Congo

And for little David, who was born in 2008, the son of the demobilized child-soldier Ruffin Luliba and his former wife, Laura, who were so kind as to give my name to their first child.)

Le Rêve et l’Ombre étaient de très grands camarades.

(The dream and the shadow were the best of comrades)

—Badibanga, L’élephant qui marche sur des œufs (Brussels, 1931)

CONTENTS

Cover (#u9fb8a2ad-34a3-5727-8e35-7194a9311278)

Title Page (#ubf129293-fc12-5cfa-83e5-bb97f561516c)

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

Epigraph (#uaa4b889e-8d89-5b96-92d3-9564f850116d)

List of Illustrations

Introduction

1. NEW SPIRITS: Central Africa Draws the Attention of East and West | 1870–1885

2. “DIABOLICAL FILTH”: Congo Under Leopold II | 1885–1908

3. THE BELGIANS SET US FREE: The Early Years of the Colonial Regime | 1908–1921

4. IN THE STRANGLEHOLD OF FEAR : Growing Unrest and Mutual Suspicion in Peacetime | 1921–1940

5. THE RED HOUR OF THE KICKOFF: The War and the Deceptive Calm That Followed | 1940–1955

6. SOON TO BE OURS: A Belated Decolonization, a Sudden Independence | 1955–1960

7. A THURSDAY IN JUNE

8. THE STRUGGLE FOR THE THRONE: The Turbulent Years of the First Republic | 1960–1965

9. THE ELECTRIC YEARS: Mobutu Gets Down to Business | 1965–1975

10. TOUJOURS SERVIR: A Marshal’s Madness | 1975–1990

11. THE DEATH THROES: Democratic Opposition and Military Confrontation | 1990–1997

12. COMPASSION, WHAT IS THAT?: The Great War of Africa | 1997–2002

13. LA BIÈRE ET LA PRIÈRE (SUDS AND SANCTITY): New Players in a Wasted Land | 2002–2006

14. THE RECESS: Hope and Despair in a Newborn Democracy | 2006–2010

15. WWW.COM

Sources

Notes

References

Index

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by David Van Reybrouck

About the Publisher

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (#u4f0c6662-e657-5e1c-b314-9f694a6a7e09)

Map 1 (#litres_trial_promo): Geography

Map 2 (#litres_trial_promo): Population, Administration, and Raw Materials

Map 3 (#litres_trial_promo): Central Africa in the Mid-nineteenth Century

Map 4 (#litres_trial_promo): Congo Free State, 1885–1908

Map 5 (#litres_trial_promo): Belgian Congo During World War I

Map 6 (#litres_trial_promo): Belgian Congo During World War II

Map 7 (#litres_trial_promo): The First Republic: Secessions and Uprisings

Map 8 (#litres_trial_promo): The First Congo War: Kabila’s Advance (October 1996–May 1997)

Map 9 (#litres_trial_promo): The Second Congo War

INTRODUCTION (#u4f0c6662-e657-5e1c-b314-9f694a6a7e09)

IT IS STILL THE SEA, OBVIOUSLY, BUT YOU CAN SEE THAT SOMETHING has changed, something about the color. The low, broad rollers rock the ship as benevolently as ever; there is still nothing but ocean, yet the blue is gradually becoming tainted with yellow. And that produces not green, the way you might remember from your lessons in color theory, but murkiness. The glimmering azure has vanished. There is no more turquoise billow beneath the noonday sun. The boundless cobalt from which the sun arose, the ultramarine of twilight, the leaden grayness of the night: gone.

From here on, all is broth.

Yellowish, ochre, rusty broth. You are still hundreds of nautical miles from the coast, but you know: this is where the land starts. The force with which the Congo River empties into the Atlantic is so great that it changes the color of the seawater for hundreds of kilometers around.