## Metadata - Author: [[Tim Butcher]] - Full Title: Blood River - Category: #books ## Highlights - With a colonial past bloodier than anywhere in Africa, the Congo represents the sum of my African fears and the root of my outsider's shame. ([Location 136](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001JEPX3A&location=136)) - Within a year, the relationship between Kabila and his two erstwhile allies, Rwanda and Uganda, had deteriorated into all-out war. Without any meaningful army of his own, Kabila effectively bribed local countries to fight on his behalf. Zimbabwe sent troops to support Kabila, but only as long as Zimbabwean generals were allowed to keep the profits from cobalt and diamond mines in the south of the country. Angola sent troops to help Kabila, but only if deals were agreed to share offshore oil. The war was complex - at one point it drew in the armies of Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi, against the armies of the Congo, Zimbabwe, Chad, Angola and Namibia - and it was very bloody, with a death toll that would eventually exceed four million. ([Location 207](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001JEPX3A&location=207)) - I can still picture the pudgy face of the airport security official as he spotted a Ugandan visa in my passport. Like the reels of a slot-machine shuddering to a jackpot, his pupils flickered both with suspicion and greed. ([Location 229](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001JEPX3A&location=229)) - President Kabila headed what was effectively a cobalt and diamond cartel, while two rival factions (one backed by neighbouring Uganda, the other by Rwanda) divided up the rest of the country's resources. Crudely, Uganda got gold and timber, and Rwanda got tin and coltan - a mineral used in mobile telephones. ([Location 331](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001JEPX3A&location=331)) - 2. ([Location 371](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001JEPX3A&location=371)) - Modern hydrographical surveys show the outflow of fresh water from the Congo River is so strong that it has carved out of the seabed a submarine canyon 1,000 metres deep reaching almost 200 kilometres out into the ocean. In the late fifteenth century Cao did not have the benefit of such surveying equipment. He measured the river's force more prosaically - he recorded that the outflow of fresh water was so prodigious that far out to sea from the river's mouth it was possible to drink water straight from the ocean. ([Location 378](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001JEPX3A&location=378)) - The Congo's status as Portugal's greatest discovery did not last long. Less than a decade after Cao reached the Congo River, another Portuguese mariner, Bartolomeu Dias, went ever further south to discover the first sea route from Europe to the Indies by rounding the heel of Africa. Dias encountered such rough weather that he called it the Cape of Storms, but the Portuguese authorities soon changed the name to reflect the great economic opportunity it represented. They called it the Cape of Good Hope, close to where Cape Town stands today. The Congo's output ofthe occasional shipment of ivory or raffia could not compete with the huge volume of silks and spices available in Asia and, in the face of commercial competition, the Portuguese soon found another asset they could take from the Congo - slaves. ([Location 446](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001JEPX3A&location=446)) - Between the late sixteenth century when the transatlantic slave trade began and the late nineteenth century when European nations finally banned it, the best estimate is that twelve million Africans were forced on board ships and the Congo River mouth was, throughout that entire period, one of the principal sources of slaves. ([Location 472](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001JEPX3A&location=472)) - Originally from Oman, at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, Arab sailors had been probing down the east coast of Africa at about the same time the Portuguese had been probing down the west. Like the Portuguese, these Arab outsiders settled on slaves as the most valuable commodity offered by the African territories, so the Arabs had started to capture and trade slaves, before shipping them back to Oman and other Arab city states in the Gulf.But there was one big difference with the Portuguese slavers - the Arabs actually went on the slaving expeditions themselves. On their safe island fortress of Zanzibar, they would assemble armed expeditions before crossing to the African mainland and heading inland. It took more than a century, but as they emptied the coastal plains of potential slaves they probed deeper and deeper, setting up a network of footpaths and trading stations that eventually reached halfway across the continent.Stories of immense inland lakes, snow-capped mountains and huge rivers filtered back through this network to Zanzibar and from there, via visiting British seamen, to London and the Royal Geographical Society. Its members sent a series of expeditions to the island with the deliberate intention of piggybacking on the Arab network of tracks and trading stations across Africa. One by one, the mysteries of African geography were being solved byexpeditions launched from Zanzibar. The source of the Nile was traced; the Great Lakes were charted; and the first contacts were made with the tribal kingdoms of central Africa. ([Location 488](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001JEPX3A&location=488)) - unlike explorers such as Livingstone, who travelled light, carrying barely more than a change of clothes and a Bible, Stanley approached African travel like a military deployment. His party would be heavily armed and equipped with the best navigational technology that Victorian London could offer, including the latest surveying instruments - three chronometers that were to be carried in their own special cases packed with cotton wool -and the most modern medicines to protect against tropical disease. ([Location 559](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001JEPX3A&location=559)) - It took six months for Stanley to complete his preparations for the journey and to reach his starting point in Zanzibar. Finally, on the morning of 17 November 1874, the expedition column gathered on a sandy beach track on Africa's east coast and stirred to the sound of Edward Pocock's bugle. Consisting of 352 bearers, some carrying bundles of supplies and others sections of boat, it stretched for more than a kilometre and bringing up the rear came the four white men, mounted on asses, with the five dogs padding along by the side. ([Location 573](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001JEPX3A&location=573)) - Since the 1994 genocide, Rwanda has been regarded by many outsiders as a tiny, frail country bullied by its larger neighbours. This is a grossly inaccurate generalisation. With a government now dominated by Tutsis, Rwanda punches way above its weight in regional affairs. There are clear parallels with Israel, another small country of people driven by the memory of mass murdercommitted against them to dominate its neighbours militarily, and the neighbour that Rwanda bosses most is the Democratic Republic of Congo. On a map, tiny Rwanda is overshadowed by the vastness of the DRC, but for the past ten years it has been Rwanda that has loomed over the DRC. In 1996 Rwanda's Tutsi-dominated forces invaded the country and orchestrated the ousting of Mobutu the following year, and in 1998 the same forces turned on Laurent Kabila, the man they had installed as Mobutu's replacement, starting the conflict that has so far cost four million lives. ([Location 611](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001JEPX3A&location=611)) - For almost a hundred years Katanga's growth had been based almost completely on copper. For a long time the province was known as Shaba, the local Swahili word for the metal. But the problem with copper is that the production process is relatively complex. Expensive mining equipment is needed, as well as skilled labour and large amounts of chemicals for processing and other supplies that have to be imported. This was all possible during the Belgian colonial era when law and order existed, but through the chaos of Mobutu's rule during the 1970s and 1980s, foreign investors saw their copper mines repeatedly flooded, supplies plundered and attempts to bring in replacement equipment blocked by corrupt and incompetent local officials.By the time I reached Lubumbashi, copper was in decline, but the town was in the grip of a new boom, one driven by cobalt.Cobalt had suddenly become commercially attractive because the world price had been driven upwards by a surge in demand from China's fast-growing economy. The cobalt price had grown by 300 per cent in less than year, from $8 to $24 per pound, a dramatic change that had had a dramatic effect in Katanga, home to some of the world's greatest and most accessible cobalt deposits.Cobalt mining in Katanga does not require massive investment or expensive processing. Here, a man with a shovel can become a cobalt miner, simply by digging away the topsoil and looking for the darker, greyish or purplish rock that is rich with cobalt salts. The rock is then purified in the most primitive way, using a hammer to chip away the non-cobalt-rich rock, a process that the Congolese miners call `cobbing', a word imported from Britain where it was first used by seventeenth-century Cornish tin miners. The demand from China is so great that middlemen in Lubumbashi, often Lebanese or Indian, are willing to pay cash for sacks of the grey rock. The sacks are then collected, packed on trucks and driven on a long and tortuous journey past grasping officials on the Congolese border with Zambia and then 2,000 kilometres south to the closest functioning port, Durban, in South Africa, before finally being shipped to China. ([Location 702](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001JEPX3A&location=702)) - The ruler of one of Europe's smallest and youngest nations (Belgium was founded in 1830) commissioned the Welsh-born, naturalised American to stake the entire Congo River basin as theprivate property of the king. ([Location 873](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001JEPX3A&location=873)) - 'So you are the man crazy enough to want to follow Stanley's route. The history of this place is extraordinary - the slavers and their ivory, the Belgians who fought battles right here where the town now stands, and the wars since independence - but I have never met anyone who comes here just for history's sake. History is a luxury people cannot afford around here, where the more pressing things are where the next meal is coming from or the next drink of clean water.' ([Location 933](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001JEPX3A&location=933)) - I had read Guevara's diary about his time in the Congo. It was 1965 and he arrived here fired with revolutionary zeal, willing to risk his life in the fight against the Mobutu regime that America was in the process of installing. It was an era when the Cold War was being fought in numerous proxy wars all over Africa, and Guevara flew from Cuba to communist-controlled Tanzania to stage his insurgency across Lake Tanganyika. During a brief stopover in Tanzania he spent time with Laurent Kabila, then a young Congolese dissident and opponent of Mobutu. It would be more than thirty years before Kabila eventually replaced Mobutu, but at his first meeting Guevara was not overly impressed with Kabila's revolutionary credentials. He described him as a drunken womaniser rather than a true freedom fighter. ([Location 939](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001JEPX3A&location=939)) - It had been shot up so many times that I was sure even the bullet holes had bullet holes. ([Location 963](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001JEPX3A&location=963)) - First, I had to get permission from both the local district commissioner and military commander. Even in a large town like Kalemie where thestate fails to provide any teachers, doctors or policemen, it still insists on pieces of paper to authorise the toings and froings of foreigners. ([Location 1157](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001JEPX3A&location=1157)) - While the rest of the world drowned in information provided by broadband Internet connections and live satellite television, the political debate here in Kalemie revolved around a rude message, written on a child's notepad and nailed to a tree. ([Location 1169](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001JEPX3A&location=1169)) - 'I am sorry to say that today is worse than ever before. I have got used to the lack of water. I have got used to the lack of power. I have got used to the lack of supplies in town. But the thing that makes today so bad is the lack of the rule of law. ([Location 1261](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001JEPX3A&location=1261)) - These local mai-mai do not cause major problems because they rarely move far from their home villages. It is the ones who wander who cause the chaos. The nomads survive by plundering whatever they can find. ([Location 1381](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001JEPX3A&location=1381)) - All this effort for $30 and a fish supper. I was stunned.Congolese like Muke are out there now, as I write this, sleeping in the bush, swatting insects, kneading blisters on unshod feet, toiling along a Ho Chi Minh trail of survival that shows just how willing many Africans are to work their way out of poverty. ([Location 1497](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001JEPX3A&location=1497)) - The normal laws of development are inverted here in the Congo. The forest, not the town, offers the safest sanctuary and it is grandfathers who have been more exposed to modernity than their grandchildren. I can think of nowhere else on the planet where the same can be true. ([Location 1555](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001JEPX3A&location=1555)) - Kasongo was the epicentre for the 1892 war between Belgium and Arab slavers. The Arabs had developed it into the capital of their slave state. It was near here that Livingstone witnessed the raids that made him such an ardent opponent of slavery. InKasongo the Arabs built slave markets where tribesmen, caught by raiding parties, were traded; prisons where slaves had their necks wedged into timber yokes, so heavy and cumbersome they made escape impossible; storehouses where elephant tusks and other booty pillaged from the local villages were collected before being hauled back to Zanzibar by chain-gangs of slaves. ([Location 1724](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001JEPX3A&location=1724)) - What the Indian Mutiny was to Britain, the 1892 Kasongo incident was to Belgium, a moment of anti-foreigner brutality used to justify decades of colonial control. ([Location 1732](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001JEPX3A&location=1732)) - Outside I could just make out a decaying sign carrying the old slogan from the 1970s Mobutu period. It said `Peace, Justice, Work' - three of the things one would least associate with Mobutu's bloody, criminal, indolent dictatorship. ([Location 1768](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001JEPX3A&location=1768)) - `I am the mayor, appointed by the transitional government in Kinshasa. But I have no contact with them because we have no phone, and I can pay no civil servants because I have no money and there is no bank or post office where money could be received, and we have no civil servants because all the schools and hospitals and everything do not work. I would say I am just waiting, waiting for things to get back to normal.''And when was the last time things were normal?' His smiling face suggested he did not find my question overly rude.`The 1950s. From what I hear, that is when this town was last normal.' ([Location 1773](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001JEPX3A&location=1773)) - Our Expedition is no longer the compact column which was my pride. It is utterly demoralised. Every man scrambles as he best may through the woods; the path, being over a clayey soil, is so slippery that every muscle is employed to assist our progress. The toes grasp the path, the head bears the load, the hand clears the obstructing bush, the elbow puts aside the sapling. ([Location 2199](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001JEPX3A&location=2199)) - Pierre Mulele, the rebel leader responsible for the Mulele Mai uprising, was lured back from exile with a promise of an amnesty, only to be disposed of by Mobutu's troops. He died under torture, after his genitals and limbs had been cut off. What remained of his body was then tossed into the Congo River. ([Location 2576](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001JEPX3A&location=2576)) - There was a certain brilliance to Mobutu's evil. He was the consummate showman, luring George Foreman and Muhammad Ali to his capital, Kinshasa, for the most famous bout in boxing history, the 1974 'Rumble in the Jungle'. ([Location 2579](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001JEPX3A&location=2579)) - A hunter told me that he would prepare the trophy from an antelope hunt by deliberately finding one of these ant columns and then throwing the dead animal's skull into its path. When he came back the next day, the bone would be spotless, stripped of every last piece of flesh and gristle, tendon and tissue. ([Location 2663](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B001JEPX3A&location=2663))