By Chris Anyokwu
Amid a seething cocktail of global crises ripping the world to shreds; amid planetary geopolitics of economic inequality being experienced everywhere against the murky backcloth of this year’s Davos Summit by Euro-American arch-priests of neoliberalism; amid the Climate Emergency and all the ameliorative placebos to post-pone Apocalypse, at least for the foreseeable future and amid the routinized motions of Africa’s leadership fumblings, from Cape to Cairo, the Holy Father from the Holy See in far-away Vatican in Rome, Italy had elected to visit the Conradian “Heart of Darkness”.
One truly wonders how Joseph Conrad would be feeling about this unusual turn of events happening in the Congo of which he had written in his controversial novella, Heart of Darkness. One equally wonders how King Leopold II, the Belgian emperor of the Old Congo would be feeling about the colourful Catholicism of human solidarity and Christian love. Surely, he would be feeling deeply mortified and self-loathing given his unprecedented acts of brutality and misanthropy in his life-time. The Congolese are still alive and flourishing despite his genocidal overreach when he wielded power. Indeed, the people always outlive the palace, as Niyi Osundare poetises in Village Voices. How about Mobutu Sese Seko, former Congo’s president, who was paradoxically canonised in Wole Soyinka’s fantasia on the theme of power in A Play of Giants? How would this scion of the soil, Sese Seko, be feeling now in his dark and dreary grave? A man who fate and fortune had given power and authority to govern his newly-independent nation but chose to reduce his people to a nation of hewers of wood and drawers of water? An online source beautifully introduces us to the Congo like this: “The word itself stirs the imagination, evoking images of thick rainforest filled with wild chimps, colourful birds, gorillas and shrieking bonobos, and a great wide river, fishermen drifting slowly past on their shallow canoes. But the Congo is also synonymous with suffering: war, poverty, and densely populated cities sprawling out into the wilderness […] Split into two entirely different countries – the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of Congo, they are divided by the Great Congo River that winds through the heart of Central Africa and spills out into the Atlantic Ocean.”
Dated approximately 90,000 years ago, the first real states such as the Kongo, the Lunda, the Luba and Kuba, appeared South of the equatorial forest on the savannah from the 14th century onwards. In the 15th century, Portuguese sailors arrived in the kingdom of Kongo. King Afonso (1506-1543) had reigned supreme at the time, raiding black slaves and transporting them to the Western world. However, Belgian colonisation of the Congo began in 1885 when King Leopold II founded and ruled the Congo Free State. Owing to his terrible cruelty and inhumanity, the Belgian government had transferred control of the region from Leopold II and established the Belgian Congo in 1908. As though condemned to never-ending whorls of unrest and conflict, the region never knew peace and serenity. Life had remained remorselessly Hobbesian in its dystopian grisliness. This unwholesome and unsavoury state of affairs had persisted until June 30, 1960 when the country got her independence. President Mobutu Sese Seko was installed as the nation’s ruler and in 1965, he renamed his country Zaire, following the heady wave of decolonisation sweeping across the Third World and Africa in particular at the time. But when Rwanda invaded Zaire during the First Congo War (1997), Mobutu lost out and Laurent-Desire Kabila took over and rechristened Zaire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Afterwards, the Second Congo War (1998-2003) broke out, resulting in a regional war in which many African countries took part. Millions were killed or displaced. Joseph Kabila, the son of the former leader, later took the reins in 2006 and did his level best to preserve a semblance of sanity in the DRC. And in 2018, the incumbent leader, Felix Tshisekedi was elected president. He, it was, who played host to Pope Francis in this year’s visit.
The choice of the Pope’s destination had agitated the minds of Church (or Papal) observers. Why the DRC? They wondered. Why not the DRC and her neighbours like Rwanda which also boasts about 70% of her citizenry as Catholics? The Holy Father could have killed many birds with one stone, observers and commentators had reasoned. Would this diplomatic misstep breed a sense of backsliding, of mass disillusionment and betrayal in these Catholic-dominated nations? Time shall tell. However, beyond this indelicate diplomatic fancy footwork on the part of the Protocol Department in the Holy See, it is always welcome and salutary to have the Head of the Roman Catholic Church as your Guest of Honour. So far, the Pope has visited 59 countries and 8 countries in Africa. But what has continued to interest people is the nature and state of things in these countries prior to the Pope’s visit and the visible and invisible impacts of his visit thereto. Unsurprisingly, therefore, Pope Francis’s choice of the DRC as his latest destination (apart from South Sudan) did not come as a surprise since the country has perennially been in the eye of the storm. The DRC is, to all intents and purposes, home to violence, war, religious crises, and, of course, poverty. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to reports, is among the five poorest nations in the world. In 2021, nearly 64% of Congolese, just fewer than 60 million people, lived on less than $2.15 a day. About 1 out of 6 people live in extreme poverty. The causes of poverty have been identified, among others, as the long history of conflict, political upheaval, instability and authoritarian rule.
Other causes include illness, malnutrition and poor education. Yet, the DRC is about the world’s richest in terms of mineral deposits. It hosts numerous major deposits of diamonds, gold, copper, cobalt, tin, tantalum and lithium. Thus, its biggest resource is its mineral deposits. The cycle of violence and conflict in the DRC has been linked to natural resource exploitation involving all kinds of both local and foreign vested interests. Whilst this goes on, the people sink deeper and deeper in the mire of poverty and Biblical misery. Now children have also joined in mining cobalt with their bare hands, thereby risking life and limb to eke out a miserable existence. One is in this context reminded of the infamous “Blood Diamonds” of Liberia as well as the prevalence of child labour in places such as Qatar, India, Bangladesh, Ghana, Senegal, and Cote d’ Voire. British economic historian Niall Ferguson in his important book, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, in his inimitably lucid manner goes to great lengths to examine the far-reaching effects of “Resource Curse” or what scholars have termed the Paradox of Plenty. One would be forgiven if one had mistakenly thought Ferguson had the DRC in mind when he was writing on the scourge of Resource Curse. For all that it is worth, the DRC manages to get by by exporting refined copper, unwrought alloys, cobalt, unrefined copper, copper ores or concentrates and crude oil.
In a country of estimated 95,894,118 people (as in 2021), this over-dependence on the exportation of primary produce and raw materials is a classic recipe for disaster. The country will never leave or outgrow her economic infancy.
Now, the talk in town is that foreign nations, like birds of prey, are circling in the Congo skies, aiming to swoop on her stupendous mineral deposits and leave the people holding the short end of the stick. It is difficult to shake off or forget that scene in Ola Rotimi’s play Ovonramen Nogbaisi in which the Queen of England’s emissaries bring fripperies to the Oba of Benin as they discuss Terms of Trade and Treaties of Peace. To date, the Oba’s question to the British colonial jobbers still echoes loud and clear in the ears of History. What’s the rationale for this act of altruism and generosity for a person you have not seen and who is at the farthest reaches of the earth? The same puzzle resides at the root of the relations between the West and the rest of us.
Let us return to the DRC and the Pope’s visit. By area, the DRC is the second largest country in Africa and the eleventh in the world. In terms of its religious demographic, Roman Catholics make up about 45%, Protestants 40%, Kimbangivsm: 5% and Muslims: 5%. Given, therefore, the religious composition of the DRC, how effective and relevant was the Pope’s visit beyond the usual glitz and glamour of it all; the accompanying global attention such a visit normally generates? Is the symbolism of the visit the substance of it all? Are there measurable transformative socio-economic and political impacts? In religio-spiritual terms, has the visit clarify and solidify the collective vision of the faithful regarding their place in the Great Chain of Being, or in the cosmic scheme of things? Would the faint-hearted among the flocks be inspired and encouraged to rekindle their faith in Christ or Mary, Mother of God and the supporting cast of celestial ministrants? It has become imperative to ask these questions in the light of the fact that the Pope, being a man of faith – is condemned to be a bearer of the Sword of the Spirit; a preacher of the theology of non-violence, a pacifist per excellence in a world rigged increasingly against the anodynes of turn-the-other-cheek pieties; a world growing ever so belligerent and bellicose a la Russia’s war on Ukraine, the U-S-China Trade War and ceaseless sabre-rattling over ownership of the South-China Sea; North Korea’s infatuation with nuclear weaponry, Zionist zealotry, anti-semitism in the Middle East and elsewhere and Islamist jihadism across parts of the world, especially here in Africa. Against this bleak backdrop, the Pope’s message to Congolese resonates poignantly: he condemned foreign plundering of the Congo and her resources. Delivering his message at the 80,000 – capacity Martyrs’ stadium in Kinshasa, Pope Francis counselled the people to lay down their arms, embrace mercy, and be missionaries of peace; to reject “resignation and fatalism”. He continued: “In a world disheartened by violence and war, Christians must be like Jesus”. He went on to highlight three “wellsprings of peace”, namely: “forgiveness, community and mission”. Pope Francis also encouraged the people to shun ethnic rivalry and corruption.
In spite of Pope Francis’s well-intentioned homilies of love and mercy and good-naturedness, the unblinking hardness of life still continues to confront the Congolese people. Poverty still remains the greatest problem in the country. The undying after-effects of Belgian colonisation of the DRC, the autocratic authoritarianism and the political corruption of the local ruling elite, ignorance and disease remain prime causes of mass immiseration. Also income inequality is fuelled by the Bretton-wood institutions, including the IMF and the World Bank as well as lender nations. Dependence upon foreign aid and importation continue to weaken the country and make her liable to conflict and disaffection. The point is, the DRC, like the rest of Africa, must transit from a mono-cultural economy to an exporter of manufactured goods and services. The DRC must process and refine her raw materials. Professor PLO Lumumba in one of his lectures spoke eloquently about the twin neuroses of “the Messiah” and “the Martyr” syndromes among Africa’s rulers. This chic virus of false messianism has to be extirpated from the psyches of the rulers (who must work towards becoming leaders).
For whatever it is worth, Africans, especially Roman Catholics among us must thank the Holy Father for his visit both to the DRC and South Sudan. It means a lot to us all. For we are aware that the Euro-American flocks are already grumbling that the Pope is giving too much attention to the world’s dregs, the so-called Margins and Peripheries from the Global South. They gripe that this pro-wretched-of-the-earth policy is detrimental to the interests of Mother Rome and all her Caucasian satellites. The contention is that the Roman Catholic Church is fundamentally Euro-centric and white and now it is gradually turning multi-racial, multi-cultural and pro-Global South, and, by implication, anti-West! This Euro-American groundswell of discontent is invariably reopening the barely-healed wounds of colonial history, and, before that, the abominable commerce in human chattel – the Trans- Atlantic Slate Trade. It also reopens the Pandora Box of centuries-old allegations of gross misconduct, notably sexual violence by clergy in the Roman Catholic Church, worldwide. The recent passing and funeral of George Pell, an Australian Cardinal who was convicted of child sex abuse, has brought to global attention the ugly and unhealthy state of the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church today. Dan Brown’s trilogy (The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons and Inferno) with its conspiracy theories about the church continues to stir controversy and debate to this day.
One thinks the Church in the Western Hemisphere should let sleeping dogs lie. Let the Pope go wherever the spirit leads him. Pope Francis has come and gone back to Rome, leaving the people of the DRC to the living nightmare that is their daily lot. Now, everyone has got to work out their salvation with fear and trembling.
Chris Anyokwu is Professor of English, University of Lagos