IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF MR. KURTZ ...
The British journalist Michela Wrong takes the title of this chillingly amusing cautionary tale from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, near the end of which the dying white station manager, Mr. Kurtz, cries out against "the horror, the horror." It is, as Wrong says, "one of the great misquotations of all time," commonly misinterpreted as a protest against black Africa's "supposed predisposition to violence." Wrong gets it right:</br></br>The British journalist Michela Wrong takes the title of this chillingly amusing cautionary tale from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, near the end of which the dying white station manager, Mr. Kurtz, cries out against "the horror, the horror." It is, as Wrong says, "one of the great misquotations of all time," commonly misinterpreted as a protest against black Africa's "supposed predisposition to violence." Wrong gets it right: "When Kurtz raves against 'the horror, the horror,' he is . . . registering in a final lucid moment just how far he has fallen from grace. The 'darkness' of the book's title refers to the monstrous passions at the core of the human soul, lying ready to emerge when man's better instincts are suspended. . . . Conrad was more preoccupied with rotten Western values, the white man's inhumanity to the black man, than, as is almost always assumed today, black savagery."</br></br>Wrong uses Conrad's theme in her study of the calamitous three- decade reign of Mobutu Sese Seko in Congo -- which Mobutu renamed Zaire -- to say that "no man is a caricature, no individual can alone bear responsibility for a nation's collapse." What happened in Zaire "had its roots in a history of extraordinary outside interference, as basic in motivation as it was elevated in rhetoric." She is wholly unsentimental about Mobutu, whom she calls "brutal, ruthless and greedy," a "neighborhood thug," but she also insists that "if Mobutu traced a Kurtz-like trajectory from high ideals to febrile corruption, he did not pursue that itinerary alone, or unaided."</br></br>The story of Congo between Mobutu's rise to power in 1965 and his involuntary departure 32 years later is at once simple and familiar, yet unimaginably complicated, ambiguous and mysterious. On the one hand, it is a tale of a charming, stylish, intelligent, manipulative man who rose from unlikely origins, gained control of his government by unscrupulous means and bled its treasury dry; it is a tale that has been told many times, in many settings and with many casts of characters, and it gets no prettier with each retelling. On the other hand, it is a hugely intricate tapestry in which past and present are woven together in patterns that sometimes prove impenetrable; a tale involving so many people, organizations and acronyms that sheer bewilderment is the only honest way to respond; and a tale upon which it is impossible, in most respects if not all, to pronounce final and confident moral judgment.</br></br>The legacy of Mobutu and his accomplices is stunning: "Congo's economy has shrunk to the level of 1958, while the population has tripled. Average life expectancy is fifty-two, 80 per cent of the population is employed in 'subsistence activities'; illiteracy is growing; AIDS is rife and such diseases as bubonic plague and sleeping sickness are enjoying a vibrant comeback. By the end of the century the government's annual operating budget for what is potentially one of Africa's richest states was dipping below the daily takings of the US superstore Wal-Mart." There are many reasons, but it all comes down to this: Mobutu stole Congo blind.