Dear Joe,

The beginning of your piece was right on the mark (see Thank you so much, but I felt that, somehow, one needs to do better than fighting on all fronts. As you so eloquently put it, it boils down to how and who writes the equation. One needs to re-write the equation. The beginning of your piece actually does that. I do not know how to re-write it, except when I hear and read about reparation. The injustices committed in the process of building this triumphant capitalo-parliamentarist system are so huge that it defies our imagination. Be on all fronts is your response. It covers all bases, but in the process it gives up on redrawing the fronts as we should have learned from our collective histories.

Please do not misunderstand this comment. The discourse of authenticity re Mobutu is easy to dismiss and denounce, but what do we do when it is encouraged by the ones who trampled on our ancestors who, I can imagine, upon hearing of reparations might mutter under their eternal breath: "Really, now that the price is right and they have the heavy duty lawyers, are they trying to sell us a second time?"

I try to always remember what the slaves did in Haiti/St Domingue back between 1791 and 1804, without the help of human rights organizations or NGOs. There is still a possibility, as shown by the people of Haiti, of fidelity to that event. Fidelity to emancipatory politics. All fronts (read all armies of the day) were brought to the slaves and were defeated, but the same nations made sure that the emancipation did not bloom. Now we do have the proof that the system which has been built is relentlessly genocidal.

My concrete suggestion is to rally around the event of 1804 and make sure that Haiti becomes what the slaves really want it to be. Such fidelity goes beyond personalities, ideologies, left, right and center. Just one front. It is right there, begging us to join. Thank you for your piece and do take care. Thank you to the editors and workers of Pambazuka News.

Publishers: Mkuki Na Nyota Publishers, Dar es Salaam
DISTRIBUTORS: Africa Books Collective PRICE: £20.95 or $34.95

Jacques Depelchin's book, 'Silences in African History' was becoming the victim of a reviewer's silence. What you are going to read is but an initial reaction to reading this book of many parts, that reminded me of the lyrics 'coat of many colours that my mama sewed for me'. It is a very engaging book. Many readers may understand and sympathise with me, if I plead to having been very busy; leading to a pile up of must read books, journals and papers.

That's partly the reason why it took some time to get around to reviewing this book, but the main reason is that Jacques is a complex writer, who writes in the fast disappearing cross-disciplinary radical scholarship. This is from an era when intellectuals had the guts to call imperialism its real name, instead of the understated notion of 'globalisation' that is used these days.

Oppressors and exploiters were called their real names instead of the dubious notion of 'partners in development' that is foistered on us today. The book may be inaccessible to the faint hearted as it traverses history, philosophy, literature, social sciences, humanities, cultural studies, traditions, spirituality ,religion, economics, history of science and science of history, the historical method, the dialectical method. It is both about the methodology of history and the history of methodology.

In 10 chapters, written with economy of language but full of so much information that betrays the long period of gestation of the book, it is both a critique of received wisdom and contemporary practice not only about the history of Africa but the knowledge of and about Africa. While applauding the pioneering nationalist African historians of the postcolonial period for challenging colonialist constructs and exposing imperialism packaged as knowledge, Depelchin also confronts most scathingly the reversal of the nationalist gains in contemporary times, where the pro/reproduction of knowledge about Africa has again transferred back to the metropolis and predominantly non African scholars who call themselves Africanists. They are largely outside of Africa, in western and predominantly North American universities.

They are also cohabiting with an exponentially increasing number of African scholars from Africa. The contemporary African Diaspora of technicians of knowledge in these countries is beginning to dwarf that of any single African country, including Nigeria. For instance it will be interesting to compare the ratio of African professors per head within 100 kilometres of New York to those in a similar radius of Lagos, Pretoria, Nairobi or Dar Es Salaam. It is not just the big names of our intelligentsia that have emigrated, but several generations after them - and even now future generations are aspiring to jump ship.

Historical silences meet existential silences with the same outcome: transfer of power over our history to extra continental individuals and institutions. We have to wonder what will become of peoples whose cream of intelligentsia are removed from the social base of their knowledge production.

‘Silences’ is such a wonderful cocktail of gems around so many issues and concerns across so many disciplines that one is frustrated that Depelchin has written several books in one without completing any of them. It is the kind of book that a lazy student can struggle to read and get a general grasp of many issues and bamboozle his way around term essays.

But in the hands of an inquisitive and enthusiastic reader it is both humbling and inspiring. It makes one wonder how little one knows but also challenges one to want to read more. But the theme of ‘Silences’ runs through all the chapters and gives it a coherence that its vast spectrum could have denied it. It is about how what we know is shaped by the methodology we deploy, but this methodology itself is not neutral but shaped by class and ideological interests of those in control of our lives and societies.

Intellectuals fancy themselves as being 'objective', others even see themselves as being above society, but Depelchin demystifies these fantasies in the Cabralist sense of posing the class interests that inform scholarship and how intellectuals are themselves part of the struggles they are interpreting. As partisans they make choices that determine what they see and what they refuse to see. Sometimes what they did not write about is more important than what they have written.

This book deserves wider reading. It is part of the power dynamics of scholarship about Africa that to be read and be popular, African authors or authors on Africa have to be published outside Africa and mostly in Europe and the USA. The publishers of this book, Mkuki Na Nyota, based in Dar Es Salaam, once a centre for radical scholarship and emancipatorary politics of the nationalist-developmental state, are one of the more veteran core of African publishers determined against all odds to publish about Africa in Africa, creating a space for African intellectual, cultural and political ownership of Africa.

The Director, Walter Bugoya, comes from the nationalist and liberationist tradition that have refused to surrender. If we do not patronise our own institutions and entrepreneurs how do we expect them to develop and compete favourably with the rest of the world? Depelchin has chosen not to be silenced by writing this book and he has also refused to allow African publishing to be silenced by choosing to publish in Dar Es Salaam even though he could have taken the easier option of publishing from the US where he is now based. In life there are always alternatives.

The organic intellectual in Africa or of Africa has to make the choice. The choice is either to continue to perpetuate the silencing of Africa and Africans, by only researching and publishing what is acceptable to the powers that be in academia and the ruling establishments generally or making a choice in favour of liberation scholarship.

Depelchin lays it out starkly: the choice is yours, but there is a price for standing up to tell truth to power even among academics.

* Reviewed by Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem, General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

During August, two historical events are commemorated, both of which had a major impact on the destiny of millions of people and changed the face of the world forever. The first, remembered on August 6 and 9, is the horrific nuclear bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 that killed hundreds of thousands of people. The second, marked on August 23, reminds us of the abolition of the slave trade, a system that devastated African societies for hundreds of years. What is the nature of the system that allows for atrocities such as these and countless others? Jacques Depelchin goes to the heart of capitalism and finds a system gone mad.

Capitalism has been so genocidal that it is worthwhile to posit that it cannot do otherwise, despite attempts to humanize it. How it came about, how it has been portrayed (by friends and foes) over the centuries but especially now, reinforces the idea that it cannot be done away with. How and where it has slaughtered in massive and horrific ways should be understood as only the smallest manifestation of its genocidal nature - not just against one group of people, but against all human beings. Could it have been otherwise?

Those who are convinced that capitalism can be humanized shall argue yes. Unfortunately, the data are so skewed in their favor that to argue the opposite is as huge an obstacle as the challenge faced by the slaves who rose up against slavery in Haiti in 1791. If the above question is going to be discussed adequately, capitalism and its history must no longer be treated as if, by definition, it is immune from evil. The hypothesis is that the principles which have sustained it, propagate death. Capitalism kills everything it touches, especially when it claims to do otherwise. It has devised as many ways of killing as there are declared and undeclared worshippers.

Capitalism and how victims of genocides become killers

Self-appointed certifiers of evil can easily be blind to their own actions. For former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the death of half a million children in Iraq as a result of US imposed sanctions was considered "worth" the effort. Yet, why does it seem easier to accept the description of a Hutu machete-wielding genocider as beyond barbarism? It is as if certain epithets and words can only be linked to certain peoples. Yet, victims of genocides can easily become killers; more easily than can be imagined. In its history of always imposing its principles, rules and laws, capitalism shall eventually face the very practices it has attributed to its enemies.

As capitalism inaugurated itself, about 500 years ago, so it has continued to reproduce itself, modernizing its ways and refining how it sells itself. The current occupation of Iraq is a modernized, updated visual illustration of how Amerindians were stripped of their land and how Africans and Asians were yanked from their homes and land by what came to be known initially as The System - meaning slavery and all that grew out of it.

There is a tendency, even among the most critical voices (e.g. Howard Zinn's History of the United States), not to see the connections between what could be described as the inaugural homelessness of the Amerindians and the Africans, Hitler's lebensraum, today's homelessness in the richest countries of the Planet and the same phenomenon in the streets of Fallujah, Palestine and South Africa. At this rate, for how long will humanity be able to call Planet Earth home?

I do not claim to say anything new. Many have said it before, more eloquently, forcefully and inspiringly (e.g. Fredy Perlman, Against His-tory, Against Leviathan; Bertram Gross, Friendly Fascism). The tradition of resisting the system did not just start from 19th century Europe, as it included those who left no writings, but screamed and fought like hell against their kin predators. It has included the survivors of certified and uncertified holocausts. It must include the voices which continue to be silenced because their suffering did not register on the Richter Scale of genocidal certification, and remain stubbornly unacknowledged. Repetition, in different multiple ways, can be helpful in strengthening resistance to capitalism, in its terrorizing and/or user-friendly forms. For example, the well-known genocidal sequences of the twentieth century have been identified (and certified) in ways which, in one stroke, exempt and anonymize the real culprit from closer scrutiny.

Why ‘Never Again’ has always been applied selectively

And, if the famous ‘Never Again’ should really be stood by, it is necessary to look at capitalism with less benevolent, opportunistic eyes simply because the pillars of power today (military, economic, political, juridical, cultural and religious) have been molded by the manner in which capitalism emerged and sees itself as angelic, in triumphal colors. One of the measures (and by no means the only one) of how total the triumph has been, can be seen, most recently, in how the current US administration is forcing the nation-state signatories of environmental and international criminal laws to retreat from signed agreements, whether in Geneva, Kyoto or Rome. But then, this ignoring of international conventions and covenants is not new, as, for example, can be seen today by how the Convention Against Genocide (1948) has been ignored by the signatories.

Globalization as being portrayed today by the G8 has been sold in the same fashion over the last 500 years: through a combination of military conquests, territorial occupation, minimal social and humanitarian programs, corruption, severe and protracted punishment for those who, collectively or individually, do not submit (e.g. Haiti, Cuba, Grenada, Nicaragua, Lumumba, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu Jamal, to only mention a few).

By definition, capitalism carries within it an unrelenting need for total control not just of the market, but of everything, of life and death. There is no other morality or ethics but the triumph of the power principle "might is right". ‘Never Again’ cannot just apply to the WWII Holocaust, but must be linked to the genocidal sequences unleashed by capitalism, otherwise, ‘Never Again’ will never apply (or ever so selectively as has been the practice).

From slavery until today, the system has been regularly updated and modernized. In times of crisis, when its real nature is difficult to hide, capitalism takes on a reformist mantle as it did through the abolition of slavery, or in other transitional phases, such as from colonial rule, or from Apartheid in South Africa.

To those who argue that what we are seeing is no different from how previous empires have come and gone, one can only say that it is the first time in history that humans have mastered the capacity to instantly destroy all life on the Planet. From the end of World War II, or more precisely, since Hiroshima and Nagasaki, efforts have been made to control the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Those efforts have failed, are failing and shall continue to fail unless the deep, rarely acknowledged causes which led to WW I, WW II, WW III (The so-called Cold War) and WW IV (Worldwide Structural Adjustment Programs which have come full circle to the US via the attempt to do away with social security) and WW V (the current war, without end, against terror) are looked at without complacency. As of now it is possible to argue that nuclear power is to the physics world or to nature as capitalism is to economics: both are untamable.

The submission/integration to capital has now reached an unprecedented level: geographical, political, ideological, legal, cultural and religious. In an analysis of the crisis of political leadership in the DRC, Ernest Wamba dia Wamba (2005) pointed out that the state (as fashioned in Africa by capital, from colonial to post-colonial times) appears as genetically coded to be at the service of capital, regardless of geographical borders. Capital has no allegiance and can be truly described as "sans foi ni loi" (faithless and lawless), rewriting rules and laws as it spreads, facilitating its never ending expansion. All and everything is fodder to its insatiable appetite. Could it ever have been emancipatory as envisaged at one point? What can be answered with certainty is that, from how it has unfolded, humanity must extract some sort of emancipatory breathing space, while avoiding falling into the very same practices of seeking power by any means necessary.

What if evil had always been at the core of capitalism?

The process of definitively extricating ourselves from its shackles will require applying the following principles: resist its further spread through constant and systematic non-violence against all of its manifestations wherever and whenever they are seen and understood. Affirm the mortality of capital by upholding the immortality of the human.

‘Unrealistic’ will say some. When millions of human beings on earth are faced with living off less than 5 dollars a day, the only realistic position ought to strive to change it as urgently as possible; maybe under the form of ‘A Declaration Against Capital as Genocidal’ which could signal the beginning of a truth procedure toward rendering capitalism and its sustaining structures obsolete.

The genocidal nature of capital is hidden from view, in great part, because the rules for identifying a genocide are written in such a way that capital is safely disconnected from responsibility. In that process basic notions like justice lose their universal integrity because the system has become extremely adept at justifying and rationalizing the most unacceptable, the most unjustifiable crimes. The very history of the WW II Holocaust has preferred to focus on the personalization of the culprits while, at the same time, trying very hard to erase or downplay corporate responsibility. But even at the level of corporate responsibility, personalizing evil by actually naming corporations which benefited from the Holocaust is not very helpful from the perspective of determining with as much precision as possible what is responsible for the inability, reluctance and refusal to identify the most intractable source of evil.

It is obvious why capital, its history and all of the structures which have grown out of it should not be considered as the ultimate source of evil in today's world. Most people, even among those who suffer the most from capital's impact world wide, are willing to give capital the benefit of the doubt, if only on account of a list of "positive things" which are associated with capital. Yet, if given a real viable choice, most people would certainly prefer to be able to feed themselves without having to rely on charity.

The convergence and concentration, through and thanks to corporations, of military, economic, financial, political, scientific and religious power in the hands of very few individuals worldwide, is unprecedented. Sometimes it looks as if WW II never really ended, and that the fight for world supremacy was reconfigured for the benefit of the one capable of frightening the rest of the world into submission because its military arsenal had the demonstrated capacity to destroy life on Earth. This capacity is easy to understand when referring to the nuclear armament industry and militarism, but most advocates of peace on earth are not willing to confront the system which, according to them, sustains both the positive and the negative; because the unstated assumption is that capitalism, by definition, cannot be evil, cannot lead to evil behavior. Thus, such evil institutions as The Gulag cannot be associated with the US in any way, as Amnesty International found out upon publishing its latest annual report in which it compares the prison networks maintained by the US to the Soviet Gulag. Entertaining such comparisons, thoughts and hypotheses would undermine the basis upon which the triumphal histories of the so-called most advanced nations have been written.

Global capital vs. US capital to capital vs. all the peoples of the world?

Sometimes the proof that something no longer works takes several failures to be accepted, but what if capital has no way of recognizing failure? Capital can no longer impose itself through wars of conquests, even if some continue to think that owning the biggest military machine in history gives them the right to keep re-conquering the Planet, over and over.

Just recently (June 20-24), Beijing was flexing its muscles in a bid to buy one of the US oil companies, (UNOCAL). As if this was not enough of a sign of the changing times, Mr. Greenspan, Head of the US Federal Reserve Bank, has warned the Bush administration against trying punitive measures against Chinese imports because such a move would not help increase jobs in the US market. However, neither Greenspan's proposed remedy (among other things, specializing in "smart jobs" as once advocated by Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor under the first Clinton Administration) will not work because, across the board, from India to China, via Malaysia, Taiwan and South Korea, blue and white collar workers have become smarter and more productive than their US counterparts. Mr. Greenspan's thinking is typical of a believer in the global capitalist system, joining hands with the CEOs of IBM, Intel, financiers, bankers, etc. who look at the Chinese market as the ultimate promised land.

Is it bio-technology (life) or thanato-technology (death)?

The US ruling establishment has convinced itself and a great part of the world that its monopoly of weapons of mass destruction is the safest protection against evil, even though the 500 year build-up to this supremacy demonstrates the opposite. And the situation is getting worse. One of the most important indicators of how much more lethal capital has become, is the privatization of the US Army and the flow of profits to the corporations. This domination of the military industrial and prison complex is complimented by domination in the entertainment/sport/leisure industry (which includes the food industry, the film and advertising industries) whose combined function is to prevent the citizens from thinking, or better to have the illusion of thinking, under the sedation of the entertainment industry. Thinking outside the box is only meant for profit, for increasing consumption, not for solving social issues. Outside of the box is actually within an already prepared larger box. Empowerment within the pyramidal configuration of the existing power structure can not help but reproduce that structure when what is called for is its dissolution in favor of the sphere (as beautifully shown by Ayi Kwei Armah in his last novel KMT: In the House of Life, Per Ankh, 2002) where the emphasis is away from competition and confrontation and toward cooperation and harmony among people and with nature.

The emphasis on competition has been so severe that it has transformed, for example, the meaning of words like healing. As practiced today in the US, the health industry is not about healing, it is much more about how, as the popular phrase goes, to "make a killing" by looking for (and selling) the miracle cure or the miracle medical technical procedure. The market reigns supreme in the collective and individual minds. Its relentlessness so completely blinds those who should be served that it has acquired a life of its own as though nothing can be done to dampen or control its most destructive features. Simple, common sense understanding of the relationship between one's health and what is eaten and drunk as the best and most effective way of maintaining health is losing credibility, thanks to skilful advertising.

Primitive accumulation is no longer about separating the producers from their means of production, but about stripping human beings of their capacity to think. This divisive mechanism has been so refined, so internalized, that individuals are instinctively more concerned about the survival of the system which is killing them rather than about the survival of their bodies.

Which way forward?

A criminal running away from the crime ends up committing more and more horrendous crimes in order to cover up the previous ones, and so it has been and continues with capitalism. Since the crimes have never been acknowledged as such, runaway genocidal sequences continue and are getting worse despite ethics courses being taught in law, business and medical schools, and despite the proliferation of human rights organizations. When the G8 and their formal and informal acolytes vow to fight for Africa and make poverty history it sounded like previous pious vows about abolition. The source of poverty is greed. Capitalism thrives on greed, poverty, violence, warfare and injustice. Why not make capitalism history?

A system which has been genocidal cannot help but seek to reproduce itself through what it perceives as "having worked" even though the price is becoming less and less acceptable. Given the economic, financial and legal system, conviction will never happen and could only happen if people battle for another world on the basis of principles framed by a higher law, a law which is not framed by the dictates of capital, but by the principles of solidarity, cooperation, justice and peace with all peoples of the Planet.

Every year on August 6th and 9th, the Hibakusha (survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki), along with nuclear abolitionists and supporters try to remind the world, anxiously, that no one should ever suffer what they went through. Should it not be obvious that the triumphant managers of capitalism and their millions upon millions (generation after generation) of nameless victims are generic Hibakusha, before their time, of a system gone mad.

The anxiety in the voices of the Hibakusha from Hiroshima and Nagasaki comes from wondering what will happen when they die. But one is also encouraged by the inexhaustible fidelity to what is best in humanity, exemplified by Haitians from 1791 to 1804 and through to today (2005), by survivors of the WW II Holocaust battling for Palestinians, by anti-apartheid militants who have refused to cash in on their dues because, as they saw the seamless slide from South African to global apartheid, their conscience called on them to continue in the spirit of those who, in 1791, in Haiti, faced unimaginably worst odds.

* Jacques Depelchin is Executive Director of the Ota Benga Alliance for Peace in the DRC.

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Thank you for the piece by Gerald Caplan on solidarity in Genocide. That effort of transcending the differences in partial or total annihilation for the sake of an ideology is to be commended, but the effort falls short. The space is too brief to deal fairly with the reasons for this.

Uniquely unique

One should accept that all genocides are both unique and generic. But, the idea that, historically, morally or ethically, we shall one day devise a sort of Richter Scale for genocidal horror is beyond sadness because it would fall into the very system which was inaugurated with the wiping out of Indigenous people, Amerindians followed by ripping Africans away from their homes in ways which can be imagined as similar to current processes in various parts of the Planet.

Hitler's words quoted by Caplan illustrate something deeper. By then, as far as the System was concerned, who remembered the Native Americans, Africans and African Americans as people? The circumstances were different, but the objective was the same: wipe out any obstacle which dares to stand in the way. The difference between Hitler and Capitalism is that the latter does not have a name even though so many crimes have been perpetrated in its name.

It is easier to scapegoat Hitler than, say, institutions which pass today as standing up for humanity. If fidelity to humanity is going to create an unassailable foundation for Never Again, then it should not fear calling for something like Reconciliation with Truth. Such a process principled by a truth process based on an ethic of truth would be organized at a distance from States or institutions deriving their legitimacy from states. It would be rooted in the kind of preoccupation which is highlighted in Caplan's piece.

Thank you for your work. Congratulations especially for sharing the most recent pieces on Zimbabwe. They make us think, not just react ideologically. Congratulations to the writers and also to those who make Pambazuka News possible.

We must work harder still. We are slowly getting to the proper framework, one which encompasses all the rupture points from 1492. It is not only in Zimbabwe that people are trying to think and practice emancipatory politics. It has been done from as far back as 1492, not only in Africa, but in all the parts of the world which came under conquest in the name of THE system. When the slaves in Haiti said enough is enough, they kept at it from 1791 through 1804, without human rights organizations, with only their conviction that slavery was inhuman. What sustained them is that conviction: fidelity to humanity. Can one revive that connection? Why not? Why should all African peoples stand by and allow the next summit of the francophone take place in Port Au Prince in solidarity with the current regime in place.

Is it possible to stand up and say NO. Is it possible, today, to practice what the slaves did back then: fidelity to humanity. If Africa has been accepted, the cradle of humanity, then, it seems to me, one should do everything one can do to make sure that it does not become part and parcel of turning the Planet into a grave. How? It is a challenge for us all.

From the editorial to the comments on the Darfur piece earlier to the piece on the UN vote on ending the embargo in Cuba, to the essay on the squeeze on land by Robin Palmer, thank you.

All of the essays and comment point in the same direction and lead one to ask one question: why and how do we (i.e. those who side with those without land, work, health, clean air, etc.) manage not to unite?

The bi-centenary of Haiti is passing us by (1804-2004) as if it never happened. In contrast, remember how 1492-1992 and 1789-1989 were celebrated?

President Bush, almost at the same time American and French troops were kidnapping President Aristide, in a speech meant to defend "American Freedom" concluded "there can be no compromise between Freedom and Slavery".

Is it possible to say that our problem can be described as "failure (hesitation, resistance?) of fidelity to the freedom achieved by the slaves who overthrew slavery in Haiti?"

Could that failure be explained by our inability (reluctance, hesitation?) to maintain Atlantic (and Oriental) slavery and the wiping out of Native Americans as Crimes Against Humanity against the dissolving effect, on our collective conscience, of what these crimes gave birth to: capitalism as we know it today, in which everyone is free to torture, maim, kill in order to maintain what is described as the one and only triumphant socio-economic system of all times.

Following the success of the slaves in 1804, the enslavers-capitalists motto has remained the same and can be summarized as follows: "the discovered can never ever discover anything, and if they try, the most severe punishment shall be dispensed". No one has been able to document the terror suffered by those who were kidnapped and shipped across the Atlantic, no one can imagine the terror suffered by those whose land was robbed.

It is easy to see wars in various parts of the Planet as driven by the search to monopolize resources. Has it changed from the time when land and labour were the keys to opening up the Promised Land of capitalism?

Not many media referred to it, but Aristide's crucial faults (from the point of view of the US and the French governments) were not only putting an end to the Army, asking for the French to repay what the Haitian governments paid between 1825 and 1947, more than 20 billion Euros. More serious was the fact that Haiti was resorting to Cuban doctors and teachers to resolve its health and educational problems.

Cuba is seen as one of the trespassers of the above mentioned "No Trespass" sign, and has been punished ever since. (There are other many examples). I agree with Tajudeen that Africans should unite (not just the governments) with the Cubans and all those who, since and before 1804 said no to slavery in any form, degree or shape.

The crisis of landlessness is not recent. It is genetically tied to the early beginnings of capitalism which has multiple roots and not just medieval Europe.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is haltingly stumbling away from the eleventh war since its Independence in June 1960. The question, which is on the mind of all the Congolese people, is whether this peace - finalized in April 2003 - shall hold; whether, this time, the politicians who agreed to work together in the transition government of national unity will really work for the benefit of all the Congolese. Given the way in which the agreement was reached, there are good reasons to be doubtful. Government partners continue to be suspicious of each other. There are still signs that some people are pursuing the war by other means.

It is obvious that in order to understand the nature and depth of the Congolese crisis, it is necessary to deepen both the space and time parameters beyond the usual regional and continental limits. In addition to others, which will be made clear below, the principal reason for expanding the geographical and historical horizon is that globalization as practiced today looks, at the risk of distortion, very much like the modernization of Atlantic Slavery. This is also in response to Edouard Glissant's well known encouragement to "have a prophetic vision of the past" to which we could add "with an ancestral vision of the future". Only such an approach can really help us understand how and why, at so many turns of our collective history, we have not been able to take ourselves seriously and repair the effects and consequences of that Crime Against Humanity, as the UN Conference Against Racism, Discrimination and all forms of Intolerance (Durban, South Africa, August-September 2001) described Atlantic Slavery, the wiping out of Native Americans and other aboriginal populations.

From Atlantic and Oriental Slavery (as globalization was practiced then) to the current destruction observed in the DRC, in Africa, in the USA and many other places on the planet, we can learn more quickly from our specific histories if we approach them from a perspective which reveals the similarities: the search for resources be they slaves, rubber, diamonds, coltan, oil, timber, water or uranium shall always trigger conflicts. Conflicts and wars of conquest will erupt in order to access resources. The resulting violence will end with destruction. Conquering states, colonizing states, pre-colonial, colonial, post-colonial, have been the central tools for carrying out these looting processes.

The search and thirst for the Congo's resources is not a recent phenomenon. From the days of Atlantic Slavery, the Kongo Kingdom became one of the prized destinations of slave traders. As a result of the conflicts generated by the search for slaves, the area was devastated by what has been described by historians as Jagga invasions, military expeditions in search of slaves. Kimpa Vita, a heroin resister against the onslaught was burned (like Joan of Arc) for having denounced the Kings' participation in the slave trade (1703), and the help of the Catholic Church.

As a result of the last war (1998-2003), there has been a tendency to downplay previous conflicts, which erupted in the Congo around the question of resources, from rebellions during the Slave Trade era to colonial and post-colonial rebellions.

Looking at the pattern of the history of the Congo, from the time of Atlantic slavery, it is obvious that the wealth (resources) of the country has been intimately connected to conflicts regardless of the historical period (before colonial occupation, during colonial rule or after). The use of violence and military force in order to secure and control access to these resources was crucial. When the country became Independent in 1960, in the thick of the Cold War, the US sought to ensure that the Congo stayed on the side of the West. For this alone, the US and its allies, Belgium (former colonial power), France and the others did all they could to make sure that the Congolese would only follow their dictates. Lumumba, the first and only elected Prime Minister, was overthrown within weeks of assuming power (September 4, 1960).

In order to seriously re-think the reconstruction of the DRC, it is crucial to look at the history of the country through a lens which allows us to see beyond our own borders. If we look at the DRC's Independence in 1960: when Independence began to be discussed by academics like Van Bilsen in 1955, it was envisioned as a process which would take place over a 30 year period. The understanding most Belgians had of colonial rule was a benevolent, paternalist episode in which the Belgian King Leopold II had 'sacrificed' his fortune in order to bring civilization to the Heart of Africa. When Adam Hochschild's book, King Leopold's Ghost came out in 1998 in both English and French, the Belgian historical establishment and the average Belgian were shocked to learn that the truth was drastically different: what had happened could be described as a genocide. Accessing rubber at the end of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th led to massive loss of human life among the Congolese.

The achievement of Independence in 1960 and (insult to injury) Lumumba's speech at the Independence official ceremony, seeking to straighten the record, led to Lumumba and his acolytes being punished to such a degree that others were not encouraged. Not only was Lumumba killed, but his body and that of his companions had to be dissolved in acid. Later on, in Kisangani and in all the areas known to have been favourable to Lumumba, a witch-hunt was launched against all Lumumbists. Similarly, the successful armed struggles against Portuguese colonialism in Guinea Bissau, Mozambique and Angola, in 1975 (around the time of the US defeat in Vietnam) extracted a heavy price in the form of a relentless policy of terrorism and destabilization against the governments in place in those countries, by the apartheid regime, hand in hand with the US. Most countries in Africa, around 1960, the so-called year of Independence, found themselves in a predicament: how to consolidate a victory in a most hostile context, one dominated by a determination on the part of former colonial powers not to accept the former colonies as equal partners.

As pointed out in critiques of development as a failure, scaffolding was put in place to build colonial rule, development and, before, slavery. The end of slavery, and colonial rule meant the removal of the scaffolding, but the building stayed on and served the primary purpose of reinforcing subjugation of one group by another. From Slavery through colonial occupation and Apartheid, the historical end of these oppressive regimes did not mean the end of the system. In fact, quite the opposite happened as has been shown by UN statistics about the deepening of poverty for the poorest people of the planet.

Through these common histories of ours, we have learned that changes can be transformative, politics do not have to be monopolized by politicians or state institutions. Emancipatory politics require that we remain faithful to the subject which has been fighting for the very same objectives we are still fighting today: a world freed from conquering warfare, a world driven by the concern for building sustained peace between people.

* Jacques Depelchin is with the Ota Benga International Alliance for Peace in the Congo.
* This is a summary of a presentation at the Symposium, Futures of Southern Africa, Windhoek, Namibia, Sept 15-17, 2003.