Politics and Chaos in the Congo

A review of The American Mission by Matthew Palmer, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, NY, 2014

 

This intriguing tale is set in Africa, specifically in the present day Congo. Descriptions of the teeming capital of Kinshasa and its mad house politics, full of  intrigue and violence, ring true. Similarly authentic are descriptions of a remote village tucked on the shore of one of the Congo’s massive rivers. Finally, the author captures the essence of how an American embassy operates.  He should be qualified for accuracy in that regard because Palmer is a serving U.S. diplomat.  Yet, however realistic the background, this novel is fiction.  The story is a rollicking suspenseful adventure replete with heroes, heroines and villains galore.

The basic plot is that a noble disgruntled young diplomat whose career is apparently in the doldrums is given a new chance at embassy Kinshasa. He eagerly seizes the opportunity, but soon finds that things are not what they seem, and not on the up and up.  He is sent out to perform tasks which he finds morally repugnant, particularly an ambassadorial backed effort to support an international company’s effort to exploit a mining concession that would destroy a peaceful village.  He strives to reverse the idea and finds himself drawn into a whirlwind of truths, half-truths and outright lies.  Erstwhile friends become enemies and vice versa.  Even as the plot swirls, our young diplomat finds his firm ethical ground and stays true to his ideals. 

I really enjoyed the novel because I liked the setting and all the foreign service references, most of which were spot on. While I don’t mind seeing diplomatic stereotypes caricatured, I would caution that there are no inner State Department cabals like the ones described. I offer a few other little nit-picks for what they are worth.  Palmer moves the geography, geology and ethnic presence of the Congo around to suit his needs.  That’s okay in a novel, but still disconcerting to find the Luba people hundreds of miles from home, the copper belt re-located to the rain forest, and Zongo (a real town) misplaced on the inside cover map. Additionally, in the opening chapter set in Darfur the Janjaweed did not raid Zagahwa camps but often attacked Fur IDP camps. A comment about how to get to the fictitious village was “fly to Goma and go downriver” is wrong.  Kisangani is the town on the Congo River that should have been referenced.  Goma is on a lake.  Finally, in talking about the Foreign Service our hero says he registered his will with the human resources office back home.  That is not done.

Foreign Service Officers will particularly enjoy this novel as will folks who know Africa and know how politics and business play out there. Even so, it is a novel with universal appeal. 

Sierra Leone troubles

A review of Radiance of Tomorrow by Ishmael Beah,  NY 2014

This is a sad and truthful book. It is fiction, but in the context of the story the author speaks eloquently to the realities of African life in the aftermath of war and in face of a harsh modern world where traditional values succumb to the pressures of new times. In the wake of civil war the novel recounts the saga of how a family in Sierra Leone revitalizes itself in an effort to restore harmony and peace in their village.  Even as the older ways, based on strong interpersonal relationships, are being reconstituted, new disruptive ways intrude in the form of a mining company and the disruption it brings.  Eventually, the new ways win out.  The village is destroyed and its people co-opted by corruption. Dismayed by their fate, remnants of the family flee to the capital city, but there too face agonies of unemployment, scams and the collapse of social fabric.

The novel begins in a hopeful fashion wherein first elders and then families return to their abandoned village not only to pick up and bury the bones of the dead, but also to rebuild their lives and village society.  They succeed only gradually as villagers harbor fears and scars from the war.  Included among the returnees are a man and his two children whose hands were cut off by rebel militia.  Also appearing was the young man, who while being called “commander cutlass”, was the perpetrator of the amputations.  He is remorseful, but they cannot reconcile.

The story soon focuses on Bockerie and Benjamin and their families. They survived the war by fleeing, but return to their jobs as teachers.  The school has nothing but students – no equipment and no books – but the teachers love their work and labor on. Soon the principal regularly steals what little there is, including teacher salaries.  Just as the village is getting settled, a mining company opens operations nearby.  This causes havoc. The company is uncaring and unresponsive to village concerns. It pollutes their water. Its trucks run down their children. Its men harass and rape village women. Remonstrations have no effect as national officials are in the pockets of the company.  But the company does provide jobs, and finally Bockerie and Benjamin find no alternatives other than seeking employment there.  First the company undermines the soul of the village and eventually destroys it physically in its quest for ore. 

Ultimately Bockerie and his family travel to the city to seek new beginnings, but alas more trouble. As country bumpkins they are not prepared for slick city ways.  Despite setbacks, the family perseveres.

Author Bleah throws every kind of disaster into the paths of his protagonists.  All too often he makes expatriates, i.e. the mining company, or western influence the scapegoats for every pernicious event.  Clearly part of his message to the world via this novel is that external actors must be more understanding and caring about the societies they encounter.  Yet much of the author’s ire is saved for domestic corruption and leaders who sell out their people for the all mighty dollar.  But the novel is more than that too, it is a study of the aches and pains that people go through as the world around them changes.  They cannot go backwards, nor even find a stable present, but must go forward.  The challenge in doing that is not to lose one’s humanity and moral compass in the process.

I read this novel by a Sierra Leone author in August of 2014 while I was in Freetown during the height of the Ebola crisis.  Even though the Ebola plague is not part of the novel, I found the theme of confronting life’s woes to resonate strongly.  That is precisely what so many citizens are compelled to do in the face of the uncertainties of this terrible disease.      

Congo Revealed - Some Glory, Lots of Pain

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.   

Adventure Fiction set in Kenya

Following is a review of Assegai  by Wilbur Smith, St. Martins Press, NY, 2009.

 

Smith has his formula for adventure action books down pat. This one is no exception.   Set in Kenya before World War One, the author weaves his story around actual historical figures such as Lord Delamare, President Roosevelt and Colonel Lettow von Vorbeck.  However, the tale’s main characters are fictional and often outrageously so. They are too handsome, too honorable, too cruel, too evil, too knowledgeable, too brave, or too beautiful. Even so their entrance and exit from the plot provides the pace of the story.

The basic plot revolves around a stock Smith character this time Leon Courtney, a young man who comes into his own as a hero, hunter and spy.   He kills many animals - always minutely described - beds a series of women, relies on his African guides for bush and cultural savvy and despite flirting with disastrous failure time and again, ultimately succeeds in all endeavors.  As noted, it is a well told tale.

Assegai is fiction so the author can create geography, which he does.  He also throws in a bit of Swahili, which helps shore up the Kenyan setting , but the title is strange.  Assegai is a Zulu word from southern Africa that is the name for a stabbing spear used there.   Although the Masai people of Kenya also use a similar weapon, the Swahili name for that spear is mkuki or fumo, neither of which, I guess, are as recognizable to modern readers as assegai.  I first picked up the book thinking it was about southern Africa.  

Wilbur Smith’s novels always require a certain suspension of belief by the reader, but his African settings are valid and his tales move along.  Assegai is a great beach or airplane book.