Congo Wilderness Explored


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Before you enter the forest it is respectful to seek permission.

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The peoples of the Congo basin have lived in a close relationship

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with their forests for thousands of years.

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But this relationship was to radically change with the arrival of the white explorers.

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From the beginning, they developed very different visions of the forest.

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They portrayed it as a land of savage chaos, the heart of darkness.

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They've been corrupted by the wealth of its resources and yet,

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at the same, time entranced by the sheer exuberance of its nature.

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The great swathe of forests that cover central Africa

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were not penetrated by European explorers until the second half of the 19th century.

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When they did eventually venture in beyond their settlements on the coast

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they were not to find it uninhabited.

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That was the perception of the Western European explorers

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who went down to central Africa, imagining it was a black hole.

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People have been living in central Africa, in the deep tropical forest, for centuries and centuries.

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And the nature that we see there has been formed by these peoples.

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It's a contrast between a lot of the conservationist discourse

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of trying to preserve this pristine space that resembles more the Garden of Eden.

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The people have formed these spaces.

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So what the Europeans found there was something that they discovered for themselves.

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They weren't bringing in anything new to the people there.

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For hundreds of years, the 2 million square kilometres of rainforest that

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cover the Congo Basin was merely a blank on the European map.

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It's a region bounded by the Atlantic to the west and a range of ancient volcanoes to the East.

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It's intersected by giant river systems that feed the river that eats all rivers - the Congo.

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On its way to the sea, the Congo also passes through swamps and savannah, great lakes and clearings.

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A variety of habitats that supports an extraordinary range of species,

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many of which were unknown to the early European explorers.

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It was in 1859 that a young Franco-American explorer

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returned from the African forest with thousands of animal specimens, many of them unknown to science.

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Although Paul Du Chaillu wrote about his experiences with cannibals and pygmies, it was his stories of

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a forest brimming with wildlife that captured the public's imagination.

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His encounter with one animal in particular, created a sensation.

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Du Chaillu's descriptions of the gorilla are quite incredible.

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He really ups the ante on the horrific.

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He really sells a very good story and his audiences lapped it up.

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He presents an image of a hostile jungle but particularly

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a hellish, beastly gorilla as the king of this jungle.

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"His eyes began to flash fierce fire as we stood motionless on the defensive.

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"And the crest of short hair which stands on his forehead began to twitch rapidly up and down,

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"His powerful fangs were shown as he sent forth a thunderous roar.

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"Now he reminded me of nothing but some hellish dream creature.

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"A being of that hideous order, half-man, half-beast, which we find pictured by old artists

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"in some representations of the infernal regions.

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"He advanced a few steps and then stopped to utter that hideous roar.

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"Advanced again, and finally stopped.

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"And here, just as he began another of his roars, beating his breast in rage...

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"We fired and killed him."

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His descriptions were to perpetuate the savage image of the gorilla right through to the 20th century

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in literature and, eventually, on film.

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In particular, Du Chaillu was playing up

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to a public that was already fascinated by the idea of powerful, semi-human beasts

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with a high sex drive.

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SHE SCREAMS

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Du Chaillu's efforts went beyond the written word.

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He even doctored the specimens he brought back.

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Here's your terrifying, savage,

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brute gorilla.

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Du Chaillu actually cut the penises off his gorillas.

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Why?

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Because nobody would believe that a man-ape,

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an ape-man could possibly be pulling women off to...

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Because their penis, fully erect,

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is no more than one inch long. Which is why there are leaves over.

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And it's these stories that really set imaginations

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running riot with an idea of what might exist in Central Africa.

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He sets a stage for later explorers like Stanley but also later authors.

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If you think of Henty, Stables, Stephenson, Haggard, Kipling or Kingston.

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Writing these wonderful adventure narratives of a miscellaneous collection of

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Victorian explorers, pith-helmeted, bewhiskered, khaki-clad,

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drifting down river, discovering wild beasts.

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Fighting their way through jungles and discovering lost treasures.

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And it's the description of wilderness that enables this.

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The description of an African wilderness, albeit teeming with life

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and indigenous peoples, a wilderness that's challenging.

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Certainly in the imagination of British audiences was an environment

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that was ripe to be subjected, dominated and controlled.

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Part of that was through mapping,

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but obviously later through conquest and colonisation.

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Du Chaillu's gorilla specimens captured the imaginations of

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the cartoonists of the time, playing their part in the debates around Darwin's The Origin of Species.

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"Am I satyr or man?

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"Pray tell me who can and settle my place on the scale.

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"A man in ape's shape, an anthropoid ape or a monkey deprived of his tail?

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"Then Darwin set forth, in a book of much worth, the importance of nature's selection.

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"How the struggle for life is a laudable strife, and results in specific distinction."

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For a while, the gorilla was seen as the likely candidate for mankind's closest relative.

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"Then apes have no nose and thumbs for great toes, and a pelvis both narrow and slight.

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"They can't stand upright - unless to show fight with Du Chaillu, that chivalrous knight."

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Du Chaillu's vivid accounts of the Congo presented the idea of a place

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full of other human like ancestors, leading to speculation that this forest was rich with tribes of

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people further down the evolutionary tree than the European white male.

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So far, Du Chaillu had created the image of a great African Forest brimming with natural history

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specimens and as an exotic habitat for early prototypes of human kind.

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But soon an event occurred which was to utterly transform the European

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attitude to the Congo region and to dictate its destiny right up until the present day.

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On August the 9th 1877, Henry Morton Stanley, the man who discovered Livingstone, reached

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the mouth of the Congo having blazed a trail across the great uncharted centre of the continent.

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Basically, Stanley's journey,

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it started the sounding gun for the scramble for Africa.

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20 years of white man staking the interior of Africa.

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So it really was a massive turning point.

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This unimaginably huge tract of Africa was suddenly open.

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A whole area of the map had been filled in.

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Stanley's achievement was considerable.

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His journey had been sponsored by the New York Herald

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in the United States and the London Daily Telegraph.

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His self-promoting articles, augmented by extensive lecturing tours presented his account of

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his voyage across what he called the Dark Continent.

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This massive bestseller, full of exaggeration,

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described an heroic journey down a river and through dense forests full of violent tribes.

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"To the ordinary white man, it was what may well be

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"termed impenetrable - except at constant peril of his life.

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"It was ravaged by cannibals, fierce warlike tribes and Arab slave raiders.

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"Every tribe barred the ingress of the travelling

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"and its frontier on all sides lay exposed to any white stranger who took the trouble to plant a flag."

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It was a bestseller.

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But, yes, it consigned this part of Africa to a stereotype, to an image.

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An Africa that was inherently brutal, almost irredeemably so.

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So, going from perhaps

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these voyages that were genuinely scientific or had at their heart

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a sort of perhaps enlightened goal of adding to knowledge,

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of scientific inquiry, to a mindset that was

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bristlingly Imperial and casting the African continent as something that was irredeemably savage.

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And, therefore, had to be saved by

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the enlightened knowledge of an Empire.

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Perhaps Stanley is responsible for setting

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Africa down that path of subjugation and colonial domination.

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There was going to be a new history.

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By demonstrating that the Congo was navigable, Stanley alerted

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European powers to the possibility that the entire Equatorial forest could be divided up.

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Within eight years of the publication of Through the Dark Continent, France, Germany, Spain,

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Portugal and Great Britain had carved out portions.

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And the King of one small nation had grabbed half of it as his own personal fiefdom.

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Leopold II, King of the Belgians, described the great swathe of

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African forest as, "This magnificent African cake."

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Never does he step one foot on Africa. And yet he holds an astonishing record.

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He is the man who has claimed as his own one piece of land larger than any other human ever has.

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He took that land as his plaything, his fiefdom, his private estate.

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It's astonishing, it's a million square miles

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of Equatorial forest, river system, savannah.

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And he regards it as a large cake from which he can derive whatever goods he can.

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Leopold's giant-size portion of cake was to prove very rich indeed.

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The abundance of animals and plants were no longer merely objects of scientific interest.

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They'd help him finance an empire.

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His initial source of income came from forest elephants.

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Though smaller than their relatives in East Africa, they still packed a lot of ivory.

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The export of ivory was so lucrative that the animals were driven close to extinction.

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But soon another, more lucrative example of the region's abundance

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was to change the King's fortunes and the forest itself.

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Leopold was looking to the Congo to exploit its mineral wealth,

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rubber particularly, at this point.

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Rubber being used for automobile tyres, but crucially being used

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for the insulation on electric cables, telephone and the telegraph.

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These modern technologies, dependent on rubber.

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It was a boom, immense wealth but it came at immense cost.

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Great numbers of rubber trees grew wild in the forest's interior.

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There was no idea of plantations at this time

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and so tapping them would need to rely on the local knowledge and labour of the forest's inhabitants.

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And this was to be a primary example of how the region's riches would become associated with misery.

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Leopold now owned their forest

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and his ruthless drive to extract rubber from the inhabitants

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radically altered their perception of the landscape they'd inhabited for thousands of years.

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When a village failed to produce its quota of rubber, selected people had their hands chopped off.

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Frequently it was the children.

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The image of the abundant Congo was supplanted with the image of the state of terror.

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Frankly, it was the first genocide of the modern era.

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Between 1885 to 1908 between 4 and 10 million people died.

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These are numbing figures.

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It happened because white man thought that he could do this to Africa.

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And that really is, that's where the association

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of Central of the Congo River Basin with darkness comes from.

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The adjective darkness was to become indelibly attached to the Western imaginings of the Congo

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with the publication of Conrad's novella in 1899.

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"Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world.

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"When vegetation rioted on the Earth and big trees were kings.

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"An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest.

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"The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish.

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"There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine.

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"The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of overshadowed distances.

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"We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness."

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Joseph Conrad had travelled in Leopold's so called Congo Free State in the 1890s.

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Like many white men, he'd suffered from chronic dysentery and malaria.

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His physical degeneration was coupled with a deep disillusion

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with the way Leopold's regime exploited the land and its people.

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And what he saw, the behaviour of the white men, scarred him so much

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it sat in his soul for eight years.

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Eight years later, in three hectic months, he produced The Heart Of Darkness.

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"They were dying slowly, it was very clear.

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"They were not enemies, they were not criminals.

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"They were nothing earthly now, nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation.

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"Lying confusedly in the greenish gloom.

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"Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the legality of time contracts.

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"Lost in uncongenial surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food,

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"they sickened, became inefficient and were then allowed to crawl away and rest."

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And there were very many layers of darkness.

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One of the layers of darkness was the darkness of a colonial project and the hypocrisy at its heart.

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That it was pretending to be about uplifting the native, and introducing him to civilization,

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but in fact, it was about profit at any cost.

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The other darkness was the darkness of a white man, a western,

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supposedly civilised man who goes to Africa, enjoyed supreme absolute power and loses his moral bearings.

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The model for Kurtz, the station agent who goes crazy

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in the middle of the forest, was probably Leon Rom who was a Belgian member of the Force Publique.

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And this was the man who's famous in the Congo for decorating

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his palisades with the heads of the local Congolese.

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"His was an impenetrable darkness.

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"I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent.

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"I saw on that ivory face an expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power,

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"of craven terror.

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"Of an intense and hopeless despair.

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"He cried out twice. A cry that was no more than a breath.

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"The horror. The horror."

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And then the last darkness is the use now that

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we always think of when we use that phrase, "heart of darkness."

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Which is the savagery of primeval Africa.

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And it's very interesting that that use is the only one now that we see in the media today.

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At the time of its publication, Conrad's book was just the opening

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salvo in what eventually amounted to a barrage of criticism of Leopold's Congo.

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The first human rights campaign of the 20th Century, it was also to be the first to use photographs.

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Taken by British missionaries, they provided the evidence and produced outrage.

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Supported by Mark Twain and Arthur Conan Doyle,

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journalist Edmund Morel made the Red Rubber Campaign one of the dominant political issues of the age.

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The Red Rubber Campaign, or the campaign that Morel led, became a huge public affair

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both in England, in Europe and in the United States.

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And it became a mass protest,

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with all sorts of political ramifications.

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And eventually, I suppose,

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you can say that it led to the dismemberment of Leopold's...

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..private franchise and the Belgian state taking over the Congo.

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In 1908, Leopold handed his Congo Free State over to the Belgian nation.

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The extreme abuses of the past slowly began to diminish.

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But among all the colonising nations the idea of the civilising mission to the benighted forest colonies

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was to be perpetuated for another half century.

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It is Leopold's museum outside Brussels that exemplifies this propaganda more than any other.

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Financed from the profits of his rubber trade, he built a stately

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memorial to himself and his image of Western Civilisation in the Congo.

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He died before it was completed.

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Although its new administration has plans to update it,

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the Royal Museum of Central Africa still displays the image

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of the white man's mission, stimulating an ambiguous response from Congolese visitors.

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There was a positive side to the presentations of the colonial museums.

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They were also availing themselves of the cultural wealth of the forest people.

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Figurines and masks from unknown sculptors of the forests were

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a revelation to artists like Derain, Vlaminck, Modigliani and Picasso.

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Picasso incorporated Congolese sculpture

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into one of the most influential paintings of the 20th Century.

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On visiting an exhibition of African art in Paris, he wrote:

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"I experienced my greatest artistic emotion when I suddenly discovered

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"the sublime beauty of sculptures

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"executed by the anonymous artists from Africa.

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"These passionate and rigorously logical religious works are what

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"the human imagination has produced as most potent and most beautiful.

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"At that moment I realised what painting was all about."

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Of course it released him from all academic art.

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I think it was the power in these things.

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I mean, just looking at them.

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They just have this power and any artist is going to feel...

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..proud of that, pleased of that. He's part of this tradition.

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The region's natural riches were also being collected in great numbers.

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Museums all over the world enticed their publics with vast displays

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of the forest's flora and fauna.

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Hunters and naturalists combed the forest for more and more

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exotic species in what was still seen as a primeval forest.

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There were rumours

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that the forest harboured survivors from the dinosaur era.

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Sadly, no dinosaurs were discovered.

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But the zoological world was rocked with other discoveries.

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One came from the mountains on the Eastern edge of the Congo Forest.

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The American zoologist Carl Akeley was commissioned

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to collect specimens for the American Museum of Natural History

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and he saw the forest in a new light.

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But Akeley began not only to reassess the image of the gorilla

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but he brought a new concept to the region, conservation.

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Akeley's exertions resulted in the creation

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of Africa's first National Park.

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Albert National Park was the first of many.

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The Congo was now perceived

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as a natural treasure to be preserved, not just exploited.

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However, this perception did not embrace

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the human populations who lived in and around it.

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People for whom the forest and its resources provided a livelihood

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and also was a well-spring for their spiritual life.

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Throughout the various colonies that partitioned the forest,

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attitudes to the local inhabitants varied.

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In the vast territory which was the Belgian Congo, it seemed that

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the rulers were still locked into a perception of the forest population

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that owed a great deal to the social Darwinians

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and the evolutionary hierarchy of mankind.

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Well, the Belgians had this incredibly patronising approach

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to the Congolese. There were several social distinctions

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in Congolese Cities. You had the African quarters,

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the popular quarters, and then you had the white quarters,

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which were...you know, were rather nicer. And then in between

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you had the areas where the 'Evolue' were allowed to live.

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And these were Africans, 'evolved Africans'

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who were deemed to be between the Africans and the whites.

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I think the word Evolue says everything. Evolved.

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You're in a transitory stage between being an African,

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ie not quite human, and a white person, who is fully human.

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VINTAGE VOICEOVER IN FRENCH

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The Belgian Congo began to promote itself

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as the best managed colony in the region.

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It was as if the forests had been tamed to provide

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the perfect tourist destination.

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Sustained by profits of its abundant mineral resources,

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airports were built, new railway lines created.

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A national system of roads

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was forged across thousands of miles of jungle.

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Primary education was provided for the local population

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and the colony had more hospital beds

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than all the rest of tropical Africa.

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Diseases like leprosy were almost eradicated.

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The colony was still situated on the 'dark continent'

0:36:580:37:02

but it no longer seemed to be Conrad's Heart Of Darkness.

0:37:020:37:06

AFRICAN VOCAL MUSIC

0:37:060:37:09

The Congo was at its zenith in the 1950s, late 1950s.

0:37:120:37:16

This was a time when it was integrated with the rest of the world.

0:37:160:37:19

You could take a flight and land in the Congo quite happily

0:37:190:37:22

and it would connect on. That was the point, it was connected.

0:37:220:37:25

You could buy a railway ticket in what was then Rhodesia

0:37:250:37:28

and travel into the Congo.

0:37:280:37:29

I know this because my own mother did it in 1958.

0:37:290:37:31

Just a young girl in her 20s,

0:37:310:37:33

not a particularly adventurous traveller, by her own admission.

0:37:330:37:36

She just went through the Congo because she was on a journey

0:37:360:37:39

from Rhodesia to Kenya and it was the way to do it.

0:37:390:37:42

And, for me, one of the tiny little examples

0:37:420:37:45

is that Hollywood could send a big film crew,

0:37:450:37:47

a big film crew with a producer, with a big fat cigar.

0:37:470:37:50

John Huston, a colourful, amazing, want to shoot the elephants,

0:37:500:37:54

kind of character as the director. Send those guys and 40 crew,

0:37:540:37:57

with their sound men, and their gaffer boys,

0:37:570:38:00

and their best boys and all of this up the Congo river.

0:38:000:38:02

About as far as it's possible to go, all the way to Stanleyville.

0:38:020:38:06

They went on the train, the Equator Express that cuts across the equator.

0:38:060:38:09

At the end of that, they drove another 40 miles out into the bush

0:38:090:38:12

to find what was, for them, the perfect river scene

0:38:120:38:15

for the African Queen. And it was perfectly doable.

0:38:150:38:18

From the thrilling pages of world renowned author CS Forester's

0:38:180:38:21

magnificent story and filmed in the jungles and head waters of Africa,

0:38:210:38:25

The Dark Continent, in all the magnificence of colour

0:38:250:38:28

by Technicolor, comes the most exciting adventure ever screened.

0:38:280:38:33

You promised you'd go down river.

0:38:380:38:40

-There's death a dozen times over down the river.

-You promised.

0:38:400:38:44

Well, I'm taking my promise back!

0:38:440:38:46

The region's roads, railways, airports, schools, hospitals

0:38:480:38:52

and hunting lodges were financed from the super abundance

0:38:520:38:55

of mineral deposits that lay beneath the ground.

0:38:550:38:59

Forest products like rubber and oil palm brought in more revenue.

0:38:590:39:04

The very fact it was a rainforest provided another resource.

0:39:040:39:08

The great cliche about the Congo, "It is cursed with its resources."

0:39:090:39:12

It has everything you could possibly want. It has power,

0:39:120:39:16

hydroelectric power, more than anyone can dream of if you could,

0:39:160:39:20

reasonably, trap that river.

0:39:200:39:22

Similarly, the Congo's copper deposits.

0:39:220:39:24

Again, the richest in the world.

0:39:240:39:26

Cobalt deposits, the richest in the world.

0:39:260:39:28

Alluvial diamonds, fantastic.

0:39:280:39:30

Kimberlite Diamonds, even better. Gold? It goes on. Casseterite?

0:39:300:39:33

Coltan? It's all there.

0:39:330:39:35

At the time of Leopold II, someone described the Congo

0:39:360:39:41

as being a geological scandal, and that's certainly the case.

0:39:410:39:46

You have the very, very major holdings

0:39:460:39:49

of copper and cobalt, gold, diamonds and, of course, uranium.

0:39:490:39:54

Now, at the time of the Second World War,

0:39:540:39:56

the uranium that was used to produce the bombs

0:39:560:40:00

that were dropped on Hiroshima came from Congo.

0:40:000:40:04

The very riches that had facilitated the infrastructure

0:40:120:40:16

and wealth of the Belgian Congo

0:40:160:40:18

were to blight the country's future as an independent state.

0:40:180:40:22

In 1960, virtually all the countries of the region gained independence.

0:40:220:40:28

For a moment, this part of Africa was seized with optimism.

0:40:280:40:32

The great tracts of equatorial forests would become

0:40:360:40:40

a collection of independent states

0:40:400:40:42

which still retained their old colonial boundaries.

0:40:420:40:45

The new Congo state dominated the region and international attention.

0:40:450:40:50

But virtually from the beginning, most of the new countries

0:40:510:40:55

were thrown into upheaval as foreign interests interfered

0:40:550:40:59

to retain control over the mineral resources.

0:40:590:41:02

Once again, Henry Morton Stanley's image of savage anarchy prevailed.

0:41:020:41:07

For a few years,

0:41:170:41:18

the region returned to the darkness of chaos and civil war.

0:41:180:41:22

The Congo's first president was assassinated.

0:41:220:41:25

Belgian troops and later the UN were called in.

0:41:250:41:28

White mercenaries fought in the south.

0:41:280:41:32

Che Guevara led guerrilla bands in the East.

0:41:320:41:35

Eventually, a unifying figurehead arose

0:41:350:41:37

who was to recast the image of this country of forests

0:41:370:41:41

as Zaire, the model African state.

0:41:410:41:44

He took his inspiration from his forest background.

0:41:440:41:47

First of all, he was very much a traditional chief,

0:43:080:43:11

coming from the forest tradition.

0:43:110:43:14

His way of governing was very much based on...

0:43:140:43:18

on forest-type policies,

0:43:180:43:20

very secretive and very clanic, there's no question about that.

0:43:200:43:25

And he always loved nature,

0:43:250:43:26

that's one of the things that he is respected for.

0:43:260:43:29

He was very, very supportive of nature conservation,

0:43:290:43:33

even though there was a lot of elephant poaching at the same time.

0:43:330:43:36

He loved to go fishing, he loved to go hunting.

0:43:360:43:40

He used to take his VIP visitors out to nature.

0:43:400:43:45

He had this wonderful expression.

0:43:450:43:47

He used to say, "You people in Europe have your cathedrals.

0:43:470:43:50

"In Zaire, we have our forest, that is our heritage."

0:43:500:43:54

"This is something you want to protect."

0:43:540:43:57

As the region's powerful figurehead,

0:43:570:44:00

Zaire's leader ensured a period of relative peace.

0:44:000:44:05

Field researchers were able to operate in his forests

0:44:050:44:08

and, among other discoveries,

0:44:080:44:10

identified another close relative to humankind. Unique to Zaire,

0:44:100:44:15

the Bonobo's social relations were based on...an abundance of sex.

0:44:150:44:20

Everyone does it with everyone else.

0:44:240:44:27

Males with males, females with females, adults with young,

0:44:270:44:30

and they do it for all sorts of reasons - to greet, to appease,

0:44:300:44:35

to reassure, to enhance relationships of all kinds.

0:44:350:44:39

It's the social cement of bonobo society,

0:44:390:44:42

the binding force that keeps the group together.

0:44:420:44:45

The mountain gorillas were protected in the eastern province of Kivu,

0:44:520:44:57

the old Albert National Park.

0:44:570:44:58

No respecters of borders,

0:45:000:45:02

they moved between Zaire and neighbouring Rwanda.

0:45:020:45:05

Naturalists like Dian Fossey and David Attenborough

0:45:060:45:10

were to recreate their image as peace lovers.

0:45:100:45:13

There is more...

0:45:150:45:18

meaning and mutual understanding in exchanging a glance...

0:45:180:45:23

with a gorilla...

0:45:230:45:26

than any other animal I know.

0:45:260:45:27

We're so similar.

0:45:290:45:31

Their sight, their hearing,

0:45:330:45:34

their sense of smell are so similar to ours

0:45:340:45:39

that we see the world in the same way as they do.

0:45:390:45:43

Du Chaillu's image of the ferocious half-man half-beast

0:45:470:45:51

could now be consigned to the antique book collectors.

0:45:510:45:55

So it seems really very unfair that man should have chosen the gorilla

0:45:580:46:04

to symbolise all that is aggressive and violent

0:46:040:46:08

when that's the one thing that the gorilla is not and that we are.

0:46:080:46:13

But just as we were beginning to see them as playful and harmless herbivores,

0:46:190:46:23

they were about to become a new symbol,

0:46:230:46:26

the innocent victims of deforestation.

0:46:260:46:29

CHAINSAW WHINES

0:46:290:46:31

Rainforests like the Amazon and the Congo

0:46:360:46:40

were becoming a source of international concern.

0:46:400:46:43

This time, it was in the ex-French colonies to the north

0:46:430:46:47

where concessions were being granted to European timber companies.

0:46:470:46:52

Not only was animal habitat being destroyed,

0:46:520:46:55

but roads were being opened to the bushmeat hunters.

0:46:550:46:58

In Zaire itself, the uncontrolled and thoroughly corrupt exploitation

0:47:080:47:12

of the country's minerals

0:47:120:47:14

was now causing the collapse of Mobutu's great forest state.

0:47:140:47:18

Zaire's riches were being siphoned into foreign bank accounts,

0:47:250:47:29

spent on palaces or squandered on expensive and often pointless

0:47:290:47:33

purchases that could not be afforded and would not be maintained.

0:47:330:47:38

'And now it's time for birthday presents to the nation.

0:47:410:47:45

'A jumbo jet.'

0:47:450:47:46

His final downfall was to be triggered by the fallout

0:48:190:48:22

from the Rwandan genocide in 1994.

0:48:220:48:26

Millions of refugees poured over the border

0:48:270:48:30

into the forests of eastern Congo.

0:48:300:48:32

The upheaval resulted in the invasion of foreign armies

0:48:320:48:35

that backed his political rivals.

0:48:350:48:38

As his loss of power became inevitable,

0:48:400:48:43

he began to resemble less the dominating figure of Leopold II

0:48:430:48:47

and more Mr Kurtz, the failed and morally bankrupt administrator

0:48:470:48:52

from The Heart Of Darkness.

0:48:520:48:55

I think there are some similarities between Kurtz and Mobutu.

0:48:550:48:59

Certainly, when I first got to Kinshasa as a young reporter,

0:48:590:49:05

there was this mystery figure who was in the middle of the jungle,

0:49:050:49:08

marooned in Gbadolite, where he had this this vast palace,

0:49:080:49:12

where he'd grown up, where he came from, where he spent a lot of time

0:49:120:49:17

planting seedlings, designing his ornamental gardens.

0:49:170:49:21

If you see some of the coverage that was shot of him during those years,

0:49:210:49:27

there is a sense of a man who's cutting himself off completely

0:49:270:49:31

from reality, still touring around, saying hello to local villagers,

0:49:310:49:35

planting his garden, trying to live the life of the gentleman farmer.

0:49:350:49:39

No longer wants to know anything

0:49:390:49:42

about the politics of his country, international politics,

0:49:420:49:47

who only feels at home now in the forest

0:49:470:49:50

and who had withdrawn into his forest hideout.

0:49:500:49:53

Mobutu was eventually forced into exile,

0:49:540:49:58

leaving behind his rotting palaces

0:49:580:50:00

to become a symbol of his grandiose failure,

0:50:000:50:04

slowly consumed by the forest he so identified with.

0:50:040:50:09

The spectre of savage anarchy returned once again

0:50:150:50:18

to much of the Congo with the civil wars that followed

0:50:180:50:22

Mobutu's exile and death.

0:50:220:50:24

This image has been perpetuated

0:50:290:50:31

by the intervention of armies from other nations

0:50:310:50:34

and a struggle to control the country's minerals and mines.

0:50:340:50:39

And the great forests are an easy place to hide renegade armies and tribal militias.

0:50:390:50:44

But just as the forests can support ruthless and violent armed bands,

0:50:480:50:53

they can be the source of food and shelter for the inhabitants.

0:50:530:50:56

It was a constant message, a constant remark

0:50:580:51:01

that came from every single Congolesan person I spoke to

0:51:010:51:04

from one side to the other, either deep inland or down by the coast.

0:51:040:51:07

At one point in their lives, they'd all had this experience.

0:51:070:51:10

HE SPEAKS IN FRENCH

0:51:100:51:12

"We've all fled to the bush, we've gone there to find sanctuary."

0:51:120:51:15

I guess if you think about it, the sheer scale of the place,

0:51:180:51:21

it's the geography, it is so vast,

0:51:210:51:23

it is the second largest rainforest in the world after the Amazon.

0:51:230:51:26

This vast, vast country,

0:51:260:51:28

that's the only safety you've got when the bad guys are coming.

0:51:280:51:31

You have a chance of hiding,

0:51:310:51:32

if you can just go and disperse yourself somewhere in that forest.

0:51:320:51:35

In the last decade, the eastern part of the Congo has been blighted

0:51:380:51:42

with natural disasters, as well as massacre, rape and pillage.

0:51:420:51:46

Malnutrition and disease have taken an even greater toll.

0:51:460:51:50

As many as five million people have died.

0:51:500:51:53

For the largest human death toll since the Second World War,

0:51:570:52:01

there's been scant coverage.

0:52:010:52:03

But analysis of some television channels, including the BBC,

0:52:030:52:07

shows there have been more hours focusing on the threat

0:52:070:52:10

to the Congo's great apes and their habitat

0:52:100:52:12

than there has been on the plight of the human population.

0:52:120:52:16

I'd spent many months in Eastern Congo,

0:52:160:52:19

covering first the genocide in Rwanda, then

0:52:190:52:22

there was the flood of thousands of refugees into Eastern Congo,

0:52:220:52:26

then thousands more were dying of cholera in the refugee camps.

0:52:260:52:30

Amongst the journalists there would be many who would be taking time out

0:52:300:52:36

to write about the gorillas in Virunga Park,

0:52:360:52:39

which ran just near the refugee camps,

0:52:390:52:41

and the emphasis would always be about, "Isn't it awful?

0:52:410:52:44

"There are all these Hutu genocidaires,

0:52:440:52:46

these genocidal killers wandering around in the camps,

0:52:460:52:49

and the gorillas are being eaten,

0:52:490:52:51

the gorillas are being slaughtered, isn't it awful?"

0:52:510:52:54

And you sort of thought,

0:52:540:52:56

"Well, yes, but there's been a genocide across the border.

0:52:560:52:59

"People are still dying of cholera, is this an appropriate emphasis?"

0:52:590:53:03

Our Western response to the Congo does seem to allow

0:53:050:53:08

for two contradictory visions to live side by side.

0:53:080:53:12

However much we recoil from the human bloodshed and atrocities,

0:53:120:53:16

we're still fascinated by the idea

0:53:160:53:18

that these forests are also home to our closest genetic relatives.

0:53:180:53:23

Ever since the first explorers, we have been entranced

0:53:250:53:29

by the great diversity and abundance of plant and animal species,

0:53:290:53:35

the sheer exuberance of nature.

0:53:350:53:37

After Leopold, the Belgians attempted to bring

0:53:380:53:42

order and infrastructure, but now, like Mobutu's palaces,

0:53:420:53:48

the last vestiges of the white man's colonial endeavours

0:53:480:53:52

are being swallowed up by rampant nature.

0:53:520:53:56

There was an amazing moment very close to the equator,

0:53:580:54:01

about as close as you possibly could get.

0:54:010:54:03

It was just near the town of Kisangani,

0:54:030:54:05

what used to be Stanleyville, this city on a bend in the river.

0:54:050:54:08

Deep equatorial forest,

0:54:090:54:12

and I was walking through the forest,

0:54:120:54:14

and then suddenly my heel felt something strange and angular,

0:54:140:54:20

felt a bit odd in this sort of leafy organic world of the forest.

0:54:200:54:25

And I scraped down through the leaf mulch with my heel

0:54:250:54:28

and came across a railway sleeper,

0:54:280:54:30

you know, with the name Antwerp printed on it, 1913.

0:54:300:54:34

But even more scary,

0:54:340:54:36

the railway sleeper was connected to railway tracks,

0:54:360:54:38

which again I could scrape away,

0:54:380:54:40

and they disappeared off and then died in the forest.

0:54:400:54:43

Katharine Hepburn sat on that railway.

0:54:490:54:52

Humphrey Bogart sat on that railway,

0:54:520:54:54

and they went along that railway in 1951 to film The African Queen.

0:54:540:54:58

And for me it was a very powerful moment,

0:54:580:55:00

and it drilled home that sense of a place

0:55:000:55:02

where the developmental graph had gone like a parabola

0:55:020:55:05

and we were on the downward slope,

0:55:050:55:07

and that's the reality of today's Congo.

0:55:070:55:10

But now there are new foreign builders in the Congo.

0:55:150:55:18

Like the Europeans of the 19th century,

0:55:180:55:21

the Chinese have come here offering to bring the benefits

0:55:210:55:25

of their expertise and technology.

0:55:250:55:27

In a deal worth as much as 9 billion,

0:55:390:55:42

the Chinese are promising to build new roads,

0:55:420:55:45

railways, hospitals and schools.

0:55:450:55:49

This is in exchange for millions of tons

0:55:490:55:51

of the country's copper and nickel over the next 15 years.

0:55:510:55:56

The new roads, railways and hospitals depend on

0:55:570:56:00

a stable and open government which will be able to maintain them.

0:56:000:56:05

There are justified fears that history will repeat itself.

0:56:050:56:10

Economists talk about the resource curse, which is that assets which

0:56:100:56:15

should be a great blessing in fact turn out to be a blight, and I think Congo is the

0:56:150:56:20

perfect example of that, and what's interesting is that Congolese people

0:56:200:56:25

will often talk to you with huge pride and sort of vaingloriousness about all these wonderful...

0:56:250:56:30

"We're a rich country, we've got all these mineral assets,"

0:56:300:56:33

and it really is a very important part of their self-image and their

0:56:330:56:37

image of their own country, but of course if you can't tap the assets

0:56:370:56:42

and if you can't tap the assets in a way that is then funnelled back and re-invested in your own country,

0:56:420:56:48

you'd actually be better off without them, and that is unfortunately the truth,

0:56:480:56:52

because they have constantly

0:56:520:56:55

seen these assets being used as an excuse to rape the country.

0:56:550:57:00

The people of the Congo are now among the poorest in the world.

0:57:040:57:08

In the last century, many have left the forests for the towns and cities.

0:57:080:57:13

In earlier days, they'd seen the forest as more than just a place of refuge and sustenance.

0:57:140:57:21

It was also the place where their ancestors lived,

0:57:210:57:24

a place of awe, reverence and sometimes fear.

0:57:240:57:29

Since the arrival of the Europeans, this relationship has been fundamentally transformed.

0:57:290:57:36

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