Zaire The Leopoldian Legacy
Waterfalls, such as this one on the Kasai River, hampered
early European exploration of the interior.
"Without the railroad," said Léopold II's agent, Henry
Morton
Stanley, "the Congo is not worth a penny." Without
recourse to
forced labor, however, the railroad could not be built;
nor could
the huge concessions made to private companies become
profitable
unless African labor was freely used to locate and
transport rubber
and ivory; nor could African resistance in the east be
overcome
without a massive recruitment of indigenous troops. The
cruel logic
of the revenue imperative left the Leopoldian system with
no
apparent option but to extract a maximum output of labor
and
natural resources from the land
(see From
Colonial Times to Independence
, ch. 3).
At the heart of the system lay a perverse combination
of
rewards and penalties. Congo Free State agents and native
auxiliaries (the so-called capitas) were given
authority to
use as much force as they deemed appropriate to meet
delivery
norms, and because their profits were proportional to the
amount of
rubber and ivory collected, the inevitable consequence was
the
institutionalization of force on a huge scale. Although
native
chiefs were expected to cooperate, the incessant and
arbitrary
demands made on their authority were self-defeating. Many
chiefs
turned against the colonial state; others were quickly
disposed of
and replaced by state-appointed "straw chiefs." Countless
revolts
ensued, which had an immediate effect on the scale and
frequency of
military expeditions. As the cost of pacification soared,
Léopold
II declared a state monopoly on rubber and ivory. The
free-trade
principle that had once been the cornerstone of the Congo
Free
State thus became a legal fiction, aptly summed up in this
pithy
commentary of the time: "Article one: trade is entirely
free;
article two: there is nothing to buy or sell."
Protestant missionaries were the first to alert
international
public opinion to the extent of cruelties visited upon the
African
population, and with the creation of the Congo Reform
Association
in 1904, the public outcry against the Congo Free State
reached
major proportions. Not until 1908, however, did the
Belgian
parliament vote in favor of annexation as the most
sensible
solution to the flood of criticisms generated by the
reform
movement. The Colonial Charter provided for the government
of what
was thereafter known as the Belgian Congo. This charter
permitted
the king to retain a great deal of authority and influence
over
affairs in the colony through power of appointment and
legislative
authority, but his power was constitutional rather than
personal
and, therefore, limited. The main purpose of the charter
was to
prevent the establishment of a royal autocracy in the
colony
similar to the one that had existed in the Congo Free
State.
For almost the entire period of the Congo Free State
(1885-
1908), the peoples of present-day Zaire were subjected to
a
staggering sequence of wars, repression, and
regimentation. The
impact of this colonial experience was so devastating, and
its
aftereffects so disruptive, because the initial shock of
European
intrusion was followed almost immediately by a ruthless
exploitation of human and natural resources. In terms of
its
psychological impact, the bula matari state left a
legacy of
latent hostility on which subsequent generations of
nationalists
were able to capitalize; on the other hand, the sheer
brutality of
its methods generated a sense of fear and hopelessness,
which,
initially at least, discouraged the rise of organized
nationalist
activity.
Data as of December 1993
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