Michael: In 1958, in the Belgian Congo, the Congolese people—all 13.5 million of them—collectively earned 58% of the national income. Kevin: Okay, that sounds… not great, but maybe not as bad as I’d expect for a colony. Michael: Here’s the catch. The other 42% of the income? That went to just 100,000 Europeans living there. Kevin: Whoa. Hold on. That's an insane ratio. That’s not a country; it's a private mining operation with a population attached. How is that even possible? Michael: That’s the perfect question, because the man who created that model literally treated the Congo as his personal company. And that brutal math is the starting point for the book we're diving into today: The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People’s History by Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja. Kevin: That name sounds familiar. Michael: It should. What makes this book so powerful is the author himself. He's not just a historian; he's a scholar-activist who was expelled from secondary school in 1960 for pro-independence activities. He was a delegate at the Sovereign National Conference that tried to chart a democratic future for the Congo in the 90s. He didn't just study this history; he lived it. Kevin: Wow, okay. So this isn't an outsider looking in. This is a report from the heart of the struggle. Michael: Exactly. And it all begins with a king who convinced the world to give him a country as a personal gift.

Michael: Let's talk about the architect of this system: King Leopold II of Belgium. In the late 19th century, he looked at the map of Africa, a place European powers were carving up, and he wanted a piece of the pie. But Belgium, the country, wasn't interested. So, he decided to get it for himself. Kevin: Wait, so this wasn't even a Belgian colony at first? It was one guy's personal property? Michael: Precisely. It was called the Congo Free State, which is one of history's most Orwellian names. He established it through a front organization with a noble-sounding name—the International African Association—supposedly for humanitarian work, fighting slavery and bringing civilization. Kevin: A classic PR move. Michael: The ultimate PR move. He hired the famous explorer Henry Morton Stanley to be his man on the ground. Stanley went up the Congo River, not with Bibles and medicine, but with contracts and dynamite. He earned the local name 'Bula Matari'—the Smasher of Rocks. He coerced local chiefs, who couldn't read or write, into signing away their land and sovereignty in exchange for trinkets and cloth. Kevin: That’s just heartbreaking. And how did the rest of the world—the US, Britain, France—let this happen? They just signed off on this? Michael: That's the genius and the horror of it. Leopold played them against each other. The book shows how the United States was the first major power to recognize his claim, creating a diplomatic domino effect. They thought it was better to have a small, supposedly neutral player in charge than one of their big rivals. Kevin: They had no idea what they were unleashing. Michael: Or they didn't care. Once Leopold had control, the humanitarian mission vanished. It became all about profit, specifically ivory and rubber. His private army, the Force Publique, would march into villages and take the women hostage, forcing the men to go into the rainforest to meet impossible rubber quotas. If they failed, their wives were killed. If they came back with too little rubber, their hands were chopped off. Kevin: My god. I’ve heard about this, but the details are just sickening. Michael: The book cites estimates that the population of the Congo may have been cut in half during Leopold's rule, a loss of perhaps 10 million people. This wasn't just colonialism; it was a system of mass enslavement and terror for one man's profit. And this is the crucial point: it established a blueprint. The state was not for the people; the state was an instrument of extraction for a ruler. The wealth flowed out, and the violence flowed down. Kevin: And you’re saying that blueprint didn't disappear when Leopold was finally forced to give up the Congo to the Belgian state? Michael: Not at all. The Belgian government took over, and while the most extreme brutalities were curbed, the fundamental structure remained. The Congo was a cash cow. And after independence in 1960, when a truly nationalist leader, Patrice Lumumba, came to power and tried to break that model, the West panicked. Kevin: This is where the Cold War comes in. Michael: Absolutely. Lumumba wanted genuine economic independence. He famously gave a speech on independence day, right in front of the Belgian king, and called out the racism, humiliation, and exploitation of colonial rule. He was immediately branded a radical, a communist threat. The CIA and Belgian intelligence conspired to remove him. Kevin: And they succeeded. Michael: They did, with the help of a Congolese army chief named Mobutu Sese Seko. Mobutu eventually took power and ruled for over 30 years. He was the West's guy—anti-communist, stable, and more than happy to continue the Leopoldian model of plunder, only this time the profits went to him, his cronies, and his Western corporate partners. The book has this incredible story about one of Mobutu's ministers in 1996, who, fearing he'd be fired, flew to Mobutu's palace with a briefcase containing one million US dollars in cash as a "gift" for the First Lady. Kevin: And did it work? Michael: He kept his job and got a promotion. That was the system. The state was a piggy bank, and Mobutu was the one holding the hammer. The cycle of exploitation, established by Leopold, was now fully in the hands of a domestic ruler, propped up by the same foreign powers that once decried Leopold's abuses.

Kevin: Okay, that's an incredibly bleak picture of exploitation. It's easy to see the Congolese people as just victims in this grand, tragic story. But the book's title is 'A People's History.' Where is their side of the story? Michael: That's the heart of the book. Nzongola-Ntalaja argues that alongside this history of plunder is an unbroken history of resistance. It didn't just start with the independence movement in the 1950s. It was always there, taking different forms. Kevin: Like what? Armed rebellions? Michael: Sometimes, yes. But often it was more subtle and, in some ways, more powerful. Take the Kimbanguist movement in the 1920s. Simon Kimbangu was a Baptist preacher who started a ministry that exploded in popularity. He preached a message of liberation and racial pride. He was performing miracles. Thousands of workers left their jobs on colonial plantations to follow him. Kevin: The authorities must have loved that. Michael: They were terrified. They saw it as a direct threat to their authority and their labor supply. They arrested Kimbangu, sentenced him to death—later commuted to life in prison, where he died 30 years later—and brutally suppressed his followers. But the movement went underground and became a powerful symbol of anti-colonial identity. It showed that resistance could be spiritual and cultural, not just political. Kevin: That’s fascinating. It’s a form of rebellion they couldn’t just shoot. What other forms did it take? Michael: Another key area the book explores is the educated class, the so-called 'évolués.' These were Congolese people who had been educated in mission schools, spoke French, and adopted European customs. The Belgians thought they could create a loyal middle class to act as a buffer. Kevin: A classic colonial strategy. Create a local elite that has a stake in the system. Michael: Right. And to formalize this, they created something called the 'social merit card' in the 1948 and later 'matriculation' status. To get one, you had to prove you were "civilized." An investigative commission would come to your house. Kevin: An inspection? What were they looking for? Michael: They would check if you had silverware and linen, if you ate at a table with your wife instead of on the floor, if you spoke French with your children. It was this incredibly invasive and humiliating process. Kevin: Wow. The 'social merit card' is wild. It's like a loyalty program for colonialism, but the only reward is being treated like a basic human being. I can see why that would radicalize people. Michael: It completely backfired. The évolués realized that no matter how "civilized" they became, they would never be treated as equals. They were still paid less than Europeans for the same work and faced constant discrimination. So this group, which was supposed to be the bedrock of colonial support, turned against it and provided the intellectual leadership for the independence movement, joining forces with the masses. Kevin: So when independence finally came in 1960, it must have felt like the ultimate victory for this long struggle. Michael: It did, for a moment. But this is where the book introduces its most powerful and tragic concept: the need for a "second independence." The people quickly realized that replacing white rulers with black rulers didn't change the fundamental system of exploitation. The new leaders, the ones who hadn't been assassinated like Lumumba, became what the book calls the "new whites." They drove the same cars, lived in the same mansions, and continued the plunder. Kevin: That's heartbreaking. It’s like winning your freedom only to realize you're still in chains, just held by a different person. Michael: Exactly. And this disillusionment fueled the next wave of popular resistance in the mid-1960s, a series of rebellions against the new neocolonial state. This is the "second independence" movement. The people were fighting not just for a flag and an anthem, but for genuine social and economic justice. It’s a struggle that, as the author argues, continues to this day.

Michael: So you have this legacy of exploitation and this powerful, ongoing history of resistance. But after Mobutu's 30-year dictatorship finally crumbled in the 1990s, what followed wasn't liberation. It was the complete unraveling of the state. Kevin: This is the period of the Congo Wars, right? I've heard them called "Africa's World War." It seems impossibly complex. Michael: It is, but the book breaks it down to a core dynamic: a war of partition and plunder. The fall of Mobutu created a massive power vacuum. And into that vacuum rushed his neighbors, particularly Rwanda and Uganda. Kevin: Hold on. Rwanda and Uganda were initially seen as the good guys in this, right? They helped the rebel leader Laurent Kabila overthrow the corrupt dictator Mobutu. Michael: That was the narrative in 1997, yes. They backed Kabila's march across the country. But the book argues their motives were far from pure. Once Mobutu was gone, they didn't leave. They stayed, and their relationship with their supposed puppet, Kabila, quickly soured. Kevin: Why? What happened? Michael: Kabila, for all his flaws, was a nationalist. He didn't want to be a puppet. When he tried to assert his authority and ordered the Rwandan and Ugandan troops to leave, they turned on him. In 1998, they backed a new set of rebel groups to overthrow their own guy. This is what sparked the Second Congo War. Kevin: So the liberators became the invaders. Michael: Precisely. And it descended into a horrifying free-for-all. The book details how the Congo became a battlefield for its neighbors' political and economic interests. There's a UN report cited that describes the systematic looting of the Congo's resources—diamonds, gold, timber, coltan, which is essential for our cell phones. Kevin: So they were fighting each other inside another country over its resources? Michael: Yes. The book describes the bloody clashes between the Ugandan and Rwandan armies in the city of Kisangani. They weren't fighting for ideology; they were fighting over who controlled the diamond mines. A Ugandan newspaper at the time had this incredible quote, saying that while the Ugandans made money, they "got crumbs as Rwanda took the lucrative deals." They were arguing over the spoils. Kevin: And the Congolese people are just caught in the middle of all this. Michael: Caught in the middle is an understatement. They were the primary victims. Millions died, not just from the violence, but from the hunger and disease that followed the collapse of society. And what about Laurent Kabila, the man at the center of this? The book is titled up to him. Was he just another dictator, or was it more complicated? Michael: The book portrays him as a tragic and deeply flawed figure. He was an old-school Lumumbist revolutionary who spent decades in the bush, but he was unprepared for power. He was authoritarian, paranoid, and failed to unite the country against the invaders. The International Crisis Group had this devastating quote about him, calling him "a ruler by default, and one who prefers sharing the country to sharing power." Kevin: So he missed the chance to be the leader that could finally bring about that "second independence." Michael: He completely missed it. He squandered the popular support he initially had. Instead of building a new state, he replicated the old patterns of cronyism and repression. And in 2001, he was assassinated by one of his own bodyguards, leaving the country in the hands of his young, inexperienced son, Joseph Kabila. The cycle just kept turning.

Michael: When you pull it all together, the book presents this devastating, repeating cycle. Foreign powers, starting with Leopold, create a model of pure resource extraction. A Western-backed dictator like Mobutu perfects it for personal gain. The people rise up in a powerful, decades-long struggle for real freedom. But when the dictator finally falls, the vacuum is filled by new predators, both foreign and domestic, who continue the plunder under the guise of liberation. Kevin: It’s a profound tragedy. The book makes it clear that the Congo's problem isn't a lack of wealth or a lack of resilience in its people. It's this persistent failure to break a cycle that is constantly being reinforced from both the outside and the inside. Michael: Exactly. The author's ultimate argument is that the crisis of the post-colonial state is the result of the breakdown of that original anti-colonial alliance. The leadership became disconnected from the masses, pursuing their own class interests instead of the people's aspirations for a better life. Kevin: It leaves you with such a tough question. If peaceful, democratic movements like the Sovereign National Conference are ignored by the international community, and armed struggle just leads to more chaos and plunder, where does a country like the Congo go from here? It really makes you rethink what 'liberation' even means. Michael: It's a question the Congolese people are still grappling with every single day. The book doesn't offer easy answers, but it insists that any hope for the future lies in understanding this painful history and recognizing the enduring power of the people's demand for justice. We'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Find us on our social channels and share what resonated with you from this incredible, difficult history. Kevin: This is Aibrary, signing off.