Congo Inc. Read online

  CONGO INC.

  GLOBAL AFRICAN VOICES

  Dominic Thomas, editor

  I Was an Elephant Salesman: Adventures between Dakar, Paris, and Milan

  Pap Khouma, Edited by Oreste Pivetta

  Translated by Rebecca Hopkins

  Introduction by Graziella Parati

  Little Mother

  Cristina Ali Farah

  Translated by Giovanna Bellesia-Contuzzi and Victoria Offredi Poletto

  Introduction by Alessandra Di Maio

  Life and a Half

  Sony Labou Tansi

  Translated by Alison Dundy

  Introduction by Dominic Thomas

  Transit

  Abdourahman A. Waberi

  Translated by David Ball and Nicole Ball

  Cruel City

  Mongo Beti

  Translated by Pim Higginson

  Blue White Red

  Alain Mabanckou

  Translated by Alison Dundy

  The Past Ahead

  Gilbert Gatore

  Translated by Marjolijn de Jager

  Queen of Flowers and Pearls

  Gabriella Ghermandi

  Translated by Giovanna Bellesia-Contuzzi and Victoria Offredi Poletto

  The Shameful State

  Sony Labou Tansi

  Translated by Dominic Thomas

  Foreword by Alain Mabanckou

  Kaveena

  Boubacar Boris Diop

  Translated by Bhakti Shringarpure and Sara C. Hanaburgh

  Murambi, The Book of Bones

  Boubacar Boris Diop

  Translated by Fiona Mc Laughlin

  The Heart of the Leopard Children

  Wilfried N’Sondé

  Translated by Karen Lindo

  Harvest of Skulls

  Abdourahman A. Waberi

  Translated by Dominic Thomas

  Jazz and Palm Wine

  Emmanuel Dongala

  Translated by Dominic Thomas

  The Silence of the Spirits

  Wilfried N’Sondé

  Translated by Karen Lindo

  IN KOLI JEAN BOFANE

  CONGO INC.

  刚果股份有限公司

  Bismarck’s Testament

  俾斯麦的遗嘱

  Translated by MARJOLIJN DE JAGER

  Foreword by DOMINIC THOMAS

  INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS

  Published with support from the John Gallman Fund for New Directions

  This book is a publication of

  Indiana University Press

  Office of Scholarly Publishing

  Herman B Wells Library 350

  1320 East 10th Street

  Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA

  iupress.indiana.edu

  Original publication in French

  © 2014 Actes Sud

  English translation

  © 2018 by Indiana University Press

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1992.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.

  ISBN 978-0-253-03190-7 (paperback)

  ISBN 978-0-253-03191-4 (ebook)

  1 2 3 4 5  23 22 21 20 19 18

  to the young girls, the little girls,

  and the women of Congo

  to the UN

  to the IMF

  to the WTO

  The new state of Congo is destined to become one of the most important enforcers of the work we intend to accomplish…

  Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, at the closing of the Berlin Conference, February 1885

  Contents

  Foreword by Dominic Thomas

  Acknowledgments

  Lands and Times

  Who Are You?

  Paper Tiger

  Inaudible Screams

  Persistent Turmoil

  The Women They Kill

  The World Is Yours

  Eternal Dragon

  Compromise of Principles

  Please Read the Attached Note

  Chance Eloko Pamba

  Game Over!

  Epilogue

  Foreword

  In Koli Jean Bofane’s Congo Inc.: Bismarck’s Testament: The Limits of Empathy and the Postcolonial Scramble for Africa

  Dominic Thomas

  In Koli Jean Bofane’s first novel, Mathématiques Congolaises (2008), transported his readers on a journey into the confusion and disorder that have become so endemic to depictions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The “two Congos”—the Republic of the Congo (capital Brazzaville) and the DRC (capital Kinshasa)—sit face-to-face on the banks of the eponymous Congo River. The Global African Voices series has already published (or will be publishing) several works by Sony Labou Tansi (Life and a Half and The Shameful State), Alain Mabanckou (Blue White Red, The Tears of the Black Man, and The Negro Grandsons of Vercingetorix), Wilfried N’Sondé (The Heart of the Leopard Children, The Silence of the Spirits, and Concrete Flowers), and Emmanuel Dongala (Jazz and Palm Wine), authors who hail from the Republic of the Congo. In Koli Jean Bofane’s Congo Inc.: Bismarck’s Testament, first published in France in 2014, will therefore be the first novel in the series focusing on the DRC. Thanks to Marjolijn de Jager’s truly remarkable translation and uncanny ability to capture the essence of the original text, readers will be able to appreciate why different juries, having awarded In Koli Jean Bofane the Grand Prix littéraire de l’Afrique noire for his first novel, also selected Congo Inc.: Bismarck’s Testament for the Grand Prix du Roman Métis and the prestigious Prix des Cinq continents de la Francophonie.

  The subtitle—Bismarck’s Testament—in what is a hypnotizing, mesmerizing, daring, and deeply disquieting novel, harkens back to the era when Germany’s first chancellor, Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898), convened the Congo Conference (also known as the Berlin Conference) in 1884–1885. It was of course at this conference that the fourteen signatory powers negotiated the terms of the General Act, an initiative that triggered what became known as the “scramble for Africa.” However, the General Act also simultaneously granted legitimacy to the ambitions of King Leopold II of Belgium, who imposed his rule over the Congo Free State from 1885 until 1908, at which point it became the Belgian Congo up until political independence in 1960. This territory also comprised the northern region along the equator and the city of Mbandaka, where In Koli Jean Bofane was born in 1954. Adam Hochschild’s book King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa highlighted the brutalization and exploitation of the “native” population in the relentless and unchecked drive to extract the country’s resources.1 Similarly, in his monumental study Congo: The Epic History of a People, David Van Reybrook underscored how “today, the Congo Free State is notorious not so much for its vague borders as for its crushing regime. And rightly so. Along with the turbulent years before and after 1960, the year of independence, and the decade between 1996 and 2006, that period is seen as the bloodiest in the nation’s history.”2

  In Koli Jean Bofane does not shy away from controversy; he makes a concerted effort to provide the reader with a near exhaustive inventory of the damning history of the region while emphasizing its key geostrategic importance—beginning with the Berlin Conference and then straddling both world wars, on to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Vietnam War, the sa
nguine history of decolonization and genocide, and culminating in the nefarious activities of multinationals:

  The algorithm Congo Inc. had been created at the moment that Africa was being chopped up in Berlin between November 1884 and February 1885. Under Leopold II’s sharecropping, they hastily developed it so they could supply the whole world with rubber from the equator, without which the industrial era wouldn’t have expanded as rapidly as it needed to at the time. Subsequently, its contribution to the First World War effort had been crucial, even if that war—most of it—could have been fought on horseback, without Congo, even if things had changed since the Germans had further developed synthetic rubber in 1914. The involvement of Congo Inc. in the Second World War proved decisive.

  The final point had come with the concept of putting the uranium of Shinkolobwe at the disposal of the United States of America, which destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki once and for all, launching the theory of nuclear deterrence at the same time, and for all time. It contributed vastly to the devastation of Vietnam by allowing the Bell UH1-Huey helicopters, sides gaping wide, to spit millions of sprays of the copper from Likasi and Kolwezi from high in the sky over towns and countryside from Danang to Hanoi, via Huế, Vinh, Lao Cai, Lang Son, and the port of Haiphong.

  During the so-called Cold War, the algorithm remained red-hot. The fuel that guaranteed proper functioning could also be made up of men. Warriors such as the Ngwaka, Mbunza, Luba, Basakata, and Lokele of Mobutu Sese Seko, like spearheads on Africa’s battlefields, went to shed their blood from Biafra to Aouzou, passing through the Front Line—in front of Angola and Cuba—through Rwanda on the Byumba end in 1990. Disposable humans could also participate in the dirty work and in coups d’état. Loyal to Bismarck’s testament, Congo Inc. more recently had been appointed as the accredited supplier of internationalism, responsible for the delivery of strategic minerals for the conquest of space, the manufacturing of sophisticated armaments, the oil industry, and the production of high-tech telecommunications material.3

  Pillaged, plundered, looted, despoiled, embezzled, stripped, ransacked, ravaged—each and every one of these synonyms remains pertinent to the unquenchable transgenerational thirst for Congo’s natural resources. The process of assigning accountability is not restricted to external predators, to the succession of foreign or outside forces on the ground; rather, In Koli Jean Bofane’s scene is truly apocalyptic, a dramatic staging of biblical proportions, one on which the attention also turns to the local vultures who gather in multitudes to devour the festering, putrid carcass and who share the blame and culpability for the deleterious consequences of their choices.

  The DRC is one of the largest and most densely populated countries in the world. The military dictator Mobutu Sese Seko introduced a process of renationalization known as “zaïrization” in 1971, renaming the country the Republic of Zaire. The political instability that had become characteristic of the early years of postcolonial transition—and that included the assassination in 1961 of the first democratically elected leader, Patrice Lumumba—subsequently defined the rule, from 1965 to 1997, of Mobutu himself, a much-satirized dictator who became the embodiment of corruption, degeneracy, and wickedness. Indeed, critic Nicolas Michel aptly described Congo Inc.: Bismarck’s Testament as “a heady mixture of political erudition, cruel irony,” a work in which “the Congo’s extravagance had found its match in In Koli Jean Bofane.”4 What remains incontrovertible in the novel is the seamless continuation between the colonial and postcolonial “scramble”—namely, the ongoing despoliation of resources by multinational corporate interests coupled with, nourished, and sustained by corrupt governance. What ensues is widespread civil conflict, human rights abuses, and environmental degradation.

  Witness to this devastation is the novel’s main protagonist, a young Congolese Pygmy named Isookanga. However, anyone who comes into contact with him soon learns not to underestimate this central figure because of his stature. Connected to the outside world from his rural village setting thanks to a telecommunications tower installed by Chinese business operatives, Isookanga devotes his days to making the necessary preparations for his exodus to the capital and megalopolis, Kinshasa, “the place of concentration and fission is Kinshasa, laboratory of the future and, incidentally, capital city of the nebula, Congo Inc.” Certainly, mobility and relocation are not in and of themselves new in the library of francophone sub-Saharan African literature, a library that proudly displays the emblematic stories of Fara in Ousmane Socé’s Mirages de Paris (1937), Laye in Camara Laye’s The Dark Child (1954), Tanhoe in Bernard Dadié’s An African in Paris (1959), Samba in Cheikh Hamidou Kane’s Ambiguous Adventure (1961), Joseph in Daniel Biyaoula’s L’Impasse (1996), or Massala-Massala in Alain Mabanckou’s Blue White Red (1998). All of these protagonists were seduced by the colonial project and postcolonial opportunities they perceived in Europe, by what Christopher L. Miller has described as the inherent “francocentrism,” the symbol of upward mobility and the promise of advancement.5 However, Isookanga’s migration is internal and he remains within the borders of the nation-state.

  Media attention has tended to concentrate on the movements of migrants and refugees traveling across the Aegean and Mediterranean seas over the past few years, and we have witnessed a toughening of European Union policy that has resulted in stricter control, selection, and regulation over who is permitted to enter and remain in what has increasingly been referred to as Fortress Europe. Images have featured hundreds of people boarding unseaworthy crafts in desperate attempts to cross these seaways, all too often concluding with tragic human losses. Arnaud Leparmentier and Maryline Baumard have discussed the findings of a 2015 study conducted by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) that points to burgeoning numbers of both economic migrants and asylum seekers coming from the African continent. These can be explained by a broad range of push factors that involve declining economies, political unrest, civil conflict, human rights abuses, and, of course, serious environmental concerns; the supply nations all have in common one or more of these elements. However, as the aforementioned study also reveals, of the 32 million or so Africans who have been displaced, internal and intra-African population dislocation movement remains far more significant.6

  Isookanga’s rural exodus or flight takes him to the capital, a common pattern as urban centers continue to proliferate. Like so many of his fictional (and real-life predecessors), the adventure is one that will take him from innocence to insight and initiation as the logical outcome of harsh life lessons. By the time he sets out, his knowledge of the outside world has been attained from the endless hours he has devoted to the online game Raging Trade. Under the avatar “Congo Bololo,” which translates as “bitter” or “sour” Congo, and to the soundtrack of American rap music, he takes on ruthless adversaries. “The first-aid kit,” we learn, “that contained the stealth weapons he’d managed to accumulate throughout his sessions with the game wouldn’t suffice; his adversaries were daunting. He didn’t know what they were up to—those rapacious American Diggers, Skulls and Bones, Uranium and Security, the Goldberg & Gils Atomic Project, all of them making sure he’d get his just desserts, he knew that—but Congo Bololo hadn’t spoken his last yet. He was going to crush them, methodically, one by one.” Journeying alongside Isookanga, we discover the striking correlation between the online game and the challenges confronting the DRC on the larger geopolitical landscape of globalization. The colonial enterprise may very well have been premised upon the insatiable accumulation of goods and the pursuit for profit, but analogous mechanisms unambiguously remain the order of the day. When asked by his uncle “‘but what is it exactly that you want to do?’” he does not have to think twice before responding, “Globalization, computer technology, Uncle.” Uncertain as to what the future will hold, his determination overrides any concerns he may harbor: “Would the now established globalization drive people to veiled behavior even in everyday life, to a ghostlike secrecy? […] Isookanga was
n’t sure of it yet, but what mattered for now was that he was finally in downtown Kinshasa, the capital.”

  Shortly after his arrival, Isookanga meets Zhang Xia, a Chinese man endeavoring to resolve his own complicated personal issues. Zhang Xia becomes a mentor of sorts, sharing words of wisdom with the somewhat disoriented young man: “‘Experience is a lantern that only sheds light on the path you’ve already walked.’” Their interaction is far from unusual in a city in which the Chinese presence is by now a long-standing one. In Sur les ailes du dragon: Voyages entre l’Afrique et la Chine, Belgian author Lieve Joris had recorded her travels between Africa and China and described the extraordinary flow of goods and people between these two regions of the world.7 Trade relations between China and the DRC have grown exponentially in recent years, most notably in terms of mining operations and infrastructure development and investment; this has taken place in the context of a relentless pursuit of Congo’s riches, such as timber, cobalt, and tin. Conclusions and reports of this nature abound: “the DRC will remain the destination of choice for Chinese mining investors in the coming years, thanks to the country’s low production costs and the largest undeveloped high-grade (2–3% compared to global average of 0.8%) copper deposits in the world.”8

  Isookanga remains steadfast, resolute, announcing, “‘You know, I’m not that interested anymore in what goes on in the forest or with my people. I’m a man of the future who goes along with his time. Me, I’m globalizing.’” His uncle Old Lomana, however, sees things quite differently, and it will take some time for Isookanga to see through the prism of triumphant globalization. Old Lomana has observed how the eco-balance has been disturbed and the wildlife driven away: “‘Something’s happening in the ecosystem, Isookanga. Parameters are in the process of changing radically.’” For him, the intrusion of new technologies and of “‘the telecommunications pole’” installed by “‘those barbarians’” are to blame for the disruption of the natural environment, and