A chance remark from a Congolese friend got me thinking.
We were talking about hospitals and she said Kinshasa had some of the best hospitals before they became an independent country and how people from places as far away as Jo’burg would come to Kinshasa for treatment. She recalled how beautiful the city was and it would have compared to any modern European city of that time. She sadly said life had become so dangerous after independence that she had to flee to Canada with her small children in tow. Then came that chance remark. 'The Belgians left too early". Surprisingly she did not seem too impressed with Patrice Lumumba either. My questions is why do these countries nosedive into
pure anarchy and the inevitable civil war after the colonial powers pull out ?
Is it because the common person has no idea of what is going on when it comes to matters like independence and the fact that power will be invariably vested in a few leaders who soon degrade into quasi dictators and bleed the country dry.
I’ve read accounts of how people in post independent India refused to buy tickets on trains and buses because they were told it would all belong to them and they would no longer have to once the British left. India remains one of the most corrupt nations in the world.
Liberia is another country that I always think about. It was meant to be paradise for people liberated from slavery to go forth and prosper.
What could have been done right ?
European colonialism throughout the world is something like slavery in America. Sure we don’t have slavery anymore, but the effects still are still felt.
The arbitrary drawing of borders during de-colonization can be directly blamed for all sorts of problems today. India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons. Because the British fucked up. Israel vs Arab nations? Various African conflicts?
It was entirely naive to think that these former colonies would continue the Western European style of government that their European colonial powers imposed upon them. Or the national borders that Europe decided upon.
I guess I should re-phrase. What my friend meant was that there was no one at the wheel after the Belgians left and the country descended to chaos : )
Jay
I don’t know enough about the Belgium Congo to really get into specifics.
But if i understand you correctly, Belgium fucked up by colonizing the Congo, and they fucked up when they de-colonized the Congo. I would agree with that.
Soon after independence, violence broke out against Belgians in general and against the Force Publique in particular, an army with Belgian officers that had committed many atrocities over many years.
As a result, 80,000 Belgians still living in the Congo were evacuated. That probably included almost all the doctors and senior hospital staff, as well as the leadership of many institutions throughout the country.
Before independence Congolese had not been allowed in any professional or leadership positions.
This doesn’t belong in general questions, because people are certainly going to offer opinions. I’m not certain whether it’s better in IMHO or p&e, but let’s give it a chance here.
For a couple of the colonies, the colonial powers messed up by favoring a certain group over others and thus ensured that there was no national identity, just a privileged group lording it over others.
A lot of colonies may have had problems before being taken over but they had functioning economies and political systems. But once a European country took over, the pre-colonial systems would be intentionally dismantled. Doing so made the locals dependent on European administrators and reduced possible points for organizing resistance.
When the European powers left, they generally did so in a hurry. Little effort was made to set up a functioning local system to replace colonial administration
While there may well have been a good hospital in Kinshasa before independence in 1960, it won’t have done the Congolese much good. The Belgians were notoriously brutal, killing up to 13 million Congolese people during their colonial rule. After they left, life expectancy has very consistently risen from fucking 41 to 59. I’m not convinced that’s a nose dive. While they could, perhaps, be doing better, things have improved for the Congolese overall compared to Belgian colonial rule.
As to why countries aren’t doing a better job post colonialism: colonial powers were spiteful. The Portuguese poured concrete down the elevator shafts of parliament, took all the maps and ripped up infrastructure. That was in 1975. Next we started running our proxy wars through their oil vs diamonds conflict. Next thing you know county is full of landmines. You try running great hospitals/free and fair elections/good governance that way.
The thing was a giant set up and they never stood a chance of doing better than they are doing. Which is still better for most people than when the Europeans were making the trains run on time.
other than anti-immigrant/Asian policies i see no reason why the UK gave hong kong back to china …they could have voided the treaty once mao took over …
The issue wasn’t the ceding of Hong Kong Island, which the British owned as a result of the Opium Wars; it was the 99 year lease on The New Territories - which includes places like Kowloon. All the water etc was in the New Territories so if the British said “Fine, the lease is up, you get the New Territories back” then Hong Kong Island would have been untenable, which is why it all went back.
I agree the whole thing was badly handled though - in particular with how the Hong Kong residents weren’t automatically given British Citizenship.
Hong Kong was militarily indefensible against a PLA with air bases a few minutes flying time away, against a colonial power on the other side of the world. The Chinese could have taken it anytime they wanted, but preferred to wait, and have the whole thing fall into their hand.
I have visited Barbados many times and have read something of their history. They did not descend into chaos or dictatorship after independence. What happened is that the British governor spent more than 15 years introducing guided democracy. They had a parliament and gradually took over the governance until independence was declared. They had a running government and simply took over all the powers. And they freely chose the British governor as their new Governor General.
One thing that also probably helped is that they had high literacy rates for a century. I don’t know how that came about.
As you alluded to in the OP, there was someone at the wheel.
And then the CIA murdered him.
Any further questions?
I lived in the Congo in what was then called Leopoldville from 1961 - 1962, since my father worked for the UN and got sent there, and we followed.
Short answers: the Belgians were responsible.
I’m sure there was a good hospital before Independence. I bet the Congolese were not allowed into it. There was also an excellent and beautiful university (we went swimming there.) They finally allowed Congolese in just before independence - the few graduates (fewer than two dozen) became ministers.
Speaking of hospitals, the UN made their own, converting a hotel into one. My father was one of the major people who made it happen, and when he got sick they gave him his own floor.
And don’t forget that the reason the UN was there was that Katanga, with its vast mineral resources, seceded in large part due to European mineral interests.
There is a book by the CIA station chief stationed there that gives a lot of interesting stories - its factuality has been questioned, no surprise there. Don’t have the title, I gave it to my father to read and never got it back.
An excellent summation of what went wrong and another great Bourdain episode.
Yeah.
Do you think if Lumumba had lived to take the reins, Congo would have at least ended up like Barbados or best case scenario like Mauritius or Botswana which are two of the prosperous and peaceful nations in Africa ?
Or would it have been an inevitable failed communist experiment ?
Lumumba wasn’t a Communist.
He appealed first and repeatedly to the West and the UN for help in establishing an independent Congo, and dealing with the Belgian-led Katanga breakaway. He visited the US, the UK, and Canada personally to ask for help.
When they all refused (due to commercial interests in Katanga), only then did he turn to the Soviet Union for help. But he still didn’t accept Soviet ideology.
According to Britannica:
He was for a unitary Congo and against division of the country along ethnic or regional lines. Like many other African leaders, he supported pan-Africanism and the liberation of colonial territories. He proclaimed his regime one of “positive neutralism,” which he defined as a return to African values and rejection of any imported ideology, including that of the Soviet Union.
Branding him a Communist was pure propaganda.
My cousin went to Patrice Lumumba University in the USSR.
He was taught that PL was in the same club with Che and Fidel. : /
I am sure PL was a poor victim of the cold war.
And you really believe that Patrice Lumumba University in the USSR would only tell the absolute truth?
You’ll have to find a better cite than that. Please do.
The west supported Mobutu – a totally corrupt and repressive dictator – instead of Lumumba, and kept him power as their puppet. He was prepared to allow western multinational corporations to exploit the country’s natural resources as much as they liked. Foreign companies could do whatever they wanted, as long as they gave him a cut of the profits.
So, in fact, it was west that was mainly responsible for the Congo becoming a failed state in the post-independence era.