Congo and African Studies Those

Congo and African Studies

Those who are conquered always want to imitate the conqueror in his main characteristics-in his clothing, his crafts, and in all his distinctive traits and characteristics." -Ibn Khaldun

This assertion, from the fourteenth century, is most definitely not an inarguable one. Many conquered peoples undoubtedly harbor hate and resentment for their conquerors, especially those who were defeated in a vicious manner. A more insidious phenomenon, though, is the tendency of a conquered people to become like their conquerors once they are themselves again victorious. By "conquered," it should be noted that a violent battle is not the primary significance of the word-conquered may refer to economic defeat, business takeovers and cultural evolution ("cultural imperialism" is one term bantered around in this realm) as well as to violent physical oppression.

The conquered people may not adopt the behaviors of their conquerors consciously; they might even try to avoid endeavors and systems installed by their one-time rulers. Similar to the phenomenon in sociology that has proven individuals who suffer abuse during childhood are more likely to become abusers themselves, nations who were mistreated as colonies have difficulty transitioning to self-rule without repeating the mistakes of their "parent" countries.

A modern example of this behavior is that of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DROC), a Belgian colony until 1960. The colonial history of Congo includes genocide, forced labor, exploitation of the country's natural resources, and impoverishment of the peasantry. Upon gaining independence, no one can doubt the Congolese people's desire to move away from these tragic events. Unfortunately, the recent history of the DROC is littered with political strife, assassinations, economic instability and impoverishment, and genocide. How much of this may be attributed to the Belgian colonization has not yet been determined and may never be a quantifiable figure; however, there is a strong case that the Belgian colonial influence is a significant factor in the climate of the present-day DROC.

A plan to demonstrate the hypothesis that Belgian colonialism heavily influences the current Democratic Republic of the Congo in this essay. First, I will present a brief history of oppressive actions perpetrated against the people of the DROC by their colonial government from 1890-1960, the Belgians.

In the next section of the essay, I will examine specific behaviors of the post-colonial Congolese (both positive and negative) which mirror the behaviors or characteristics of the Belgian rulers, and explore how these similarities came to exist. I will also investigate alternate reasons for these similarities, other than my own hypothesis. In the final part of this essay, I will weigh all of these factors in considering if my above statement has been justified by this examination of influences.

ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL AFFAIRS OF THE DROC

The current situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is one that has garnered international humanitarian attention for its oppression. A 2005 Human Rights Watch report spoke of civilians being attacked by the army, sexual assaults on civilian women by soldiers, and the persecution and murder of human rights activists.

The citizens of the DROC live in fear of the ethnic and racial strife of the region spilling over into their village. In addition to this tension between villages and between soldiers and civilians, political strife is also common. As recently as 2001, the president of the nation, Laurent Kabila, was assassinated, throwing the nation into even more turmoil. Kabila was assuredly not a bastion of political freedom himself; upon being sworn in as president in 1997, he outlawed political competition and most likely supported the genocide of Rwandan Hutu refugees to the DROC. During this time, the bloodshed and atrocities were so severe that the United Nations, for a short while, sent peacekeeping troops to the DROC in order to restore order.

Prior to Kabila's tenure as president, the DROC had only one other leader-Mobutu Sese Seiko, a colonel in the army during the colonial period-who had served since 1960. Mobutu, during his thirty-year era as prime minister and then president, heavily influenced the current situation in the DROC. His political and economic practices shaped the country for years after he died, from his encouragement of foreign investment in the Congo's plentiful natural resources to the nationalization of these firms in an unsuccessful attempt to increase employment in the nation. These exploitations-first of the DROC's mineral and other natural resources, and then of Congolese workers, followed the intent, if not the letter, of previous exploitations of the nation and its citizens by the Belgian colonial power.

All stated intentions aside, Mobutu's behavior as well as that of Kabila during the late 90s did not make much more "progress," in terms of creating an egalitarian society with a profitable, stable economy than the Belgian colonials had done. Mobutu, in fact, so devastated the Congolese economy that in 1993, he issued a new batch of currency that was declared as having no monetary value and inspired a rampage by the army which killed fifty civilians when they were paid with the new currency.

The destruction of the DROC's natural resources continues in the era of self-governance unabated from the era of colonial exploitation of minerals, precious metals, and animal products (i.e ivory). Some observers postulated that the exploitation of the Congo's resources actually got worse under self-governance due to increased demand and an increased need for income. One Congolese journalist noted that the DROC was "too vast, too rich, and too poorly developed; Congo possesses too much mineral wealth for its own good, and this incites lust in the hearts of foreign governments." For example, the DROC exported 19,000 carats of diamonds in July 1998, while Rwanda, a nation of similar diamond mining capabilities, only exported 1,500 carats.

There are fabulous riches being pulled out from underneath us, but the population does not benefit at all. Instead, we suffer," said one Congolese resident about the situation. This current mood of instability and exploitation makes the residents of the Democratic Republic of the Congo at least as fearful of the government and as impoverished and persecuted as they were under Belgian rule; the injustice is likely harder to bear now, when it comes at the hands of countrymen instead of foreign rulers. As these incidents and recent history show, the current governance situation in the DROC is one that is similar in its failures to the Belgian governance of the first half of the twentieth century.

This governance, from King Leopold II's late 19th-century, semi-secret endeavor to create a colony in the Congo through the nation's 1960 independence from Belgian rule, exploited the region's natural resources for profit, abused the labor force in mining and harvesting rubber, and, under Leopold, committed genocidal acts against the Congolese without redress or retribution. The history of Belgian governance is permanently tainted by Leopold's egregious abuses of power, his implicit endorsement of genocide by the army, and his avaricious usage of natural resources. The exploitive effects of Belgian rule can still be seen in the DROC, as I will demonstrate in the following section.

EFFECTS OF BELGIAN COLONIALISM IN THE DROC

The lingering effects of Belgian influence in the Democratic Republic of Congo are predominantly negative; however, it would be unfair to characterize this influence as one hundred percent detrimental. As such, I will first discuss a few benefits that the DROC has gleaned from its time as a colony.

One is the basic infrastructure which exists. Although the current infrastructure may be run down, imagine instead if there were none at all. Colonization provided this basic system of roads and similar public assets. In a related vein, the Belgian's attraction to the natural resources of the area led them to establish mines, prospect for valuable minerals, and in turn, provide a source of income for the DROC via its exports. If handled responsibly and not exploited (which, sadly, is not the case today), mining the precious metals and stones and harvesting rubber and other resources could serve as a viable stream of income for the nation and lessen its dependence on foreign debt and aid.

It is impossible to remain unbiased, however, when considering the lasting effects of colonialism on the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The detrimental effects far outweigh the slight benefits, and the harm done to the DROC over the years is far more substantial than any residual benefits gleaned from the Belgian colonization. The most tragic legacies left by colonialism are the memories of the barbaric genocide perpetrated by militias of colonial powers; in the Congo the lopping off of hands as punishment for not meeting a rubber harvesting quota was common.

This legacy of abuse and torture exists in the collective unconscious of a nation, although the practice may no longer flourish; the imprint of abuse and torture at the hands of a colonial power still reside in the psyche of Congolese, tempering their trust of outsiders and influencing their ideas of how productivity is created in a labor force. Leopold's utter abandonment of the Congo colony resulted in this kind of abuse from greedy firms who only wanted to exploit the natural resources of the area. This betrayal by a power figure indelibly remains in the hearts and minds of the Congolese when interacting with other nations, even African neighbors (like Rwanda, with whom the DROC has had long-term and bloody conflicts).

A more empirical measure of the lasting effects that Belgian colonization has had on the Democratic Republic of the Congo is in the damage that has been done to the latter's natural resources. Almost every individual who comes into contact with the natural resources of the DNOR, either through study, travel to the area, or prospecting in the mines and locations of other resources themselves has responded with, at the least, shock at the manner in which the Congo's vast natural reserves of precious metal, stones, and everyday resources like rubber have been depleted. Human Rights Watch has issued a report stating that not only are these resources being depleted in a manner that is exploitive and only benefits the corporations extracting the resources, but that the presence of these foreign corporations who do not have a business rationale for preserving the DROC or its citizens is detrimental to the safety and well-being of the citizens as well as the environment. Said a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, "Efforts to make peace in Congo risk failure unless the issue of natural resource exploitation and its link to human rights abuses are put at the top of the agenda."

These first two detrimental phenomena (the psychological scars of genocide and the physical damage to the environment) can be directly traced back to the days of Belgian colonization; the discovery and exploitation of natural resources in the Congo as well as the perpetration of atrocities there was an exclusively Belgian event. Gold, although prevalent, was not utilized by the Congolese for everyday life and as such, was not mined in large quantities. The Belgians changed that, seeing the profit that could be made from extracting the natural resources in the area. They also began intense rubber- and ivory-harvesting efforts, demanding that natives work in what amounted to labor camps or risk losing a hand for not performing well enough to satisfy the Belgian landlords' expectations of production.

During this era of forced labor, another lasting detriment to the DROC was enacted by the colonial power: the stereotype, passed on to other nations and assuredly embedded within the psyche of the Congolese, that "Africans were by nature idle and would never respond to economic incentives alone." Not only did rhetoric like this prejudice international opinion toward the African, but the (untrue) stereotype became a stigma that still exists about work ethics of Africans. Again, this stereotype, initiated and perpetrated by the Belgian colonials, is a prejudice that has survived decades and still affects the perception and prejudice of Africans in certain situations.

Yet another lasting effect that Belgian colonization had on the Congolese was the harm done to the developing nation's economic and political identities. The economic identity was damaged in a manner similar to the ways that Latin America's economies were crippled during their formative years, by the establishment of an import substitution economy. The DROC, rich in raw materials like rubber, gold, and minerals, leaned heavily toward exporting resources for cash and then buying processed necessities, or agricultural products like grain and other consumables. The result of this emphasis on exports while a nation is flush with natural resources, such as when the Belgian Congo was harvesting a staggering amount of rubber, is that the manufacturing apparatus is never fully developed so that the nation may function without such a high degree of dependence on not only the supplies and products of other nations, but on the supply of its own raw materials-in the case of the Congo, when the rubber supply began to wane, the ability of the Congolese economy to trade was significantly diminished. This "coercive economy," with its forced labor and lack of development, has continued to be a detriment to the Congolese economy. Years after the Belgians have left, the Congolese, like so many nations which are recovering from colonization and having an import substitution economy forced on them, still lag behind in means of production and self-sufficiency.

OTHER FACTORS INFLUENCING DROC TODAY

In spite of all the empirical and implied evidence regarding the detrimental effects of colonialism, to assign blame for all of the Democratic Republic of the Congo's modern ills to Belgian colonization would be unfair. There are factors other than the lasting effects of colonialism that contribute to the current situation in the DROC. These factors include the fact that agricultural production is almost impossible, since only 3% of the land is arable, regional tensions that are not a result of colonialism that result in an unstable environment militarily and in terms of genocide and other human rights violations, and finally because of the refugee situation from the Rwandan genocide during the late 1990s. All of these factors bear heavily on the conditions in the DROC today, and prevent colonialism from being the only affecting phenomenon of the nation.