Recently I broke from tradition and lent a friend my old but relevant single copy of HARPER’S Magazine from 2007 to read a story about the tough legal conditions soldiers of fortune go through. The story is titled “CONTRACT WITH AMERICA. Hard times for the soldier of fortune” by Daphne Evitar but he also read another article “THE RIVER IS A ROAD Searching for peace in Congo” by Bryan Mealer which seemed to overpower his interest in the first article of choice. Obviously, he had never read anything complete about the Congo before, and knew nothing even by hearsay of its history, except for The Mighty Sparrow’s provocative calypso “Never eat a White meat yet” so he was devastated by the references to poverty, hard-living and violent times.

I patiently explained to him that writers cannot produce extensive biographic footnotes on the subject areas of their topic, the subject of the article is about the River traffic, when they have guidelines from publishers on how much words the article must contain etc. Writing is also a job I insisted, and criteria’s have to be met. This brother had made highlights of areas to support his argument. I was not happy with him doing that to my magazine but he ignored my protest and my previous explanation and proceeded to insist on the failure of the country’s leaders with the following excerpts: “To think we had one of the greatest civilizations in Africa,” he said once, shaking his head. “But now… Severin had grown up around some of the world’s nastiest poverty just outside of his door in Kinshasa, and I think he was hoping like me, to find something better in the vast, green interior.” Then he chose another part of the story, also highlighted: “ And while Mobutu siphoned off billions in public funds to build palaces, like the one deep in the jungle equipped with a runway for Concorde jets, and to fly in masseuses direct from China, the country rapidly fell apart. Civil servants went unpaid for years, soldiers mutinied and looted the cities clean, inflation soared, water and electricity disappeared, and the average Congolese existed on US$120 per year. Mobutu’s era of Kleptocracy and neglect finally ended when rebels marched into Kinshasa in early 1997 and installed Laurent Kabila as president. The big man fled to Morocco and later died.” It then occurred to me what was going on. This brother had digested so many reports of bad things, revolutions in Africa, including the Congo (Zaire) that somewhere in his awareness he was looking for confirmation or an explanation on whether the article he had read confirms that Africa is indeed a basket case. the indoctrination of stereotypes is most times self-induced, relying on your ignorance and lazy resistance to the task of investigating for clarification, which results in being able to dispel or leave unchallenged the fertilised deas already absorbed.

With the advent of social media and Google, no one bothers to reach to the links of articles, much less for books, which is making a comeback with some of the younger adults. The distractions of living are numerous, including just staying on top of the bills. It’s also difficult explaining the history that seems fantastic to someone hearing it for the first time. But I felt compelled to explain what had transpired with the Arab and Moslem African onslaught led by Tipu Tip from his Zanzibar headquarters. This was followed by the African schemes of Leopold of Belgium, destroyed the self-sufficient high cultures of the Congo, like the orderly and well-governed Kuba Kingdom with its artistic population, unaware and unprepared for the savagery of the invading European colonisation mentality (still alive today) from the 1870s onward, that swept an entire social system out of existence across Africa, adjusting borders, dividing peoples and destroying proven workable social systems. Then after the manifestation of ‘God’s Demon’ Adolf Hitler, in the 1930s followed by WWII, with Russia and Communism emerging as a pretentious alternative of Colonialism, post-WWII. The colonised nations were again in a struggle to liberate themselves, or what was of their former selves dissected under different flags, the Belgium Congo under its charismatic leader Patrice Lumumba seeking an escape for his nation from Belgium colonisation, in the midst of insurrection by Congolese troops. It was a tense time contaminated further by the cold war interests of America and Russia. The fact is that the Congo was caught up in a severe conflict upon the threshold of its independence not of its making but between Nikita Khrushchev of Russia and President Eisenhower of the US of A. In the end, Patrice Lumumba was murdered and Mobutu who was tabled to be thrown out of the army became the convenient president. This was 1965, he destroyed the country for 32 years. Congo was the victim of cold world politics by nations who cared only for their desired Geo-political results at any cost, the suffering of the ‘Other’ people did not matter.

My friend asked for related literature. I lied and said I had none. People just don’t return books. However, I did give him some title names to buy on Amazon or may be available in our almost vanished second hand book stands. His plight was not alarming, he is not in a field that made such literature an option, but paying attention to the world and its politics and the real policies of powerful nations does make you understand that national Independence is an elusive ceremonial concept. No wonder Forbes Burnham chose to celebrate our Republic status that enveloped the resistance of Kofi and the maroons that are more relevant in the face of disappointing expectations and the betrayals from preconceived guardians of democracy.