If being born in Africa is unlucky, how about being born in the DRC?

By PETER WANYOYI

Where one is born is a bit of a lottery, an accident of genetics, time and place. But it is generally true that to be born in Africa is, on average, to draw a very bad hand. Africa has the shortest life expectancy in the world, the highest number of running conflicts of any continent, the most backward social systems, the worst infrastructure and the most chaotic administrations anywhere on earth.

But if being born in Africa is to be unlucky, then being born in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is to be cursed by the gods themselves.

Genocide

The vast country has never quite known peace. Even before the Belgians annexed it and made it playground for their King — Leopold II, Arab and European slave master used Congo as a source of most of their slaves. They raided the territory with impunity, and many of the peoples of African descent — now in South America — can trace their roots to what is now DRC and Angola.

But that was nothing compared to what then befell the country; Leopold II tricked his way into making Congo his personal property. What followed was genocide and, effectively, a concentration camp covering the whole country. Leopold enslaved the population and extorted free labour from them, on pain of amputation. Anyone who refused to slave in Leopold’s rubber plantations — at no pay — had their hands amputated, and if they had already been amputated, they were summarily executed. Beatings by colonial administrators were so severe and common that they became a common cause of death for locals. By the time the madness stopped when Leopold died in 1909, more than ten million Congolese had died under Leopold’s administration.

Chaotic

Congo emerged from the trauma of its Belgian misrule, only to rush headlong into independence and more chaos. America’s CIA, unwilling to see the Congo’s vast resources benefit the country, set about assassinating any progressive leaders like Patrice Lumumba. CIA agents shot Lumumba, Congo’s progressive prime minister, — who later on admitted — and his body cut up and dissolved in vats of acid. Mobutu Sese Seko was then imposed on the Congolese people, and was propped up by successive American and other Western regimes until he was toppled by the Rwandese in 1997.

The DRC has muddled on after Mobutu, whose 32 years leadership saw the country get poorer and more chaotic than ever before. There are virtually no roads in the country, which is a bit of a challenge for a country bigger than all of Western Europe put together. Now, though, the war drums in the DRC are beating again. The UN, Tanzania, Rwanda, a rebel outfit called M23 and various other actors are all gathering for an almighty battle in the Eastern DRC.

Meanwhile, refugees — kicked off their land — continue to gather in squalid camps close to the Uganda and Rwanda borders. They must wonder, these unlucky souls, what they ever did to deserve to be born in as hopeless a place as the DRC.