African Warfare: Recruitment

Posted by Scimitar on August 08, 2007, 08:19 AM | #

The collapse of the Congolese army in the wake of Kabila’s Rwanda backed invasion is a textbook example of this. As you know, I am preparing a series of upcoming blog entries about this subject. The Congolese army was ridiculously corrupt by then. The army spent most of its time taking bribes and pillaging the population. In one such incident in 1992, unpaid soldiers went on a rampage. Riots erupted in major cities which brought economic activity to a standstill. Hundreds of people died. Congo’s economy collapsed to its lowest point since independence.

By the time of the First Congo War in the late 1990s, the army was despised by the populace. Mobutu had gutted the army of its most capable men to neutralize the threat of a coup. He staffed the officer corps with members of his own ethnic group and sycophants. Kabila’s AFDL (composed of boy soldiers like you mention above) rolled across the Congo as the FAZ collapsed into a rabble.

Mobutu Sese Seko is a fascinating figure. I wrote a few days ago:

“I’m going to have fun with my treatment of him (the working title is “Zaire: Towards the N***** Paradise.”) He used the national treasury as his own personal bank account, would appear on television descending from the clouds, built fabulous palaces for himself in the middle of the jungle while his own people starved, used to hand out Mercedes left and right to his friends, was unabashed about having sexual relations with the wives of his subordinates, he even had his own hair stylists fly from Europe and New York to give him a hair cut. His wife’s name was “Marie Antoinette.”

During the early 1970s, Mobutu implemented a de-Europeanization program of the Congo which he called “authenticity.” It was during this period that the Congo was renamed Zaire, Leopoldville was renamed Kinshasa, and so forth. The Congolese were forbidden by law to wear European style clothes. Have you ever seen the negro in America wearing African clothes? That’s what happened there, but on a much larger scale. They Congolese were forced to adopt new African names. They had to refer to Mobutu with terms like “the Founder” and “the Helmsman” and “the Messiah” and “le Guide.”

This is no joke. Mobutu renamed himself “Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga” which literally meant “the all-powerful warrior who goes from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake.” He expropriated the European businesses and became the third largest employer in the country in the process. Guess what happened? The economy collapsed.

Stunner. Stunner.

Under the Belgians, the economy had been growing at a clip of 7% of year. They left the Congolese a pacified modernizing colony with skyscrapers, a national healthcare system, European style homes, electricity, airports, industries, etc. The Congo became a constitutional democracy.

Mobutu ran the Congo exactly like an American rap artist. It was as if the Notorious B.I.G. had become president of a country the size of Western Europe.”

Mobutu was no fool either. He was an avid reader of Machiavelli. During his final years in office, he spent most of his time in his isolated jungle palace in Gbadolite, surrounding himself with co-ethnics and imagining himself to be a farmer, a son of the soil. He rarely visited the capital. It was as if the Congo had ceased to have a government at all. The state existed for his own personal enrichment and fantasies. By the time of his death, he was one of the richest men in the world with properties scattered throughout Europe. His country had a GNP 60% less than it did at independence in 1960.

In the aftermath of Kabila’s invasion and the overthrow of Mobutu, Rwandan and Ugandan troops stuck around. Eventually, they had a falling out with Kabila, and marched on Kinshasa to remove him from power. Kabila appealed to neighboring countries like Zimbabwe, Angola, Zambia, and Namibia for assistance. They sent troops to the Congo in exchange for all sorts of mineral concessions. Eventually, over half a dozen African powers were slugging it out in the Eastern Congo.

The Second Congo War, or “Africa’s First World War” as it has been often called, was the most destructive conflict since WW2. It took the lives of three million Congolese. In terms of mineral wealth, the Congo is the richest country in Sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, in this sense, it counts as one of the richest countries in the world.

How is that the negro lives in such poverty and misery while squatting on top of oil, gold, diamonds, coltan, copper, cobalt, tin, uranium, zinc, manganese, and rubber - resources that most nations could only dream of. It is one of the great mysteries of the world. I will start posting my thoughts in a few days.

Posted by Joe on August 10, 2007, 11:01 PM | #

In other words, Africa is just like black urban ghettos in America.