From the Congo to the Mississippi
From the Congo to the Mississippi
The USA and the DRC in Past and Present
The two musicians featured above are originally from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They have built their musical careers in South Africa, the United States, and in concerts around the world with the Playing for Change band. For more of their music, check out these YouTube searches for Mermans Mosengo and for Jason Tamba. Mosengo gives a bit more background in this short interview.
"Congo music" has long been popular around the African continent as well as across the Atlantic. And it has developed in interaction with Cuban music in particular. See this short article on Rumba's Congolese roots, and a short video on Rumba in Cuba. For two books with more background, see Rumba on the River: A History of the Popular Music of the Two Congos and Rumba Rules: The Politics of Dance Music in Mobutu's Zaire.
But while Congolese in the diaspora in Africa, in the United States, and around the world have made their presence felt in music and in many other spheres of life, the impact of outside forces has been devastating on the country in the past and continues in the present. This issue of AfricaFocus Notes includes excerpts from articles on the elections coming up this year as well as a set of wider readings on the history, particularly from the late 19th century to the present.
Friends of the Congo is hosting a series of online events in a global teach-in this week. See https://congoweek.org/calendar-of-events.html for details, and https://congoweek.org/ for more background.
Elections in December
In 2023, as voters in the DRC prepare to go to the polls in December to elect a new president, few in the United States are likely to be familiar with the presidential candidates. But U.S. policy still has a major influence on how the election is viewed internationally.
See https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/09/18/congo-election-biden-fayulu-tshisekedi-democracy-corruption/
"Washington Must Not Allow Another Stolen Election in Congo: Fear of Chinese influence must not take precedence over protecting democracy," by Stephen R. Weissman and Anthony Gambino.
Weissman is a former staff director of the U.S. House or Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Africa. Weissman´s latest book is From the Congo to Capitol Hill: A Coming-of-Age Memoir. Anthony Gambino was the director of the USAID mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 2001-04 and was an election observer there in 2006.
Elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the largest and most strategically situated country in sub-Saharan Africa, are scheduled for December. In the all-important presidential contest, the main candidates are expected to be the incumbent, Felix Tshisekedi; former parliamentarian and activist Martin Fayulu, whom most knowledgeable observers consider the real winner of the last election; Moise Katumbi, the former governor of Congo’s richest province; and Augustin Matata Ponyo, a former prime minister.
[Editor´s note: Dr. Denis Mukwege, gynecological surgeon famed for his advocacy for victims of sexual violence, announced his candidacy two weeks ago. But he is thought to have little chance of winning a significant number of votes.]
Unfortunately, signs point to troubled elections that will be neither free nor fair. Despite some support for a democratic contest, official Washington’s priorities appear to be trending elsewhere: toward building a strong relationship with Congo’s current president and competing with China for political influence and control of Congo’s multiple strategic minerals, such as cobalt, a key component of electric car batteries.
But this tack fails to reckon with some uncomfortable realities. Tshisekedi came to power through likely fraudulent elections five years ago, as one of us has written about at length in Foreign Policy. Congo remains riven by violent armed groups; political persecution of opposition groups, journalists, and even musicians; and massive corruption permeating the state, the vital mining industry, and the logging of the world’s second-largest rainforest. ...
Washington is in danger of getting it backwards. You cannot build better governance and ensure uninterrupted access to resources by turning a blind eye to President Tshisekedi’s questionable legitimacy and its manifold consequences. Only the winner of a genuinely democratic election, whether that be Tshisekedi or someone else, would possess the legitimacy necessary to work with the Congolese people, the United States, and others to resolve Congo’s long-standing crisis.
[more]
See also https://africacenter.org/spotlight/drc-democratic-republic-congo-quest-democracy-test/ "The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Quest for Democracy Faces a New Test", By Paul Nantulya, September 29, 2023, and https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/28/washington-congo-drc-stolen-election-biden-democracy-diplomacy-state-department/ "Why Did Washington Let a Stolen Election Stand in the Congo?" by Stephen R. Weissman, April 28, 2021.
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A Personal Note
I have never set foot in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (the closest I have been is Kitwe in Zambia). But I have long been aware of the country and its ties to the United States. My father's elder sister and her husband were Presbyterian medical missionaries in the Kasai from the 1930s to the early 1960s. Growing up in the Mississippi Delta in the 1950s, and in high school and college in Arizona after that, I was already aware of the connections between the civil rights movement and African independence struggles. As a junior year abroad student at the University of Ibadan I joined with fellow students in a demonstration commemorating the first anniversary in January 1962 of the assassination of Patrice Lumumba the previous year.
Over many years, I have been privileged to learn from friends and colleagues more knowledgeable than I about the Congo. And in my own time spent in Tanzania, Mozambique, and Angola, the powerful and largely negative impact of events in the Congo on U.S. policy and on Congo´s neighbors was highly visible.
A Glimpse of History
During the transatlantic slave trade, current estimates from genetic records and a database of recorded slave ship voyages indicate that some 5.9 million of the 12.5 million enslaved people forcibly taken from Africa to the Americas came from the region now within the borders of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola.
When European powers met in Berlin in 1884-1885 to set the rules for the partition of Africa, the United States was a full participant. Although seeking open-door access for commercial interests instead of territory, the U.S. government played a central role in allocating the territory of the Congo Free State to King Leopold of Belgium as his private possession.
Second only to Algeria in area within Africa, the country now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has been a major focus for U.S. foreign policy in Africa for more than a century. Through multiple changes of names and rulers, the DRC has been deeply shaped by U.S. political and economic power. People to people influences have flowed both ways over centuries, although most enslaved people from the Congo Basin did not go to North America, but rather the Caribbean or South America.
King Leopold, Patrice Lumumba, and Mobutu Sese Seko were all familiar names to U.S. policymakers and newspaper readers in their times. And Joseph Conrad´s Heart of Darkness imprinted indelible stereotypes in American public opinion. See this selected reading list here for more background.
Among these, the following are of particular interest.
Mark Twain, who himself grew up on the Mississippi River and featured it in the adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, also wrote a scathing imaginary soliloquy by King Leopold defending his rule in the Congo. More recently, the history of King Leopold has been eloquently recounted by Adam Hochschild in his book King Leopold's Ghost. And William Sheppard, an African American missionary affiliated with the white Presbyterian Church in the U.S. southern states, was one of those whose protests made King Leopold's atrocities in the Congo an international scandal.
There are many books about Patrice Lumumba and the U.S. role in murdering him. But the latest, being released today, is The Lumumba Plot: The Inside Story of a CIA Assassination. Advance reviews from experts I trust indicate that it is likely to be the best.
Recent books on current conflicts in the DRC include Jason Stearn´s The War that Doesn't Say Its Name and Siddharth Kars´s Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives.
For additional shorter notes, not sent out by email, but available on the web, visit https://africafocus.substack.com/notes.