17 January 2014
Book Review: The Democratic Republic of Congo: Between Hope and Despai
LSE’s Jonathan Silver calls Michael Deibert’s book an “essential read” for those interested in wider postcolonial worlds.
(Read the original review
here)
Early in 2003 when the world’s attention was focused on the unfolding
calamity of the Iraq invasion, another deadly conflict was occurring in
the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). I was in south west Uganda
watching with trepidation as a constant flow of Ugandan army vehicles
streamed across the border from Ituri province after the strategically
important town of Bunia had been captured a few months earlier by the
Uganda’s People’s Defense Force. Along with the ubiquitous UN white
trucks of the UN’s MONUSCO, the amounts of transportation of men, goods
and weaponry gave just an inkling of the epic scale of conflict and
resource extraction that was taking place at the time in eastern DRC and
I was somewhat ashamed about how little I knew about such a devastating
episode in Africa’s history. That feeling stayed with me through the
last months of the Second Congo War (1998-2003) and the subsequent
low-intensity series of ongoing conflicts, disputes, peace deals and
oscillating tensions culminating in the recent emergence of the
Mouvement du 23 Mars (M23) militia. Anyone who, like me, is looking to
gain a better understanding of this part of central Africa would do well
to read journalist Michael Deibert’s passionate dissection of the
geographies of war and peace in the DRC.
The book is divided into ten chapters which provide a contemporary
account of the country anchored in historical detail, following the
country from pre-colonial times through to the postcolonial era and the
rule of Mobutu as the country fragmented, revealing in excruciating
detail the suppression and all-out civil conflict that have
characterised the country. Deibert begins the book with a prologue that
takes the reader directly into Ituri province and what he describes as
the “killing fields” as he walks through the “chest-high grass” of this
region, documenting the terrorisation of ordinary Congolese in Bogoro in
February 2003. This opening is both haunting and moving, as he chooses
not to begin with the assorted political actors in the country but
rather with the harrowing experiences of farmers such as Mathieu
Nyakufa, as over 200 civilians were murdered by the Forces de Resistance
Patriotique d’Ituri (FRPI).
The main part of the book opens with a short but interesting snapshot of pre-colonial society, particularly the
Kingdom of Kongo
where Mwene Kongo ruled a highly centralised state and many other
“state-like entities” that extended across the vast territory now known
as the DRC. So often the history of this huge country and its many grand
and noble traditions (as well as African states more generally) begins
with the arrival of Europeans, as if hundreds of years of civilisation
meant nothing until the missionaries, slave traders and imperial
explorers landed on the shore. Although Deibert provides this brief
introduction, the book soon moves to the moment the Portuguese explorer
Diogo Cao arrived in 1482 and as such seems to reflect these wider traditions of writing Africa.
Familiar history is covered in the form of explorer Henry Morton
Stanley as he finds a European King in Leopold of Belgium, desperate to
create his own empire (and the plunder that would go with it). Deibert
shows how Stanley set about the brutal suppression of the Congo and
establishing natural resource extraction on a scale that continues to
the present day in various forms. As the author notes, this “remains one
of history’s great crimes” (page 14). Interestingly he hints at the
pathological nature of Leopold through him being “the product of an
ice-cold relationship with his mother and father” Such horrors would not
only draw denunciations by Victorian reformers (Doyle, 1909) but, as
the author makes clear, Leopold’s rule would set a precedent that would
continue far into the future. His way of governing would certainly be
mirrored in the 32-year rule of Congo by Joseph-Desire Mobutu after his
1965 coup. His attempts to draw in both Communist and Western backers,
his divide and rule governance and “a cult of personality to rival
anything Africa had seen before or since” are brought to the attention
of the reader as further causes of the contemporary conflicts that have
divided the country and its people.
After the brief (at under 50 pages) but comprehensive history of the
country up to the beginning of the Rwandan genocide in 1994, the
remaining chapters of the book focus on the recent history of DRC, the
Great Congo Wars and the echoes that continue to reverberate across the
region from these momentous events. It is these seven chapters that
perhaps offer the greatest contribution to understanding the country. In
these pages the author provides a tour de force of detailed
journalistic analysis, revealing the multiple causes of the conflicts
that began with the fleeing genocidaires and subsequent actions of the
Rwandan leader Paul Kagame in destroying Hutu camps and undertaking an
invasion. Setting in train a brutal war that would draw in not just
Rwanda but neighbouring Uganda (and later various African states) newly
formed militias were supported to fight proxy conflicts and steal the
abundant resources of the area to fund these escapades. It is during
this time that the author reveals the acquiescence of the West through
figures such as Madeline Albright (Clinton’s Secretary of State at the
time) who praised “Africa’s best new leaders” and thus condemning
eastern Congo to continued foreign and catastrophic influence. The
author shows how DRC has been cynically used by its neighbours. The
authoritarian leaderships of neighbouring countries such as Rwanda and
Uganda are clearly implicated in Deibert’s dissection of competing
powers. As the author shows, this has been central to the problems of
the eastern DRC over the last 20 years during which the country has
been plundered by several surrounding countries, using vast territories
as a space to project expansionist inclinations, make a corrupt set of
autocratic governments rich and hinder any chance of lasting peace. The
role of older powers such as France and Belgium together with new
international actors such as China reveals that huge reserves of
diamonds, gold, timber continue to draw the attention of foreign
governments near and far who are prepared to ignore the human rights of
the Congolese people in order to secure these natural resources.
The analysis of the role of the then young president Joseph Kabila,
who took power in 2001 is another key contribution of the book. The
author offers a balanced and comprehensive analysis of Kabila’s role in
both struggling to contain, yet also contributing to the continuing
fracturing of eastern DRC into a diverse geography of various bands of
foreign and domestically funded armed forces that he terms in chapter 10
‘rebellion after rebellion’. Deibert’s forensic investigation reveals
Kabila’s increasingly authoritarian rule since coming to power. Such an
analysis shows the problems posed by governing such a huge geographic
space and the competing interests that criss-cross the country. As later
chapters reveal, these areas have often been governed or taken over by
leaders indicted by the
ICC, such as
Bosco Ntaganda and
Jean-Pierre Bembawho have
been prepared to use brutal strategies of force to challenge Kabila’s
grip on the country and its resources. Indeed the list of abbreviations
of different groups at the beginning of the book reflect this staggering
mosaic of actors and groups across the country.
The book does well in steering clear of the Conradian echoes of
travels into the heart of darkness which characterise many contemporary
and not so contemporary Western accounts (Burton, 1961, Stanley 1878,
1890) of the country that have perpetuated representations of the Congo,
drawing rightful scorn from postcolonial scholars (Mbembe, 1978,
Mudimbe, 1988). As Jarosz (1992:106) argues, “the metaphor of the Dark
Continent has shown remarkable tenacity in a variety of Western idioms
spanning the last hundred years of human geography in the Western
tradition”. Heroic accounts of Euro-American travels into these spaces,
seemingly off the map of civilisation, offer little for readers seeking
to learn more about the DRC without being able to speak French and
therefore unable to read the Congolese view of their own history. As a
result, Deibert’s exhaustive documentation of the complex and shifting
relationships between politicians, warlords, donors, vulnerable
communities, neighbouring states and a plethora of shifting actors
provide an important and timely contribution in which to understand the
political geography of DRC. Yet the reader would do well to note that
even such an impressive account is open to Chatterjee’s (1994: 216)
insistence that, ‘‘Europe and the Americas, the only true subjects of
history, have thought out on our behalf not only the script of colonial
enlightenment and exploitation, but also our anti-colonial resistance
and post-colonial misery”. While this reflection should not stop readers
opening the pages to this fantastic text, it should be something to
consider as the reader progresses through the book.
This is not just a book about the DRC or even contemporary Africa as
the cover purports. Instead it is an essential read for those of us
interested in wider postcolonial worlds and the historical fragments of
local, regional and global contexts that intersect and link huge parts
of the planet together. The book makes clear the role of the West in
cynically using the country, the exploitation of the almost unparalleled
natural resources by fellow African countries, global corporations and
conniving governments. Such analysis should not prompt us to recoil in
horror or paralysis about the scale of crimes that continue to take
place across eastern DRC, or brush aside as another episode in the
seemingly chaotic and cruel post-independence period of many former
colonies. Instead as he travels across DRC, Deibert’s work brings to
light the often disabling hangover of colonialism and the issues of
governance, war and peace that unfold in countries such as DRC as a
result. Mbembe (2001:102) argues for the need to reflect on “the
political, cultural and economic realities of societies living with the
legacies and in the aftermath of colonialism” and the book can certainly
be praised for such a task, showing us how we can follow the threads of
colonial rule into contemporary accounts.
Deibert succeeds in documenting the travails of the ordinary people
of the DRC and the impact that these conflicts have had on them, not
just through numbers of dead, displaced or raped but through the stories
of individuals, allowing the voices of those most affected to speak
directly to the reader. Such writing should be a reminder to those of us
who write about postcolonial worlds to focus beyond the dominant
characters and the big men (and it is nearly always men) of history to
uncover how these wider political forces unfold across the everyday
lives of populations. Considering the subtitle of the book, ‘Between
hope and despair’ I found the book to be a little disappointing in
Deibert’s treatment of hope and the ways the Congolese people have
managed to not just get by but get on, navigate the shifting
complexities of life and dream of a better future in the face of often
almost insurmountable odds. Given the complexity of the DRC’s political
geography and the extraordinary achievement in mapping these endless and
shifting configurations, perhaps this was not the book in which to
explore these everyday tales with which I have become familiar through
urban accounts of Kinshasa by Frank De Boeck (2004, 2011). Still, as
Deibert suggests, these ordinary Congolese “carry within themselves the
idea of a nation, a nation stitched together out of a patchwork of
tribal kingdoms that was never meant to be one but that has persisted”
and which offers a vestige of hope in the future of the nation.
The book makes clear that describing contemporary DRC merely as
nothing more than a modern heart of darkness is inadequate and anchored
in colonial representations of Africa. It therefore joins a number of
important recent texts such as Hochschilds (2012), Prunier (2011) and
Stearns (2011) that help us better understand this colossal country
without recourse to crude representations, instead relying on extensive
research, understanding and empathy. This powerful account forces
scholars and other readers to stare sombrely into the postcolonial
mirror and reflect not just on the role of our countries in such tragedy
but our own ways of writing, knowing and representing the continent
that can inform research far beyond the borders of the DRC.
Over the course of early December the M23 was
militarily defeated
with the leaders and 1500 soldiers crossing over the Ugandan border to
surrender after the Congolese army, and crucially a change in the rules
of engagement for the MONUSCO intervention force shifted the military
balance. Yet with the far from magnanimous Kinshasa government and the
M23 agreeing a shaky peace agreement, signed on 12 December, together
with reports of activities by other militias, including
the M-18, there is still
much caution
about whether this can be a comprehensive peace for which many in the
region are now hoping. Given the history of eastern DRC dissected so
well in this book I, like the author and the millions of people in
Ituri, the Kivus and the wider DRC can only draw hope for the future.
References
Burton R.E (1860): The Lake Regions of Central Africa. Kindle file
De Boeck, F., and Plissart, M-F. (2004) Kinshasa: Tales of the Invisible City. Antwerp:Ludon
De Boeck, F (2011) Spectral Kinshasa: building the city through an
architecture of words 311- 128 in
Edsenor, T and Jayne, M (eds) (2011)
Urban theory beyond the West: A world of cities. Routlegde. London
Doyle, A (1909) The Crime of the Congo. Kindle file
Hochschild, A (2012) King Leopold’s Ghost: A stroy of greed, terror and heroism in colonial Africa. Mariner Books, New York,
Jarosz, L (1992) Constructing the Dark Continent: Metaphor as
Geographic Representation of Africa. Geografiska Annaler. Series B,
Human Geography, Vol. 74, No. 2 (1992), pp. 105-115
Mbembe, C (1978) Research in African Literatures, Vol. 9, No. 1, Special Issue on Literary Criticism. (Spring, 1978), pp. 1-15.
Mbembe, A. (2001) On the Postcolony. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Mudimbe, V. Y. (1988) The invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge. James Currey, London
Prunier, G (2011) Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan genocide and
the making of a continental catastrophe. Oxford University Press,
Oxford
Stanley, H,M. (1878): Through the Dark Continent or The Sources of
the Nile Around the Great Lakes of Down the Livingstone River to the
Atlantic Ocean. Kindle file
Stanley, H,M. (1890): In Darkest Africa, or the Quest, Rescue and Retreat of Emin, Governor of Equatoria. Kindle file
Stearns, J (2011) Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The collapse of
the Congo and the great war of Africa. Public Affairs, New York
