So King Philippe "regrets" what happened in the Congo under King Leopold's brutal regime. No apology. Just regrets.
Ten million people murdered!
The years of brutality afflicted on the Congolese, all the displacement of its people and the confiscation of land and resources, all of this violence, and then the lies, the cover up of those countless lies--and to offer now only a "regret"?
Yes, it was regrettable! It was like a one-two punch of fascism and capitalism in that from 1908 to 1960 the infamous Leopold controlled the country's people and it's resources as a means of preserving the what the wizards brought to Africa: white supremacy. For who owns the wealth of the Congo?
King Philippe writes that the violence and brutality so honored buy the Europeans as a necessity in the Congo weighs "still on our collective memory."
Whose collective memory?
He concludes, "I would like to express my deepest regrets for the wounds of the past, the pain of today, which is rekindled by the discrimination all too present in our society."
As The Guardian notes, "the looting of the Congo has never stopped." According to Martin Fayulu, a member of the "respected opposition" in the Republic of the Congo (DRC), the resources have been stolen. "Our people remain in misery, we are ruled by dictators and the thieves. The international powers say they need to be pragmatic. And look where we are."
The legacy of the brutal regime is that the Congo was in "deep poverty [and suffering from] widespread violence, and disease, despite it's natural wealth." The death of George Floyd "has rekindled anti-racism protests in Belgium." The protesters want an end to lies and the grand blanketing narrative that conceals the structurally chiseled white supremacy on chips running our computers in the West. The protests are prompting the federal parliament to establish a "'truth and reconciliation' commission to 'come clean' about the country's colonial past."
In the meantime, the statues of Leopold are coming down with the bare hands of the Congolese.
"Mistah Kurtz, he dead." Not quite.
**
And Sven Lindqvist is a traveler of sorts to Africa too. From Stockholm University, he travels through what was Leopold's Congo, "in a searching examination of Europe's dark history in Africa and the origins of genocide." The results is his non-fiction account of the horror of European conquest in "Exterminate All the Brutes."
Neither Stanley nor Conrad are far out of his vision. In fact, he follows them, hearing the echoing voice of the priest Father Bihler who was "convinced that the blacks had to be exterminated," writes Lindqvist. The "holy" wizard didn't see anything wrong in the pogrom of extermination.
In my Catholic school education, the nuns and priest talked about civilization in Africa. Here, in the US, on the Southside of Chicago, we Black children were being civilized, too.
Civilizing the brutes like Conrad's Kurtz. But Leopold didn't seem to bother, for the mission of the priest, Bihler, was to see to the extermination of the "whole people" over the age of fourteen years old, according to a letter from Lord Grey to his wife. Conrad's Kurtz, writes Lindqvist, takes up the task.
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