer and one
of the most notable navigators of the Age of Discovery. This was Diogo Cã o. He started
where Prince Henry ended. In 1482 Diogo Cã o arrived at the source of the Congo River and
boasted that he had discovered the Congo River. He then returned back to Portugal to
inform the king. The king congratulated him for good job and asked him to continue with
his investigation.

When Diogo arrived in Namibia he thought it was South Africa so he announced that he has
arrived in South Africa. The king did not believe him and ordered Bartholomew Diaz to
prove him. Diaz discovered Diogo arrived in Namibia and thought it was South Africa. From
there Bartolomeu Diaz moved on until he got to the Cape of Good Hope in 1488. Today it is
called Cape Town!

When Diogo arrived in Congo he found two great kingdoms namely Loango and Bakongo
with great civilization and declared them to belong to the King John II. After Diogo's visit,
Portuguese merchant ships began to enter Congo and stopped to the Congolese kingdom.
At first the Congolese were happy to do business with foreigners because these relations
opened up the market for their products and they acquired new products from Europe. A
few years later the traders said that Congo could not supply the gold, copper, and other
resources they needed. They had to set up rubber fields and the slave trade.

Slave trade was very bad. The French, British and Dutch nations invaded Congo to harvest
slaves for their fields. They took up to 15,000 slaves a year from Congo and never returned
back home. They loved the Congolese slaves because they were strong and disease-
resistant. Their defenses were high, and despite being eaten by mosquitoes in the
Congolese forests, they were fit. In 1526, King Mvemba Nzinga popularly known as King
Afonso decided to write a letter to the king of Portugal about the effects of slavery on his
kingdom and to ask him to stop it completely because the people were dying. The
Portuguese did not listen to him and instead they increased speed.

King Leopold II announced to the world that he was going to Africa to stop slave trade by
which was highly practiced by Arabs. He founded an NGO to stop this and promote
civilization. It was called the Association of the Congo. The United States and Europe
supported him and gave him some financial aid. But he in reality King Leopold II was lying.
It was a tricky to capture Congo after missing the Philippines.

Through his association King Leopold hired Morton Stanley, a well-known and long-time
explorer for a thousand pounds a year to help him survey all Congolese land. Stanley was
given a guard with firearms and told to use every means possible to ensure the Congolese
chiefs sell him the whole Congo. He used corruption and intimidation until 400 chiefs
signed an agreement to sell their land to the King. The agreement itself was in French.
Leopold only needed their signatures to present during Berlin Conference. When he
presented the contracts signed by chiefs the conference agreed that Congo should not be
touched by anyone. It belongs to King Leopold. King Leopold then transformed Congo into
the Congo Free State. He owned the land as his personal property  Ewans, Sir Martin (2001).

At first Leopold saw ivory as a lucrative business but when the environment was difficult to
find the ivory due to piracy and the declining ivory market he decided to move on to the
rubber business. In order to harvest enough rubber Leopold formed an army. It was called
Force Publique, composed of Belgian officers (Hochschild, A., & Kingsolver, B. (2020). The
army fully supervised the harvesting of the rubber. People harvest the rubber as
compensation of taxes. They did not know if their land had been sold for a while and so
they lived to pay taxes. Harvesting the rubber was a tax in itself.

Many lost their lives by falling from tall trees while struggling to harvest rubber. Whoever
died was died immediately under the tree fell down. The human status was equally to
hyena. Everyone was assigned some potion of rubber to harvest a day. Whoever failed to
fulfill that was punished. Cut off one’s hands to intimidate those who couldn’t meet their
requirement was a common punishment offered. But also for a village that did not reach
the goal then it had to cut off the right hands of its people and fill in the gaps. The wives of
lazy men were taken as bond until they completed the work, and they were required to pay
the goats and return the day they completed the work. Life in Congo was completely
miserable. Half of the Congolese died during the reign of Leopold, who had never been to
Congo during his reign Hochschild, A., & Kingsolver, B. (2020). The work was done by his
officers.

When evils by King Leopold started spreading in the media, the Belgian parliament
intervened and forced Leopold to sell Congo to the state. He agreed and from 1908 to 1960
Congo became part of Belgium.

Freedom movement
The anti-colonial movement began in the 1920's. The Congolese began to boycott the
Whiteman churches and joined churches founded by their fellow blacks. Many joined the
religion of Simon Kimbangu. Simon Kimbangu was a religious leader from Congo claiming
that he was sent by Jesus through (John 14: 17-18). He was a catechist of the Baptist church
long before he started his own church (David van Reybrouck 2014). This gentleman healed
the sick, raised the dead, and foretold the future. His ministry gained so many followers
that he threatened the Belgian authorities (Janzen, 1979). Protestants and Catholics
demanded Simon Kimbangu be arrested.

On June 6, 1921 his meeting was invaded and his followers arrested but he and his son
Charles escaped into the forests. His ministry continued in secret. But in September 1921
he decided to come out. He was arrested and taken to a military court and found guilty of
endangering the peace of the country. He was not given a chance to be heard (Gampiot &
Mokoko, 2017). On October 3, he was sentenced to death. But he was commuted to life
imprisonment with 120 strokes every day. He died in prison on October 12, 1951, after
suffering 30 years in prison.
The death of Kimbangu was a call to awake more freedom fighter. The Alliance de Bakongo
under Joseph Kasavubu and the Mouvement National Congolais under Patrice Lumumba
were formed to demand independence. In 1959 a conference of Congolese politicians
demanded the independence of the country. The Belgian government announced elections
in January 1960 and six months later the colonists handed over the country to natives.
Patrice Lumumba's MNC party won a landslide victory for Lumumba as prime minister on
June 30, 1960.

During the Congolese independence celebrations on June 30, 1960, King Baudoin of
Belgium praised his grandfather King Leopold II for building Congo. And he imposed
conditions, urging the new leadership of Kasavubu and Lumumba should not to make any
changes until Belgium was convinced that they could stand on their own two feet. Instead
they should continue receiving advice from Belgium and not otherwise.

Joseph Kasavubu, the first President of Congo, congratulated the king on his excellent
speech and promised to act on it. Lumumba was not at all pleased with the speech.
Although he was not included in the speaker's schedule for the day, Lumumba stood up and
attached the speech,

We have experienced forced labour in exchange for pay that did not allow us to
satisfy our hunger, to clothe ourselves, to have decent lodgings or to bring up
our children as dearly loved ones.

Morning, noon and night we were subjected to jeers, insults and blows because
we were "Negroes". Who will ever forget that the black was addressed as "tu",
not because he was a friend, but because the polite "vous" was reserved for the
white man?

We have seen our lands seized in the name of ostensibly just laws, which gave
recognition only to the right of might.

We have not forgotten that the law was never the same for the white and the
black, that it was lenient to the ones, and cruel and inhuman to the others.
 We have experienced the atrocious sufferings, being persecuted for political
convictions and religious beliefs, and exiled from our native land: our lot was
worse than death itself.

We have not forgotten that in the cities the mansions were for the whites and
the tumbledown huts for the blacks; that a black was not admitted to the
cinemas, restaurants and shops set aside for "Europeans"; that a black travelled
in the holds, under the feet of the whites in their luxury cabins.

After his speech, Lumumba went back to his seat and as he passed before the king of
Belgium he looked at him with contempt and anger and then said, ‘We are no longer your
monkeys anymore.’ (Kabwe, 2013). Lumumba's words sent Congo back to the conflicts. The
Belgian army occupied Katanga, a prosperous area. President Kasavubu and Lumumba
rushed to ask for US military support from President Eisenhower. They were denied. They
decided to surrender to the United Nations. The United Nations actually sent peacekeepers
to Congo. However, the peacekeepers protected the looters of Congo resources (Corera,
2013).

Lumumba saw that this was now an issue. He decided to flee to Russia for help. Russia
dropped warplanes, and Congo became a battlefield between the United States and the
Soviet Union. Murder erupted. Blood was shed. President Kasavubu, under US influence,
fired Lumumba for allegedly leading the nation into war. When Lumumba and Kasavubu
were in conflicts Mobutu under US influence Mobutu declared himself a top government
official in support of Kasavubu(Corera, 2013).

The UN General Assembly under US pressure recognized Kasavubu and Mobutu as

A few hours before his execution, he wrote a letter to his wife. In the letter Lumumba stated
that he was very proud that he was not ready to be a colonial tyrant and betray the
Congolese people for anything, he was ready to die as long as he managed the right thing
for the benefit of the majority.
Lumumba was taken to Katanga and on January 17, 1961 he was killed and buried. The
next day her body was exhumed, chopped up and melted in acid. Lumumba disappeared
from the face of the earth. He left a widow and children. To him his wife and all his children
were just "Congolese". Even in a letter to his wife he urged her not to cry for him, instead
they should cry for Congo. He ended his letter with “Long live Congo! Long live Africa! ” and
not long live long baby!

Kasa-Vubu died in April 1969 and left the country to Mobutu. From June 1970 Mobutu
changed the names of the regions; Léopoldville was named Kinshasa, Stanleyville was
Kisangani, Elisabethville was Lubumbashi, and Coquilhatville was called Mbandaka and in
1971 years he changed the name of the country to Zaire and the Congo River to Zaire.

Mobutu became very rich and the country went bankrupt. Things turned out for Mobutu
after the Rwanda Genocide. It was immediately after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, Zaire
found itself in conflict with Rwanda after Hutu militiamen the Interahamwe fled to eastern
Zaire and used refugee camps as a base to invade Rwanda. But they also collaborated with
the Zairean army to launch a campaign to attack the Congolese, Tutsi-origin, popularly
known as Wanyamulenge. Wanyamulenge and Congolese are in tensions.

Reference

Gondola, D. (2003). The history of Congo. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Hochschild, A., & Kingsolver, B. (2020). King Leopolds ghost: A story of greed, terror, and
heroism in Colonial Africa. Boston: Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Harford, T. (2019, July 23). The horrific consequences of rubber's toxic past. Retrieved from
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48533964

Cartwright, M. (2021, November 14 ). Prince Henry the Navigator. Retrieved from

Ewans, Sir Martin (2001). European atrocity, African catastrophe : Leopold II, the Congo Free
State and its aftermath. Richmond: Curzon. ISBN 978-0700715893.
David van Reybrouck. Congo: The Epic History of a People. HarperCollins, 2014. p. 142ff.
ISBN 978-0-06-220011-2.

Janzen, J. M. (1979). Deep Thought: Structure and Intention in Kongo Prophetism, 1910—
1921. Social Research, 46(1), 106–139. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40970363

Gampiot, A. M., & Coquet-Mokoko, C. (2017). Kimbanguism: An African understanding of

Kabwe, Z. (2013, April 28). 'Sisi sio Nyani wenu tena' – Lumumba kwa Mfalme wa Belgium,
June 30 1960. Retrieved from https://jamii.africa/sisi-sio-nyani-wenu-tena-
lumumba-kwa-mfalme-wa-belgium-june-30-1960/

Corera, G. (2013, April 02). MI6 and the death of Patrice Lumumba. Retrieved from
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-22006446.