Notes - Empty Hands, Open Arms - page 193

From Slave State to Failed State

95-96 The Portuguese shipped millions Wyatt MacGaffey, “Kongo and the King of the Americans,”
Journal of Modern African Studies 6 no. 2 (August 1968): 171-81, referenced in Turner, The
Congo Wars , 50.
96 Illness and parasites Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost , 231.
96 Pictures that missionaries took Ibid., 215.
97 Entire villages were enslaved Robert Harms, “The End of Red Rubber: A Reassessment,”
Journal of African History 16 no. 1 (1975): 73-88, referenced in Turner, The Congo Wars , 27.
97 Roger Casement and Arthur Conan Doyle Mark Twain, King Leopold's Soliloquy (New Delhi:

LeftWord Books, 2005), 57.
97 The system had always been The chicotte was outlawed only in 1955. As for the iconic abuses
of King Leopold's reign, they diminished but in no way stopped when, after a decade of pressure
from the British and US press, Belgium annexed the Congo Free State. For the next fifty-two years,
it ruled the colony with a markedly paternalistic approach, claiming to civilize a savage people
while exporting massive quantities of rubber, cobalt, copper, gold, and diamonds, as well as cot-
ton, coffee, and palm oil. René Lemarchand, “Historical Setting,” in Meditz and Merrill, Zaire: A
Country Study , 16.
97 Writers have speculated Michela Wrong addresses the claim, made by some, that because the
people have no memory or clear knowledge of the colonial period's abuses, there is no causal link
between the abuses of the colonial period and the later exploitation by Mobutu. Wrong responds
by making a comparison with which I entirely agree: “But it wasn't necessary to be an expert on
sexual abuse to know it was possible to be traumatised without knowing why; that, indeed, amne-
sia—whether individual or collective—could sometimes be the only way of dealing with horror,
that human behaviour could be altered forever without the cause being openly acknowledged.”
Wrong, In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz , 59.
98 Thomas Turner, a professor Turner, The Congo Wars , x.
98 In 1971, Mobutu changed As Thomas Turner writes, “Mobutu ignored the fact that 'Zaire' was
only a Portuguese mishearing of the Kikongo word nzadi (river). One imagines the scene. A Por-
tuguese asks, using gestures, 'What is that called?' A Kongo answers, 'The river'.” Turner also
points out that, rather than being a rejection of colonial terms, it merely repeated one, given that
“Zaire” was and remains the name of a northern Angolan province. Turner, The Congo Wars , 62.
98 He even renamed himself Michael G. Schatzberg, Political Legitimacy in Middle Africa: Fath-
er, Family, Food (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 49. See also Howard W. French,
“Mobutu Sese Seko, Zairian Ruler, Is Dead in Exile in Morocco at 66,” New York Times , Septem-
ber 8, 1997, http://www.nytimes.com/1997/09/08/world/mobutu-sese-seko-zairian-ruler-is-dead-
in-exile-in-morocco-at-66.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm .
99 This was also the time Ibid., 52; Turner and Meditz, “Introduction,” in Meditz and Merrill,
Zaire: A Country Study , xlii-xliii.
99 The Congo is composed The World Factbook , Central Intelligence Agency website, ht-
tps://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/cg.html . Turner and Meditz offer
the following estimates: Catholics (46-48 percent), Protestants (24-28 percent), the indigenous
Kimbanguist Church (16.5 percent), Muslims (1 percent), and the remainder who practice tradi-
tional forms of African religion. Turner and Meditz, “Introduction,” in Meditz and Merrill, Zaire:
A Country Study , xxvii.
99 Mobutu's popularity faded Schatzberg, Political Legitimacy in Middle Africa , 172.

99 “ They chartered Boeings . . .” Pierre Janssen quoted in Wrong, In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz ,

227.