'The Horror, The Horror:' Congo/Zaire Quiz

Answer: Heart of Darkness

Korzeniowski became a literary giant, now known to the world as Joseph Conrad. In "Heart of Darkness", published in 1899, Conrad gave the world the infamous colonial agent Kurtz, a cultured product of the enlightenment who rapidly descends into depravity and savagery when freed from societal constraints in the African bush. Conrad's bleak take on humankind and its motives and endeavors, exemplified by Kurtz' haunting last words ("the horror, the horror"), was fully borne out on another, more northerly continent some 40 years later.

Answer: King Leopold II of THE BelgIANS

It is almost impossible to conceive of a nation of the Congo's size (and mineral wealth) as having been owned by one man, but owned by one man it was. The definitive account is Adam Hochschild's "King Leopold's Ghost--A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa", published in 1998. According to Hochschild, Leopold never even so much as set foot in the the vast tropical domain which was his personal property.

Answer: "Exterminate all the brutes."

Conrad, no literary piker, wrote that Kurtz' scrawled words were "luminous and terrifying like a flash of lightning in a serene sky." Conrad thus reduced the great bulk of the European colonial experience in Africa into a phrase which has become part of the modern moral vernacular. Swedish author Sven Lindqvist recently used it as a title for his book about the history of European genocide.

Answer: Yes, Léon Rom, head of the 'Force Publique'.

"Apocalypse Now" fans, take note: according to Hochschild, Rom had a fence around his office with a human skull on each post, as well as a number of rotting heads about the property. Conrad's descriptions of depravity, interpreted for many years as metaphorical, actually turn out to have been clinically reportorial.

Answer: Luba soldiers from the Kasai region, possibly in the presence of Belgian officers.

There is no doubt that the CIA wanted to get rid of Lumumba (the CIA station chief in Leopoldville was given the means to do so), but there is a good deal of evidence suggesting that they were beaten to the punch. Michela Wrong's excellent "In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz...", points to the Luba soldiers, but is equivocal about Belgian involvement; however a Belgian (Flemish) writer, one Ludo De Witte, has gone so far as to posit "direct responsibility" for the murder on the part of Belgian officers.

Answer: Joseph Mobutu

Mobutu, whose name has become virtually synonymous with kleptocracy, snuggled up to the West, and the US in particular (the extent, if any, of CIA involvement in the '65 coup is still debated)
and stole his own country blind. He fled the country in 1997 and died shortly thereafter in Morocco. At his death and for some time prior thereto, he was one of the world's richest men.

Answer: "It's a lie. It's a lie. I am only the fourth richest."

You can't make this stuff up. Mobutu, who was by then calling himself Mobutu Sese Seko Wa Zabanga, Marshal of Zaire, amassed an astonishing financial empire. Though evil in sub-Saharan Africa has often had a white face, Mobutu ransacked his huge and underdeveloped country no less rapaciously than King Leopold II had.

Answer: Dikembe Mutombo

A good guy who also happens to be one of the greatest defensive centers in the history of basketball. Mutombo came to Georgetown U. and John Thompson from Kinshasa, Zaire. He has not forgotten his people's moving plight.

Answer: Laurent Kabila

It is not entirely clear whether Kabila, a onetime protege of Che Guevara, enlisted Rwandan and Ugandan support for the coup, or whether the tail was in fact wagging the dog. He held the presidency for less than four years, and was assassinated by a bodyguard on 1/16/01.

Answer: All of these

A Congo governmental investigation pointed to Rwanda, Uganda and Congolese rebels as motive forces. Shortly after the assassination, 11 Lebanese nationals believed to have links to the bodyguard who killed Kabila were assassinated. As is seemingly inevitable with these things, at least one website accuses the US of covert involvement.