Bwana and Sambo explain why Congo can't escape its scars

I can't figure out why this story appears in the "Insight" section of today's Toronto Star. It is a story long on sensationalism but utterly bereft of insight.

First the sensationalism. Heads roll again and again. They are lopped off with reckless abandon and carried about in gunny sacks. Child soldiers have their fingers chopped off and drink the blood of their enemies. Vaginas are violated, not just with machetes, but with machetes heated in a fire!...

Oh!

My!

God!

They don't call it the "dark continent" for nothing, do they!?

Lucky for us, Star editor-in-chief Michael Cooke steps in with some background. It's not all the fault of the Congolese. The Belgian colonizers were not good people. No, they murdered ten million Congolese and then, at independence, left the fledgling state with a mere three PhDs.

Well, no wonder the place went to hell! How was the nascent state to bootstrap itself into the modern era with only three PhDs in the entire land?

That's a condescending bit of "Bwana knows best," isn't it?

Then, after the CIA, with the connivance of the Belgians, Brits, and UN, killed Congo's first democratically elected president, "the Congolese immediately turned on themselves..." and that's been the story ever since.

And this is what passes for "journalism?"

Shame!

I'm not a journalist, but I'm not brain dead either, and I'd like to make a couple of suggestions that might have upped the insight quotient for this story.

First of all, it's a pity we only meet one Canadian, the saintly world president of Doctors without Borders. Cooke comes tantalizingly close to unmasking a few more when he refers to corrupt practices in the mining industry which has caused tens of millions (billions with a "b" would be more accurate) of dollars to be diverted into the accounts of government officials and various shady middlemen. Canadian mining companies have a massive presence in the Congo. Why not name names, Mr. Cooke?

Rwanda gets barely a passing mention in the story. Paul Kagame's name does not come up at all. Cooke makes it sound like a few observers think the Kagame regime may be up to nefarious hanky-panky in the neighbourhood. In fact, virtually all independent observers agree Rwanda under Kagame has been neck-deep in fomenting strife in the Congo. The reason we don't talk about it is because his interference is quietly encouraged and facilitated by the West, including Canada.

Dictator?

What dictator?

Justin "Sunny Daze" Trudeau's feel-good feminist government sent Kagame heart-felt congrats on winning  the last "election" with 99% of the vote! Who are we kidding?

After more than fifty years of "independence" there are sound reasons why Congo can't escape its scars, but Cooke and Badylon Kawanda have done their best to avoid addressing them.

Doing so might require a little soul searching around how we continue to contribute to the ongoing tragedy that is the Congo.

Storm clouds over Dan's Republic

The Democratic Republic of Congo is one of those African nations that has yet to grow into its potential in the post-colonial era. There's a certain segment of old-school pinkos who lay the blame for this on the legacy of colonialism.

I blame Dan Gertler. Gertler is the international man of mystery who has done a really great job of enriching himself with a wide range of business activities in the DRC. In fact, Gertler's net worth after a couple of decades of wheeling and dealing in the Congo is greater than the country's GDP!

Then I read Alex Engwete's impassioned defense of Gertler, and maybe he has a point or two. The Gertlers of the world do bring something to the table, and I agree that notions of transparency transposed willy-nilly onto emerging economies fail to take into consideration the realities of doing business in that kind of environment. Successful developed economies all had their share of crooks, swindlers, scallywags and carpet-baggers make their contribution in the course of their evolution.

But Dan's fabulous Congolese adventure may be facing a dark future, and it's all got to do with players much bigger than him. As part of the long term Africom strategy to remake Africa as an American fiefdom, the M23 rebel army is rapidly making inroads in the country. That's a rebel army underwritten and directed by our erstwhile ally, Rwanda.

But Dan's a land-on-his-feet kind of guy. He's probably making deals with the M23 commanders already!

Congo tango

Wasn't that long ago that our standard expectation of our allies in the dark continent was that when Uncle Sam said "jump" they'd ask, how high?

Nowadays the more frequent reply to an Uncle Sam request is "how much?" As in how much are you going to give us in money and guns.

But the reality on the ground is that even those days are numbered. We are soon going to see a new African reality. When Uncle Sam says "jump", his African allies will say "fuck you."

We're getting a hint of that already with the brouhaha over Ugandan support for the M23 rebels in the Congo. A UN report leaked a few weeks ago fingers both Uganda and Rwanda as being the prime movers behind the M23 group, which has succeeded in routing the Congolese army from a large swath of mineral-rich north eastern Congo.

Uganda has responded by threatening to quit the Western-backed coalition that has managed to install a puppet government in Somalia. Reuter's reports that the puppet PM has sent an urgent plea to the Ugandans; please don't go.

This is Uganda playing hardball. What they're saying is that if we want them to do our dirty work fighting the Shabaab in Somalia, then we're going to have to look the other way when it comes to their hanky-panky in Congo.

Who do they think they are?

You'd almost think they see themselves as an independent nation or something!