Word: congo
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...Adam Hochschild's brilliant and damning "King Leopold's Ghost" describes the early colonization and exploitation of the Congo. Long before Sierra Leone, Belgium's colonial army encouraged the amputation of body parts as proof that native soldiers had actually killed their enemies. Former Financial Times correspondent Michela Wrong's "In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz" details Joseph Desire Mobutu's rise to power and his descent into paranoia, isolation and self destruction. Mobutu's Congo, Wrong writes, was a modern-day kleptocracy - a nation state that institutionalized theft...
...intellectuals in Africa and the African diaspora seek their own explanations for the failures not only of post-independence Congo, but also of post-colonial Africa more widely, there is renewed interest in the story of Patrice Lumumba. Haitian-born director Raoul Peck's powerful new film, "Lumumba," uses the story of the Congo's first and last democratically-elected prime minister to graphically and explosively explore Western complicity in the Congo's slide into chaos following its independence...
...really have time to develop an ideology or a message." The fact that Lumumba could be effective at all was something of a miracle. By the time of independence, the Belgians had allowed only 17 Congolese to obtain a university education. Larry Devlin, a CIA agent in the Congo at the time, agrees with Michela Wrong that Lumumba tried to use the Russians but was never really a communist. "Poor Lumumba. He was no communist," said Devlin. "He was just a poor jerk who thought 'I can use these people.' I'd seen that happen in Eastern Europe. It didn...
...Lumumba's flirtation with the Russians led the U.S. , Belgium and other Western powers to look for a more malleable alternative to rule the Congo. They settled on Lumumba's former aide, Joseph Desire Mobutu, who had been promoted to head of the army. Mobutu was flooded with Western money and arms, and within two months was able to out-maneuver the remnants of Congo's civil government, launching the newly-independent nation's long slide into institutional theft and ultimate bankruptcy. Lumumba was placed under house arrest, and after he escaped, was captured, tortured and turned over to Moise...
...Belgian secret agents sent to dispose of Lumumba's body. The film is a reminder that Patrice Lumumba's dream of independence, which inspired his fellow Africans, is not quite forgotten even today. And it is an even greater reminder that in the chaos that the Congo has become, none of us are quite as innocent as we'd like to believe...