The Congo

Subject: The Congo

The question one has to ask, which beastliness was worst. The colonial beastliness which kept the trains running on time from Leopoldville to Salisbury, and maintained the roads and the ports in the Belgium Congo or the beastliness of inter tribal warfare with its wholesale massacre of black on black for reasons which are indistinct.

 The history of the Congo like that of much of Africa is played out according to the age of the teller. For the young person today, brainwashed by a rights culture  to do what they want and have opinions untainted with historical necessity. Their Africa represented by the Congo of today is the result of exploitation by the white man, in this case the Belgian, by keeping the indigenous African impoverished and in check if necessary by heavy handed policing, bordering on brutality. 

My own memories of the Belgium Congo, (actually the French Congo and Brazzaville)  although fleeting, and my memories of Mozambique, were of a vibrant market place with intriguing, sometimes baffling African customs but on the whole, a smiling crowd of people engaged in their own lifestyle. 
The white immigrant in these countries were usually clustered with their own kith and kin, also engaged in their own lifestyle but also engaged in a wider concept of social responsibility where the buildings were kept fit for purpose, roads in good repair and the railways ran on time.
I suppose this image of colonial efficacy is an anathema to someone who sees exploitation at the hands of the white man everywhere and wishes for the natural characteristics of the African spirit to be free. The story is embellished by many authors with a humanitarian tale to tell, they weave a story of exploitation and an unnecessary dislodgement of centuries old tribal hegemony.   
It could be argued that there is no greater exploitation in our own, down-at-the-heel towns in our own country but the same authors don't find the same sense of indignity to write about these people, perhaps the sunshine and the open savanna inspires a wider more technicolored vantage point to pontificate about the natural order of things.
The so called hegemony (if it were ever present) was soon replaced by the ferocity of tribe on tribe violence knows no better example than what happened in the Congo or neighbouring Rwanda. So bad was the butchering that the West quietly turned its back unable to make any sense out of the blood bath. But it wasn't only in the Congo and Rwanda but also Uganda, Zimbabwe,Angola, Namibia and Chad. The violence cost over 4 million lives and still counting and has devastated any semblance of civilised conduct.
It is such a far cry from the crimes laid at the door of colonial exploitation and usually leaves aside any question or consideration of the infrastructure which the colonial period had built and left behind, now rusted away. Or the cities, now cesspools of decay all this is ignored by the ideologues who see nothing but bad from the period named Colonisation. 
According to the continents apologists, the decay is due to a lack of training and foresight from the colonial powers towards the African population to make them ready for control and governance as the Continent demanded independence in the 1960s. 
There were many contributing factors but the despots who sized control when the Europeans left were partly a result of absent parenting and an almost immediate downturn in the economic health of each decolonised country. We see it to a lesser extent in our own western society today, absent parents blamed for the irresponsible and irresolute nature of many of our own offspring and who themselves also battle against the effects of poor education and negligible  employment opportunity.
Everything has scale and the scale of impoverishment in the UK pales against the tormented lives of the people bordering the Congo river. The senseless killing continues to this day with 'war lords' using children to kill and be killed. It's a phenomenon not repeated elsewhere, other than when religion creates religious ghettos where hatred runs deep, propagated by religious self interest. 
Only in Africa does the schism between the different tribes draw so much blood. Perhaps European history runs it a close second but then it was largely the work of an imperial clique whilst in central Africa the touchstone seems an across the board  lust for blood with a total breakdown of civilised norms.