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If you're interested in learning a little more about the Congo's history, I highly recommend Michela Wrong's book In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the B

If you're interested in learning a little more about the Congo's history, I highly recommend Michela Wrong's book In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu's Congo. Ignore the sensationalized title and apparently cliche reference to Heart of Darkness, the writing is much smarter than that. She wrote it shortly after Mobutu's death in 1997, after living in the country for several years. You might also know her from a more recent book about Paul Kagame [1]. Perhaps surprisingly, the least sympathetic characters post-independence in In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz might be the World Bank and IMF employees. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Disturb_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Disturb_(book)

sib 5y ago
And further along this path, if you really want to be saddened / depressed / disgusted, there's King Leopold's Ghost. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004KZOWEG https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004KZOWEG
- mycologos 5y ago
  Yeah, I'm genuinely surprised at how little stain there is on Belgium's international reputation as a result of this. I guess part of it is that the Belgian people themselves had relatively little to do with it while it was happening, and that the affected individuals largely don't speak English, but in terms of "a country goes out and messes up millions of other people for terrible reasons", it's ... up there.
MikeUt 5y ago
> Perhaps surprisingly, the least sympathetic characters post-independence in In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz might be the World Bank and IMF employees. Could you elaborate?
- mycologos 5y ago
  Sure. Maybe the easiest way to sum it up is that I saw them as the most callow actors in the story. Even Mobutu is working under real constraints, he has a whole class of people to keep happy, or else the security apparatus around him will fall and he and his family will go with it, and Congolese politics seem febrile and complex in the best of times. I mean, he's certainly a bad guy. But somehow the badness of his western enablers is worse, because they come from orderly, well-off, educated places, and throughout the book they just seem uninterested in actually understanding the country that they're supposed to be experts on. There's a little section Wrong writes about how promotion in these organizations is often a function of just getting aid out and caring a lot less about what said aid actually does, and nearly all of the elite western characters insist after the fact that, actually, none of what happened is their fault, even as Wrong writes about what seem to be, uh, rather less than diligent efforts to actually assess the effectiveness of their methods.

sib 5y ago

And further along this path, if you really want to be saddened / depressed / disgusted, there's King Leopold's Ghost. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004KZOWEG https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004KZOWEG

mycologos 5y ago
Yeah, I'm genuinely surprised at how little stain there is on Belgium's international reputation as a result of this. I guess part of it is that the Belgian people themselves had relatively little to do with it while it was happening, and that the affected individuals largely don't speak English, but in terms of "a country goes out and messes up millions of other people for terrible reasons", it's ... up there.

MikeUt 5y ago

> Perhaps surprisingly, the least sympathetic characters post-independence in In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz might be the World Bank and IMF employees. Could you elaborate?

mycologos 5y ago
Sure. Maybe the easiest way to sum it up is that I saw them as the most callow actors in the story. Even Mobutu is working under real constraints, he has a whole class of people to keep happy, or else the security apparatus around him will fall and he and his family will go with it, and Congolese politics seem febrile and complex in the best of times. I mean, he's certainly a bad guy. But somehow the badness of his western enablers is worse, because they come from orderly, well-off, educated places, and throughout the book they just seem uninterested in actually understanding the country that they're supposed to be experts on. There's a little section Wrong writes about how promotion in these organizations is often a function of just getting aid out and caring a lot less about what said aid actually does, and nearly all of the elite western characters insist after the fact that, actually, none of what happened is their fault, even as Wrong writes about what seem to be, uh, rather less than diligent efforts to actually assess the effectiveness of their methods.