Congo Inc.

In Koli Jean Bofane, Marjolijn De Jager

Description

To the sound of machine gun fire and the smell of burning flesh, award-winning author In Koli Jean Bofane leads readers on a perilous, satirical journey through the civil conflict and political instability that have been the logical outcome of generations of rapacious multinational corporate activity, corrupt governance, widespread civil conflict, human rights abuses, and environmental degradation in Africa. Isookanga, a Congolese Pygmy, grows up in a small village with big dreams of becoming rich. His vision of the world is shaped by his exploits in Raging Trade, an online game where he seizes control of the world's natural resources by any means possible: high-tech weaponry, slavery, and even genocide. Isookanga leaves his sleepy village to make his fortune in the pulsating capital Kinshasa, where he joins forces with street children, warlords, and a Chinese victim of globalization in this blistering novel about capitalism, colonialism, and the world haunted by the ghosts of Bismarck and Leopold II. Told with just enough levity to make it truly heartbreaking, Congo Inc. is a searing tale about ecological, political, and economic failure.

Acknowledgments
I. Lands and Times
II. Who Are You?
III. Paper Tiger
IV. Inaudible Screams
V. Persistent Turmoil
VI. The Women They Kill
VII. The World Is Yours
VIII. Eternal Dragon
IX. Compromise of Principles
X. Please Read the Attached Note
XI. Chance Eloko Pamba
XII. Game Over
Epilogue

Sujets

• Human Rights
• World Literature
• Political
• África
• General officer
• Politics
• Colonialism
• Capitalism
• General
• Africa
• Translation
• Congo
• Corruption
• Satire

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 08 janvier 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9780253031914
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 7 Mo

Extrait

CONGO INC.
GLOBAL AFRICAN VOICES
Dominic Thomas, editor
I Was an Elephant Salesman: Adventures between Dakar, Paris, and Milan
Pap Khouma, Edited by Oreste Pivetta
Translated by Rebecca Hopkins
Introduction by Graziella Parati
Little Mother
Cristina Ali Farah
Translated by Giovanna Bellesia-Contuzzi and Victoria Offredi Poletto
Introduction by Alessandra Di Maio
Life and a Half
Sony Labou Tansi
Translated by Alison Dundy
Introduction by Dominic Thomas
Transit
Abdourahman A. Waberi
Translated by David Ball and Nicole Ball
Cruel City
Mongo Beti
Translated by Pim Higginson
Blue White Red
Alain Mabanckou
Translated by Alison Dundy
The Past Ahead
Gilbert Gatore
Translated by Marjolijn de Jager
Queen of Flowers and Pearls
Gabriella Ghermandi
Translated by Giovanna Bellesia-Contuzzi and Victoria Offredi Poletto
The Shameful State
Sony Labou Tansi
Translated by Dominic Thomas
Foreword by Alain Mabanckou
Kaveena
Boubacar Boris Diop
Translated by Bhakti Shringarpure and Sara C. Hanaburgh
Murambi, The Book of Bones
Boubacar Boris Diop
Translated by Fiona Mc Laughlin
The Heart of the Leopard Children
Wilfried N Sond
Translated by Karen Lindo
Harvest of Skulls
Abdourahman A. Waberi
Translated by Dominic Thomas
Jazz and Palm Wine
Emmanuel Dongala
Translated by Dominic Thomas
The Silence of the Spirits
Wilfried N Sond
Translated by Karen Lindo
IN KOLI JEAN BOFANE
CONGO INC.

Bismarck s Testament

Translated by MARJOLIJN DE JAGER
Foreword by DOMINIC THOMAS
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Published with support from the John Gallman Fund for New Directions
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
Original publication in French
2014 Actes Sud
English translation
2018 by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-03190-7 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-253-03191-4 (ebook)
1 2 3 4 5 23 22 21 20 19 18
to the young girls, the little girls, and the women of Congo
to the UN
to the IMF
to the WTO
The new state of Congo is destined to become one of the most important enforcers of the work we intend to accomplish
Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, at the closing of the Berlin Conference, February 1885
Contents
Foreword by Dominic Thomas
Acknowledgments

Lands and Times

Who Are You?

Paper Tiger

Inaudible Screams

Persistent Turmoil

The Women They Kill

The World Is Yours

Eternal Dragon

Compromise of Principles

Please Read the Attached Note

Chance Eloko Pamba

Game Over!
Epilogue
Foreword
In Koli Jean Bofane s Congo Inc.: Bismarck s Testament : The Limits of Empathy and the Postcolonial Scramble for Africa
Dominic Thomas
In Koli Jean Bofane s first novel, Math matiques Congolaises (2008), transported his readers on a journey into the confusion and disorder that have become so endemic to depictions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The two Congos -the Republic of the Congo (capital Brazzaville) and the DRC (capital Kinshasa)-sit face-to-face on the banks of the eponymous Congo River. The Global African Voices series has already published (or will be publishing) several works by Sony Labou Tansi ( Life and a Half and The Shameful State ), Alain Mabanckou ( Blue White Red, The Tears of the Black Man , and The Negro Grandsons of Vercingetorix ), Wilfried N Sond ( The Heart of the Leopard Children, The Silence of the Spirits , and Concrete Flowers ), and Emmanuel Dongala ( Jazz and Palm Wine ), authors who hail from the Republic of the Congo. In Koli Jean Bofane s Congo Inc .: Bismarck s Testament , first published in France in 2014, will therefore be the first novel in the series focusing on the DRC. Thanks to Marjolijn de Jager s truly remarkable translation and uncanny ability to capture the essence of the original text, readers will be able to appreciate why different juries, having awarded In Koli Jean Bofane the Grand Prix litt raire de l Afrique noire for his first novel, also selected Congo Inc .: Bismarck s Testament for the Grand Prix du Roman M tis and the prestigious Prix des Cinq continents de la Francophonie.
The subtitle- Bismarck s Testament -in what is a hypnotizing, mesmerizing, daring, and deeply disquieting novel, harkens back to the era when Germany s first chancellor, Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898), convened the Congo Conference (also known as the Berlin Conference) in 1884-1885. It was of course at this conference that the fourteen signatory powers negotiated the terms of the General Act, an initiative that triggered what became known as the scramble for Africa. However, the General Act also simultaneously granted legitimacy to the ambitions of King Leopold II of Belgium, who imposed his rule over the Congo Free State from 1885 until 1908, at which point it became the Belgian Congo up until political independence in 1960. This territory also comprised the northern region along the equator and the city of Mbandaka, where In Koli Jean Bofane was born in 1954. Adam Hochschild s book King Leopold s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa highlighted the brutalization and exploitation of the native population in the relentless and unchecked drive to extract the country s resources. 1 Similarly, in his monumental study Congo: The Epic History of a People , David Van Reybrook underscored how today, the Congo Free State is notorious not so much for its vague borders as for its crushing regime. And rightly so. Along with the turbulent years before and after 1960, the year of independence, and the decade between 1996 and 2006, that period is seen as the bloodiest in the nation s history. 2
In Koli Jean Bofane does not shy away from controversy; he makes a concerted effort to provide the reader with a near exhaustive inventory of the damning history of the region while emphasizing its key geostrategic importance-beginning with the Berlin Conference and then straddling both world wars, on to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Vietnam War, the sanguine history of decolonization and genocide, and culminating in the nefarious activities of multinationals:
The algorithm Congo Inc. had been created at the moment that Africa was being chopped up in Berlin between November 1884 and February 1885. Under Leopold II s sharecropping, they hastily developed it so they could supply the whole world with rubber from the equator, without which the industrial era wouldn t have expanded as rapidly as it needed to at the time. Subsequently, its contribution to the First World War effort had been crucial, even if that war-most of it-could have been fought on horseback, without Congo, even if things had changed since the Germans had further developed synthetic rubber in 1914. The involvement of Congo Inc. in the Second World War proved decisive.
The final point had come with the concept of putting the uranium of Shinkolobwe at the disposal of the United States of America, which destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki once and for all, launching the theory of nuclear deterrence at the same time, and for all time. It contributed vastly to the devastation of Vietnam by allowing the Bell UH1-Huey helicopters, sides gaping wide, to spit millions of sprays of the copper from Likasi and Kolwezi from high in the sky over towns and countryside from Danang to Hanoi, via Hu , Vinh, Lao Cai, Lang Son, and the port of Haiphong.
During the so-called Cold War, the algorithm remained red-hot. The fuel that guaranteed proper functioning could also be made up of men. Warriors such as the Ngwaka, Mbunza, Luba, Basakata, and Lokele of Mobutu Sese Seko, like spearheads on Africa s battlefields, went to shed their blood from Biafra to Aouzou, passing through the Front Line-in front of Angola and Cuba-through Rwanda on the Byumba end in 1990. Disposable humans could also participate in the dirty work and in coups d tat. Loyal to Bismarck s testament, Congo Inc. more recently had been appointed as the accredited supplier of internationalism, responsible for the delivery of strategic minerals for the conquest of space, the manufacturing of sophisticated armaments, the oil industry, and the production of high-tech telecommunications material. 3
Pillaged, plundered, looted, despoiled, embezzled, stripped, ransacked, ravaged-each and every one of these synonyms remains pertinent to the unquenchable transgenerational thirst for Congo s natural resources. The process of assigning accountability is not restricted to external predators, to the succession of foreign or outside forces on the ground; rather, In Koli Jean Bofane s scene is truly apocalyptic, a dramatic staging of biblical proportions, o