Rating: 
Summary: In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz
Review: A strong account of a man and his times which provides rare insight into the most successful of a generation of african despots. Learning about Mobutu and his circumstances fills a gap in our understanding of contemporary Africa. In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz did leave me a little bit unsatisfied. I was looking for either a more dramatic narrative to keep me engaged or else a more broad and structured presentation of facts. I would recommend this book to someone interested in the Congo and Africa.
Rating:
Summary: Written with rigor and sensitivity to the Congolese cause
Review: After visiting Kinshasa earlier this year, I gained a better appreciation for this book and how skillfully the author has revealed the multiple causality behind Congo's present predicament. This is not just a journalistic travelogue -- it is a carefully crafted poltical analysis which is written in an accessible style that may lead some cursory readers to be cynical about the author's journalistic credentials. However, I wish we had more journalists like Michela Wrong covering the world -- who are willing to spend extended peeriods of time in a difficult location rather than flying in and out on assignments. It is true that the book has an urban flavor and does not cover life in the villages that some readers may be yearning for -- but the aim of this book is not to romanticize a battered land but rather the reveal the creation of a despot and how he was enabled to ravage a truly enchanting part of the planet. The following quotation from one of her chapters sums up the treatise of the book and shows how brilliantly the author can express complex sentiments and concerns about the way in which ostinsible national stability was guarded at the expense of a economic and social decline:"Deprived of the chance to learn the lessons of its own history, Zaire's population was kept in a state of infantilism by a more insidious form of colonialism. Instead of the roller-coaster of war, destruction and eventual rebirth, the intervention of the U.S., France and Belgium, of the World Bank and the IMF, locked the society into one slow motion economic collapse. Balked of expression, unable to advance, mindsets froze over somewhere in the 1960s, leaving the country's leadership at the turn of the century stuck in an ideolgical time warp." (p. 215).
Rating: 
Summary: Disorienting
Review: I am only half way through this book so I can't be sure it won't pick up some momentum, but I have to say that so far it has been disappointing. The author glosses over such vital information so casually that the reader not only misses her point but later on in the book when she refers back previously mentioned events and people, you're left entirely disoriented. I will keep reading it because the topic is interesting to me, but I don't think the book is well written.
Rating: 
Summary: An important read
Review: I became interested in this book after hearing the author's fascinating interview on public radio, and I wasn't in the least bit disappointed after reading it. It's an important book, one that sheds light on a region too often dismissed as "backward" or "evil." Mobutu was his own man, yes, but he was also a product of colonialism and in direct line of Leopold. For more, read "King Leopold's Ghost," which deals with pre-Mobutu Congo.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Description of Zaire under Mobutu
Review: I lived in Zaire from 1973-76 and made two trips by Land Rover from Kinshasa to Kenya, in addition to several smaller trips. Ms Wrong's account of the workings of the government could not have been more accurate. After reading her book I came away with the same fears and love of that country I experienced when living there. Zaire leaves a mark on everyone who has remained there for a short period and Ms. Wrong captured it. For all those interested in a case study of dictatorship - this is a must read.
Rating:
Summary: White mans guilt get a different meaning...
Review: I loved this book, the complete lack of morals by the government(s) of the Congo
and short sightness of their actions are truely amazing.
Easy to blame outsiders for the problem in Congo, but the root of the problem is that the state isn't neutral in its actions but there's always a catch in every move they make.
Rating:
Summary: Wrong Gets It Right
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Masterly mix of past and present in the Congo
Review: I spent 16 years in the Congo (1960-19760), eleven of them as Mobutu's personal physician (see "A Doctor's Life: Unique Stories). Michela Wrong has produced an historical account marked by realism and balance. Her research and scholarship as well as her writing are extraordinary. The book is a page-turner and should be read by anyone concerned about the West's checkered past in dealing with a Third World giant.
Rating:
Summary: Not just a big crook
Review: I was goig to write a review of this most amusing book, but found that Mr. Henderson had beaten me to it. Following his cogent and penetrating review I find there isn't much left to say. However, in the best tradition of reviewers everywhere, I would like to refer to other parts of the book, which I found to be very entertaining. In the Constitution of a region of Zaire that wanted to secede from Mobutu's Kinshasa government there was an article (article 15) suggesting to anyone who wanted the government's protection or support to "take care of your own business" ("debrouillez-vous"), which essentially the legal form of Mobutu's dictum that corruption was OK so long as it wasn't excessive (President Turbay of Colombia said the same thing in 1978, although he didn't manage to hang around as long as Mobutu did). There is an operating nuclear reactor in Zaire. An enriched uranium core disappeared recently, only to resurface in the hands of the Sicilian mafia. A profet jailed by the Belgians who believed himself to be the incarnation of the Holy Ghost created a church complete with hierarchy and miracles and Holy Writ. Mobutu kept twins as lovers, to ward off malignant influences from his defunct first wife's spirit. I agree with Mr. Brokesley that the soul of the story is Mr. Mobutu. A cunning man, he had that rare combination of shamelessness and grandeur. One would need to go back to Mussolini or Napoleon III to find a similar European mindset. He wasn't a psycopath like other African leaders (such as Francisco Macias NGuema, Idi Amin Dada or Jean-Bedel Bokassa), and while he robbed the country of its lifeblood, bringing it back into the middle ages, he did it much more amusingly than other leaders could have done (who ever heard of a good anecdote about Robert Mugabe or Daniel Arap Moi, who are just as big crooks as Mobutu ever was?). Mobutu shared in the spoils of corruption, and allowed even non-family members to take part in the feast. This is much more than other tyrants (such as Somoza, Trujillo, Khadaffi, Saddam Husseim or Suharto) ever did. Yes, he was a bad guy, responsible for untold misery, but he wasn't as bad as some of the others in his line of business. So, if you ever want to see what happens when the rule of law is absent and all social constraints implode, this is the book for you
Rating: 
Summary: Did Jacques deFarge Ever Meet Mr. Kurtz?
Review: In reading this book and recalling Ms. Wrong's interview in 2000 (with Tom Ashbrooke, who himself was interviewing for Host of "The Connection" show on National Public Radio; and who now Hosts "On Point" at NPR), I would have to agree with her critics: There is a form of "dishonest honesty" characteristic of this book. Facts, in and of themselves true in their time, are instances of collusion depending on who inquires what of those facts. Michela Wrong inquires for the financial world, and passes the results off to a general public not all whom share the values of Finance. Africa is seeking her "place and relation" in the world. Ms. Wrong, who has the view of "The FinancialTimes" of London is aghast by Mobutu's actions (a creation of Belgium, the U.S., and France)as a placeholder in that process. Nevertheless at the end of the day, there are those of us who would not withhold from Africa whatever platform is required to accomplish her "place and relation" in the world much as Britain, France, the U.S., and other nation-states have -- over a much more ample time. Even the best of these (Italy, for example, is yet seeking her "place and relation" in the world) and have found that place -- and relation -- by trial and error. "In The Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz" would deny the former Zaire (today's,Democratic Republic of Congo) this" seeking process, insisting instead, that the Continent get perfect today. Unlike other nations, (which did not have the C.I.A., the I.M.F., the World Bank, or Ronald Reagan/Henry Kissinger/Chester Crocker and Stephen Morrison of CSIS catwalking and checkmating their every development effort; nor every corporation in the western world work against, or effectively undermine, the interests of their citizens), neither the former Zaire nor Africa as a Continent has ever been a metaphor for independent ambitions of politicians or aspirations of the people. The DNC has always been an instrument of someone else's will, desire, and projecton of power. Britain, an empire, essentially, of "My dear boys," and "My poor childs," understands this exactly. Thus viewed, Mobutu was a placeholder between Patrice Lumumba (who was assasinated because of the vision he held for what the former Zaire could be), and Laurent Kibila (similarly, assasinated). Against whom does Micheld Wrong complain? For whom does she complain about Mobutu? About What? Exactly? We forget, it seems, that in the wake of great evil to a people, the typical results are not often Mandelian: A definition of what "horrors" we could expect in the DRC receive a benchmark definition from Adam Hochschold's "King Leopold's Ghost." Ms. Wrong reminds us, in approach, analysis, and conclusions, of the "pretty young thing" who happened, also, to be blond -- straight out of the University of Chicago Law School -- who deigned to know "Why blacks in the deep South hadn't gone right out to vote?" in the immediate aftermath of the Voting Rights Act? There are "agents of socialization" involved in the routinization of politics, democracy, and in what it means to be "citizen" of "a nation." Democracy, transparency, accountability all, are processes, that take significant political time, accessoried by ritual, symbolism, and metaphor, to perfect. Having with-held "the thing itself," "In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz" would deny time for these processes so essential to its manifestation. Only corporate colonialism -- to which The Times of London, like The Economist -- is "friendly" toward the notion that "Corporations should run Africa" -- does not hold this essential principle, inviolate. Had Africa a Monsenieur Class that class would have applauded this book: so impossibly naive, consistently uncritical of Mobutu's enablers, and unsophisticated it is. Ms. Wrong -- who obviously means well -- brings to what could have been a significant work, a Defendants' Brief, which Defendant has a previous history as perpetrator. It comprises a vast mystification of the original unspeakable evil to even ask the questions,or expect the solutions posed by Ms. Wrong. Why should Mobuto, Kabila; or Mugabe and Mandela/Mbeki, for that matter, govern perferctly or produce perfect democracies surrounded as they are by unbridled corporations and infringed by said corporations' sponsoring governments to produce "good government" after 20 years? Western governments have not produced perfect democracies after 200 years+ operation. This is not just because the templates of colonialism format, still, Africa's economies, and are thus out of sync with their nascent or developing democracies, but because the countries from which democratic templates for Africa issue have, themselves, yet to achieve "perfect democracies." Far better that Ms. Wrong consider following in the footsteps of Charles Dickens' "Mr. deFarge," or, better still, Mademosell deFarge, to appreciate the situation that could have been,and still may be.
|
