Congo is a sad country which started with massive disadvantages (King Leopold used it as his private route to personal wealth) and never recovered.
The Belgians made little provision for independence, but that is not unusual in Africa and other countries have managed OK despite a bad start. Congo never did.
A combination of tribal and ethnic conflicts, underhand colonial behaviour and Cold War politics meant that failure was inevitable. Lumumba was brutally murdered by his own countrymen with America and Belgium cheering from the sidelines.
Lumumba never had a chance and he made it worse for himself by delivering an un-programmed and fiercely anti-colonial speech on Independence Day. This is not made too clear in the film - you have to listen really hard to know that that is what was happening. As a result of that unwise speech, he destroyed his relations with the Belgians and gave the Congolese people hopes and expectations that could never be realised.
He also made an enemy of the leader of the Katanga region.
He was thus regarded by his own people as having reneged on promises after an impossibly short time in Government and then, having been publicly and privately brutalised by Congolese troops, finally murdered by the Congolese leader in Katanga, who ordered two Belgian policemen to dig up and destroy the body. All true and faithfully, if gruesomely, repeated in the film.
Everyone comes out badly in the film - which is only right and proper. Belgians for practising apartheid before the word was invented to cover the Boers in SA. How could anyone operate a system where, as a native, you had to be assessed to see if you had developed (`evolved' - shades of Darwin) sufficiently to be licensed to have wine in your house?
The Americans come out rather lightly in the film. Maybe it was not known at the time the film was made that the CIA station chief (Devlin, not Carlucci) was sent poisoned toothpaste to introduce into Lumumba's bathroom cabinet (he didn't). By order of Eisenhower.
The Congolese come out worst of all, appropriately, since in the long term they are the ones who also suffered (and continue to suffer) the most as a result of not being able to act together irrespective of tribal origin.
There is still in reality no country that is Congo. It remains a collection of tribal and ethnic groupings. And therefore weak and poor and ready to be exploited. All this is accurately foreshadowed in this excellent film.
A film that is horrific and unsettling, but real. Excellent.
The Belgians made little provision for independence, but that is not unusual in Africa and other countries have managed OK despite a bad start. Congo never did.
A combination of tribal and ethnic conflicts, underhand colonial behaviour and Cold War politics meant that failure was inevitable. Lumumba was brutally murdered by his own countrymen with America and Belgium cheering from the sidelines.
Lumumba never had a chance and he made it worse for himself by delivering an un-programmed and fiercely anti-colonial speech on Independence Day. This is not made too clear in the film - you have to listen really hard to know that that is what was happening. As a result of that unwise speech, he destroyed his relations with the Belgians and gave the Congolese people hopes and expectations that could never be realised.
He also made an enemy of the leader of the Katanga region.
He was thus regarded by his own people as having reneged on promises after an impossibly short time in Government and then, having been publicly and privately brutalised by Congolese troops, finally murdered by the Congolese leader in Katanga, who ordered two Belgian policemen to dig up and destroy the body. All true and faithfully, if gruesomely, repeated in the film.
Everyone comes out badly in the film - which is only right and proper. Belgians for practising apartheid before the word was invented to cover the Boers in SA. How could anyone operate a system where, as a native, you had to be assessed to see if you had developed (`evolved' - shades of Darwin) sufficiently to be licensed to have wine in your house?
The Americans come out rather lightly in the film. Maybe it was not known at the time the film was made that the CIA station chief (Devlin, not Carlucci) was sent poisoned toothpaste to introduce into Lumumba's bathroom cabinet (he didn't). By order of Eisenhower.
The Congolese come out worst of all, appropriately, since in the long term they are the ones who also suffered (and continue to suffer) the most as a result of not being able to act together irrespective of tribal origin.
There is still in reality no country that is Congo. It remains a collection of tribal and ethnic groupings. And therefore weak and poor and ready to be exploited. All this is accurately foreshadowed in this excellent film.
A film that is horrific and unsettling, but real. Excellent.