Customer Reviews

In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu's Congo

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I sepnt too much of my life living in Kinshasa. Don't make the mistake I made -- read this book instead. Ms. Wrong has written a book that captures the Congo Conundrum: serious chapters about the IMF/ World Bank/ Western "policy" toward Congo and Africa are interspersed with zany episodes of life in a country that is no country. I've read the book twice, all my friends with Congo experience who've read it love it. Well done.

Much like some of Robert Kaplan's best writings about sweaty, Third World climes, this work provides a street urchin's eye view of Kinshasa during the Mobutu years. Included here are memorable portraits of cripples running cross-river smuggling rackets, bizarre black-Jesus cults, and over-the-top pink champange swilling elites who robbed the country blind in their never-ending efforts to acquire tacky Euro-fashions and German luxury cars. Also present in this book are numerous laugh-out-loud postcards from the edge that was Zaire -- for instance, the 500,000Z hyperinflated note locals referred to as the "prostate" in honor of their leader's cancerous organ.

Through it all, however, shines a nuanced portrait of "President" Mobutu. A thief, certainly. A thug, yup. A man who bears some responsibility for turning a potentially wealthy country into a cesspool, sure. But the Mobutu that emerges here is also a talented politician who brought a measure of order to Congo's post-colonial chaos. Once on top, however, he had to loot the national treasury in order to pay off rapacious underlings who would settle for nothing less than chartered Concordes and Mirage fighters. As she relates how Mobutu's obscenely opulant Versailles-in-the-jungle is rapidly being reabsorbed by the forest, one truly grasps the meaning of Ozymandius.

All in all, one hell of a lesson in the perils of being a strongman.

Michela Wrong's In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz is the perfect companion piece for the amazing and horrifying King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild (itself a historical look at the setting of Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness). Wrong takes the story into the present by covering the recent years in the Congo after the Belgians abruptly leave their colony, after providing a brief, succint look at its colonial background, to show the rise and fall of Mobutu Sese Seko, taking down the rich natural resources and the economy of his country with him through his time in government. The author is very effective at showing the Congo as a piece on the Cold War checkerboard using this position to gain support from the United States and money from the IMF and the World Bank allowing a corrupt system to remain in place and the corruption to grow to enormous scale. The complete absurdity of this situation is made quite clear in the journalistic approach the author takes to this book. The end of the Cold War ended this system and helped bring down Mobutu, too late to help his country. The author is quite good at placing the blame and the Western nations come in for their fair share as colonialism left the Congo only to be replaced by a Western backed form of economic imperialism. A horrifying and often sadly humourous read that opens one's eyes to the situation in Africa.

A small library of books has been written about the political grotesqueries of post-colonial Africa. "In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz" is a worthy addition to the genre: it tells the story of Joseph Mobutu, an obscure soldier who became President of the Congo (later Zaire) and wrecked the country over the course of his 30+ years in office. One of history's great kleptocrats, Mobutu nationalized the mining industry and systematically looted the economy in order to buy homes in France, build palaces in the jungle, and grease his patronage machine. He chartered Concorde jets to fly his family on European vacations while Congo's economy whithered and collapsed.

Written by a British journalist, the book conforms to the conventions of the "Screwed Up African Nation" genre: it quotes Conrad, tells colorful stories about venal politicians, offers self-flattering journalistic details (the author was on assignment in Kinshasa when the regime fell), and salutes plucky, long-suffering, ordinary Congolese making their way in a ruined economic environment. To the extent that the book rises above the genre, it is by placing the anecdotes and vignettes in political and economic context. It explains, for example, how Mobutu's despostism was enabled by patrons like the IMF and the CIA. It also spreads the blame around by tracing the continuities between Mobutu's larcenies and Belgium's barbaric colonial policies.

Unfortunately, the book is not scholarly: the bibliography is scanty, there are no footnotes, and the chronology is jumbled and riddled with gaps. Certain sections are clearly recycled journalism, going on at unnecessary length about minor figures who happened to be interviewed by the author during the course of her newspaper duties. But overall, the book can be recommended to anyone interested in the story of how one great African nation was undone by the greed of its rulers and the connivance of the international system.

Anyone who wants to understand the Congo should read two books, Michela Wrong's In The Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz and King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild. I also heartily recommend both books to anyone studying Conrad's Heart of Darkness, which is too seldom seen as an historic account as well as a literary novel. Wrong and Hochschild explain why the last 100 years of bloody tyranny in possibly the most mineral-rich country on earth has laid the groundwork for 100 more.

Hochschild gives us the first half of the century, when King Leopold II of Belgium, a man whose inferiority complex knows no bottom and whose greed no limits, jumps into the feeding frenzy for colonies and comes up gripping the very heart of Africa, the vast area around the Congo River and it's tributaries that would later become the Belgian Congo, then Zaire, and today is the Democratic Republic of Congo. This is also the setting for my novel, Heart of Diamonds: A Novel of Scandal, Love and Death in the Congo. Wrong covers this era also, but in less depth, helpfully referring readers to Hochschild for the full story.

Where she picks up steam, though, is with Joseph Desire Mobutu, better known as Mobutu Sese Seko, who became the archetype African strongman dictator. She paints a remarkably nuanced portrait of the man, exposing not just his brutality but his cunning; his charm as well as his lust for power. Wrong witnessed Mobutu's last days and tells us how he ultimately lost control of the nation he ruled for over thirty years.

Mobutu didn't rise to office on his good looks and winning personality--he was essentially put there by the CIA. He also didn't retain power simply because he was good at exercising it; France, Belgium, and the United States, not to mention the World Bank, kept him there with military support and an endless stream of dollars. The tale of how he played the First World like a violin is fascinating. Mobutu's nationalization of foreign-owned assets and his machinations with the White House sparked several plot elements in Heart of Diamonds: A Novel of Scandal, Love and Death in the Congo.

Wrong gives us a highly readable account of Mobutu's demise. "The Leopard" as he was known, had grown increasingly distracted and detached from his power base. In the last years, he spent most of his time in the Xanadu he constructed in Gbadolite in the middle of the equatorial forest, leaving the country's affairs to a network of cronies and relatives who plundered the nation in his name. The Rwandan genocide of 1994 set the stage for his downfall. Mobutu sided with the Hutus, and when he ordered the Tutsi refugees who had fled into Zaire to leave under pain of death in 1996, Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi joined forces to drive him from office.

Wrong also explains how Laurent Kabila picked up where Mobutu left off as ruler and manipulating despot. Unfortuantely for the reader, her account was published before Kabila's own assassination in 2001.

Paired with Adam Hochschild's well-researched history, King Leopold's Ghost, Michela Wrong's book gives the reader a better understanding of this deeply troubled nation.

Wrong provides an excellent series of anecdotes about Zaire/Congo during Mobutu Sese Seko's rule. Her book reads like a cocktail party conversation, fascinating stories that are great to listen to but don't have a whole lot of depth behind them or statistics to back them up. Even Wrong's discussion of her attempts to find statistics end up as anecodotes about her experiences with the Congolese government, the World Bank, the IMF, and many government agencies.

Overall, though, this book is a fascinating first-person account of Mobutu's rule. Highly entertaining!

This is an incredible book. Thoroughly researched, vividly described, and hard to put down with full of great narratives, Michela Wrong carefully documents Zaire's descent into apocalypse under Mobuto's rule.

With the exception of a coup here and, oh half a million people being murdered there, Africa is often swept under the carpet by the media. That's a shame, since post-Colonial Africa presents some of the bizarre, unbelievable and heartbreaking stories anywhere on the planet. Zaire/Congo is a microcosm of the African tragedy, and Wrong captures every aspect of it so well. After retelling some of the stories from this book, such as the waterfront Mafia run by handicapped people, hospitals not letting patients leave because of non-payment, and most bizarre of all, a nuclear reactor outside of Kinshasa, my friends looked at me in disbelief.

But it's all true, here in this book. Michela Wrong paints a portrait of a nation that was once the pride of Africa, but now exists in the twilight zone of Third World geopolitics. "Kurtz" is capped off by an exhaustive analysis of dictator Mobutu's 30-year reign over Zaire, the man's personality, and a conclusion about the billions of dollars he allegedly stole from the country that might surprise you.

Gripes with the book are few. The author brushes over one of the most bizarre and famous events to take place in Zaire, the Ali-Foreman "Rumble in the Jungle" where Mobutu attempted to showcase Zaire as the next black African superpower. Then again this event has been documented ad nauseum by George Plimpton and in the documentary "When We Were Kings." She also seems to neglect to get into the more brutal aspects of Mobutu's rule, only briefly touching on an interview with the former head of Zaire's secret police, rather focusing on the corrupt nature thereof.

Minor complaints though. This is a great book, and I would even recommend it to those not interested in the subject. "Footsteps" is a great how-to manual on how NOT to conduct nation building.

The title seems to me all wrong, but that's about the only complaint I have about this informative, fascinating peek into the last forty or so years of Congo's history. Mobutu was no Kurtz, even if he might have been something worse, and the few parallels drawn do not advance the themes of the book itself.

This is a minor complaint, since the book itself is remarkably engaging. By combining a first person perspective on many of the events surrounding Mobutu's last days in office with interviews of the significant players in the Mobutu regime, Wrong is able to paint a broad canvass of those factors that led both to the creation of Mobutu the president and the myths and realities that surround him. It's a fascinating job, and an enlightening one. I, for one, am less enamored of being a dictator than I once was, and certainly more appreciative of those factors, both within a country and without that contribute to their existence.

I think however the true glory of this book comes not from the sweeping sociopolitical account of Mobutu's years in powers, but rather from the delicate handling of the details which define life under a totalitarian third world regime. Wrong has a wonderful eye for these things, both within her own experience but also how they manifest themselves in the lives of the downtrodden and impoverished. As the book moves into its final third Wrong's attention to these details fades under the pressure for a resolution that, at least for the people of Congo, never comes.

This book is neither fish nor fowl, and that's one of the things I liked best about it.

You do, as another reviewer said, get a "street-urchin's view" of Zaire, but you also get a brief examination of the country's colonial history, talks with retired spies, and a look at Mobotu's lifestyle, ideology and financial manipulations. Wrong also examines what Belgium does (and does not) remember about their sole colonial adventure and places the ideological struggles in Zaire in the context of Cold War geopolitics. We also get a keen portrait of the class that made their fortunes as a result of Mobutu's kleptocracy, the wonderfully named "Big Vegetables," who even as I write this live in fabulous luxury (albeit in exile).

"In the Footsteps" is what you would expect if you met a very bright friend who had spent many years in Zaire and said "tell me everything you can about what it's like!" Nicely written too. A first-rate effort.

Throughout history, Africa has claimed the moniker of the Dark Continent, originally due to its mysteriousness, wildness, and danger. However, there is a new darkness that has overtaken modern Africa, a darkness that plagues the content. This darkness is composed of governmental corruption, violent coups, genocide, ethnic cleansing, guerilla warfare and other forms of exploitation and violence.

One of the most blatant examples of this impinging darkness was the rule Zaire's President Mobutu. His insatiable thirst for cruelty brought Zaire, a nation with massive potential for wealth and prosperity, to its knees and subsequently destroyed the will of his own proud people.

Michaela Wrong follows the rise of Mobutu, the once obscure military aide, and chronicles his nearly instinctual political maneuvers which finally consolidated his grip on the throat of Zaire. Wrong also illustrates the effects of Mobutu's "kleptocracy" which essentially bled the nation and its people dry of any wealth, and economic potential.

Apart from bankrupting a nation, perhaps the saddest result of Mobutu's reign was destruction of a nation's will. The people of Zaire not only grew disillusioned with Mobutu's leadership, but became disillusioned with the hope of betterment. In the minds of many of those living in Zaire under Mobutu, the thought of struggling everyday to eek out a living seemed pointless. At the end of that day, the Mobutu government would come and reap all that was so painfully sown.

The title of book is In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz, named after the power hungry character in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Wrong does draw vague parallels between the two. Still, the parallels do lend an interesting twist to the work. Both Mobutu and Kurtz were corrupted by power and the vast wealth hidden in the darkest Africa, and once they tasted those sweet riches, their appetites became insatiable and cost Africa dearly.