Congo Should Be Africa's Brazil

Congo-Kinshasa: We Should Be Africa's Brazil

Ali M. Malau14 May 2009
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It's true that Congo is a disappointment, says Ali M. Malau, responding to There is No Congo, an article which advocates carving up the country described as 'a collection of peoples, groups, interests, and pillagers who coexist at best'.


But that's no reason to write off its potential to succeed as a nation-state of a country that should rival rising powers like South Africa and Brazil with its wealth of natural and human resources. Malau argues that Congo's failure is the result of a Western campaign to weaken it in order to 'perpetuate the systematic plunder of Congo's resources' by foreign interests. Since 1885, says Malau, the affairs of the Congo have never truly been left to the Congolese people. With a great deal of work and investment from its people, Malau believes Congo could still become a 'powerful engine for the development, and the industrialisation of the entire continent'.

Foreign Policy magazine recently published a rather disturbing article, There is No Congo, by Jeffrey Herbst of Miami University of Ohio, and Greg Mills who directs the Johannesburg-based Brenthurst Foundation. The article makes a case against Congo as a unified entity. As a Congolese citizen, I could not disagree more with their arguments, and I believe they warrant an appropriate rebuttal.

Their article is a perfect illustration of the flawed approach with which much of the so-called international community, and some scholars on Africa, have analysed the situation in the Congo since its nominal independence in 1960, and frankly, part of the reason why they never get it right. It is often not due to inaccurate facts, or lack of knowledge on the region, but more due to inadequate prisms moulded in the inside-think of Western-world-centric academia.

In my view, and to illustrate some of the points I am rebutting, the article boils down to the following citations:


' ... And indeed, for centuries, this is precisely what Congo's colonial occupiers, its neighbours, and even some of its people have done: Eaten away at Congo's vast mineral wealth with little concern for the coherency of the country left behind. Congo has none of the things that make a nation-state: Interconnectedness, a government that is able to exert authority consistently in territory beyond the capital, a shared culture that promotes national unity, or a common language. Instead, Congo has become a collection of peoples, groups, interests, and pillagers who coexist at best.

'The very concept of a Congolese state has outlived its usefulness. For an international community that has far too long made wishful thinking the enemy of pragmatism, acting on reality rather than diplomatic theory would be a good start.'

There is one general sense in this article that is right: The Congo has been a disappointment. With the vast swathes of fauna, flora, mineral, agricultural, hydroelectric, and human resources it inherited at its independence, one would expect the Congo today to rival, if not exceed, such rising powers as South Africa, Brazil, India, China, Korea, Singapore, Saudi Arabia or the UAE. Instead, as the article justly points out, the level of deliquescence in Congo today is almost unprecedented; not acknowledging that reality would be intellectually dubious.

Nevertheless, what is equally dubious, is the misdiagnosis of the root causes of the current situation. The authors of this article repeatedly, and I believe questionably, confuse causes and consequences, to support and justify a desire, long-held in certain circles, for the balkanisation of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The authors point out the weakness of the Congolese central state in governing the vast country, without fully and honestly addressing the international geo-strategic reasons why that reality came to be. The authors point out the various secessions and minor uprisings during the past 40+ years to justify their diagnosis of the Congo. Yet they fail to shine a light on the multiple foreign state and corporate backers that participated in those early attempts at derailing the Congo. The authors claim that 'the Congolese government's inability to control its territory has resulted in one of the world's longest and most violent wars', without actually addressing the reasons why the government was - and still is - not able to control its territory in the first place.


My contention is quite simple. The current conflict(s) in the Congo, the deliquescence of the state, the lack of infrastructures and 'interconnectedness', are not merely unforeseen, pathological consequences of bad colonial and/or cold war policy gone awry. The current situation is a direct, calculated, and progressively manufactured result of a long-standing operation by Western nations to maintain a weak state in this vast mineral rich swath of land in the heart of Africa and perpetuate the systematic plunder of Congo's resources by various foreign interests, and their proxies in the local elite.

Seems far-fetched? Let us consider that, until proven otherwise, the Congo is a sovereign country, recognised as such by international law, the United Nations, and, in theory, every country on the planet. Yet despite that, over the past five decades, these very countries, (including supposed champions of the rule of law like the United States, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Belgium, France and South Africa), have allowed their mining companies (like Banro, Freeport-McMoran, Anglo American, DeBeers, and others) to enter into odious contracts with corrupt elements of the leadership in Kinshasa, and worse, with murderous warlords, and near-genocidal militias, unhindered, and unpunished. Furthermore, several of these very countries and their corporations have provided the military, logistical and ideological support to the secessionist regimes in the 60s and 70s, Rwanda, Uganda, Angola, their proxy militias AND/OR their rival militias, thus destabilising and creating a de facto partition of the country, and further guaranteeing maximised profits through cheap/slave/child labour under warlords. That is not happenstance, but cold, calculated, predatory business planning. In fact, one only has to examine the history of the ties between the Oppenheimer mining magnate family of South Africa - which founded, and finances, the Brenthurst foundation that one of the authors of There is No Congo, Greg Mills, leads - and the various regimes and rebellions we have seen in the Congo, to understand how integral these foreign corporate and state interests are to the conduct of ANY business in the Congo.


I contend that it is not so much that there is no Congo; nor is it that the Congo as a country is not possible. I contend that since 1959, it was deemed too much of a potential threat to several world and regional powers, and to the coffers of their corporate acolytes, to allow the rise of a strong, large, potential Brazil-type power, in the heart of Africa. And we can see why. Let us consider the Congo today. Despite being one of the poorest, most badly-managed countries in the world, by virtue of its position and of its potential, the country is poised - should there be a great deal of change in leadership - to be a major guarantor of the development of a truly functional African continent, and African Union. As Herbst and Mills themselves justly point out, 'the country is the region's vortex'. Former South African President, Thabo Mbeki notes 'There cannot be a new Africa without a new Congo'. President Barack Obama himself rightly notes 'If Africa is to achieve its promise, resolving the problem in the Congo will be critical'.

Over the years, despite all the adversity the Congo faces, and despite the desires they secretly harbour to see the Congo disintegrate to begin annexing its pieces, its neighbours in the region were forced to recognise its central and crucial position for the advent of further economic development for the entire continent. As a result, despite currently being, admittedly, an economic drag on all of them, the countries of Southern, Central, and Eastern Africa have all secured some form of regional economic/political supranational alliance with the Congo, whether through SADC, CEPGL, CEEAC or COMESA (all groups that constitute regional clusters in the building of the larger African Union).

Relevant Links
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Congo-Kinshasa
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Conflict
There lies the issue for this country. Left to its own devices, a big, strong, unified Congo would be a powerful engine for the development, and the industrialisation of the entire continent. Herbst and Mills, I believe justly state that 'economically, the various outlying parts of Congo are better integrated with their neighbours than with the rest of the country'. But that is not in Congo's disfavour. Whether in terms of its abundant precious and strategic minerals, the tremendous amount of renewable energy that could be generated by the Inga dam project on the Congo river, the natural gas in Lake Kivu or the geo-thermal potential of the volcanic mountains in the east, the second lung of our planet that is its rainforest, or the extraordinary - and exhaustively demonstrated - resilience of its people, the Congo has everything to be the central pillar around which Africa rises. Should the people of the Congo find a way to build the infrastructure to interconnect its outlying parts, the country would instantly become the key piece in regional development. That prospect has always unsettled many, whose interests might not be as well served should there be a strong government, a functioning army and police, and rule of law.