Michela Wrong - In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz - Living on the Brink of Disaster in the Congo

In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz

LIVING ON THE BRINK OF DISASTER

IN THE CONGO

Michela Wrong

To Michael Holman , who made sure the book got written

COVER

TITLE PAGE

DEDICATION

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave

CHAPTER TWO Plaything for a king

CHAPTER THREE Birth of the Leopard

CHAPTER FOUR Dizzy worms

CHAPTER FIVE Living above the shop

CHAPTER SIX A nation on Low Batt

CHAPTER SEVEN Never naked

CHAPTER EIGHT The importance of being elegant

CHAPTER NINE I get by with a little help from my friends

CHAPTER TEN A folly in the jungle

CHAPTER ELEVEN The night the pink champagne went flat

CHAPTER TWELVE The Inseparable Four

CHAPTER THIRTEEN Nappies on the floor

CHAPTER FOURTEEN Ill-gotten gains

EPILOGUE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

GLOSSARY

INDEX

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

COPYRIGHT

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

‘He won’t be forgotten. Whatever he was, he was not common. He had the power to charm or frighten rudimentary souls into an aggravated witch-dance in his honour; he could also fill the small souls of the pilgrims with bitter misgivings: he had one devoted friend at least, and he had conquered one soul in the world that was neither rudimentary nor tainted with self-seeking. No; I can’t forget him.’

Heart of Darkness —JOSEPH CONRAD

The feeling struck home within seconds of disembarking.

When the motor-launch deposited me in the cacophony of the quayside, engine churning mats of water hyacinth as it turned to head back across the brown expanse of oily water that was the River Zaire, I was hit by the sensation that so unnerves first-time visitors to Africa. It is that revelatory moment when white, middle-class Westerners finally understand what the rest of humanity has always known – that there are places in this world where the safety net they have spent so much of their lives erecting is suddenly whipped away, where the right accent, education, health insurance and a foreign passport – all the trappings that spell ‘It Can’t Happen to Me’ – no longer apply, and their well-being depends on the condescension of strangers.

The pulse of apprehension drummed as I stuffed my clothes back into the ageing suitcase that had chosen the river crossing between Brazzaville and Kinshasa as the moment to split at the seams, transforming me into a truly African traveller. It quickened as a sweating young British diplomat signally failed to talk our way through the red tape and a chain of hostile policemen picked through the intimacies of my luggage, deciding which bits to keep. It subsided as we emerged from our three-hour ordeal, a little the lighter, finally crossing the magic line separating the customs area from the city.

But in truth, the quiet thud of fear would be there throughout my time in Zaire, whether I was drinking a cold Primus beer in the bustling Cité or taking tea in the green calm of a notable’s patio. This ominous awareness of a world of infinite, sinister possibilities had become one of the dominant characteristics of the nation led by the man who started life as plain Joseph Désiré Mobutu, cook’s son, but reinvented himself as Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga, ‘the all-powerful warrior who goes from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake’.

By the mid-1990s, Mobutu had become more noticeable by his absence than his presence, a tall, gravel-voiced figure glimpsed occasionally at official ceremonies and airport walkabouts in Kinshasa, or fielding hostile questions at a rare press conference in France with a sardonic politeness that hinted at huge world-weariness. Rattled by the army riots that had twice devastated his cities, belatedly registering the extent to which he was hated, he had withdrawn from a resentful capital to the safety of Gbadolite, his palace in the depths of the equatorial forest, to nurse his paranoia.

His impassive portrait, decked in comic-opera uniform, kept watch on his behalf, glowering from banks, shops and reception halls. ‘Big Man’ rule had been encapsulated in one timeless brand: leopardskin toque, Buddy Holly glasses and the carved cane so imbued with presidential force mere mortals, it was said, could never hope to lift it. He liked to be known as the Leopard, and the face of a roaring big cat was printed on banknotes, ashtrays and official letterheads. But to a population that had once hailed him as ‘Papa’, he was now known as ‘the dinosaur’, a tribute to how sclerotic his regime had become. Certainly, on a continent of dinosaur leaders, of Biya and Bongo, Mugabe and Moi, he rated as a Tyrannosaurus Rex of the breed, setting an example not to be followed. No other African autocrat had proved such a wily survivor. No other president had been presented with a country of such potential, yet achieved so little. No other leader had plundered his economy so effectively or lived the high life to such excess.

Preyed on by young men with Kalashnikovs, its administration corroded by corruption, a nation the size of Western Europe had fallen off the map of acceptable destinations. My battered copy of the Belgian Guide Nagel, picked up in a Paris bookshop, described Kinshasa as a modern capital ‘boasting all the usual attributes of Europe’s great cities’ and encouraged the tourist to explore its museums, monuments and ‘indigenous quarters’. But that had been in 1959, when the world was a white man’s oyster. Kinshasa was now a stop bypassed even by hardened travellers, where airlines avoided leaving their planes overnight for fear of what the darkness would bring. A hardship posting for diplomats, boycotted by the World Bank and IMF, it was a country every resident seemed determined to abandon, if only they could lay their hands on the necessary visa.

I would be there for the end, and for the beginning of the end.

Less than three years after my arrival, the tables were turned and I was the one to experience the curious intimacy the looter shares with his victim, rifling through Mobutu’s wardrobes, touring his bathroom and making rude remarks about his taste in furniture (‘African dictator’ kitsch of the worst kind). Somewhere at the back of one of my drawers, there is a stolen fishknife that was once part of the presidential dining set. My companions in crime were more ambitious – they took monogrammed pillow cases, bottles of fine French wine, even a presidential oil portrait. But looters were being shot on the streets the day we paid our unannounced visit on Marshal Mobutu’s villa in Goma, and I wasn’t going to risk execution for a souvenir.

It was November 1996 and the new rebel movement that had suddenly risen from nowhere in the far east of Zaire had seized control of the area bordering Rwanda. For weeks the frontier crossings leading into this breathtakingly beautiful region of brooding volcanoes and misty green valleys, all rolling down to the blue waters of Lake Kivu, had been closed while the fighting went on. Then suddenly the victorious rebels opened the frontier, and a small flood of journalists who had been kicking their heels on the other side poured across.

When tour agencies were still brave enough to include Rwanda and Zaire in their African itineraries, Goma was a favourite destination for tourists visiting some of the world’s last mountain gorillas. A pretty little town on the black lava foothills, it had now been torn apart by its own inhabitants, who had taken the army’s exodus as the cue for some frenzied self-enrichment. Shops had been eviscerated, the main street was a mess of phone directories, glass and unused condoms, shattered toilet bowls and broken shutters. ‘They’ve attacked me four or five times, but they just won’t believe I don’t have anything left to take,’ gasped a ruined Lebanese trader, waiting at the border post for permission to leave. His eyes were swimming with tears.