In 1899, Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness, described events in the Congo as “the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience”
Little did he know.
1/ The story of the Congo is one of untold suffering and spectacular plunder.
---Long Thread---
2/ Home to the 2ⁿᵈ largest rainforest (65% forest cover) & 2ⁿᵈ largest river in the world, the DRC is roughly the size of Western Europe with a pop'n of 84mn and a GDP of $50bn.
The value of Congo’s natural resources is estimated at $24tn, greater than the US’ $20tn GDP.
3/ Africa’s 2ⁿᵈ largest country has 10% of the world’s copper, 30% of diamonds, 80% of Coltan, 50% of Cobalt and 12% of hydro-electric capacity.
Mining ($11.6bn) accounted for 95% of exports, 28% of revenue, 20% of GDP & 11% of the workforce in 2016.
4/ The Congo has powered the western world for centuries:
From supplying slaves for sugarcane plantations, rubber for the pneumatic tire, uranium for the atomic bomb to coltan for mobile devices and today, 60% of the Cobalt for lithium-ion batteries.
5/ It began with the slave trade in the Kongo kingdom by the Portuguese in the 1480s.
Initially, Kongolese nobles aided the trade but when the Portuguese started abducting everyone, King Afonso I of Kongo protested to Portuguese King Joao III in 1526
6/ The bedrock for the plunder of the Congo, however, was laid in 1877 by Sir Henry Morton Stanley, whose expedition was sponsored by King Leopold II of Belgium.
He spoke of a land full of fabulous riches and organised a private army that became the dreaded Force Publique.
7/ Stanley found local tribes weakened by centuries of slave-hunting raids by traders like Zanzibari Tippu Tip, and proceeded to trick local chiefs into signing away concessions on land, waterways and forests in return for cloth, trinkets, beads and gin.
8/ At the Berlin Conference of 1885, the Congo was handed to a charity run by King Leopold under the pretext of “stopping slavery”
Leopold had finally gotten a chunk of what he termed "magnifique gâteau africain" (magnificent African cake) and he named it the “Congo Free State.”
9/ Leopold initially focused on ivory but later granted concessions to European Co.s to exploit the Congo.
One of these was Huileries du Congo Belge, a subsidiary of Lever Brothers (later Unilever), which got 1.9mn acres for oil palm plantations.
10/ Leopold utilized the 19,000-strong Force Publique (FP) to great effect in terrorising the populace into subservience.
Some FP were orphans, some foreigners and others were Zappo Zap – a savage group of cannibalistic mercenaries.
FP became the Congolese Army at independence.
11/ In 1898, John Dunlop invented the pneumatic tire and demand for rubber spiked.
‘Workers’ who missed rubber quotas were whipped with the chicotte, had their hands severed or were killed and those that did, got pieces of cloth or spoonfuls of salt.
12/ Over 10 million Congolese died during King Leopold’s reign in the Congo and he made over $1.1bn, hiding the fortune in foundations, Swiss accounts, shell companies and properties on the French Riviera.
13/ Leopold essentially privatised the Congo, and the “government as a system of organised plunder” that he established served the Belgian colonialists and post-independence regimes very well.
At independence, there were only about 20 college graduates.
14/ During WWI, 75% of the copper used in brass bullet casings came from the Congo and so did most of the uranium used during WWII, including in the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima.
15/ Congo’s Shinkolobwe mine, the source for nearly all of the uranium used in the atomic bomb Manhattan Project, was the richest in the world with its ore averaging 65% uranium oxide compared to American or Canadian ore, which contained less than 1%.
16/ Just before independence in 1960, the Belgians poured concrete down the Shinkolobwe mineshaft, closed off the pit and took off with the equipment to prevent anyone else, including the Congolese, from accessing the uranium in the mine.
17/ At Congo’s independence in 1960, King Baudouin of Belgium praised the genius of King Leopold, but Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba was having none of it and made his outrage known immediately.
Lumumba was already a marked man and this episode took him to the top of the list.
18/ The US was particularly agitated by Lumumba’s fervent nationalism (even calling him 'Lumumbavitch') and along with the UN, the UK & Belgium, helped chief of staff Joseph-Désiré Mobutu arrest, torture and execute Lumumba in Lubumbashi on Jan 17, 1961.
19/ The UN under Dag Hammarskjöld provided choppers to track down Lumumba and shut down radio stations to prevent him from appealing for help from his countrymen.
Hammarskjöld died in a plane crash on his way from Katanga in September 1961.
20/ Soon after independence, the Belgians tried to engineer the Secession of Katanga Province under Moïse Tshombe, to serve their commercial interests.
Three years later in 1963, UN & US forces defeated the Katangan military and Tshombe stepped down as president of Katanga.
21/ In 1964, rebellions erupted in the east leading to the intervention of mercenaries from the UK, US, Belgium, ‘Rhodesia’ and South Africa.
In response, radical African states including Algeria and Egypt reached out to Cuba, which sent in Che Guevara.
23/ In an abortive attack on a Congolese Army garrison at Bendera in June 1965, the Tutsi rebel soldiers fled, the Congolese refused to fight, and 4 Cubans were killed.
Sensing the futility of it all, Che left the Congo in Nov 1965.
Meanwhile, Mobutu seized power in Kinshasa.
24/ A US president once said of Nicaraguan dictator, Anastasio Somoza: “Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.”
In Mobutu, the US found their African Somoza and proceeded to prop him up from 1965 until the cold war ended in 1991.
26/ Mobutu stole $4bn+, built his Versailles at Gbadolite and acquired 33 properties including a villa on the French Riviera close to Leopold II’s chateau.
The economy shrank 60%, inflation hit 23,000% & living standards fell to pre-independence levels.
27/ But not everyone in the Congo hated Mobutu. The residents of Gbadolite still reminisce about the development he brought to them – a hydro-electric plant, hotels, offices and even a Coca Cola bottling plant with a capacity for 80,000 bottles a month
28/ Among those that visited the palace at Gbadolite were Pope John Paul II, the Belgian king, French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, UN SG Boutros-Boutros Ghali, televangelist Pat Robertson, David Rockefeller and CIA Director William Casey.
30/ Terminally ill, abandoned by the west and facing a Kabila-led rebellion, Marshal Mobutu fled to Morocco in 1997 where he died of prostate cancer aged 66.
Kabila took over and replaced Mobutu's patronage network with his very own, backed by the US, Rwanda, Uganda & Angola.
31/ Once in power, Kabila hesitated to pay off Mobutu-era debt, reneged on contracts signed during the march to Kinshasa, limited foreign Co. access to minerals & openly showed his irritation at his Rwandan allies.
33/ By 2016, the Kabila family had amassed a $750mn fortune, owned diamond permits covering 450 miles of territory and had racked up ownership in scores of companies in various sectors of the economy including two airlines.
34/ Kabila continued with the Mobutu strategy of handing a free rein to his military, underpaying them and letting them get away with crimes against civilians
This led to millions in the east dying from conflict, disease, hunger and forced labor.
35/ With the army out of control, the rule of law largely non-existent and the rest of the world clamouring for a piece of Congo’s riches, Eastern Congo became a warlords’ paradise, with many backed by neighbouring countries and foreign profiteers.
36/ Meanwhile, Rwandan, Zimbabwean and Ugandan forces ransacked and pillaged minerals in the eastern region while also funding the rebel groups in the area.
At one point, Rwanda even claimed part of the eastern territory as being historically Rwandan.
In 2002, JP Bemba's MLC rebels hunted, cooked and ate Bambuti pygmies in North Kivu in an operation code-named “Effacer le tableau” (erasing the board).
In Nov 2012, Congolese Army soldiers went on a 2-day rampage in Minova, looting and raping at will as they retreated from a scorching defeat in Goma by M23 rebels.
The people of eastern Congo have known little peace in well over a century.
41/ Even UN peacekeepers and aid workers in the east of the country have been accused of illegally trading gold, arming rebels, sexually abusing and exploiting the civilians under their protection.
42/ According to UNICEF, about 40,000 children work in cobalt mines in miserable conditions for shifts of up to 24 hours underground, earning less than $2/day.
Add to this hunger, Ebola, Measles, Covid-19... and it is hell on earth for the children.
Over time, there have been over 120 armed groups, 80+ humanitarian missions, 20,000+ peacekeepers, hundreds of foreign Co.s, thousands of profiteers and a bewildering array of covert agents…
48/ Today, even as China imports 90% of Congo’s Cobalt (used in lithium-ion batteries for electric cars), insecurity persists.
In Kasai for example, the Kamwina Nsapu (black ant) militia continues to visit ethnic violence, rape, murder & slavery upon the citizens of the region.
49/ New leaf?
The Kabila dynasty ended in Jan 2019 with the swearing in of Felix Tshisekedi, son of former PM, Étienne Tshisekedi.
This marked the first ever peaceful transfer of power to the opposition.
50/ “The day will come when history will speak. Africa will write its own history and in both north and south, it will be a history of glory and dignity.”
-PE Lumumba
Even as world attention turns briefly to the Congo, the story of this great nation remains far from complete.
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1/ When Nairobi started under Ainsworth, the first municipal budget was 7,161 rupees (± Sh150K), which only paid for the uniforms and salaries of 6 Swahili and 8 Indian policemen, 2 sweepers, and oil for street lights.
2/ Called from Machakos to serve as a top civil servant at the swampy town populated more by wild animals than by European settlers, Ainsworth arrived in Nairobi in 1899 at age 25.
Born in 1864 in the UK he died in 1964, at 100 years old.
[Nairobi in 1898]
3/ Prior to his arrival, British land surveyors had already come to Kenya and identified much of the fertile land as “unpopulated” and ripe for colonial settlement.
There was no knowledge among the Europeans of African land ownership, such as the Kikuyu system of gethaka
2/ As soon as the project was approved, they quickly abandoned the PPP and started an international open tender.
The tenders were then crafted in such a way that a select number of local companies were looped in through the backdoor as subcontractors of original manufacturers.
3/ Cabinet Secretary James Macharia, who was in charge of the health docket when the contracts were awarded, and Dr Muraguri, disowned an inflated price list submitted by his successor Sicily Kariuki, according to the parliamentary report. The two gave their own price lists
The Postal Corporation of Kenya, PCK or Posta, is the oldest parastatal in Kenya having been founded in 1901 as the Postal Services of British EA (PSBEA).
Over the years however, Posta has faced unending troubles due to corruption and mismanagement.
1/
---A postal thread---
2/ In 1910, PSBEA offered savings accounts and later evolved into Postbank Credit.
In 1994, the bank collapsed with Sh3.8bn in deposits and Sh3.6bn in loans, due to bad debts owed by connected individuals like Cyrus Jirongo.
2/ Anpi Pharma would under-quote to win the tender then after winning, would come back and state:
“freight charges and cost of materials have gone up. I want to vary the tender.”
3/ Before Kemsa, there was the Central Medical Stores ran by a Zachariah Shimechero, a Deputy Commissioner of Police at independence and later the Commissioner of Settlement of Squatters.
In 1972, a shortage of meat forced the govt to license private abattoirs.
In short order, there was an influx of meat, much of which was of dodgy quality.
In 1973, the govt ordered that all meat transport vehicles bear a red stripe for identification.
1/ ---a thread---
2/ It was about the same time that Mohammed Ali Motha, a butcher, and his business partner Abdul Habib Adam, founder of Adam's Arcade, came up with the idea of a Halal slaughterhouse in Ngong under Halal Meat Products Limited.
Adam died in 1974, leaving Halal to the Mothas.
3/ In 1974, Jeremiah Nyagah, the then Agriculture minister approved construction of an abattoir and inspection unit at a cost of Sh9.6mn.
The govt loaned £500,000 (±Sh7mn) but declined to take a stake, a decision that would later prove rather costly.
Once upon a time, Robert Maxwell, (whose daughter Ghislaine, is involved in the Jeffrey Epstein-Trump scandal) and President Moi got together and decided they would hive off Uhuru Park and construct a 60-storey tower.
2/ Just like with projects we are seeing today, the Kenya Times Complex would be financed by $200mn in loans guaranteed by the govt.
Proposed by Robert Maxwell, the British-designed complex would house a statue of Moi, Kanu party HQs, KTN, conference & shopping facilities.
3/ Prof Wangari Maathai immediately filed an injunction at the high court agains the project.
And in language eerily akin to that used by social media trolls today, Asst Minister John Keen quipped, 'I don't see the sense at all in a bunch of divorcees coming out to criticize''