D.R. Congo: the Darkness of the Heart: How the Congolese Have Survived 500 Years of History

By Loso Kiteti Boya

Book Synopsis: This book recounts from the perspective of a Congolese native the five-hundred-year journey of the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo. It analyzes dispassionately the facts of the turbulent history of the country and its continuing impact on the life of the modern-day Congolese. In the book, we set out to begin the search for the Congolese answers to the DR Congos historical paradox of a very rich country living a very poor life in a neighborhood in which it is the biggest and yet the weakest country. We travel back five hundred years to rediscover the ancient kingdom of Congo and look closely at its people, institutions, value and belief systems, customs and practices and try to establish the linkages between the present cultural values, belief system, and practices of the modern-day Congolese with those of their past. Through the revisiting of the past, we try to identify the ways and means of a more effective strategy for social, political, and economic renaissance in the DR Congo. Although a diary, the book is not a chronological presentation of the Congos history. The reader can expect to travel back and forth on the meandering road of the Congolese journey. The DR Congo is a land of ecological gigantism and an environmental Garden of Eden. It has the second largest freshwater river in the world, the Congo River, a powerful source of clean energy, and the second largest tropical rain forest in the world; the largest number of big lakes in Africa, including Lake Tanganyika; one of the largest assortment of minerals and precious metals and gems in the world, including uranium; and a large landmass of 906,000 square miles stretching over two time zones with a population of less than seventy million, translating into one the lowest population densities in the world. Such an array of diverse and rich natural resources and the extraordinary economic power potential of DR Congo have always attracted envy and invasions from foreign countries, multinational companies, and individuals over the centuries, the latest being the attack of the combined armies of Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi in August 1998. The history of the DR Congo is also the history of the darkness of the human heart, extreme cruelty and violence, greed and selfishness by the early European explorers, the slave traders, the Zanzibari Arab slave merchants of the last centuries, and the neocolonialists and cold warriors of the twentieth century. It is the history of treason of the Congo by the Congolese, the betrayal of the public trust of the people, and of the pursuit of power at all costs and bad management of the economy by the Congolese leaders and the politicians, from the medieval kings of the kingdom of the Congo to the present-day ruling class. The book follows the less publicized but crucial journeys of the numerous Congolese slaves to the Americas, documenting their early settlements in the United States, the Caribbean Islands, and Brazil and reconnecting their present-day descendants in the Americas to their Congolese roots and ancestry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: May 19, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450082501

Loso Kiteti Boya

Mr. Loso K. Boya, a Congolese, holds a B.A. in Economics from State University of Congo in Katanga Province (1970); a Masters Degree in Business Administration (MBA) from Syracuse University (1972); and a Masters Degree in Public Health (MPH) from Johns Hopkins University (1988). He grew up in Pindi in Kwilu District of Congo. He worked as Economist at the Central Bank of the Congo, and joined the World Bank in Washington DC in 1976, and from there worked in several African countries for 22 years. He participated in Congolese general elections of 2006 as candidate for Deputy to National Assembly. He is currently a Senior Manager of a US NGO in the Washington DC area.

Book preview

DR CONGO:

THE DARKNESS OF

THE HEART

How the Congolese Have Survived Five Hundred Years

of History

Loso K. Boya

Copyright © 2010 by Loso K. Boya.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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79144

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CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

PART I: The Kingdom of the Congo and the Europeans

1    The Kingdom of the Congo

2    Life in the Ancient Kingdom of the Congo

3    Insecurity and the Struggle for Survival

4    The Arrival of the Europeans and Territorial Conquest

5    The Consequences of the Encounter with the Europeans

6    The Institution of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade

7    Portugal, the Slave Trade, and the Demise of the Kingdom of the Congo

8    The Zanzibari Arab Slave Trade

PART II: Independence, Civil Wars, and the Aftermath

1    The Colonial Experience

2    The Post-Independence Battles of East vs. West Proxies

3    Thirty-Two Years of Mobutu Dictatorship

4    Democracy and Electoral Politics

5    Picking Up the Pieces and Rebuilding

6    Reforming Agriculture

7    National Debt Management

PART III: Social Life in the Congo

1    The Notions of Civil Service and Public Service

2    The Legal Systems

3    Religion

4    The Arts

PART IV: Emerging New Challenges

1    The DR Congo Mineral Wars

2    The Martyr City of Kisangani Boyoma

3    The DR Congo’s Natural Resources and the Environment

4    The DR Congo and the China Trade

5    Final Thoughts

References

Book Summary

Author Biography

DEDICATION

To Lucie, Mary Jo, Christine, and Odette,

who brought wisdom, success, and joy into my life;

and to Nicole,

my hope for the future.

PREFACE

It was the month of July 1956 in the nearby lush forest of my village of Pindi in the Bulungu District of the Belgian Congo when the midday breeze of the dry season caresses the fallen leaves of the trees and the wilted tall grass of the Congolese countryside. My mother, Lucie, whom we affectionately called the general because of her village-recognized intelligence, will power, and organizational skills, and I, both wielding shiny machetes newly purchased from Mr. Branco, the Portuguese general storekeeper in the administrative and commercial town of Bulungu twenty kilometers away, were clearing the trees for our seasonal field of manioc, corn, and peanut crops. I was exhausted and hungry after a morning of slashing and cutting through the dense thickets. With her usual observing and penetrating eyes, the general looked at me with a mixture of affection and authority, stopped cutting, and posed for a few seconds. Then she asked with a sharp voice that echoed in the suddenly quiet forest, Loso, are you tired? Do you want to take a break now? I quickly responded, Yes. She went to get the food basket she had left at the foot of a big tree that we could not tackle with our machetes due to its size. We sat down for our lunch amid food flies circling around our makeshift table.

The general started the conversation and said to me, Loso, do you like being here in the middle of the forest hacking trees and being bitten by insects? I said, No. She continued, Unlike myself who did not have a chance to go to school to ‘read books,’ you, Loso, have a chance to go to school and to achieve great things for our family and our village, and to make our lives (she meant hers and mine) a little easier by securing a good-paying job that only comes with a good education. She continued: I will work my entire life to pay for your school if you are willing to take on that challenge and to study hard and always, she added looking straight into my eyes. She went on: With your educational potential, you are expected to be the leader of our family and to help our people prosper. Are you willing to take up that challenge? she asked me again. I said yes to get her off my back. At age thirteen, I did not know exactly what mother was talking about, but I had a sense that she was trying to tell me something important, to pass on a message that would guide the rest of my life. For twelve years amid the disdain and laughter of the other women in our village , who considered my mother’s total dedication and commitment to formal education and higher learning for her first son a little strange and contrary to our long established village custom of directing male children to developing and perfecting their skills in field work and hunting, the general kept her promise. She nurtured, and encouraged me and, through her hard work in the crop fields, financed and helped me finish the Jesuit-run Pindi Elementary School, where I graduated as an honor student and was selected to give the student commencement speech in French before the biggest crowd of my life in 1958.

The episode of conversation in the bush was only one event out of several hundreds of such private talks I had with my mother. My mother had five children: the oldest, a daughter, was married off and left our family home early at the age of fifteen. The rest of the children were all boys, and I was the oldest. It therefore fell on me to take up the domestic chores and other duties, including work in the crop fields that were normally carried out by the oldest female children. Thus, during my early teenage years, I was duty bound to accompany my mother to the crop fields every day when I was not attending school, to fetch drinking water from the river each day at a distance of at least four miles, to pound dry manioc with mortar and pestle to make manioc flour for dinner porridge when Mama Lucie was ill or too tired to do it herself, etc. In our village, these activities were duties fit for women only, and my playmates routinely laughed at me for being so tied to female work. As a good strategist, Mother Lucie turned this hopeless situation into an opportunity to teach me valuable lessons and to instill in me positive values that continue to guide me to this day: hard work, value of formal education, compassion, service to others, persistence and courage in the face of adversity, clear thinking and planning skills.

By the time I finished high school in May 1965 with grand distinction, and most of my class mates were looking for jobs, Mother Lucie was still pushing me to go further in my studies despite her own impoverished situation caused by endless school fees and boarding costs she had continued to pay. When I told her that I was accepted at the State University of the Congo at Lubumbashi, 1,500 miles away in the Katanga province, she embraced the idea on condition that I would not forget to visit home during vacation time. I finished college in June 1970 and graduated with distinction and a Bachelor of Arts Degree (BA) in economics. Immediately, my outstanding and perfect academic record earned me three simultaneous offers of scholarships for graduate school from the governments of the United States, Germany, and Belgium. The offers were broadcast repeatedly over the National Radio in Kinshasa during the summer of 1970 by the three competing western aid missions. The radio messages were asking me to report to their embassies to begin the formalities for departure to their respective countries while I was wrestling with the decision about which of the three offers I should accept. I felt honored and proud that three western governments were competing for the attention of a Congolese village boy, and I could not help it but to think of the general back in the village who had sacrificed so much her whole life to bring me to that moment. I thought then, and still do today, that Mama Lucie was the real hero of the situation and deserved all the credit for my academic success.

Choosing one country out of the three generous donors was a difficult decision to reach for a twenty-seven-year-old young man with no international exposure, having been brought up under the strict Belgian colonial rule, and, like most Congolese then, brainwashed into the belief that everything Belgian was the greatest and the best in the world. When I chose the United States, I felt an uneasy sense that I had betrayed a country that was after all La Mere Patrie or Motherland to all of us Congolese a mere decade before. I also regretted not choosing Germany because I knew that I was giving up the opportunity to be part of the great economic miracle of West Germany and its famed efficiency and technological advances. Using the wisdom and foresight imparted by Mother Lucie over the years, I decided to accept the USAID offer. It was essentially a pragmatic and businesslike choice intended to give myself a chance to enter the Anglophone world and to learn the English language that I knew was fast becoming a sine qua non in the international arena and the global business world. This proved to be one of my best life choices.

By the time I finished college in June 1970, and was headed to the Unites States of America for my graduate studies in the summer of the same year, the Congolese post-independence crisis had deepened and things were falling apart in the country, including the road system that connected most villages and towns. It became more and more difficult to travel within the country and for me to go back to my village to visit the general, even after I returned to the Congo in early 1973. Years passed. In 1981, from Washington DC, where I was employed by the World Bank, my wife and I and our two young daughters flew back to the Congo on vacation and made the arduous trip of seven hundred miles on dirt roads in a half-broken vehicle to my native village to visit my mother, and we stayed together for two weeks. My mother came to Kinshasa to visit my brother in 1992, and I made a trip to the Congo to spend some time with her. That was the last time I would see her. The general passed away on June 3, 1995, in our village while I was in Washington DC. As is the custom in our culture, burial took place after two days, and in any case, lack of appropriate mortuary facilities in the village prevented keeping the body aboveground beyond that date of burial.

The general taught me a couple of important things that I have tried to uphold in my entire life: to be a good leader of my people (essentially my own extended family) and to always try to find solutions to problems that help others. This thought has remained with me for more than half a century, and it explains my personal journey as a human being and as a professional. Since that close and personal conversation with Mother Lucie in the forest, I have always sought to live up to her dream and expectations of me: to help the people of my village, of the DR Congo, of Africa, and of the world whenever I could. That has been my calling in life since receiving my marching orders from the general. I have tried to execute my covenant with her through my involvement in the Congolese Central Bank, my work at the World Bank for development in Africa, my participation in the electoral political process in DR Congo in 2006, and occasionally through my attempts to develop small business activities in the United States and the DR Congo that help the poor.

Though I cannot claim total success in all these personal endeavors, I am proud to have tried and given all to fulfill Mama Lucie’s dream. Today, the Congolese people seem to present the greatest challenge to Mama Lucie’s and my own dream of prosperity for the DR Congo and its beloved people. This worrisome situation provided the impetus and the inspiration for my inquiry into the issues that have negatively affected the progress of the Congolese over the past five centuries, and for the search for answers through this book. I hope that it will serve to point the way to millions of young and old Congolese to self-evaluate and to summon their inner strength to rebuild their own lives and to contribute their part to the long-delayed renaissance of the great DR Congo.

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INTRODUCTION

This book recounts from the perspective of a Congolese native the five-hundred-year journey of the people of the DR Congo, who have experienced numerous challenges and have survived them. The book attempts to analyze dispassionately the facts of the turbulent history of the country and its continuing impact on the life of the modern-day Congolese. The book is intended both as a diary of a people over the past five hundred years since their first encounter with the Europeans in 1482 and a vade mecum for the future for Congolese, the friends of DR Congo, and all those interested in a brighter future for the DR Congo.

The DR Congo is often mentioned in negative and sad terms, owing to its tormented history, endless conflicts, and epic struggles to survive as a nation. Both its critics and supporters agree on the immense human and natural resource potential of DR Congo but often disagree on the nature and the causes of the problems that continue to hamper its progress and on what to do about those problems. In this book, I set out to begin the search for the Congolese answers to DR Congo’s paradox of a very rich country living a very poor life in a neighborhood in which it is the biggest and yet the weakest country. I travel back five hundred years to rediscover the ancient kingdom of the Congo (except for the attributed quotes, in this book, the word Congo is used instead of Kongo) and look closely at its people, institutions, value systems, customs, and practices, with a view to establishing linkages between the present values, belief system, and practices of the modern Congolese with those of their past. I dig deeper into the early formative years of this giant of central Africa in order to better understand the present and, through the revisiting of the past, identify the ways and means of a more effective strategy for social, political, and economic renaissance in DR Congo.

I analyze the Congolese cultural, social, and political realities through the centuries up to the present days and highlight the constant elements of the Congolese political culture, social customs, and lifestyle that have survived the test of time and numerous external attempts to change them. I search for the recurrent themes of the Congolese way of life, culture, politics, and economic production that run through the centuries and look at their enduring features from the time of the first European arrival in the Congo in 1482 to the present day. I try to learn from these permanent features and draw lessons for the future. Although a diary, the book is not a chronological presentation of the Congo’s history and the experiences of its inhabitants over the centuries. The reader can expect to travel back and forth on the meandering road of the Congolese journey. The book is deliberately repetitive at times because of the need to relate the contemporary events to what happened in the past and to show the historical linkages between them. In the book, I will digress from time to time and return to the historical events and aspects of Congolese life already covered in order to highlight the continuity of the culture, politics, and economic performance of the Congo in the last five hundred years. That is indeed my goal and the thrust of this book.

In refocusing on the past, the book does not seek to litigate the past and awaken ancient controversies or reopen old wounds of the Congolese slave trade era and subsequent European colonialism. Nor does it intend to rekindle the passions of past and more recent political confrontations among the Congolese politicians or to put them on trial for their actions. It is an attempt at introspection and self-evaluation for the people of the Congo with a view to better understanding ourselves and our complicated history, and to draw the lessons that our history teaches us, going forward. In the end, only the Congolese will solve the problems of the Congo, and it is time that the Congolese themselves begin to focus on and study their problems and to search for solutions. I make a number of concrete and specific new policy proposals and recommendations to the present and future governments of DR Congo to address specific issues of concern to the Congo, both on the domestic front and on the external front. On the fiftieth anniversary of the DR Congo’s political independence from Belgium, I seek to stimulate a reappraisal of the state of DR Congo and its implications for the Congolese people and, in so doing, I open up a conversation on the subject among the Congolese and the friends of the Congo.

As we all know, most books on the Congo’s history, society, politics, and economy are written by non-Congolese, and just about everything written about the Congo is fraught with value judgments, exaggerations, embellishments, and doom and gloom stories that inspire fear. Occasionally, a more romantic view is presented to describe the mysterious and impenetrable land that lies at the heart of the Dark Continent, as westerners nicknamed Africa. I know that history is written by the victors, but in the case of the Congo, the historical distortions have been so blatant and damaging to the image of the Congolese that a legitimate case can be made for a Congolese reexamination, not revisionism, of that history. This historical record continues to downplay the role of the Congolese people in the modern history of the world, particularly in the New World through the slavery process that affected millions of Congolese who left DR Congo for new homelands in the Americas as slaves. In this book, the story of the Congo is reviewed and told from the perspective of a