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Title: In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz
ISBN: 1841154229
Author:
Michela Wrong
Publicate Date: 2001-06
Publish: 2001-06
List Price: $16.50
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $3.55
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $3.49
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1: Dead Leopard
This is a mostly fascinating on-the-ground report of the waning years and immediate aftermath of Mobutu Sese Seko's incompetent dictatorship in Zaire (Congo). Michela Wrong offers a well-rounded journalistic report that digs into the bizarre depths of kleptocracy, as the potentially prosperous Zaire was bled dry while Mobutu and his ever-shifting gang of cronies and yes-men lived in ridiculous luxury, oblivious as their subjects suffered some of the worst poverty and hardship on Earth. Wrong gains plenty of insight into Mobutu's style of governance, as he spread favors around egregiously and played other powers off each other in an increasingly paranoid effort to maintain his own influence, stealing or blowing away untold billions of dollars in the process. Wrong also reports on the aftermath of Mobutu's pathetic downfall, as a convoluted series of atrocities related to the genocide in tiny Rwanda eventually led to the replacement of Mobutu's kleptocracy with Kabila's thugocracy.
There is a running theme, which Wrong could have dwelled upon more, about how the ugly history of European colonialism and exploitation has forever wrecked the ability of Africa's peoples to build their own functioning societies, while Zaire suffered the tragic fate of a home-grown dictator who ruined his people as badly as the colonialists did. Cold War politics and shifting loyalties in endless proxy wars added to the misery. The tail end of the book gets a bit messy as well, degenerating into disconnected chapters on various items of interest, as Wrong's writing takes on some of the disjointed chaos that plagued the country itself during Mobutu's downfall. The British slang and grammatical patterns of Wrong's writing style can also lead to some confusion for American readers. But despite missed opportunities to dwell on some crucial historical lessons, here we get an engaging history of a dictator who is fascinating in his ineptitude and corruption. [~doomsdayer520~]
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2: The Second Half Of A Bloody Century
Anyone who wants to understand the Congo should read two books, Michela Wrong's In The Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz and King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild. I also heartily recommend both books to anyone studying Conrad's Heart of Darkness, which is too seldom seen as an historic account as well as a literary novel. Wrong and Hochschild explain why the last 100 years of bloody tyranny in possibly the most mineral-rich country on earth has laid the groundwork for 100 more.
Hochschild gives us the first half of the century, when King Leopold II of Belgium, a man whose inferiority complex knows no bottom and whose greed no limits, jumps into the feeding frenzy for colonies and comes up gripping the very heart of Africa, the vast area around the Congo River and it's tributaries that would later become the Belgian Congo, then Zaire, and today is the Democratic Republic of Congo. This is also the setting for my novel, Heart of Diamonds: A Novel of Scandal, Love and Death in the Congo. Wrong covers this era also, but in less depth, helpfully referring readers to Hochschild for the full story.
Where she picks up steam, though, is with Joseph Desire Mobutu, better known as Mobutu Sese Seko, who became the archetype African strongman dictator. She paints a remarkably nuanced portrait of the man, exposing not just his brutality but his cunning; his charm as well as his lust for power. Wrong witnessed Mobutu's last days and tells us how he ultimately lost control of the nation he ruled for over thirty years.
Mobutu didn't rise to office on his good looks and winning personality--he was essentially put there by the CIA. He also didn't retain power simply because he was good at exercising it; France, Belgium, and the United States, not to mention the World Bank, kept him there with military support and an endless stream of dollars. The tale of how he played the First World like a violin is fascinating. Mobutu's nationalization of foreign-owned assets and his machinations with the White House sparked several plot elements in Heart of Diamonds: A Novel of Scandal, Love and Death in the Congo.
Wrong gives us a highly readable account of Mobutu's demise. "The Leopard" as he was known, had grown increasingly distracted and detached from his power base. In the last years, he spent most of his time in the Xanadu he constructed in Gbadolite in the middle of the equatorial forest, leaving the country's affairs to a network of cronies and relatives who plundered the nation in his name. The Rwandan genocide of 1994 set the stage for his downfall. Mobutu sided with the Hutus, and when he ordered the Tutsi refugees who had fled into Zaire to leave under pain of death in 1996, Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi joined forces to drive him from office.
Wrong also explains how Laurent Kabila picked up where Mobutu left off as ruler and manipulating despot. Unfortuantely for the reader, her account was published before Kabila's own assassination in 2001.
Paired with Adam Hochschild's well-researched history, King Leopold's Ghost, Michela Wrong's book gives the reader a better understanding of this deeply troubled nation.
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3: A great snapshot of the post-colonial Congo despots
Michela Wrong is one of those liberal journalists who blame 99% of Africa's 'problems' on the European colonial regimes and the European and American 'neo-colonial' interventions. Her book does provide a very good glimpse into the doings and crimes of Mobutu and his relatives and cronies, but excuses most of it away by referencing the colonialists who went before. Ditto for his successor Kabila of course, although the focus is mainly on Mobutu.
The United States, the World Bank, and the IMF are blasted as participants in all the corruption and downgoing of Congo/Zaire because they provided countless millions in aid money. The money was given to Mobutu in the hope that it would be used improve the economy and aid development, but of course most of it wound up being slotted into Swiss bank accounts or into the purchase of villas in the Riviera.
If these vast sums had NOT been given, the author would of course have led the pack in condemning the USA, WB, and IMF for not giving the money to help Africa, as if only they had then it would not be in the mess it is. And so on, we know the refrain by now, don't we?
Wrong brings up the Cold War as yet another dire consequence for Congo, it becoming a victim of competing world powers grabbing for its resources and influence over the region. It doesn't occur to her that really it was a tremendous boon, in that it meant that countries like that could soak up billions in handouts from the West and eyes averted from African crimes and despotism. Big chiefs like Mobutu massively exploited the West and could not have done so as deeply as without the Cold War.
I lived in Africa for twelve years and saw several countries go from colonialism to post-colonial darkness under one despotic regime or another. I have run into plenty of Michela Wrongs there, who think they understand Africa but really just can not get past their own biases.
Yes, colonialism in Congo under the Belgians did have its share of abuses. But for most Congolese it was a good thing in that it meant jobs, education, modern agriculture, medicine, order, and the building up of a functional, modern nation. The problem is that the Belgians LEFT - at the demands of wannabe despots and liberal journalists like Wrong of course - and the grasping, bloody hands that took over utterly ruined the place. And of course it has been about the same all across Africa: darkness followed by colonialism as a brief ray of light, and what came after a return to the darkness.
So why did I give this book four stars? Because of the fairly accurate portrait of those post-colonial grasping, bloody hands. There is plenty of detail on how the billions got stolen, how the economic infrastructure was pillaged away to nothing, and how the whole population was returned to about the level of the stone age which is where the Belgians first found them.
Two last notes -
Firstly, Wrong's continual reference to Mr. Kurtz and Conrad's novella 'Heart of Darkness' seems way out of place. Mobutu was no Kurtz, period. Mobutu's head would have been just another adornment on Kurtz's front gate up the river. And Conrad could not have even imagined how horrendous the post-colonial Africa would become.
Secondly, she claims that Stanley was called 'Breaker of Rocks' for his brutality towards the various Congolese tribes he encountered. That is not true. He was far less severe towards the tribes than they were to each other, and the 'breaker of rocks' comes from his construction work of the railway across Congo - the endless rocky areas which he blasted and hacked away, amazing his African laborers along the way.
Overall, I recommend this book, readers should just disregard Wrong's trendy liberal-left biases.
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4: A great description of Zaire under Mobutu but poor investigative reporting
Few nations have had as sad a history as Zaire, currently known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Michela Wrong, a journalist for the New Statesman, has taken the time to write a book about the Congo's history particularly under Mobutu, and her experiences in the Congo during his kleptocratic rule.
Her stories are well-researched, and it's clear she's talked with many of those who influenced the history of the time. The sterile recounting of Congo's continual deterioriation under Mobutu is quite well done. What I found infuriating about this book is that Wrong never seems to ask why things happened, or were allowed to happen.
When Zaire, for instance, became independent, it boasted all of 17 university graduates in a country the size of Western Europe, and had had the Belgians pour much treasure into its development. Surely the Belgians, who deconialized, realized that the country would be dependent on Western know-how for many years. Why then, did they not leave advisers behind, perhaps advisers with a brief to make the president offers he couldn't refuse, as was the practice in other francophone colonies? One of the cataclysms under Mobutu's rule was his expelling of many non-Zairians, who left their capital behind, but not their connections and understanding of their business. The economy duly crashed. Why did neither the Belgians nor the French nor the Americans dissuade him from a policy that all but destroyed Zaire's prosperity? One reason why the above mentioned powers were loath to antagonize Mobutu were the many services he queitly performed for them during the Cold War. Why does Wrong only allude to them, and not mention them? One could continue in this vein, but I felt as if what could have become a fascinating book focusing on the crunch times when astoundingly disastrous decisions were made, instead focuses on the misery that these ill-begotten decisions wreaked, which is not as nearly interesting.
If you need to need a source for academic work on Zaire under Mobutu, you may enjoy this book, but I wouldn't recommend it as pleasure reading.
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5: A good introduction but nothing more...
`In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz' is a nice introduction to the intriguing life and times of infamous dictator Mobutu, from his rise to power to his less than glorious downfall. I advise it to anyone who is unfamiliar with Zaire-Congo. Very good reading is her account of the final collapse of the Zairian army. This book was originally conceived as a radio-program on BBC. It is however just that: an introduction. The author is so kind to refer to further reading in the last pages of the book. There the interested reader can find very good resources on the history of the Belgian Congo.
Michela Wrong does suffer from some prejudice towards Belgium and the Belgians not uncommon in the UK. Apart from King Leopold II, the role of the Belgian monarchy and the Belgian governments, especially while supporting the brutal Mobutu dictatorship is hardly present and when mentioned it is downplayed. Not a word on the part that King Baudouin and Prime Minister Gaston Eyskens played in 1959-1960, especially concerning the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. I strongly suggest The Assassination of Lumumba by Belgian journalist Ludo De Witte for a good background on that period.
The author points out that it took an American historian to dig up the facts about King Leopold II's barbarity. While the author is absolutely right in pointing out that Belgium has still not come to terms with its own colonial past, and while King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild is a must read, it is NOT the first published account of that period. That honour goes to the Belgian former diplomat Jules Marchal. But even so, in 1985 he still had to use the pseudonym of A. M. Delathuy and go to the small leftwing publisher EPO (Education Prol??tarienne - Proletarische Opvoeding) to get the first ever book published of a ruthless campaign that would nowadays be labelled as genocide. All big Belgian, French and Dutch publishers flatly refused it. Unfortunately this book is only available in Dutch and French, not in English.
Michela Wrong does give credit to this book, stating that it is only available in French (and Flemish if you can read it) ...Two small remarks here, there is no such thing as a Flemish language. I know that even recently a quality newspaper like The Guardian still claims that `the Flemish Belgians speak Flemish, a language related to Dutch'. The author does not have to take my word for it, she can go check any library and ask for an Flemish-English dictionary, there is no such thing. She can also come check the curriculum in any Flemish school, where she will find that students learn mathematics, geography and `Dutch' at school. While her apparently not so well informed ears may find it odd to hear that the Flemish speak Dutch while not being Dutch, maybe it will help to point out that also the Austrians speak German, that the Brazilians speak Portuguese etc ... Do the Flemish have a different accent than the Dutch? Yes; certainly, but so do Texans, Jamaicans, Australians, yet they all speak English. I also do not understand why Michela Wrong finds it necessary to give a demeaning remark ... if you can read it ... Dutch is the native language of 16 million Dutch and 6 million Flemish, that is more than all Scandinavian languages combined. Another detail that reveals her prejudice towards Belgians and Flemish is that the only Belgian politician she mentions by name is Leo Tindemans who she misspells with a typical `German' double `nn'. Of all Belgian Prime Ministers that ever played a role in Zaire-Congo, he was the least active on Zaire. Every Belgian knows about Tindemans' personal distaste for Mobutu (the feeling was mutual).
A good introduction to Mobutu indeed, a translation into French and Dutch (I can read it!) is more than welcome.
Lode Vanoost (Belgian native Dutch speaker, 7 years old in 1960, no strings attached to Congo), Brussels, 26 November 2006
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