A story of grim comedy amid the apocalypse and a celebration of the sheer indestructibility of the human spirit in a nation run riot: Michela Wrong’s vision of Congo/Zaire during the Mobutu years is incisive, ironic and revelatory.Mr Kurtz, the colonial white master, brought evil to the remote upper reaches of the Congo River. A century after Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’ was first published, Michela Wrong revisits the Congo during the turbulent era of Mobutu Sese Seko.From the heart of Africa comes grotesque confusion: pink-lipsticked rebel soldiers mingle with track-suited secret policemen in hotels where fin de siecle dinner parties are ploughing through vintage wines rather than leave them to the new regime. Congo, the African country richest in natural resources, has institutionalised kleptomania. Everyone is on the take. Someone has even swiped one of the uranium rods from the country’s only nuclear reactor.Having presided over unprecedented looting of the country’s wealth, Mobutu, like Kurtz, retreated deep within the jungle to his palace of marble floors and gold taps. A hundred years on and nothing has changed.
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Michela Wrong. In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in the Congo
DEDICATION
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE. You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave
CHAPTER TWO. Plaything for a king
CHAPTER THREE. Birth of the Leopard
CHAPTER FOUR. Dizzy worms
CHAPTER FIVE. Living above the shop
CHAPTER SIX. A nation on Low Batt
CHAPTER SEVEN. Never naked
CHAPTER EIGHT. The importance of being elegant
CHAPTER NINE. I get by with a little help from my friends
CHAPTER TEN. A folly in the jungle
CHAPTER ELEVEN. The night the pink champagne went flat
CHAPTER TWELVE. The Inseparable Four
CHAPTER THIRTEEN. Nappies on the floor
CHAPTER FOURTEEN. Ill-gotten gains
EPILOGUE
BIBLIOGRAPHY
GLOSSARY
INDEX
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
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In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz
LIVING ON THE BRINK OF DISASTER
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‘What you have to realise is you’ll only get the chance to go for one item,’ a veteran correspondent told me with deadly seriousness. ‘There won’t be any time for faffing around. So it’s all about focus. Quick in, quick out.’ I dallied for a while over a pair of yellow lace knickers with matching bra. But in the end a tan leather jacket, worth at least $1,000, I reckoned, by Kinshasa prices, won my vote.
We were not the only ones getting light-headed with anxiety. A dinner hosted by a Zairean friend who worked at one of the ministries was a jolly, noisy meal until one of the guests called for silence. Looking around the gathering of lawyers, university professors and consultants, he raised a glass of pink champagne and reminded them that this was exactly the social class targeted for elimination after Liberia’s 1980 army coup. ‘Let us drink a toast to change, and pray we are all still here in a year’s time to celebrate,’ he said.
