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Before you enter the forest it is respectful to seek permission. | 0:00:06 | 0:00:12 | |
The peoples of the Congo basin have lived in a close relationship | 0:01:05 | 0:01:09 | |
with their forests for thousands of years. | 0:01:09 | 0:01:13 | |
But this relationship was to radically change with the arrival of the white explorers. | 0:01:13 | 0:01:19 | |
From the beginning, they developed very different visions of the forest. | 0:01:26 | 0:01:32 | |
They portrayed it as a land of savage chaos, the heart of darkness. | 0:01:36 | 0:01:41 | |
They've been corrupted by the wealth of its resources and yet, | 0:01:41 | 0:01:47 | |
at the same, time entranced by the sheer exuberance of its nature. | 0:01:47 | 0:01:53 | |
The great swathe of forests that cover central Africa | 0:02:09 | 0:02:14 | |
were not penetrated by European explorers until the second half of the 19th century. | 0:02:14 | 0:02:21 | |
When they did eventually venture in beyond their settlements on the coast | 0:02:21 | 0:02:26 | |
they were not to find it uninhabited. | 0:02:26 | 0:02:29 | |
That was the perception of the Western European explorers | 0:02:29 | 0:02:33 | |
who went down to central Africa, imagining it was a black hole. | 0:02:33 | 0:02:39 | |
People have been living in central Africa, in the deep tropical forest, for centuries and centuries. | 0:02:39 | 0:02:46 | |
And the nature that we see there has been formed by these peoples. | 0:02:46 | 0:02:50 | |
It's a contrast between a lot of the conservationist discourse | 0:02:50 | 0:02:55 | |
of trying to preserve this pristine space that resembles more the Garden of Eden. | 0:02:55 | 0:03:01 | |
The people have formed these spaces. | 0:03:01 | 0:03:04 | |
So what the Europeans found there was something that they discovered for themselves. | 0:03:04 | 0:03:09 | |
They weren't bringing in anything new to the people there. | 0:03:09 | 0:03:13 | |
For hundreds of years, the 2 million square kilometres of rainforest that | 0:03:22 | 0:03:27 | |
cover the Congo Basin was merely a blank on the European map. | 0:03:27 | 0:03:32 | |
It's a region bounded by the Atlantic to the west and a range of ancient volcanoes to the East. | 0:03:32 | 0:03:38 | |
It's intersected by giant river systems that feed the river that eats all rivers - the Congo. | 0:03:40 | 0:03:48 | |
On its way to the sea, the Congo also passes through swamps and savannah, great lakes and clearings. | 0:03:55 | 0:04:02 | |
A variety of habitats that supports an extraordinary range of species, | 0:04:02 | 0:04:08 | |
many of which were unknown to the early European explorers. | 0:04:08 | 0:04:13 | |
It was in 1859 that a young Franco-American explorer | 0:05:22 | 0:05:27 | |
returned from the African forest with thousands of animal specimens, many of them unknown to science. | 0:05:27 | 0:05:34 | |
Although Paul Du Chaillu wrote about his experiences with cannibals and pygmies, it was his stories of | 0:05:36 | 0:05:42 | |
a forest brimming with wildlife that captured the public's imagination. | 0:05:42 | 0:05:46 | |
His encounter with one animal in particular, created a sensation. | 0:05:46 | 0:05:51 | |
Du Chaillu's descriptions of the gorilla are quite incredible. | 0:05:53 | 0:05:58 | |
He really ups the ante on the horrific. | 0:05:58 | 0:06:02 | |
He really sells a very good story and his audiences lapped it up. | 0:06:02 | 0:06:05 | |
He presents an image of a hostile jungle but particularly | 0:06:05 | 0:06:10 | |
a hellish, beastly gorilla as the king of this jungle. | 0:06:10 | 0:06:14 | |
"His eyes began to flash fierce fire as we stood motionless on the defensive. | 0:06:16 | 0:06:22 | |
"And the crest of short hair which stands on his forehead began to twitch rapidly up and down, | 0:06:22 | 0:06:29 | |
"His powerful fangs were shown as he sent forth a thunderous roar. | 0:06:29 | 0:06:34 | |
"Now he reminded me of nothing but some hellish dream creature. | 0:06:36 | 0:06:42 | |
"A being of that hideous order, half-man, half-beast, which we find pictured by old artists | 0:06:42 | 0:06:49 | |
"in some representations of the infernal regions. | 0:06:49 | 0:06:53 | |
"He advanced a few steps and then stopped to utter that hideous roar. | 0:06:53 | 0:06:59 | |
"Advanced again, and finally stopped. | 0:07:01 | 0:07:05 | |
"And here, just as he began another of his roars, beating his breast in rage... | 0:07:05 | 0:07:11 | |
"We fired and killed him." | 0:07:11 | 0:07:14 | |
His descriptions were to perpetuate the savage image of the gorilla right through to the 20th century | 0:07:17 | 0:07:23 | |
in literature and, eventually, on film. | 0:07:23 | 0:07:27 | |
In particular, Du Chaillu was playing up | 0:07:49 | 0:07:53 | |
to a public that was already fascinated by the idea of powerful, semi-human beasts | 0:07:53 | 0:08:00 | |
with a high sex drive. | 0:08:00 | 0:08:03 | |
SHE SCREAMS | 0:08:15 | 0:08:19 | |
Du Chaillu's efforts went beyond the written word. | 0:08:23 | 0:08:26 | |
He even doctored the specimens he brought back. | 0:08:26 | 0:08:31 | |
Here's your terrifying, savage, | 0:08:31 | 0:08:34 | |
brute gorilla. | 0:08:34 | 0:08:37 | |
Du Chaillu actually cut the penises off his gorillas. | 0:08:37 | 0:08:43 | |
Why? | 0:08:43 | 0:08:45 | |
Because nobody would believe that a man-ape, | 0:08:45 | 0:08:49 | |
an ape-man could possibly be pulling women off to... | 0:08:49 | 0:08:54 | |
Because their penis, fully erect, | 0:08:54 | 0:08:57 | |
is no more than one inch long. Which is why there are leaves over. | 0:08:57 | 0:09:04 | |
And it's these stories that really set imaginations | 0:09:10 | 0:09:15 | |
running riot with an idea of what might exist in Central Africa. | 0:09:15 | 0:09:21 | |
He sets a stage for later explorers like Stanley but also later authors. | 0:09:21 | 0:09:26 | |
If you think of Henty, Stables, Stephenson, Haggard, Kipling or Kingston. | 0:09:26 | 0:09:33 | |
Writing these wonderful adventure narratives of a miscellaneous collection of | 0:09:33 | 0:09:38 | |
Victorian explorers, pith-helmeted, bewhiskered, khaki-clad, | 0:09:38 | 0:09:44 | |
drifting down river, discovering wild beasts. | 0:09:44 | 0:09:48 | |
Fighting their way through jungles and discovering lost treasures. | 0:09:48 | 0:09:53 | |
And it's the description of wilderness that enables this. | 0:09:55 | 0:10:01 | |
The description of an African wilderness, albeit teeming with life | 0:10:01 | 0:10:06 | |
and indigenous peoples, a wilderness that's challenging. | 0:10:06 | 0:10:10 | |
Certainly in the imagination of British audiences was an environment | 0:10:12 | 0:10:17 | |
that was ripe to be subjected, dominated and controlled. | 0:10:17 | 0:10:21 | |
Part of that was through mapping, | 0:10:21 | 0:10:24 | |
but obviously later through conquest and colonisation. | 0:10:24 | 0:10:29 | |
Du Chaillu's gorilla specimens captured the imaginations of | 0:10:32 | 0:10:36 | |
the cartoonists of the time, playing their part in the debates around Darwin's The Origin of Species. | 0:10:36 | 0:10:43 | |
"Am I satyr or man? | 0:10:43 | 0:10:45 | |
"Pray tell me who can and settle my place on the scale. | 0:10:45 | 0:10:50 | |
"A man in ape's shape, an anthropoid ape or a monkey deprived of his tail? | 0:10:50 | 0:10:55 | |
"Then Darwin set forth, in a book of much worth, the importance of nature's selection. | 0:10:55 | 0:11:00 | |
"How the struggle for life is a laudable strife, and results in specific distinction." | 0:11:00 | 0:11:06 | |
For a while, the gorilla was seen as the likely candidate for mankind's closest relative. | 0:11:06 | 0:11:11 | |
"Then apes have no nose and thumbs for great toes, and a pelvis both narrow and slight. | 0:11:11 | 0:11:18 | |
"They can't stand upright - unless to show fight with Du Chaillu, that chivalrous knight." | 0:11:18 | 0:11:24 | |
Du Chaillu's vivid accounts of the Congo presented the idea of a place | 0:11:27 | 0:11:33 | |
full of other human like ancestors, leading to speculation that this forest was rich with tribes of | 0:11:33 | 0:11:39 | |
people further down the evolutionary tree than the European white male. | 0:11:39 | 0:11:45 | |
So far, Du Chaillu had created the image of a great African Forest brimming with natural history | 0:12:22 | 0:12:29 | |
specimens and as an exotic habitat for early prototypes of human kind. | 0:12:29 | 0:12:34 | |
But soon an event occurred which was to utterly transform the European | 0:12:36 | 0:12:41 | |
attitude to the Congo region and to dictate its destiny right up until the present day. | 0:12:41 | 0:12:47 | |
On August the 9th 1877, Henry Morton Stanley, the man who discovered Livingstone, reached | 0:12:48 | 0:12:56 | |
the mouth of the Congo having blazed a trail across the great uncharted centre of the continent. | 0:12:56 | 0:13:02 | |
Basically, Stanley's journey, | 0:13:03 | 0:13:06 | |
it started the sounding gun for the scramble for Africa. | 0:13:06 | 0:13:10 | |
20 years of white man staking the interior of Africa. | 0:13:10 | 0:13:14 | |
So it really was a massive turning point. | 0:13:14 | 0:13:17 | |
This unimaginably huge tract of Africa was suddenly open. | 0:13:29 | 0:13:35 | |
A whole area of the map had been filled in. | 0:13:35 | 0:13:39 | |
Stanley's achievement was considerable. | 0:13:45 | 0:13:50 | |
His journey had been sponsored by the New York Herald | 0:13:50 | 0:13:54 | |
in the United States and the London Daily Telegraph. | 0:13:54 | 0:13:58 | |
His self-promoting articles, augmented by extensive lecturing tours presented his account of | 0:13:58 | 0:14:05 | |
his voyage across what he called the Dark Continent. | 0:14:05 | 0:14:08 | |
This massive bestseller, full of exaggeration, | 0:14:10 | 0:14:13 | |
described an heroic journey down a river and through dense forests full of violent tribes. | 0:14:13 | 0:14:19 | |
"To the ordinary white man, it was what may well be | 0:14:23 | 0:14:27 | |
"termed impenetrable - except at constant peril of his life. | 0:14:27 | 0:14:31 | |
"It was ravaged by cannibals, fierce warlike tribes and Arab slave raiders. | 0:14:33 | 0:14:38 | |
"Every tribe barred the ingress of the travelling | 0:14:40 | 0:14:43 | |
"and its frontier on all sides lay exposed to any white stranger who took the trouble to plant a flag." | 0:14:43 | 0:14:50 | |
It was a bestseller. | 0:14:55 | 0:14:57 | |
But, yes, it consigned this part of Africa to a stereotype, to an image. | 0:14:57 | 0:15:02 | |
An Africa that was inherently brutal, almost irredeemably so. | 0:15:02 | 0:15:08 | |
So, going from perhaps | 0:15:08 | 0:15:10 | |
these voyages that were genuinely scientific or had at their heart | 0:15:10 | 0:15:16 | |
a sort of perhaps enlightened goal of adding to knowledge, | 0:15:16 | 0:15:21 | |
of scientific inquiry, to a mindset that was | 0:15:21 | 0:15:26 | |
bristlingly Imperial and casting the African continent as something that was irredeemably savage. | 0:15:26 | 0:15:33 | |
And, therefore, had to be saved by | 0:15:33 | 0:15:36 | |
the enlightened knowledge of an Empire. | 0:15:36 | 0:15:39 | |
Perhaps Stanley is responsible for setting | 0:15:39 | 0:15:42 | |
Africa down that path of subjugation and colonial domination. | 0:15:42 | 0:15:47 | |
There was going to be a new history. | 0:16:22 | 0:16:25 | |
By demonstrating that the Congo was navigable, Stanley alerted | 0:16:25 | 0:16:29 | |
European powers to the possibility that the entire Equatorial forest could be divided up. | 0:16:29 | 0:16:34 | |
Within eight years of the publication of Through the Dark Continent, France, Germany, Spain, | 0:16:39 | 0:16:45 | |
Portugal and Great Britain had carved out portions. | 0:16:45 | 0:16:49 | |
And the King of one small nation had grabbed half of it as his own personal fiefdom. | 0:16:59 | 0:17:05 | |
Leopold II, King of the Belgians, described the great swathe of | 0:17:16 | 0:17:21 | |
African forest as, "This magnificent African cake." | 0:17:21 | 0:17:25 | |
Never does he step one foot on Africa. And yet he holds an astonishing record. | 0:17:28 | 0:17:33 | |
He is the man who has claimed as his own one piece of land larger than any other human ever has. | 0:17:33 | 0:17:39 | |
He took that land as his plaything, his fiefdom, his private estate. | 0:17:39 | 0:17:44 | |
It's astonishing, it's a million square miles | 0:17:44 | 0:17:48 | |
of Equatorial forest, river system, savannah. | 0:17:48 | 0:17:51 | |
And he regards it as a large cake from which he can derive whatever goods he can. | 0:17:51 | 0:17:57 | |
Leopold's giant-size portion of cake was to prove very rich indeed. | 0:18:01 | 0:18:06 | |
The abundance of animals and plants were no longer merely objects of scientific interest. | 0:18:08 | 0:18:14 | |
They'd help him finance an empire. | 0:18:14 | 0:18:17 | |
His initial source of income came from forest elephants. | 0:18:20 | 0:18:24 | |
Though smaller than their relatives in East Africa, they still packed a lot of ivory. | 0:18:24 | 0:18:29 | |
The export of ivory was so lucrative that the animals were driven close to extinction. | 0:18:31 | 0:18:37 | |
But soon another, more lucrative example of the region's abundance | 0:18:39 | 0:18:44 | |
was to change the King's fortunes and the forest itself. | 0:18:44 | 0:18:48 | |
Leopold was looking to the Congo to exploit its mineral wealth, | 0:18:51 | 0:18:57 | |
rubber particularly, at this point. | 0:18:57 | 0:19:00 | |
Rubber being used for automobile tyres, but crucially being used | 0:19:00 | 0:19:04 | |
for the insulation on electric cables, telephone and the telegraph. | 0:19:04 | 0:19:08 | |
These modern technologies, dependent on rubber. | 0:19:08 | 0:19:12 | |
It was a boom, immense wealth but it came at immense cost. | 0:19:12 | 0:19:16 | |
Great numbers of rubber trees grew wild in the forest's interior. | 0:19:22 | 0:19:27 | |
There was no idea of plantations at this time | 0:19:27 | 0:19:30 | |
and so tapping them would need to rely on the local knowledge and labour of the forest's inhabitants. | 0:19:30 | 0:19:36 | |
And this was to be a primary example of how the region's riches would become associated with misery. | 0:19:36 | 0:19:43 | |
Leopold now owned their forest | 0:19:44 | 0:19:48 | |
and his ruthless drive to extract rubber from the inhabitants | 0:19:48 | 0:19:53 | |
radically altered their perception of the landscape they'd inhabited for thousands of years. | 0:19:53 | 0:19:59 | |
When a village failed to produce its quota of rubber, selected people had their hands chopped off. | 0:20:55 | 0:21:02 | |
Frequently it was the children. | 0:21:02 | 0:21:04 | |
The image of the abundant Congo was supplanted with the image of the state of terror. | 0:21:06 | 0:21:11 | |
Frankly, it was the first genocide of the modern era. | 0:21:18 | 0:21:23 | |
Between 1885 to 1908 between 4 and 10 million people died. | 0:21:23 | 0:21:28 | |
These are numbing figures. | 0:21:28 | 0:21:31 | |
It happened because white man thought that he could do this to Africa. | 0:21:34 | 0:21:38 | |
And that really is, that's where the association | 0:21:38 | 0:21:41 | |
of Central of the Congo River Basin with darkness comes from. | 0:21:41 | 0:21:46 | |
The adjective darkness was to become indelibly attached to the Western imaginings of the Congo | 0:21:48 | 0:21:53 | |
with the publication of Conrad's novella in 1899. | 0:21:53 | 0:21:57 | |
"Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world. | 0:21:58 | 0:22:05 | |
"When vegetation rioted on the Earth and big trees were kings. | 0:22:05 | 0:22:10 | |
"An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. | 0:22:10 | 0:22:16 | |
"The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. | 0:22:16 | 0:22:20 | |
"There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine. | 0:22:20 | 0:22:24 | |
"The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of overshadowed distances. | 0:22:24 | 0:22:30 | |
"We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness." | 0:22:30 | 0:22:35 | |
Joseph Conrad had travelled in Leopold's so called Congo Free State in the 1890s. | 0:22:38 | 0:22:45 | |
Like many white men, he'd suffered from chronic dysentery and malaria. | 0:22:45 | 0:22:51 | |
His physical degeneration was coupled with a deep disillusion | 0:22:51 | 0:22:55 | |
with the way Leopold's regime exploited the land and its people. | 0:22:55 | 0:22:59 | |
And what he saw, the behaviour of the white men, scarred him so much | 0:23:01 | 0:23:06 | |
it sat in his soul for eight years. | 0:23:06 | 0:23:08 | |
Eight years later, in three hectic months, he produced The Heart Of Darkness. | 0:23:08 | 0:23:14 | |
"They were dying slowly, it was very clear. | 0:23:14 | 0:23:18 | |
"They were not enemies, they were not criminals. | 0:23:18 | 0:23:21 | |
"They were nothing earthly now, nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation. | 0:23:21 | 0:23:26 | |
"Lying confusedly in the greenish gloom. | 0:23:26 | 0:23:30 | |
"Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the legality of time contracts. | 0:23:30 | 0:23:36 | |
"Lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, | 0:23:36 | 0:23:42 | |
"they sickened, became inefficient and were then allowed to crawl away and rest." | 0:23:42 | 0:23:48 | |
And there were very many layers of darkness. | 0:23:50 | 0:23:54 | |
One of the layers of darkness was the darkness of a colonial project and the hypocrisy at its heart. | 0:23:54 | 0:24:01 | |
That it was pretending to be about uplifting the native, and introducing him to civilization, | 0:24:01 | 0:24:06 | |
but in fact, it was about profit at any cost. | 0:24:06 | 0:24:10 | |
The other darkness was the darkness of a white man, a western, | 0:24:10 | 0:24:15 | |
supposedly civilised man who goes to Africa, enjoyed supreme absolute power and loses his moral bearings. | 0:24:15 | 0:24:24 | |
The model for Kurtz, the station agent who goes crazy | 0:24:24 | 0:24:28 | |
in the middle of the forest, was probably Leon Rom who was a Belgian member of the Force Publique. | 0:24:28 | 0:24:35 | |
And this was the man who's famous in the Congo for decorating | 0:24:35 | 0:24:39 | |
his palisades with the heads of the local Congolese. | 0:24:39 | 0:24:42 | |
"His was an impenetrable darkness. | 0:24:44 | 0:24:47 | |
"I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. | 0:24:47 | 0:24:52 | |
"I saw on that ivory face an expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, | 0:24:52 | 0:24:57 | |
"of craven terror. | 0:24:57 | 0:25:00 | |
"Of an intense and hopeless despair. | 0:25:00 | 0:25:03 | |
"He cried out twice. A cry that was no more than a breath. | 0:25:06 | 0:25:10 | |
"The horror. The horror." | 0:25:10 | 0:25:13 | |
And then the last darkness is the use now that | 0:25:20 | 0:25:25 | |
we always think of when we use that phrase, "heart of darkness." | 0:25:25 | 0:25:30 | |
Which is the savagery of primeval Africa. | 0:25:30 | 0:25:33 | |
And it's very interesting that that use is the only one now that we see in the media today. | 0:25:33 | 0:25:39 | |
At the time of its publication, Conrad's book was just the opening | 0:25:42 | 0:25:46 | |
salvo in what eventually amounted to a barrage of criticism of Leopold's Congo. | 0:25:46 | 0:25:52 | |
The first human rights campaign of the 20th Century, it was also to be the first to use photographs. | 0:25:52 | 0:25:59 | |
Taken by British missionaries, they provided the evidence and produced outrage. | 0:25:59 | 0:26:05 | |
Supported by Mark Twain and Arthur Conan Doyle, | 0:26:05 | 0:26:09 | |
journalist Edmund Morel made the Red Rubber Campaign one of the dominant political issues of the age. | 0:26:09 | 0:26:15 | |
The Red Rubber Campaign, or the campaign that Morel led, became a huge public affair | 0:26:15 | 0:26:26 | |
both in England, in Europe and in the United States. | 0:26:26 | 0:26:32 | |
And it became a mass protest, | 0:26:32 | 0:26:36 | |
with all sorts of political ramifications. | 0:26:36 | 0:26:40 | |
And eventually, I suppose, | 0:26:40 | 0:26:44 | |
you can say that it led to the dismemberment of Leopold's... | 0:26:44 | 0:26:51 | |
..private franchise and the Belgian state taking over the Congo. | 0:26:53 | 0:27:00 | |
In 1908, Leopold handed his Congo Free State over to the Belgian nation. | 0:27:00 | 0:27:07 | |
The extreme abuses of the past slowly began to diminish. | 0:27:07 | 0:27:11 | |
But among all the colonising nations the idea of the civilising mission to the benighted forest colonies | 0:27:13 | 0:27:20 | |
was to be perpetuated for another half century. | 0:27:20 | 0:27:25 | |
It is Leopold's museum outside Brussels that exemplifies this propaganda more than any other. | 0:27:25 | 0:27:32 | |
Financed from the profits of his rubber trade, he built a stately | 0:27:32 | 0:27:36 | |
memorial to himself and his image of Western Civilisation in the Congo. | 0:27:36 | 0:27:43 | |
He died before it was completed. | 0:27:43 | 0:27:45 | |
Although its new administration has plans to update it, | 0:27:50 | 0:27:54 | |
the Royal Museum of Central Africa still displays the image | 0:27:54 | 0:27:58 | |
of the white man's mission, stimulating an ambiguous response from Congolese visitors. | 0:27:58 | 0:28:05 | |
There was a positive side to the presentations of the colonial museums. | 0:29:12 | 0:29:18 | |
They were also availing themselves of the cultural wealth of the forest people. | 0:29:18 | 0:29:23 | |
Figurines and masks from unknown sculptors of the forests were | 0:29:23 | 0:29:28 | |
a revelation to artists like Derain, Vlaminck, Modigliani and Picasso. | 0:29:28 | 0:29:33 | |
Picasso incorporated Congolese sculpture | 0:29:38 | 0:29:41 | |
into one of the most influential paintings of the 20th Century. | 0:29:41 | 0:29:46 | |
On visiting an exhibition of African art in Paris, he wrote: | 0:29:50 | 0:29:55 | |
"I experienced my greatest artistic emotion when I suddenly discovered | 0:29:55 | 0:29:59 | |
"the sublime beauty of sculptures | 0:29:59 | 0:30:02 | |
"executed by the anonymous artists from Africa. | 0:30:02 | 0:30:05 | |
"These passionate and rigorously logical religious works are what | 0:30:05 | 0:30:09 | |
"the human imagination has produced as most potent and most beautiful. | 0:30:09 | 0:30:16 | |
"At that moment I realised what painting was all about." | 0:30:16 | 0:30:19 | |
Of course it released him from all academic art. | 0:30:25 | 0:30:29 | |
I think it was the power in these things. | 0:30:29 | 0:30:32 | |
I mean, just looking at them. | 0:30:32 | 0:30:34 | |
They just have this power and any artist is going to feel... | 0:30:34 | 0:30:39 | |
..proud of that, pleased of that. He's part of this tradition. | 0:30:41 | 0:30:44 | |
The region's natural riches were also being collected in great numbers. | 0:30:45 | 0:30:50 | |
Museums all over the world enticed their publics with vast displays | 0:30:50 | 0:30:54 | |
of the forest's flora and fauna. | 0:30:54 | 0:30:57 | |
Hunters and naturalists combed the forest for more and more | 0:30:59 | 0:31:02 | |
exotic species in what was still seen as a primeval forest. | 0:31:02 | 0:31:08 | |
There were rumours | 0:31:08 | 0:31:09 | |
that the forest harboured survivors from the dinosaur era. | 0:31:09 | 0:31:12 | |
Sadly, no dinosaurs were discovered. | 0:31:16 | 0:31:19 | |
But the zoological world was rocked with other discoveries. | 0:31:19 | 0:31:23 | |
One came from the mountains on the Eastern edge of the Congo Forest. | 0:31:26 | 0:31:30 | |
The American zoologist Carl Akeley was commissioned | 0:32:11 | 0:32:14 | |
to collect specimens for the American Museum of Natural History | 0:32:14 | 0:32:18 | |
and he saw the forest in a new light. | 0:32:18 | 0:32:21 | |
But Akeley began not only to reassess the image of the gorilla | 0:32:46 | 0:32:50 | |
but he brought a new concept to the region, conservation. | 0:32:50 | 0:32:54 | |
Akeley's exertions resulted in the creation | 0:33:30 | 0:33:33 | |
of Africa's first National Park. | 0:33:33 | 0:33:36 | |
Albert National Park was the first of many. | 0:34:07 | 0:34:11 | |
The Congo was now perceived | 0:34:11 | 0:34:13 | |
as a natural treasure to be preserved, not just exploited. | 0:34:13 | 0:34:17 | |
However, this perception did not embrace | 0:34:17 | 0:34:20 | |
the human populations who lived in and around it. | 0:34:20 | 0:34:24 | |
People for whom the forest and its resources provided a livelihood | 0:34:28 | 0:34:33 | |
and also was a well-spring for their spiritual life. | 0:34:33 | 0:34:37 | |
Throughout the various colonies that partitioned the forest, | 0:35:01 | 0:35:04 | |
attitudes to the local inhabitants varied. | 0:35:04 | 0:35:08 | |
In the vast territory which was the Belgian Congo, it seemed that | 0:35:08 | 0:35:13 | |
the rulers were still locked into a perception of the forest population | 0:35:13 | 0:35:17 | |
that owed a great deal to the social Darwinians | 0:35:17 | 0:35:20 | |
and the evolutionary hierarchy of mankind. | 0:35:20 | 0:35:23 | |
Well, the Belgians had this incredibly patronising approach | 0:35:23 | 0:35:27 | |
to the Congolese. There were several social distinctions | 0:35:27 | 0:35:30 | |
in Congolese Cities. You had the African quarters, | 0:35:30 | 0:35:34 | |
the popular quarters, and then you had the white quarters, | 0:35:34 | 0:35:39 | |
which were...you know, were rather nicer. And then in between | 0:35:39 | 0:35:42 | |
you had the areas where the 'Evolue' were allowed to live. | 0:35:42 | 0:35:46 | |
And these were Africans, 'evolved Africans' | 0:35:46 | 0:35:49 | |
who were deemed to be between the Africans and the whites. | 0:35:49 | 0:35:52 | |
I think the word Evolue says everything. Evolved. | 0:35:53 | 0:35:57 | |
You're in a transitory stage between being an African, | 0:35:57 | 0:36:01 | |
ie not quite human, and a white person, who is fully human. | 0:36:01 | 0:36:06 | |
VINTAGE VOICEOVER IN FRENCH | 0:36:06 | 0:36:10 | |
The Belgian Congo began to promote itself | 0:36:10 | 0:36:14 | |
as the best managed colony in the region. | 0:36:14 | 0:36:17 | |
It was as if the forests had been tamed to provide | 0:36:17 | 0:36:21 | |
the perfect tourist destination. | 0:36:21 | 0:36:22 | |
Sustained by profits of its abundant mineral resources, | 0:36:33 | 0:36:37 | |
airports were built, new railway lines created. | 0:36:37 | 0:36:40 | |
A national system of roads | 0:36:40 | 0:36:41 | |
was forged across thousands of miles of jungle. | 0:36:41 | 0:36:45 | |
Primary education was provided for the local population | 0:36:45 | 0:36:50 | |
and the colony had more hospital beds | 0:36:50 | 0:36:53 | |
than all the rest of tropical Africa. | 0:36:53 | 0:36:55 | |
Diseases like leprosy were almost eradicated. | 0:36:55 | 0:36:58 | |
The colony was still situated on the 'dark continent' | 0:36:58 | 0:37:02 | |
but it no longer seemed to be Conrad's Heart Of Darkness. | 0:37:02 | 0:37:06 | |
AFRICAN VOCAL MUSIC | 0:37:06 | 0:37:09 | |
The Congo was at its zenith in the 1950s, late 1950s. | 0:37:12 | 0:37:16 | |
This was a time when it was integrated with the rest of the world. | 0:37:16 | 0:37:19 | |
You could take a flight and land in the Congo quite happily | 0:37:19 | 0:37:22 | |
and it would connect on. That was the point, it was connected. | 0:37:22 | 0:37:25 | |
You could buy a railway ticket in what was then Rhodesia | 0:37:25 | 0:37:28 | |
and travel into the Congo. | 0:37:28 | 0:37:29 | |
I know this because my own mother did it in 1958. | 0:37:29 | 0:37:31 | |
Just a young girl in her 20s, | 0:37:31 | 0:37:33 | |
not a particularly adventurous traveller, by her own admission. | 0:37:33 | 0:37:36 | |
She just went through the Congo because she was on a journey | 0:37:36 | 0:37:39 | |
from Rhodesia to Kenya and it was the way to do it. | 0:37:39 | 0:37:42 | |
And, for me, one of the tiny little examples | 0:37:42 | 0:37:45 | |
is that Hollywood could send a big film crew, | 0:37:45 | 0:37:47 | |
a big film crew with a producer, with a big fat cigar. | 0:37:47 | 0:37:50 | |
John Huston, a colourful, amazing, want to shoot the elephants, | 0:37:50 | 0:37:54 | |
kind of character as the director. Send those guys and 40 crew, | 0:37:54 | 0:37:57 | |
with their sound men, and their gaffer boys, | 0:37:57 | 0:38:00 | |
and their best boys and all of this up the Congo river. | 0:38:00 | 0:38:02 | |
About as far as it's possible to go, all the way to Stanleyville. | 0:38:02 | 0:38:06 | |
They went on the train, the Equator Express that cuts across the equator. | 0:38:06 | 0:38:09 | |
At the end of that, they drove another 40 miles out into the bush | 0:38:09 | 0:38:12 | |
to find what was, for them, the perfect river scene | 0:38:12 | 0:38:15 | |
for the African Queen. And it was perfectly doable. | 0:38:15 | 0:38:18 | |
From the thrilling pages of world renowned author CS Forester's | 0:38:18 | 0:38:21 | |
magnificent story and filmed in the jungles and head waters of Africa, | 0:38:21 | 0:38:25 | |
The Dark Continent, in all the magnificence of colour | 0:38:25 | 0:38:28 | |
by Technicolor, comes the most exciting adventure ever screened. | 0:38:28 | 0:38:33 | |
You promised you'd go down river. | 0:38:38 | 0:38:40 | |
-There's death a dozen times over down the river. -You promised. | 0:38:40 | 0:38:44 | |
Well, I'm taking my promise back! | 0:38:44 | 0:38:46 | |
The region's roads, railways, airports, schools, hospitals | 0:38:48 | 0:38:52 | |
and hunting lodges were financed from the super abundance | 0:38:52 | 0:38:55 | |
of mineral deposits that lay beneath the ground. | 0:38:55 | 0:38:59 | |
Forest products like rubber and oil palm brought in more revenue. | 0:38:59 | 0:39:04 | |
The very fact it was a rainforest provided another resource. | 0:39:04 | 0:39:08 | |
The great cliche about the Congo, "It is cursed with its resources." | 0:39:09 | 0:39:12 | |
It has everything you could possibly want. It has power, | 0:39:12 | 0:39:16 | |
hydroelectric power, more than anyone can dream of if you could, | 0:39:16 | 0:39:20 | |
reasonably, trap that river. | 0:39:20 | 0:39:22 | |
Similarly, the Congo's copper deposits. | 0:39:22 | 0:39:24 | |
Again, the richest in the world. | 0:39:24 | 0:39:26 | |
Cobalt deposits, the richest in the world. | 0:39:26 | 0:39:28 | |
Alluvial diamonds, fantastic. | 0:39:28 | 0:39:30 | |
Kimberlite Diamonds, even better. Gold? It goes on. Casseterite? | 0:39:30 | 0:39:33 | |
Coltan? It's all there. | 0:39:33 | 0:39:35 | |
At the time of Leopold II, someone described the Congo | 0:39:36 | 0:39:41 | |
as being a geological scandal, and that's certainly the case. | 0:39:41 | 0:39:46 | |
You have the very, very major holdings | 0:39:46 | 0:39:49 | |
of copper and cobalt, gold, diamonds and, of course, uranium. | 0:39:49 | 0:39:54 | |
Now, at the time of the Second World War, | 0:39:54 | 0:39:56 | |
the uranium that was used to produce the bombs | 0:39:56 | 0:40:00 | |
that were dropped on Hiroshima came from Congo. | 0:40:00 | 0:40:04 | |
The very riches that had facilitated the infrastructure | 0:40:12 | 0:40:16 | |
and wealth of the Belgian Congo | 0:40:16 | 0:40:18 | |
were to blight the country's future as an independent state. | 0:40:18 | 0:40:22 | |
In 1960, virtually all the countries of the region gained independence. | 0:40:22 | 0:40:28 | |
For a moment, this part of Africa was seized with optimism. | 0:40:28 | 0:40:32 | |
The great tracts of equatorial forests would become | 0:40:36 | 0:40:40 | |
a collection of independent states | 0:40:40 | 0:40:42 | |
which still retained their old colonial boundaries. | 0:40:42 | 0:40:45 | |
The new Congo state dominated the region and international attention. | 0:40:45 | 0:40:50 | |
But virtually from the beginning, most of the new countries | 0:40:51 | 0:40:55 | |
were thrown into upheaval as foreign interests interfered | 0:40:55 | 0:40:59 | |
to retain control over the mineral resources. | 0:40:59 | 0:41:02 | |
Once again, Henry Morton Stanley's image of savage anarchy prevailed. | 0:41:02 | 0:41:07 | |
For a few years, | 0:41:17 | 0:41:18 | |
the region returned to the darkness of chaos and civil war. | 0:41:18 | 0:41:22 | |
The Congo's first president was assassinated. | 0:41:22 | 0:41:25 | |
Belgian troops and later the UN were called in. | 0:41:25 | 0:41:28 | |
White mercenaries fought in the south. | 0:41:28 | 0:41:32 | |
Che Guevara led guerrilla bands in the East. | 0:41:32 | 0:41:35 | |
Eventually, a unifying figurehead arose | 0:41:35 | 0:41:37 | |
who was to recast the image of this country of forests | 0:41:37 | 0:41:41 | |
as Zaire, the model African state. | 0:41:41 | 0:41:44 | |
He took his inspiration from his forest background. | 0:41:44 | 0:41:47 | |
First of all, he was very much a traditional chief, | 0:43:08 | 0:43:11 | |
coming from the forest tradition. | 0:43:11 | 0:43:14 | |
His way of governing was very much based on... | 0:43:14 | 0:43:18 | |
on forest-type policies, | 0:43:18 | 0:43:20 | |
very secretive and very clanic, there's no question about that. | 0:43:20 | 0:43:25 | |
And he always loved nature, | 0:43:25 | 0:43:26 | |
that's one of the things that he is respected for. | 0:43:26 | 0:43:29 | |
He was very, very supportive of nature conservation, | 0:43:29 | 0:43:33 | |
even though there was a lot of elephant poaching at the same time. | 0:43:33 | 0:43:36 | |
He loved to go fishing, he loved to go hunting. | 0:43:36 | 0:43:40 | |
He used to take his VIP visitors out to nature. | 0:43:40 | 0:43:45 | |
He had this wonderful expression. | 0:43:45 | 0:43:47 | |
He used to say, "You people in Europe have your cathedrals. | 0:43:47 | 0:43:50 | |
"In Zaire, we have our forest, that is our heritage." | 0:43:50 | 0:43:54 | |
"This is something you want to protect." | 0:43:54 | 0:43:57 | |
As the region's powerful figurehead, | 0:43:57 | 0:44:00 | |
Zaire's leader ensured a period of relative peace. | 0:44:00 | 0:44:05 | |
Field researchers were able to operate in his forests | 0:44:05 | 0:44:08 | |
and, among other discoveries, | 0:44:08 | 0:44:10 | |
identified another close relative to humankind. Unique to Zaire, | 0:44:10 | 0:44:15 | |
the Bonobo's social relations were based on...an abundance of sex. | 0:44:15 | 0:44:20 | |
Everyone does it with everyone else. | 0:44:24 | 0:44:27 | |
Males with males, females with females, adults with young, | 0:44:27 | 0:44:30 | |
and they do it for all sorts of reasons - to greet, to appease, | 0:44:30 | 0:44:35 | |
to reassure, to enhance relationships of all kinds. | 0:44:35 | 0:44:39 | |
It's the social cement of bonobo society, | 0:44:39 | 0:44:42 | |
the binding force that keeps the group together. | 0:44:42 | 0:44:45 | |
The mountain gorillas were protected in the eastern province of Kivu, | 0:44:52 | 0:44:57 | |
the old Albert National Park. | 0:44:57 | 0:44:58 | |
No respecters of borders, | 0:45:00 | 0:45:02 | |
they moved between Zaire and neighbouring Rwanda. | 0:45:02 | 0:45:05 | |
Naturalists like Dian Fossey and David Attenborough | 0:45:06 | 0:45:10 | |
were to recreate their image as peace lovers. | 0:45:10 | 0:45:13 | |
There is more... | 0:45:15 | 0:45:18 | |
meaning and mutual understanding in exchanging a glance... | 0:45:18 | 0:45:23 | |
with a gorilla... | 0:45:23 | 0:45:26 | |
than any other animal I know. | 0:45:26 | 0:45:27 | |
We're so similar. | 0:45:29 | 0:45:31 | |
Their sight, their hearing, | 0:45:33 | 0:45:34 | |
their sense of smell are so similar to ours | 0:45:34 | 0:45:39 | |
that we see the world in the same way as they do. | 0:45:39 | 0:45:43 | |
Du Chaillu's image of the ferocious half-man half-beast | 0:45:47 | 0:45:51 | |
could now be consigned to the antique book collectors. | 0:45:51 | 0:45:55 | |
So it seems really very unfair that man should have chosen the gorilla | 0:45:58 | 0:46:04 | |
to symbolise all that is aggressive and violent | 0:46:04 | 0:46:08 | |
when that's the one thing that the gorilla is not and that we are. | 0:46:08 | 0:46:13 | |
But just as we were beginning to see them as playful and harmless herbivores, | 0:46:19 | 0:46:23 | |
they were about to become a new symbol, | 0:46:23 | 0:46:26 | |
the innocent victims of deforestation. | 0:46:26 | 0:46:29 | |
CHAINSAW WHINES | 0:46:29 | 0:46:31 | |
Rainforests like the Amazon and the Congo | 0:46:36 | 0:46:40 | |
were becoming a source of international concern. | 0:46:40 | 0:46:43 | |
This time, it was in the ex-French colonies to the north | 0:46:43 | 0:46:47 | |
where concessions were being granted to European timber companies. | 0:46:47 | 0:46:52 | |
Not only was animal habitat being destroyed, | 0:46:52 | 0:46:55 | |
but roads were being opened to the bushmeat hunters. | 0:46:55 | 0:46:58 | |
In Zaire itself, the uncontrolled and thoroughly corrupt exploitation | 0:47:08 | 0:47:12 | |
of the country's minerals | 0:47:12 | 0:47:14 | |
was now causing the collapse of Mobutu's great forest state. | 0:47:14 | 0:47:18 | |
Zaire's riches were being siphoned into foreign bank accounts, | 0:47:25 | 0:47:29 | |
spent on palaces or squandered on expensive and often pointless | 0:47:29 | 0:47:33 | |
purchases that could not be afforded and would not be maintained. | 0:47:33 | 0:47:38 | |
'And now it's time for birthday presents to the nation. | 0:47:41 | 0:47:45 | |
'A jumbo jet.' | 0:47:45 | 0:47:46 | |
His final downfall was to be triggered by the fallout | 0:48:19 | 0:48:22 | |
from the Rwandan genocide in 1994. | 0:48:22 | 0:48:26 | |
Millions of refugees poured over the border | 0:48:27 | 0:48:30 | |
into the forests of eastern Congo. | 0:48:30 | 0:48:32 | |
The upheaval resulted in the invasion of foreign armies | 0:48:32 | 0:48:35 | |
that backed his political rivals. | 0:48:35 | 0:48:38 | |
As his loss of power became inevitable, | 0:48:40 | 0:48:43 | |
he began to resemble less the dominating figure of Leopold II | 0:48:43 | 0:48:47 | |
and more Mr Kurtz, the failed and morally bankrupt administrator | 0:48:47 | 0:48:52 | |
from The Heart Of Darkness. | 0:48:52 | 0:48:55 | |
I think there are some similarities between Kurtz and Mobutu. | 0:48:55 | 0:48:59 | |
Certainly, when I first got to Kinshasa as a young reporter, | 0:48:59 | 0:49:05 | |
there was this mystery figure who was in the middle of the jungle, | 0:49:05 | 0:49:08 | |
marooned in Gbadolite, where he had this this vast palace, | 0:49:08 | 0:49:12 | |
where he'd grown up, where he came from, where he spent a lot of time | 0:49:12 | 0:49:17 | |
planting seedlings, designing his ornamental gardens. | 0:49:17 | 0:49:21 | |
If you see some of the coverage that was shot of him during those years, | 0:49:21 | 0:49:27 | |
there is a sense of a man who's cutting himself off completely | 0:49:27 | 0:49:31 | |
from reality, still touring around, saying hello to local villagers, | 0:49:31 | 0:49:35 | |
planting his garden, trying to live the life of the gentleman farmer. | 0:49:35 | 0:49:39 | |
No longer wants to know anything | 0:49:39 | 0:49:42 | |
about the politics of his country, international politics, | 0:49:42 | 0:49:47 | |
who only feels at home now in the forest | 0:49:47 | 0:49:50 | |
and who had withdrawn into his forest hideout. | 0:49:50 | 0:49:53 | |
Mobutu was eventually forced into exile, | 0:49:54 | 0:49:58 | |
leaving behind his rotting palaces | 0:49:58 | 0:50:00 | |
to become a symbol of his grandiose failure, | 0:50:00 | 0:50:04 | |
slowly consumed by the forest he so identified with. | 0:50:04 | 0:50:09 | |
The spectre of savage anarchy returned once again | 0:50:15 | 0:50:18 | |
to much of the Congo with the civil wars that followed | 0:50:18 | 0:50:22 | |
Mobutu's exile and death. | 0:50:22 | 0:50:24 | |
This image has been perpetuated | 0:50:29 | 0:50:31 | |
by the intervention of armies from other nations | 0:50:31 | 0:50:34 | |
and a struggle to control the country's minerals and mines. | 0:50:34 | 0:50:39 | |
And the great forests are an easy place to hide renegade armies and tribal militias. | 0:50:39 | 0:50:44 | |
But just as the forests can support ruthless and violent armed bands, | 0:50:48 | 0:50:53 | |
they can be the source of food and shelter for the inhabitants. | 0:50:53 | 0:50:56 | |
It was a constant message, a constant remark | 0:50:58 | 0:51:01 | |
that came from every single Congolesan person I spoke to | 0:51:01 | 0:51:04 | |
from one side to the other, either deep inland or down by the coast. | 0:51:04 | 0:51:07 | |
At one point in their lives, they'd all had this experience. | 0:51:07 | 0:51:10 | |
HE SPEAKS IN FRENCH | 0:51:10 | 0:51:12 | |
"We've all fled to the bush, we've gone there to find sanctuary." | 0:51:12 | 0:51:15 | |
I guess if you think about it, the sheer scale of the place, | 0:51:18 | 0:51:21 | |
it's the geography, it is so vast, | 0:51:21 | 0:51:23 | |
it is the second largest rainforest in the world after the Amazon. | 0:51:23 | 0:51:26 | |
This vast, vast country, | 0:51:26 | 0:51:28 | |
that's the only safety you've got when the bad guys are coming. | 0:51:28 | 0:51:31 | |
You have a chance of hiding, | 0:51:31 | 0:51:32 | |
if you can just go and disperse yourself somewhere in that forest. | 0:51:32 | 0:51:35 | |
In the last decade, the eastern part of the Congo has been blighted | 0:51:38 | 0:51:42 | |
with natural disasters, as well as massacre, rape and pillage. | 0:51:42 | 0:51:46 | |
Malnutrition and disease have taken an even greater toll. | 0:51:46 | 0:51:50 | |
As many as five million people have died. | 0:51:50 | 0:51:53 | |
For the largest human death toll since the Second World War, | 0:51:57 | 0:52:01 | |
there's been scant coverage. | 0:52:01 | 0:52:03 | |
But analysis of some television channels, including the BBC, | 0:52:03 | 0:52:07 | |
shows there have been more hours focusing on the threat | 0:52:07 | 0:52:10 | |
to the Congo's great apes and their habitat | 0:52:10 | 0:52:12 | |
than there has been on the plight of the human population. | 0:52:12 | 0:52:16 | |
I'd spent many months in Eastern Congo, | 0:52:16 | 0:52:19 | |
covering first the genocide in Rwanda, then | 0:52:19 | 0:52:22 | |
there was the flood of thousands of refugees into Eastern Congo, | 0:52:22 | 0:52:26 | |
then thousands more were dying of cholera in the refugee camps. | 0:52:26 | 0:52:30 | |
Amongst the journalists there would be many who would be taking time out | 0:52:30 | 0:52:36 | |
to write about the gorillas in Virunga Park, | 0:52:36 | 0:52:39 | |
which ran just near the refugee camps, | 0:52:39 | 0:52:41 | |
and the emphasis would always be about, "Isn't it awful? | 0:52:41 | 0:52:44 | |
"There are all these Hutu genocidaires, | 0:52:44 | 0:52:46 | |
these genocidal killers wandering around in the camps, | 0:52:46 | 0:52:49 | |
and the gorillas are being eaten, | 0:52:49 | 0:52:51 | |
the gorillas are being slaughtered, isn't it awful?" | 0:52:51 | 0:52:54 | |
And you sort of thought, | 0:52:54 | 0:52:56 | |
"Well, yes, but there's been a genocide across the border. | 0:52:56 | 0:52:59 | |
"People are still dying of cholera, is this an appropriate emphasis?" | 0:52:59 | 0:53:03 | |
Our Western response to the Congo does seem to allow | 0:53:05 | 0:53:08 | |
for two contradictory visions to live side by side. | 0:53:08 | 0:53:12 | |
However much we recoil from the human bloodshed and atrocities, | 0:53:12 | 0:53:16 | |
we're still fascinated by the idea | 0:53:16 | 0:53:18 | |
that these forests are also home to our closest genetic relatives. | 0:53:18 | 0:53:23 | |
Ever since the first explorers, we have been entranced | 0:53:25 | 0:53:29 | |
by the great diversity and abundance of plant and animal species, | 0:53:29 | 0:53:35 | |
the sheer exuberance of nature. | 0:53:35 | 0:53:37 | |
After Leopold, the Belgians attempted to bring | 0:53:38 | 0:53:42 | |
order and infrastructure, but now, like Mobutu's palaces, | 0:53:42 | 0:53:48 | |
the last vestiges of the white man's colonial endeavours | 0:53:48 | 0:53:52 | |
are being swallowed up by rampant nature. | 0:53:52 | 0:53:56 | |
There was an amazing moment very close to the equator, | 0:53:58 | 0:54:01 | |
about as close as you possibly could get. | 0:54:01 | 0:54:03 | |
It was just near the town of Kisangani, | 0:54:03 | 0:54:05 | |
what used to be Stanleyville, this city on a bend in the river. | 0:54:05 | 0:54:08 | |
Deep equatorial forest, | 0:54:09 | 0:54:12 | |
and I was walking through the forest, | 0:54:12 | 0:54:14 | |
and then suddenly my heel felt something strange and angular, | 0:54:14 | 0:54:20 | |
felt a bit odd in this sort of leafy organic world of the forest. | 0:54:20 | 0:54:25 | |
And I scraped down through the leaf mulch with my heel | 0:54:25 | 0:54:28 | |
and came across a railway sleeper, | 0:54:28 | 0:54:30 | |
you know, with the name Antwerp printed on it, 1913. | 0:54:30 | 0:54:34 | |
But even more scary, | 0:54:34 | 0:54:36 | |
the railway sleeper was connected to railway tracks, | 0:54:36 | 0:54:38 | |
which again I could scrape away, | 0:54:38 | 0:54:40 | |
and they disappeared off and then died in the forest. | 0:54:40 | 0:54:43 | |
Katharine Hepburn sat on that railway. | 0:54:49 | 0:54:52 | |
Humphrey Bogart sat on that railway, | 0:54:52 | 0:54:54 | |
and they went along that railway in 1951 to film The African Queen. | 0:54:54 | 0:54:58 | |
And for me it was a very powerful moment, | 0:54:58 | 0:55:00 | |
and it drilled home that sense of a place | 0:55:00 | 0:55:02 | |
where the developmental graph had gone like a parabola | 0:55:02 | 0:55:05 | |
and we were on the downward slope, | 0:55:05 | 0:55:07 | |
and that's the reality of today's Congo. | 0:55:07 | 0:55:10 | |
But now there are new foreign builders in the Congo. | 0:55:15 | 0:55:18 | |
Like the Europeans of the 19th century, | 0:55:18 | 0:55:21 | |
the Chinese have come here offering to bring the benefits | 0:55:21 | 0:55:25 | |
of their expertise and technology. | 0:55:25 | 0:55:27 | |
In a deal worth as much as 9 billion, | 0:55:39 | 0:55:42 | |
the Chinese are promising to build new roads, | 0:55:42 | 0:55:45 | |
railways, hospitals and schools. | 0:55:45 | 0:55:49 | |
This is in exchange for millions of tons | 0:55:49 | 0:55:51 | |
of the country's copper and nickel over the next 15 years. | 0:55:51 | 0:55:56 | |
The new roads, railways and hospitals depend on | 0:55:57 | 0:56:00 | |
a stable and open government which will be able to maintain them. | 0:56:00 | 0:56:05 | |
There are justified fears that history will repeat itself. | 0:56:05 | 0:56:10 | |
Economists talk about the resource curse, which is that assets which | 0:56:10 | 0:56:15 | |
should be a great blessing in fact turn out to be a blight, and I think Congo is the | 0:56:15 | 0:56:20 | |
perfect example of that, and what's interesting is that Congolese people | 0:56:20 | 0:56:25 | |
will often talk to you with huge pride and sort of vaingloriousness about all these wonderful... | 0:56:25 | 0:56:30 | |
"We're a rich country, we've got all these mineral assets," | 0:56:30 | 0:56:33 | |
and it really is a very important part of their self-image and their | 0:56:33 | 0:56:37 | |
image of their own country, but of course if you can't tap the assets | 0:56:37 | 0:56:42 | |
and if you can't tap the assets in a way that is then funnelled back and re-invested in your own country, | 0:56:42 | 0:56:48 | |
you'd actually be better off without them, and that is unfortunately the truth, | 0:56:48 | 0:56:52 | |
because they have constantly | 0:56:52 | 0:56:55 | |
seen these assets being used as an excuse to rape the country. | 0:56:55 | 0:57:00 | |
The people of the Congo are now among the poorest in the world. | 0:57:04 | 0:57:08 | |
In the last century, many have left the forests for the towns and cities. | 0:57:08 | 0:57:13 | |
In earlier days, they'd seen the forest as more than just a place of refuge and sustenance. | 0:57:14 | 0:57:21 | |
It was also the place where their ancestors lived, | 0:57:21 | 0:57:24 | |
a place of awe, reverence and sometimes fear. | 0:57:24 | 0:57:29 | |
Since the arrival of the Europeans, this relationship has been fundamentally transformed. | 0:57:29 | 0:57:36 |