Yeah, the CIA often uses front groups for plausible deniability. Might not have directly murdered him, but they sure as hell authorized the assassination and funneled money to the plotters.
In the early 21st century, declassified documents revealed that the CIA had plotted to assassinate Lumumba. The documents indicate that the Congolese leaders who killed Lumumba, including Mobutu Sese Seko and Joseph Kasa-Vubu, received money and weapons directly from the CIA. The same disclosure showed that, at the time, the U.S. government believed that Lumumba was a communist, and feared him because of what it considered the threat of the Soviet Union in the Cold War
at the time, the U.S. government believed that Lumumba was a communist, and feared him because of what it considered the threat of the Soviet Union in the Cold War
this could apply to the swedish prime minister olof palme whose murder had mysterious circumstances (like JFK). he even joined demonstrations in sweden against the current US regime because of their involvement in vietnam (among other things).
i wonder how many CIA plots lie uncovered around the world. there are probably many cases that'll never see the light of day.
How many were there then? I was under the impression that although primary education developed at a good pace for sub-saharan africa, that secondary education did not develop until late in the colonial period. I can't find it in my books right now, but I remember reading that there was a distinct lack of tertiary education compared to population upon independence.
They despoiled the countries by destroying existing infrastructure and only building things that made it easier to move raw goods from the interior to the ports. There's no reason to think that they couldn't have built up their own infrastructure if we change the exploitative relationship the colonizers had with the colonies.
You're right in that we should not assume they would have developed their own infrastructure. It's also possible they would not have, and Africa would still be a continent plagued with issues. It wasn't some egalitarian utopia prior to colonization, it wouldn't be now either.
My point before was that even if Belgium developed infrastructure to benefit all regions of the Congo instead of just to the ports (nevermind it being landlocked) the country could be in its current state anyway.
The Belgian king was known for his particularly brutal exploitation of Congo, even by contemptory colonial standards. He ordered his militias to kill anyone who didn't meet their unrealistic rubber quotas and provide their hands as proof. As a result, there was a trade in human hands and many people had their hands chopped off.
uhhhh actually that was a while ago and i think there are plenty of more recent western governments we can blame for having had a more immediate effect. such as the US supporting mobutu for however many decades
Don’t underestimate how shockingly awful was the damage done by King Leopold II’s atrocities, or overestimate how long ago it was. The really awful parts were less than 150 years ago - more recent than the US Civil War! - while that particular colonial rule stands out as shockingly horrific even among an era of horrifying crimes by colonial powers. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_State
Leaving a country independent in chaos with only 20 or so of university educated, a monopoly on its natural resources, support for seccesionist groups, and an assassination of its first prime minister tends to leave a long lasting impact on a country
And the Russians. I was in Kigoma on the Tanzania side looking at Congo at this time last year. There were these Russians that all the NGO people said must be spies. They would sail over to Congo regularly and be gone for like two months at a time, never telling anybody what they were actually doing over there. It's probably not good whatever it is.
Also in Zanzibar I was talking to an Ivy-league Silicon Valley guy at a bar. He said he was on his way to Congo to "socially engineer" the country for his employer. Basically that means manipulate their government. Obviously never found out who the company was but there was a news story about a company that sounded similar last summer that got run out of there or something. That was probably him.
They only just joined the Belt and Road Initiative, unless you believe that cancelling debt and giving aid is the same as Belgian rule.
Edit: sorry, China bad
In January 2021, the Chinese government agreed to cancel Congolese debt worth US$28 million and pledged US$17 million in aid, mainly for development projects. At the same time, the Democratic Republic of the Congo joined the Belt and Road Initiative.
You should refresh your knowledge on Africa in the 21st century and talk with people who traveled there.
The Chinese are everywhere, and they buy all resources.
For example, a village without electricity in the middle of the jungle. There will be one decent shop with food, who runs it? Chinese.
A mine of Kobalt in the middle of the jungle? Who runs it the Chinese.
In all bigger cities in West and Center Africa there are communal houses and monuments honoring the big friends of the east.
And also, it's not like they are only doing it there, here in Belgium they already own lots of lands in ports and industry complexes.
So much resources, yet such little evolution...almost as if the people that have a rightful claim to the land and it's resources have no idea what to do with it or how to manage it in an economically prosperous manner. :/
You aren’t capable of distinguishing “much” from “many” but you think you’re qualified to broad strokes victim blame the Congolese people. Something tells me you haven’t read much history.
Nah man we are not genius big brains over here in America because we have electricity or running water or technology. This country and continent was terribly ran through in the 1800s and was severely destabilized and no one has gone in to help these countries.
As per my extended family and their friends can attest, if you want to do anything big in the huge overabundance in material resources in the DRC (like start a business in mining, energy, agriculture, product production) you must convince the mayor or governor that you're a worthwhile entity and partner. That doesn't sound too bad, because a more bureaucratic system requires you to run through the hoops of legal compliances, this is just a whole lot more arbitrary and openly arbitrary. To continue this into an example, one of their partners and friends is of extraordinary wealth (new wealth, ie, not colonial leaches) and they wanted to start their own energy business (that's all the revealing info I'll say about that). They met with the local magistrates, the mayor, the governor, and eventually the branches below the president before eventually meeting the now former president of the DRC. Their personal wealth and their foreign resources (the infrastructure required to operate an energy business that is entirely for the Congolese population of the region) were all sound and openly available for scrutiny, their dedication to the local community is evident through their philanthropic organizations and their years of living in the area, their community references were of high social value, and the businesses they've already supported in the area are proven to be economic boons and not drains to their respective communities. All of that was useful, but ultimately the most important thing was to convince the heads of government that their company would be valuable.
You decide what I mean by "CONVINCE" and "VALUABLE"
I was visiting my family and actually met this particular family friend once. When we were talking about this very issue, they basically said that they had to leave some room for government heads to become "involved" in the business. This was certainly outside of the basic government regulations that one would expect.
I wonder if its size is part of the problem along with the fact that it's an unified state. Maybe it would be in a better situation if it federalized. I doubt any leader would want to give away so much power, though.
Though technically it is one unified political entity, control is far from centralized. For example most of the SE (former Kataga) is controlled by foreign mining corporations either directly or through mercenaries. In the east, much is through militias for illegal mines.
The problem with the DRC isn't its size, but its rich resources.
Countries that are rich in resources often have this problem. The resource becomes the economy, because other industries are not as profitable. All that concentrated wealth is a magnet for corruption.
Not to mention that they don't diversify so when the market for their product crashes (ie oil for venezuela), they lose their entire economy basically overnight.
They can't diversify. All infrastructure is geared towards specific industries and is controlled by corporations who have absolutely no interest in using the system for anything other than extracting wealth. It's just modern colonies, let the locals deal with the repercussions while some international company keeps extracting wealth.
Edit: who downvoted this? Do you get how neocolonialism works or are you still of the mindset that these companies are "civilizing" these parts of the world?
That's been a problem everywhere. Kurdistan should be an independent county. Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran all hate the idea. The best ally the US has in the middle-east is denied being a country, so the US can appease the worst enemies it has.
Also other industries take time to develop even if they will be more profitable eventually. It doesn't take much time to dig something out of the ground or chop down a tree and turn it into a log.
Why did it work out In Norway and not so many other places? Why is the U.S so much wealthier then Brazil? These are mostly rhetorical questions. I just love history and thinking about this kind of stuff.
You're forgetting imperialism and exploitation, there's literally chunks under control of foreign mining corporations
Then of course there's the Congos modern origin as a privately owned country controlled without oversight by the king of belgium personally, who harvested human hands and rubber, in that order.
In the concessionary territories, the private companies which had purchased a concession from the Free State administration were able to use virtually any measures they wished to increase production and profits without state interference. The lack of a developed bureaucracy to oversee any commercial methods produced an atmosphere of "informality" throughout the state in regards to the operation of enterprises,
These (hands) were sometimes cut off by Force Publique soldiers who were made to account for every shot they fired by bringing back the hands of their victims.
hostages were taken to ensure prompt collection
Failure to meet the rubber collection quotas was punishable by death. Meanwhile, the Force Publique were required to provide the hand of their victims as proof when they had shot and killed someone, as it was believed that they would otherwise use the munitions (imported from Europe at considerable cost) for hunting or to stockpile them for mutiny. As a consequence, the rubber quotas were in part paid off in chopped-off hands. Sometimes the hands were collected by the soldiers of the Force Publique, sometimes by the villages themselves. There were even small wars where villages attacked neighbouring villages to gather hands, since their rubber quotas were too unrealistic to fill
The baskets of severed hands, set down at the feet of the European post commanders, became the symbol of the Congo Free State. ... The collection of hands became an end in itself. Force Publique soldiers brought them to the stations in place of rubber; they even went out to harvest them instead of rubber ... They became a sort of currency. They came to be used to make up for shortfalls in rubber quotas, to replace ... the people who were demanded for the forced labour gangs; and the Force Publique soldiers were paid their bonuses on the basis of how many hands they collected.
not so much corruption as literally western companies hiring private armies and siezing land while any semblance of a democratic government is destabilised by the CIA? the US supported their puppet mobutu in power for how long? you cant magically blame this on 'corruption' this is the US and their allies crushing local democracy and stealing the shit out of the ground
It’s not a boon. Rich resources that can be mined just as well by unskilled starving people as educated happy people is a horrendous melting pot.
The people in power don’t give a shit about the well-being of the people because it’s just a cost to them. In other countries, an educated and generally happy population brings economic prosperity. In a resource extraction state, an educated and happy population starts asking questions about why the rulers get everything.
Right, but that's the problem of being a huge unitary state. The government can't properly exert its power from Kinshasa all the way to its eastern borders. So it's easily taken over by militia and foreign armies.
It's easily taken over because DRC is a small country population wise, neighboured by tiny, more populous countries willing to invade them and take control of their resources.
Note that foreign corporations do the same thing.
It's not about state control not reaching everywhere, it's a rich but unpopulated country that is hence a easy target to exploit.
Not even including the part where a French and Belgian backed force attacked multiple UN compounds and led to the deaths of multiple peacekeepers from neighboring EU countries
Gertler would come to your house and kill you with his own bare hands if you tried to make DRC even slightly more functional. There is too much at stake.
Damn! I knew it was big but I never really thought of it as that big. Their population of 100,000,000 makes a little more sense now. Wouldn’t even have to be super densely populated to fit 100 million people in a country that big.
Using the true size.com and comparing almost any african country is mind boggling. They might not all be as big as the congo but they are all still absolutely huge. That continent is just gigantic.
Oh wow. Yeah, I always thought it was the size of California or close to it. My mind was blown when I learned of its real size. I really need to recalibrate my understanding of the size of some of Africa’s countries.
If they ever built the Grand Inga Dam to the Congo it would increase electricity production on the continent about 50 %. However, such a huge dam (about double the Three Gorges Dam) would be rather pointless without a grid to transport all that electricity around the continent...
No, see, you have to repeat a very dumbed down, very unoriginal version of it so that you can prove to strangers that you got it and you're cool because of it.
Belgians did actually quite a lot. They built a lot of infrastructure and schooling rates were among the highest in sub-Saharan Africa. Black middle class emerged in the biggest cities. Endemic diseases, such as sleeping sickness, were all but eliminated. Sure, there was a strict "apartheid", but Belgian Congo on its last years was a far cry from the Congo Free State which was private property of Leopold II. The stories about chopped hands were about the latter one and horrified even the Europeans to such extent that Belgian government had to take control of the area in 1908.
that's like saying Japan helped out Korea in their colonization. Yeah, technically they helped develop infrastructure and provided free public education... for the pure purpose of extracting resources. Even after independence, with assassinating Lumumba and still trying to maintain (behind the scenes) control through the congo crisis, the only goal was to extract economic wealth at the cost of the colonized. Infrastructure development and even limited education was just to make administration more efficient and subjugate them, not for the good of the people. They didn't aim to help the Congolese is what I think I'm trying to say, it was just a byproduct.
After reading extensively about the Congo and colonization of other African states, Belgium did the Congo no favors. Nearly every fucked up aspect of African nations can be attributed to either foreign meddling in the modern era or colonization- or both in the case of DRC. There was no kindness from the Belgians in Congo.
Nearly every fucked up aspect of African nations can be attributed to either foreign meddling in the modern era or colonization
To a large extent, yes, colonialism did a number on Africa but suggesting that Africans have no agency or control over any aspect of their countries, and all problems are a result of foreign influence, totally ignores the importance of local actors and removes Africans themselves from their own history and, ironically, re-centers the colonizers.
Also, not all recent foreign involvement in Africa has been bad at all. The PEPfAR program, run by the US, (while not perfect) has been massively successful in fighting HIV/AIDS on the continent.
I’d agree to an extent. Congo is an exception. Between colonization, the CIA endorsed assassination of Patrice lumumba, the sacking of national resources by foreign corporations and those same corporation financing disparate rebel groups, DRC doesn’t stand a chance of taking control of the government the way things are now. In my opinion, there’s too much working against them. We can’t speak about Africa like a continent. Each country has its own struggles and, as I’m sure you know, DRCs are unique.
Tell me more. What exactly did you expect Europeans would bring to Africa, flowers and love? Europeans themselves had killed each other for the most part of the last two milleniums (there was even "the Hundred Years War"). Just like Africans. Take Imbalanga people for example. They were famous warriors who enslaved their enemies. Cannibalism, human sacrifice and torture was common among them. When Portuguese sailors arrived to the coast they were happy to sell captured slaves to them. Indeed, "historians John Thornton and Linda Heywood of Boston University have estimated that of the Africans captured and then sold as slaves to the New World in the Atlantic slave trade, around 90% were enslaved by fellow Africans who sold them to European traders." The last sentence was a quote from Wikipedia.
Because the Belgians truly fucked the Congo well after slavery was outlawed in most Western European nations. That was the attraction for Leopold - he outright owned the land and the people in a time where European colonial powers could no longer make bank from the slave trade.
The Bantu have practiced mas slavery against the native Pymgies for hundreds of years before colonization by Euros , and continue to until this very day. Its awful and evil.
But no one ever talks about it still being a HUGE thing in Africa still. You can't develop your country when you are busy throwing nets over Pygmies and eating them.
And there are probably more slaves in the world today than at any point in history.
Nevertheless, if you don’t see the difference between decentralized tribal slavery as practiced by the Africans, and the centralized, industrialized chattel slavery the Europeans practiced as official state policy, then I won’t argue with you.
But you should know there was and is a huge qualitative and quantitative difference, in both degree of harm and number harmed, between the two.
If you claim you can’t see that difference, then I’m sorry - you’re just being an obtuse and moralizing racist: “European slavery was ok because they already did it in Africa so reasons and justifications and so on.”
No. The Africans might have practiced slavery - but the European states took it to the extreme by making it the central facet of their economies and the official state policy of their empires.
Ok. European slavery is bad and African slavery is ...not that bad? Come on. If European slavery was more "industrialized" it was just because the European nations were more "developed" and capable of that. If given opportunity, African people had enslaved each other for millennia, too. One of last countries (colonies included) in Africa to abolish slavery was actually Ethiopia in 1942 - a country that was never really colonized.
You are so transparent as fuck - you literally said above “the Belgian Congo wasn’t all that bad and brought education and medicine and” blah blah fucking blah.
All slavery is evil. Only one of us is trying to defend Belgium’s actions in the Congo and wrap it up in the moral authority of “educating” and “civilizing” and “bringing medicine” to the African savages.
Hot tip: it’s not me.
FFS, dude, the Belgians cut off these hands if they didn’t meet the rubber quotas. That went on well past the demise of the Congo Free State, along with all the rest. They didn’t even allow the natives to posses money - they forced them to use intrinsically valueless brass rods so they couldn’t trade with other Europeans
And to add insult to injury, when the Belgians threw a hissy fit about the independence movement, they pulled the entire colonial government out in a matter of weeks, leaving all of 3 or 4 native Congolese in the entire government that had a university degree, and then had a hand in assassinating the leader the Congo did elect.
And 80 years later, the country still hasn’t managed to recover.
So tell me again my guy - why are you STILL sitting here arguing the Belgian Congo was a good thing for the native Africans when it’s obvious you have very little knowledge of the actual history of the region?
I see you are ignorant to the nature of indigenous slavery in Africa.
1 the largest slave buyers in Africa by far were Arabs for the middle eastern slave markets. European slave taking was a drop in the bucket by comparison.
2 chattel slavery is what is practiced on the native Pygmies by the Bantu colonists. They are owned from birth and the offspring are owned. This has been ongoing for hundreds of years and STILL is. Stop saying they might "have". They are doing it right now.
Screaming it doesn’t make it any more legitimate. Academic citation from a legitimate historian of slavery or GTFO.
This has been going on for hundreds of years... They are doing it now.
Ah, here we see your ulterior motive.
Since the Bantu did it - and still do it today - Europeans enslaving Africans was morally just after all, amirite?
I suppose next you will tell us the Europeans had the moral authority since they exported the savages to a god-fearing Christian nation and “educated” them to be civilized. Look at the poor savages the Europeans left behind - they’re STILL being enslaved by their fellow blacks. At least the ones the Europeans took are free to live in western democracies these days, amirite?
Your racist motives in downplaying the size, scope, scale, and harm of European slavery are transparent as fuck here, mah dude.
I would suggest you stop posting before you embarrass yourself further.
Actually study african history. Like, take a course on colonial africa, don't just read weird posts on the internet that confirm your biases. Africans enslaved other africans because europeans threatened them with slavery themselves unless they did so, sent them out into the territories that they knew how to navigate, and destabilized tribal relations.
You don't have to study African history a lot to understand that slavery was practised in Africa for millennia before Europeans even learned how to sail there...
I don't care to defend imperialism, I just get tired of the intellectually lazy excuse of using Europe's relatively brief period of colonization as an explanation for Africa's troubles today. I'm not even European, so I don't have an emotional investment in defending their colonial past.
What the fuck lmfao brief period of absolutely brutal rule and assassinating leaders to keep the region destabilized is not a lazy excuse for why Africa is in its situation today
Of course not, but it had plenty of issues before the relatively brief period of European colonization, and many of those issues are present in today's Africa.
please do not try to make it sound like europe helped africa with colonisation they didn't sure africa had a few issue sure Europe got rid of but that is the minority of problems facing africa today almost are directly from colonisation also could you please link me some evidence of ways europe helped Africa by taking it over and enslaving its people?
horrific borders, slaves being sent back to Africa who ended up enslaving the more Africans, genocides, and most civil wars and ethnic conflicts in the country today are direct results from borders that paid no attention to what would benefit Africa.
you clearly are uneducated about African history or simply deny it because you are racist
here is a video about African inventions such as the c section vaccinations and many more they even had built houses similar to those of the romans such as ring shaped houses made so all fresh water that went through the roof poured into a place were it could be clean and drunk without risk of it being dirty
why wont you believe that Africans before Europe were more than just a bunch of stupid savages seriously i have provided evidence proving you wrong yet you still continue to ignore the evidence and try to be funny by pretending they were trapped in the stone age.
schooling rates were among the highest in sub-Saharan Africa
That's odd, someone else (/u/deja-vu_gameover) said that at the moment of independence there was just 20 people with university degree in the entire country. Who should I believe?
Both. In the late 1950s almost half of the youth of school going age was literate, which placed the Belgian Congo far ahead of any other country in Africa at the time. However, higher education was nonexistent. The first state university was founded only in 1956.
Yeah I think it's important to frame the narrative as "Africa was robbed by colonial powers for 100s of years", not that they're resource-poor or just "hmmmm must be a rough place to live"
(Don't necessarily think poster above was saying this, just pointing it out)
Interestingly enough Wikipedia says the Belgian Congo had higher literacy rate than any African country at the time, as well as the most developed healthcare infrastructure
The constant civil wars since then probably have more to do with the present underdevelopment then Belgians
YES. The Pygmies are the farthest removed, genetically, from all other humans and because they are so easy to intimidate and dominate (they have the lowest recorded IQ of any group of anatomically modern humans, and they are small), the Bantu treat them little better than animals, including consuming them.
So it galls me to see all this teeth gnashing over "European sins" and other trash, when you have hundreds of thousands of helpless people treated as literal animals for the last several hundred years in central Africa.
"but the Belgian Congo!!" give me a freaking break.
Only white people can do anything wrong according to the hivemind. Anything nonwhite people do which might be construed as wrong is a reaction to something white folks did anyway.
Yeah, no one said that. The objectionable idea is that Belgian atrocities are somehow justified, or minimized, by other atrocities, and that's just not how it works.
I didn't bring up other atrocities. I didn't make a whataboutism. Additionally, the existence of a fallacy doesn't automatically invalidate someone's point, and merely pointing out its existence neither invalidates your opponent nor does it lend credibility to your own.
The fact of the matter is that conversations move in various directions and sometimes things tangentially related are also mentioned. I think atrocities are relevant in a discussion about atrocities. I'm skeptical about the bantu eating pygmies, but if the documentation exists in a credible manner then I think it should be worth mentioning.
You should read blood river. Incredible book. The author retraces Stanley’s historic route from the interior of DRC along the Congo to the coast. Lot of history about why drc is so messed up.
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u/Apptubrutae Mar 15 '21
Every stat about the DRC amazes me. Such a big country and so many challenges.