Notes
179 Notes Notes to Chapter 1 1 In his description of Leopold’s 1892–93 war against Arab slave traders in eastern Congo, Robert Edgerton, albeit with changes in the names of weapons involved, might well have been describing the Third Congo War that raged some 110 years later: “The Congo conflict was virtually a civil war with large bodies of Africans armed with modern breechloading rifles, old muskets, as well as spears and arrows, fighting for both sides, sometimes changing their alliances as the fighting wore on” (2002: 98). 2 Carry-overs from past to present can be seen in the role of the Force publique, described by Michela Wrong as “a 15,000–19,000-strong army of West African and Congolese mercenaries … established to ensure Leopold’s word became law. Weapons and ammunition poured into the region. Just as Mobutu was later to give the nod to a system of organized looting by instructing his soldiers to ‘live off the land,’ Leopold expected the Force Publique to provide for itself, pillaging surrounding villages in search of food” (2000: 43). Interviewed for a 2006 British newspaper article, Tina Van Maldren (a Belgian still living in the Congo), described Mobutu as “another Leopold , using the state to rob and murder the Congolese people” (Hari, 2006, May 5). During the Third Congo War the Congolese army was often cited as one of the worst abusers of human rights in the country (see chapters 5 and 6 in this volume) and its “bad behaviour” has remained an issue (see York, 2010, Dec. 3). 3 Because soldiers had to account for every round of ammunition fired, severed hands or ears were used to document to superiors that a bullet 180 Notes to Chapter 1 had been used effectively. In addition, sometimes, a hand would be cut off to confirm a failed kill or as punishment for a quota not met. A century later, the cutting off of hands became a signature tactic of the civil war that raged in Sierra Leone in the 1990s (see Soderlund et al., 2008: chap. 9). 4 Adam Hochschild also cites a depopulation figure of 10 million in the Congo under Leopold’s rule (1998: 233), while Roger Edgerton puts the figure at 14 million, based on a population decline “from something over 20 million people in 1880 to little more than 6 million in 1908” (2002: 156). 5 William Zartman draws our attention to the uniqueness of the Congo’s chaotic emergence from colonial rule, describing it as “an isolated exception to the otherwise successful transfer of authority from colonial to independent rule throughout the continent” (1995: 2). 6 Michela Wrong reports that in the war against Kabila’s advancing AFDL, “[Mobutu’s] soldiers behaved as could only be expected. They emerged from their barracks to prey on their own citizens, building on a tradition firmly established by the Force Publique … The FAZ [Forces armées zaïroises] gradually disintegrated into a force adept at hijacking cars and stealing beer but utterly unskilled in the business of war” (2000: 252). 7 In the final days of Mobutu’s rule, it fell to US envoy Bill Richardson to tell Mobutu that if he didn’t leave the capital Kinshasha immediately, he would be in effect “on his own” to deal with Kabila’s advancing forces and that this encounter would not be pleasant. Richardson’s reported language left little to the imagination: “You’ll be dragged though the streets … and we’re not going to stop them” (as quoted in Wrong, 2000: 272). Not surprisingly, Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja reports that Mobutu “became extremely bitter for being publicly shunned by his former mentors, friends and allies between 1990 and 1997, until he was left to die on the run like a wandering dog” (2002a: 143). 8 Shortly after coming to power in 1965 Mobutu renamed the Congo Zaire. Similarly, when he came to power in 1997, Kabila renamed the country the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). In order to avoid unnecessary confusion, we use the term Congo rather than Zaire unless the latter appears in quotations. 9 Filip Reyntjens details the arrival of a number of immigrant groups to eastern Congo prior to and during the period of Belgian colonization. Tensions between the original occupants and the more recent arrivals in the densely populated region led to major outbreaks of violence in the early 1990s. These tensions were compounded first in 1993 by an influx of 200...
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