One reason why I support reparations
Currently there is a group of old Belgians at the guest house who are stuck in the 1950s. Their attitude, with varying and surprising levels of explicitness, is: Look what the Congolese did to this wonderful country we left them in 1960. I do my best to correct them, albeit a bit differently than how the students “corrected” the police (although I find the students’ methods very appealing at these moments). Their ideas are absurd in every way imaginable, but their attitude is widespread. And some Congolese (though by no means most) share this nostalgia, which I suspect is an attempt to imagine a time when life was easier than it is now. These ancient Belgians are here on these collaborative projects, which are configured as Belgian generosity, rather than reparations meant to begin to compensate for the murder and theft and underdevelopment and militarism that is the colonial legacy. These collaborative projects, which include some very positive initiatives, need to be reconceptualized as payment of an overdue debt, not as the continuation of some sort of colonial romance.
One of the refrains heard from many Belgians and some Congolese is that in 1959, the Belgians planned to remain in Congo for 30 more years (true) and things would have better if they had (false). (In his 1858 debates with Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln said slavery would continue in the US for 100 years.) As ridiculous as this seems, the idea underlying it is that the Belgian did some good and could have done more good if they were allowed to remain. Actually they did remain after independence and only further destabilized the country. Today, Congolese are desperate for an alternative and Belgians want to imagine their “good work.” What is the good that the Belgians did here? Well, people say, the Belgians paved the roads and now look at them.
What is missing from this interpretation? Kinshasa was an apartheid city. Downtown and European residential neighborhoods were constructed with paved roads and no attention was paid to the majority of the city where Congolese workers lived (and still live). There was no public transportation system developed because it didn’t matter where and how the Congolese lived (as long as they didn’t live too close to the whites--and there were walls and gates and parks and laws and police and soldiers with guns to prevent that from happening). When the discourse suggests that underdevelopment is a result of something other than colonialism, important aspects of Congolese history are concealed. How did colonialism create unsustainable migration patterns? What are the limitations in developing an efficient system of public transportation in an unplanned city where anarchic residential patterns were promoted for more than a century? I am not defending Mobutu’s mismanagement, only arguing that he did little more than maintain a Belgian colonial infrastructure. And under any circumstances, this colonial infrastructure will be extremely difficult to eliminate--at best long, arduous, and painful--regardless of anything the postcolonial governments could have done.
I was with a friend in an area that is considered run-down by Kinshasa standards. The person I was with--Congolese--remarked how nice this area used to be during the Belgian era. I looked at him and reminded him that he was born in 1957 and was three years old at independence and has no reliable recollection of the Belgian era. But this is what he has been told and this is what he believes and this is how memory works.
Reparations would force Belgians and enable Congolese to acknowledge and explain how colonialism is fundamentally responsible for most of the suffering here. The Belgian government, to its credit, has implemented some reparations measures in acknowledgement of its role in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first democratic Prime Minister of Congo. As a policy, reparations would foreground colonialism’s damage and expose the appealing lies of its mythic successes. People could understand a version of development that looks different from colonialism. (They could and should also read Walter Rodney.) This dramatic paradigm shift would enable people to imagine a radically different and truly independent future that does not rely on Belgian generosity or any other colonial romance.
One of the refrains heard from many Belgians and some Congolese is that in 1959, the Belgians planned to remain in Congo for 30 more years (true) and things would have better if they had (false). (In his 1858 debates with Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln said slavery would continue in the US for 100 years.) As ridiculous as this seems, the idea underlying it is that the Belgian did some good and could have done more good if they were allowed to remain. Actually they did remain after independence and only further destabilized the country. Today, Congolese are desperate for an alternative and Belgians want to imagine their “good work.” What is the good that the Belgians did here? Well, people say, the Belgians paved the roads and now look at them.
What is missing from this interpretation? Kinshasa was an apartheid city. Downtown and European residential neighborhoods were constructed with paved roads and no attention was paid to the majority of the city where Congolese workers lived (and still live). There was no public transportation system developed because it didn’t matter where and how the Congolese lived (as long as they didn’t live too close to the whites--and there were walls and gates and parks and laws and police and soldiers with guns to prevent that from happening). When the discourse suggests that underdevelopment is a result of something other than colonialism, important aspects of Congolese history are concealed. How did colonialism create unsustainable migration patterns? What are the limitations in developing an efficient system of public transportation in an unplanned city where anarchic residential patterns were promoted for more than a century? I am not defending Mobutu’s mismanagement, only arguing that he did little more than maintain a Belgian colonial infrastructure. And under any circumstances, this colonial infrastructure will be extremely difficult to eliminate--at best long, arduous, and painful--regardless of anything the postcolonial governments could have done.
I was with a friend in an area that is considered run-down by Kinshasa standards. The person I was with--Congolese--remarked how nice this area used to be during the Belgian era. I looked at him and reminded him that he was born in 1957 and was three years old at independence and has no reliable recollection of the Belgian era. But this is what he has been told and this is what he believes and this is how memory works.
Reparations would force Belgians and enable Congolese to acknowledge and explain how colonialism is fundamentally responsible for most of the suffering here. The Belgian government, to its credit, has implemented some reparations measures in acknowledgement of its role in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first democratic Prime Minister of Congo. As a policy, reparations would foreground colonialism’s damage and expose the appealing lies of its mythic successes. People could understand a version of development that looks different from colonialism. (They could and should also read Walter Rodney.) This dramatic paradigm shift would enable people to imagine a radically different and truly independent future that does not rely on Belgian generosity or any other colonial romance.
posted by irad at 11:15 AM
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