This is a review of
Congo - the Epic History of a People by David van Reybrouck, Harper Collins,
NY, 2014.
This book provides a fascinating look into the Congo’s
turbulent history. Rather than an
academic recitation of facts and faces, the author strove to piece together the
fabric of the Congo’s past by linking together anecdotes and memories of people
who were actually there. Imagine how
enormous was the task to find and interview such persons - people who
essentially constituted the oral repository of the last hundred years. Yet van Reybrouck found them, even a man who
had encountered Henry Morton Stanley in the waning years of the 19th
century. Other interlocutors remembered
building the railroads, being the first person in school, fighting WWII in
Ethiopia, laboring in the mines,
organizing unions, being persecuted, or elevated, by colonial authorities and
the nascent political awakenings of the
post war era. Independence era memories of
men in close proximity to Kasavubu, Lumumba and Mobutu provided insight into
their motivations and foibles.
Similarly, additional interviews moved the story forward in time through
the Mobutu years to the coming of the Kabilas. The vibrancy of personal
recollections gives this book a special aura. Moreover the aura is Congolese
because the folks interviewed were/are Congolese. The author reported their
perceptions of their history even as he wove those memories into the more
sterile historical record. The sum then
becomes more than the parts and the result is a definitive epic - just as the
subtitle indicates.
Although political history is fully recounted, the social
aspects of past times were elucidating. What did Congolese people think about
Europeans? and vice versa? Van Reybrouck makes no apologies for
Belgian’s colonial rule, but he does dissect the colonial era carefully;
usefully adding recollections from Belgians - including his own father - which
show a more human side to the stark version of authoritarianism that is
standard historical fare.
The treatise elaborates on the roles that popular music,
sports, i.e. soccer, and religion - Catholics, Protestants, Kimbanguists,
Pentecostals and other syncretic sects played in the evolution of society, and
of politics. Similarly, the book covers the rise of
tribalism, the phenomenon that plagues the Congo today, but which grew from a
number of factors including slavery, urbanism, modern politics and poverty.
Clearly any history of the Congo has to study political non-functionality
and corruption. These themes pervade the
book. Corruption began with Leopold’s Free State, continued with Belgian
monopolies, was adapted by Congolese politicians who seized assets for their
own use, was refined in Mobutu’s system of control via payoffs, and culminated
in the more recent scramble for minerals by warlords and neighboring
authorities from Rwanda and Uganda. Dysfunctional
politics too track the same trajectory wherein the need to control, and
survive, outweighed any responsibilities to the community or society at
large. The Congo did not fall into an
economic and political abyss overnight. Its leaders, with at minimum the
acquiescence of the people, took it there.
Van Reybrouck’s book is a history, so does not propose solutions, but it
does give readers an appreciation for the complexities of the current situation
and of the hurdles that the nation faces as it tries to move forward.
The sections about the fall of Mobutu, the Rwandan/Ugandan
invasion, the coming of Laurent Kabila, succession by his son Joseph and
conflict in Kivus provide background on recent events. By and large van Reybrouck gets the facts
right, and he does produce some interesting anecdotes, but he does err in
adopting assertions by fellow countrymen Reyntjens and Braeckman both regarding
the number of Rwandan refugees that died in the conflagration (he uses the
inflated number of 300,000 that was bandied about at the time, but that has
been subsequently scrutinized closely) and
the role of the U.S. government during that conflict (allegations that U.S.
troops and equipment were involved are simply false). Knowing that van Reybrouck got his facts
wrong on those issues, raises the question of credibility throughout the
book. What else is misreported?
The book closes with a rather strange chapter that discusses
the presence of Congolese traders in China, their puzzlement with that society and
their efforts to buy goods wholesale for shipment home. Although it is good to know that
entrepreneurs are out there, I suppose the relevance of the ending is that
whatever the disaster of the homeland, some of the Congolese people remain
vibrant and forward looking.
