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X-Posted from: H-NET List for African History and Culture <H-AFRICA@H-NET.MSU.EDU> From: "Jonathan T. Reynolds" <reynolds@MAIL.H-NET.MSU.EDU --------- REPLY 1 From: JESSICA ANNE KRUG University of Wisconsin-Madison <krug@wisc.edu> I was also puzzled by this piece, and found it to be condescending and disturbingly lacking in historical contextualization. I'm also curious as to why Victorian travel narrative language is still permissible. Why is it acceptable to refer to Congo's past as "dark" and Congo's musical culture as "vibrant?" And while I am certainly no great fan of the Kabila regime, why does the BBC feel entitled to direct such snide derision at Kabila's campaign promises, which seem no more hollow or absurd than those of all politicians everywhere? --------- REPLY 2 Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2006 12:12:35 -0000 From: "Jonathan T. Reynolds" <reynolds@MAIL.H-NET.MSU.EDU> From: Kalala Ngalamulume BrynMawr College <kngalamu@brynmawr.edu> The following NPR press report is more detailed than BBC: "July 30, 2006 … Congolese go to the polls to cast ballots for president in the first democratic election in more than 50 years. The U.N.-organized vote follows brutal Belgian colonial rule, dictatorship, rebellions and a 1996-2002 conflict that sucked in armies from six countries bent on grabbing a share of Congo's mineral wealth." --------- REPLY 3 Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2006 12:15:37 -0000 From: "Jonathan T. Reynolds" <reynolds@MAIL.H-NET.MSU.EDU> From: Stowell Kessler Independent Scholar <afrhisres@telkomsa.net> I really do not understand this message. Is this about semantics and political correctness. I am wishing to hear more of how this reporting is seem through "colonial lenses." This is not a rhetorical question. I really am anxious to hear a more detailed explanation. I confess that I am not well versed in the history of the period referred to. --------- REPLY 4 Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2006 12:17:52 -0000 From: "Jonathan T. Reynolds" <reynolds@MAIL.H-NET.MSU.EDU> From: Jean-Luc Vellut College Erasme Universite catholique de Louvain <jeanluc.vellut@skynet.be> Sara Dorman's message seems very opportune. She rightly points to a stereotype plaguing Western reporting of the Congo past and present. The country is all too often referred to as a place of violence, barbarity, etc. This exotic presentation is particularly frequent in the English-speaking world where the Congo is still associated with the 'Heart of Darkness'. --------- REPLY 5 Date: Tue, 1 Aug 2006 12:21:33 -0000 From: "Jonathan T. Reynolds" <reynolds@MAIL.H-NET.MSU.EDU> From: Tom Turner Dubuque, Iowa <tommyagain@yahoo.com> The BBC is doing a fairly bad job covering the Congo elections. But not worse than other major media outlets. Today's NY Times carries the headline: Congo Holds First Multiparty Election in 46 Years By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN KINSHASA, Congo, July 30 ’Äî Jules Mabuisi had waited a long time for this. At the age of 80, he has been ruled by Belgians, dictators and a cadre of warlords who carved up his country and then watched it rot. On Sunday, for the first time in decades, he was allowed to cast a meaningful vote. --- There were multi-party elections in DRC in 1965, probably freer and fairer than those of 2006. They were not presidential elections. The country had a parliamentary system, like Belgium, UK, Canada and many other countries. Later in 1965, Mobutu seized power for the second time and inaugurated a 30-plus period of dictatorship. "Conflict" seems an odd way of describing a period of dictatorship. The real problem is that the journalists -- from BBC, New York Times and many other outlets -- don't take the time to do even basic background research. --------- REPLY 6 Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2006 14:03:24 -0000 From: "Jonathan T. Reynolds" <reynolds@MAIL.H-NET.MSU.EDU> From: "Akurang-Parry, Kwabena" Shippensburg University <KAParr@ship.edu> Yes, Western journalists have condescending ways of constructing Africa hence their presentation of the Congo should not surprise us. Certainly, the framing of immemorial Africa in the earlier centuries was partly the work of Western explorers and Christian missionaries, but today, the perpetuation of images of darkness, sin, decay, deprivation, and violence must be credited to Western journalists and film moguls who hegemonize and quarry juicy slices of immemorial Africa for their equally salivating Western audience. How many of us have seen any African airport in the news or even buildings and sites comparable to those in the West? Of course this may be a metaphorical or rhetorical stretch. Anytime I show parts of Basil Davidson's series on Africa, especially the urban sprawls of Lagos, Abidjan, and Nairobi, to my students, most of them shift a little in their chairs. As far as I can remember, the only time that some American television stations showed well-architectured buildings in sub-Saharan Africa was when the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by terrorists. When President Clinton visited Ghana, the Western press chose not to show the beautifully crafted Independence Square where he gave his speech. Let me quickly add that some African media forms that depend on the international media also present Africa in negative ways: perhaps this is an issue of feeding from the bottle of hegemony and domination! Even in some fields of so-called serious scholarship where Africa-area studies have been groomed as cottage industries it is not uncommon to come across offensive sub/titles, obscurantist African historical actors, and jaundiced conclusions. --------- REPLY 7 Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2006 14:06:44 -0000 From: "Jonathan T. Reynolds" <reynolds@MAIL.H-NET.MSU.EDU> From: claire dehon Kansas State University <dehoncl@yahoo.com> Dear Colleagues, The comments of the BBC do not astonish me too much. After all, today's journalists cannot write without hyperboles. If 550 people die, it is an holocaust, if you are a conservative leader you are a Hitler. I exagereate just a little. The second point is that Congo always had this "Heart of darkness" image. Some of it comes from its landscape, the forest being an overwhelming environment. Some of it comes from the people. If we know a lot about them, there is still very much we do not know. Some of it comes from the years of Leopold's ruling (if you could call that ruling) between 1880 and 1908 when the Belgian government took over. Some of it comes from opponents of colonialism. To hear that Belgian rule was "brutal" from the BBC is rather "amusing" considering what the English did, just in Kenya for example during the Mau mau upraising. Naturally comparing one's brutality to another is an exercice in futility. My own prejudice here is that it seems that Congolese would like to have a life, and that these elections maybe a step in the right direction, and I wish them good luck. --------- REPLY 8 Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2006 14:08:04 -0000 From: "Jonathan T. Reynolds" <reynolds@MAIL.H-NET.MSU.EDU> Jesse Benjamin St Cloud State University Benjamin@stcloudstate.edu In addition to the colonial-imperial lens through which the BBC, NYTimes and other Western media view the Congo elections, if ever so briefly, I have been struck by the erasure of Lumumba and his assassination, one of the most pivotal episodes of the global wave of anti-colonial movements post-WWII. We hear that it is the first election in 46 years, but nothing about the last election or why there have been no election since, leaving those without their own historical knowledge [too many in the West], to conclusion such as this being the natural state of Congo or African countries in general. Particularly now, with such full disclosure of the US as well as the Belgian role in Lumumba's assassination, not to mention propping up Mobutu as a classic pro-Western/capitalist dictator, this omission is less excusable than ever. What the journalists are doing then, is perpetuating and participating in the Western cultures erasure and rewriting of world history and African history. This is inexcusable, particularly in the US, where tax dollars financed 40 years of immiseration for a population, while corporations and elites shared fabulous wealth. --------- REPLY 9 Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2006 01:51:05 -0000 From: "Jonathan T. Reynolds" <reynolds@MAIL.H-NET.MSU.EDU> From: Kalala Ngalamulume Bryn Mawr College <kngalamu@brynmawr.edu> Another good example of the negative image of DRC in the media is provided in the reports on the boxing match that opposed Ali to Foreman in 1974 that is referred to as "Rumble in the Jungle", as the following article, published in 'Counterpunch', shows. October 26, 2004 Ali, Foreman and the Congo Rumble in the Jungle at 30 By MICKEY Z. I won $4.00 betting on Muhammad Ali when he fought the pre-grill George Foreman for all the marbles in the wee hours of a 1974 Zaire morning. This was a time when most white kids would regularly root for Ali to lose...so I took advantage of such nonsense and put my money on The Greatest. Today, as we approach the 30th anniversary of what became known as the "Rumble in the Jungle," far more is known about the boxers (and a certain promoter named Don King who got his start in Zaire) than the venue. The Congo gained independence from Belgium in June 1960. Within three months, the CIA helped overthrow the African nation's first Prime Minister, the charismatic and legally elected socialist, Patrice Lumumba. "Lumumba attempted to steer a neutral course between the U.S. and the USSR-no easy task," says author Mark Zepezauer. Captured with CIA help in December 1960, Lumumba was "held prisoner for over a month, interrogated, tortured, then finally shot in the head," Zepezauer adds. "His body was dissolved in hydrochloric acid." Four years later, thanks to U.S. support, the murderous, corrupt, but most importantly, anti-communist, Mobutu Sese Seko assumed power and ruled with, what William Blum calls, "a level of corruption and cruelty that shocked even his CIA handlers." In the name of "authenticity," Mobutu renamed the country the Republic of ZaÔre, after a local word for "river," forced all his citizens to adopt African names, introduced a new currency, and renamed many cities. Ali bought into the faÁade of African-ness: "I wanted to establish a relationship between American blacks and Africans," he said. "All the time I was there, I'd travel to the jungles, places where there was no radio or television, and people would come up to me, and I could touch them." Ali apparently had no comment about touching those housed in the secret detention cells under the stadium where the fight took place or the criminals who were rounded up and shot before the foreign press arrived. Sure, Mobutu was a murderer...but he was "our" murderer. "The Mobutu era began with ardent U.S. support, financial and military," says journalist Ellen Ray. "From 1965 to 1991, Zaire received more than $1.5 billion in U.S. economic and military aid. In return, U.S. multinationals increased their share of the ownership of Zaire's fabulous mineral wealth. On the foreign policy front, Zaire was a bastion of anti-communism during the Cold War, in the center of a continent Washington saw as perilously close to Moscow's influence. As President Bush the Elder put it, Mobutu was "our best friend in Africa." In contrast, Norman Mailer (on hand to cover the bout) called him "the archetype of a closet sadist.'' Which brings us to October 30, 1974. "The Rumble in the Jungle was a fight that made the whole country more conscious," Ali wrote at the time. "The fight was about racial problems, Vietnam. All of that." Not quite, Muhammad. Thanks to an acquiescent media, the general public's knowledge of Zaire under Mobutu was limited to stories about African support for Ali and the rope-a-dope tactic the former champ employed to defeat Foreman. Many years later, when the dictator had outlived his usefulness to the U.S., "all of that" did come out. "Mobutu's corruption and brutality were ignored for thirty years," says Ray. "It was only when the plunder of western-owned assets and the ruination of the country were nearly complete, when Mobutu's stolen billions had become a world-wide embarrassment, that the U.S. began to seek an acceptable change." That's when the corporate media spin began to turn in the other direction and the public suddenly learned all about Mr. Mobutu in a hurry. "I may have lost that fight, but I learned a lot from it," sums up Big George today. Too bad the American public can't say the same. --------- REPLY 10 Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2006 01:53:11 -0000 From: "Jonathan T. Reynolds" <reynolds@MAIL.H-NET.MSU.EDU> From: Tony King <Tony.King@uwe.ac.uk> Bearing in mind the short length of its report for a non-specialist audience, Iím not sure that the BBC was as inaccurate as suggested. The DRC certainly does have a history of conflict since independence. In the early 1960s the abortive Katanga secession; in the late 60s/early 70s the FNLA bases during the Angolan struggle for independence. Since 1994, the current conflict that has not shown significant signs of ending and has claimed some 4 million lives, easily the most violent conflict since WWII (if we accept that Vietnam claimed fewer than 4m lives). Added to this are decades of dictatorship, kleptocracy and domestic repression which could be considered part of the wider Cold War since Mobutu was a US client, and which did not change as much as expected when he was forced out. I think that if the BBC had talked about a history of ëdictatorship and conflict' it would have been much more accurate, but the original report did not raise my hackles too much. This is off the top of my head; Iíd be happy for specialists to enlighten or correct me. Todayís BBC online report on the elections mentions 17,000 UN peacekeepers which gives an indication of the scale of the violence. By the way, much as I like Congolese music, I too roll my eyes when it is described as "vibrant". Tony King
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