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Another Lesson in History *The Kenya We Want* ...


Just concluded reading King Leopold’s Ghost, a book I had heard about for such a long time, but never actually got to read. Arguably one of Adam Hochschild’s best writing, the book is as close a depiction as will probably ever be written on King Leopold II of Belgium; his dislike for life in Belgium (a kingdom too small for his ambitions), a dislike for his role as a constitutional monarch, his obsession with the big and grandiose, and an even greater obsession with a piece of property he called his own but never set foot on – neither did he long to -   État indépendant du Congo (Congo Free state).

Hochschild commences his writing by introducing us to the main characters involved as protagonists and antagonists. A reader is introduced to the young Leopold – a largely neglected childhood that shaped who he later grew up to be – a self-obsessed mysophobic who had a liking for very young women. Other leading characters include Henry Morton Stanley (a famous and controversial explorer), E. D. Morel (a journalist and writer) who alongside Roger Casement (a secretly gay Irish man who was stripped off of his knighthood and hanged for treason – fighting for a “free Ireland” cause), carried out one of the biggest human rights advocacy campaigns of that time highlighting atrocities taking place in the Congo free state.

The greatly intriguing, easy to read book gives a narration of very weighty issues and a sad period that marked the scramble for Africa. The forced labour, the slavery, the indiscriminate killing and cutting off of arms of natives as depicted in the book all form part of Leopold’s legacy.

The book concludes by examining what was going on around the continent that may have escaped the then advocacy on the Congo. Books have certainly been written about violations in British, German, and other colonies, but here the writer questions why Morel and his ilk failed to highlight these issues then as part of their advocacy. The writer also mentions the deliberate Belgian policy to turn the lights off on this already dark period – although Brussels and other Belgium cities are awash with spoils from the Congo which the Belgian government has made no effort to return.

I grew up in a period that saw a mass influx of Congolese refugees into Kenya and from refugee camps into the city. I got to interact with a few kids who knew very little about the reason why they had to leave their homes, as well as others who knew probably too much for a child to fathom about what their country was (and still is) going through and the reason they had to take flight. Being exposed to this made me want to know more about the history of the Congo – a region STILL viewed as a richest in the world (in terms of natural resources) but unfortunately one of the most volatile due to the continuing clamor to control the countries and the large unexploited resources.

I read this and thing of Kenya’s own version of the British Gulag and a subsequent and deliberate policy by successive governments to hide this part of Kenya’s history. The history that has been taught in schools since independence contains a lot of lies and half truths about what actually happened during this period.
I hope for a time when the African schools’ curricula will contain information from books that have been written on these dark periods. I look forward to Kenyan history books that contain information up to and including the 2007-2008 post-election violence, and more importantly the underlying causes of this violence. If not, how do we distinguish ourselves from the likes of Leopold who took a week off to incinerate any paper trail on the Congo so that no successive generations would know exactly what he did there? (His own words: “They might want my Congo, but whatever I did there is my damn business!”)

The conduct of the media, politicians and the general public (as exhibited in blog posts and comments to pictures and articles) portray a silent consensus to forget what happened about 5 years ago. As we move towards elections on March 4th, the worst we can do for ourselves is to proverbially sweep this very important though recent history under a rag. Actions and utterances that border on or which overtly propagate animosity and raise emotions reflect this sweeping-under-the-rag process.

My take_

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