Sir Roger and the Congo

Once again, the Congo is in the forefront of the media for all the wrong reasons. Civil war, displacement, rape, murder, ethnic cleansing, corruption.... a more talented writer than I described it as "Pandora's box without the hope" and it's hard to escape this conclusion.

I don't know Congo at all well: I have only made one visit, yet it is strangely fascinating. My first memory was of the Rumble in the Jungle, when Muhammed Ali defeated George Foreman in heavyweight boxing. My second was reading Conrad's Heart of Darkness. In the light of what has come afterwards, who can forget the following quote "The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much." Certainly Leopold's conquest of the Congo was, even by the standards of imperialism as a whole, not a pretty thing. The supposed Congo Free State in which Leopold and his mercenaries established a centralised government solely for the purpose of looting the country of its rubber, its ivory and its minerals. Adam Hochschild's wonderful book, King Leopold's Ghost, describes the numerous atrocities inflicted on the Congolese people - and first alerted me to the role played by Sir Roger Casement in exposing these atrocities to the outside world.

Sir Roger Casement (pictured above) is an intriguing character. Knighted for his humanitarian services first to the people of the Congo and then for carrying out a similar expose on the abuses and cruelty inflicted on Putumayo indians in the Amazon basin, he fell spectacularly from grace due to his support for the Irish nationalist party, Sinn Fein. Latterly tried, convicted and executed for treason - following his bungled attempt to further the Irish rebellion with German support during the first World War - his life story presents a mystery to biographers and historians. This mystery is not only in his public life, but also in his private life - publicised by his English accusers in the form of the infamous black diaries - which describe in some detail his homosexual escapades. But perhaps it is not so difficult: he was undoubtedly a sensitive and kind man, and the horrors of imperial exploitation first in Congo and then in the Amazon - must have led him to think about the English occupation of Ireland....

Sir Roger's other tragedy is that despite his intervention, and that of his friend and tireless human rights campaigner E D Morel, the legacy of Leopold's Congo has proved so strong. From the Belgian abandonment in 1960, to Patrice Lumumba's assassination, to the long and disastrous rule of Mobutu Sese Seko, to the accession (and assassination) of the brutal Laurent Kabila, to the "democratic" elections two years ago which presented Congolese with a choice between the inept Joseph Kabila and war criminal Jean-Pierre Bemba, to Laurent Nkunda's latest incursion ostensibly to protect Tutsi minorities in the East, so little has changed.

For me, Congo exemplifies three things. First, the wicked and enduring scar left by colonialism on Africa. Second, the curse of abundant natural resources in an environment where the biggest fists are all that matter. Third, the hideous impact of systematic corruption on justice and the rule of law. What next for the people of the Congo?