 (A review by Elombe Brath, Dec. 8, 2004) For over the last 12 years, the African Diaspora Film Festival has presented a weeklong series of rare Africentric cinematographic masterpieces viewed through a Pan-African prism where the everyday experiences of people of African ancestry can be appreciated by those interested in seeing how African filmmakers tell their own stories through comparative analyses of their collective history.
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AFRICAN DIASPORA FILM FESTIVAL
Presents
"CONGO: WHITE KING, RED RUBBER, BLACK DEATH"
and Much More
by Elombe Brath
For over the last 12 years, the African Diaspora Film Festival (ADFF) has presented a weeklong series of rare Africentric cinematographic masterpieces viewed through a Pan-African prism where the everyday experiences of people of African ancestry can be appreciated by those interested in seeing how African filmmakers tell their own stories through comparative analyses of their collective history.
The films being shown in ADFF 2004 present a full spectrum of the total Black experience in expressions of rejoicing over our successes and triumphs in life or expressing the cause and effect of the pain and tortuous predicaments that Black people have been forced to endure by elements hostile to our mere existence. Sometimes the films express the sentiments of Africans born in the Motherland or those in the African Diaspora entirely, although there are times even then when programs have not been necessarily reflective of indigenous African thought void of foreign influences.
The constant stream of universal Black consciousness in the ADFF 2004 presentations is due to the fact that the co-founders, Reinaldo Barroso-Spech and Diarah N’Daw-Spech, the directors and producers of the series, understand the need to showcase the best that Cin?ma v?rit? can portray when it seriously intends to honestly shows humanity whether it represents its best or even its worst examples.
This is especially important when the storyline deals with how foreigners relate to African people. Indeed, it even includes how Africans deal with themselves, either wittingly or unwittingly, when they sometimes unfortunately cooperate with others against their people’s best interests.
This year’s offerings began on November 26th [two days short of the 119th anniversary of the culmination of the Berlin Conference] and is scheduled to run until this coming Sunday, December 12th, and continue to show an 'eclectic mix of foreign, independent, urban and classic films' that depict the everyday experiences of African people from 29 countries throughout the world.
Thus far, audiences have seen more than a week of a treasure trove of international cinematic documentaries, feature films, cartoons, drama or comedy to hundreds of filmgoers. And this past Saturday, December 4th, ADFF 2004, through its production company ArtMattan, presented the U.S. premiere of Peter Bate's "Congo: White King, Red Rubber, Black Death", a powerful documentary that depicts one of history's worst cases of exploitation and genocidal holocausts which brought shock and shame to Europe when the dastardly deeds were finally discovered over a century ago.
What the so-called civilized West European powers concocted at the Berlin Conference evolved into one of the world's most infamous criminal enterprises. The arbitrary division of the African continent solely among themselves, leaving only Ethiopia and the U.S.-dominated Liberia as ostensibly independent states, still remains as a conspiracy which forged the fault-line of many of Africa's current problems.
But it was the awarding of the Congo - a territory 80 times larger than the miniscule Belgium - to Leopold as the centerpiece of his African empire and how he chose to exercise his unfettered control over his Congolese subjects that would get him in trouble. It was precisely because the Congo was given to him as his and his alone - personal property, which he imposed such an obscene, ruthless and outrageous regime in his name, that his activities to bleed the Congolese masses to produce his rubber and other products which slowly but surely build an international movement of people who denounced the Belgian potentate's avaricious greed and exploitive murderous behavior.
As quiet as it has been kept, Leopold's brutality was so outlandish that it helped to later establish the premise that the brutal treatment of innocent, unoffending people constitute violations of their human rights.
And yet, in spite of such a heinous track record of European abuses in the Congo, those who constantly boast that they represent the best examples of western civilization and democracy have been able to practically continue with impunity for the last 120 years. Indeed, this tragic relationship has lasted from the time that the Berlin Conference attendees transferred the huge central African territory to King Leopold in 1885 and the subsequent formal retransfer to the Belgian state in 1908 which created the colony of the Belgian Congo and continued a legacy of exploitation and cruelty that slogged along for decades.
It continued another 52 years on up to the long awaited independence of the Democratic Republic of the Congo led by Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba on June 30, 1960, which was usurped in less than three months when Lumumba's legitimate government was overthrown by a conspiracy initiated by the governments of Belgium, France, Britain and the U,S. and he was finally assassinated only six months of the country's being granted its independence. This was carried out by the same forces that earlier had imposed European imperialist intervention and colonial rule over Africa, in general, and the Congo, in particular.
Most of this tragic history has been generally repressed and the on-going events in Africa's potentially wealthiest country have been distorted in order to project Africans as being innately unable to govern as an example to try to prove the point that just as they predicted, once the white man leaves the natives resort to atavist behavior that supposedly reduces them to the primitive state of development that the good, civilized white benefactors claim they discovered them upon the arrival of European settlers.
I want to focus on this particular feature because I believe it shows why the African Diaspora Film Festival is so important in its ongoing commitment to try and track down films that are difficult to obtain to more properly inform people in the U.S. of African realpolitic in general and the plight of Africans who find themselves being negatively manipulated by overemphasizing differences of languages, ethnic diversity, social circumstances and degrading environments.
Instead of avoiding being encouraged to succumb to the old divisive tactics of the outdated axiomatic Willie Lynch syndrome which leads to European divide and rule fratricidal death and destruction, why not choose to a Pan-Africanist option to unite for the collective objective to resolve all outstanding contradictions and share the mutual benefits for all concerned?
The tragic episode that occurred in the Congo during the late 19th century, with its unspeakable horrors of an orgy of systematic exploitive carnage and mass murder, took place in the wake of the Berlin Conference of November 1884 through February 1885 when representatives from European countries assembled in the German capital and partitioned the African continent among their respective European governments.
They justified the dispossession of the lands and resources of the unsuspecting African people by feigning that any intervention they may engaged in was primarily to protect the "native populations" from being enslaved by Arab slave traders who operated in the central and eastern regions. These hordes of marauders swept across the Red Sea from the Arabian peninsula and captured thousands of Africans whose weapons to defend themselves were grossly inferior.
Although the same European countries that had assembled in Berlin had themselves sailed across the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean centuries earlier and waged war against Africans throughout the continent, capturing millions of defenseless of Black people whom they kidnapped and carried across the dreaded infamous Trans-Atlantic middle passage to be enslaved on the plantations in the Caribbean, North, Central and South America, where they were forced to lay the economic foundation of the so-called New World. Concurrent to this, the European slave trade in the trafficking of Africans, also helped to finance the development of western Europe, while simultaneously aiding and abetting the underdevelopment of Africa and its indigenous people.
Therefore, to try to mask the intentions of the Berlin Conference members as allegedly to protect Africans from slavery rather than what their records indicate was really establish, using present day terminology, memorandums of understanding (MOS) to demarcate the respective areas of influence which would distinguish where they would control the economic activity, was disingenuous.
While the threat of invasions of the phenomena of an earlier Janjaweed (Devils on horseback) problem was essentially valid. But given that the excuse was offered by the duplicitous Berlin self-serving conferees, their argument seems nothing less that an early spin on the western reasons of their need to unite to protect developing peoples from ominous threats from the east which were promoted during the Cold War.
The loudest proponents of misrepresenting European colonization as a necessary "civilization" process were the apologists for Belgium's royalty, the 23-year-long one-man reign of one of the most evil and despicable creatures that the world has ever known, the Belgian monarch King Leopold II. He was given the Congo, the biggest slice of the African cake as his personal share because being the prime organizer of the criminal meeting, unlike the colonies divvied up among the rest of his assembled white compatriots. The Belgian monarch acknowledged his appreciation by promptly misnaming the vast territory, now his personal property, the so-called "Congo Free State."
Originally seen on the British Broadcasting Company (as a BBC Four television documentary) earlier this year on February 24th as the first part of a four part series, entitled "Congo: White King, Red Rubber, Black Death", and it is a film that should be mandatory viewing in all educational institutions - from primary schools on up through every university in Europe, Asia, Latin America and especially the U.S.
Those in other countries need to view it so that they can understand the historical wrongs Africans have been forced to undergo by non-Africans and how European white supremacists arrogates unto themselves the mantle of being civilized and the paradigm of virtue, with the right to do everything they just well please providing that they can gain profit and pleasure at our expense. It's time that other people of color take time to develop a comparative analysis of the systems that other people of color have had happened to them to that which we have been victimized, and how we can mutually assist each other. After all, in the analysis, counterproductive activity is counterproductivity.
"Congo: White King, Red Rubber, Black Death" is an exceptional film production. Stylistically it emotes a dark, somber background for the most part, with cameos appearances with academics providing historical analyses of what occurred two centuries back interspersed with apparently some actors dramatizing the writings of important voices of missionaries, colonial authorities and functionaries, describing the macabre occurrences that went on at Leopold's secret Crown Domaine, which could contain God only knows how many Belgiums; how the inventions of both the bicycle and the automobile initiated a massive need for the production of rubber and an even greater need to mobilize masses of people to tap rubber trees to satisfy the industry's production desires.
As one Charles Banks informs the audience, the right hand of those who were seen to be slackers would be hacked off at the wrist, sometimes being smoked for preservation, or sometimes disregarded like the time when 160 hands of men, women and children were eventually all thrown into a river. Since there were missionary reports that prior to the coming of the Europeans to the Congo, the specific cutting off of humans' limbs and other such maiming of people was unheard of.
That such occurrences should recently occur during the civil war in Sierra Leone most likely is another negative feature of Leopold's legacy. During the bloodthirsty 23-year reign of Leopold's terror that ravished the Congo, the mad king would rake in roughly 15 million dollars in personal profit at the expense of over 10 million African lives.
This is all dramatized and illustrated by the utilization of early daguerreotype photographs of atrocities committed by Belgian colonialists and their "capitas", those early indigenous enforcers who acted as mercenaries and executioners and other such social misfits that actually such actual dirty work.
The historical dramatization is told by a series of academics, religious personalities and political figures, some actually portraying themselves while others are assigned to represent those who have passed away because their contributions go back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the staging segues back and forth between the two periods.
Most of the scenes are posed in front of a huge Leopold II, sitting silent but twitching throughout his having to listen to the others document his bloody, sordid record against his ghastly operation in the Congo. Leopold remains mute as mounds of evidence document his complicity in one of the greatest crimes against humanities in the annals of history.
Bate's setting and staging ploy is interesting and works well. It also reminds me of a concept that Mark Twain used in one of his most important nonfiction books which concerned the same subject matter. Widely regarded as the greatest humorist in American literature, Twain has usually been scorned in Black American academic literate circles because of his use of what he regarded as "real speech" in his popular novels, i.e., the adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn (along with their Black friend Jim), which includes pejorative phrases and racially demeaning language which are still frequently a part of vocabulary of socially backward white folks, irrespective of their status in the U.S. class strata (and unfortunately far too many Black entertainers and writers).
However, what some of the Black leaders who spend so much time trying to get Twain's published works out of the libraries fail to recognize, is that on another level he was also an important anti-imperialist who wrote some of the most powerful condemnation of the tragedy in the Congo, particularly in one of his most important non-fiction books, "King Leopold's Soliloquy."
In fact, the volume included one of the often overlooked factors when examining Leopold and the Congo, i.e. the U.S. role in supporting Belgium's white king in his pursuit of blood-soaked rubber and possibly incalculable Black deaths.
If there is a critical piece of history that this film overlooks it is the role that Mark Twain played in the building of a mass movement against Leopold and his identifying the nefarious role of Grover Cleveland, the 22nd and 24th President of the United States, 1885-1889 and 1893-1897, respectively. It was President Cleveland who sent an American representative to participate in the Berlin meeting that launched the European scramble for Africa and their carving up the continent and redistributing it among themselves.
Although the U.S. did not actually partake in requesting a portion for itself, it did give the conferees its official blessings for its work. However, this should not be surprising when one remembers that President Cleveland had previously been a mayor of Buffalo, New York (1881) and the governor of the state of New York (1882) and was regarded as a notorious Afrophobe in regards to his tendency to ignor the inalienable rights of African-Americans. So much was Cleveland’??s administration identified with being totally supportive of Leopold that Twain wrote in "King Leopold's Soliloquy" that he regarded the U.S. as "the godfather of the Congo graveyard."
Since the film gives adequate and much deserved attention to the British shipping clerk Edmund Dene Morel, probably the most prodigious analyst and prolific writer on white supremacy and its imperialist role in Africa in general and Leopold's "Congo Free State" and its makeover as the Belgian Congo, and the Irish revolutionary Roger Casement was given credit for his contribution to the world renowned struggle to assist the broad masses of Congolese people,
I think that Bate's perspective was too singularly focused on the continental European impact, basically exonerating the critical surreptitious role of Euro-Americans. Not only that but there was a complete absence nor any mention of the significant role played by African-Americans, particularly two of the most prominent African-American allies of the Congolese human rights struggle from the U.S., the Reverends George Washington Williams and William Henry Sheppard who were among the first people to raise the hue and cry about the exploitation and wholesale racist slaughter taking place in Leopold's private domain.
Williams was a former U.S. soldier who fought for the Union during the Civil War and became a war hero, as well as a Baptist minister, legislator, journalist, author and U.S. Minister to Haiti (1885-1886), who had been commissioned by the Belgian government to tour the Congo and report back to the authorities in Brussels what immediate reforms should be employed to alleviate the deplorable conditions in the territory under control of Leopold. The good reverend did just that and it has been reasonably assumed that the report he gave to the Belgian government was not too appreciative for its candid and stern warning. Williams was still employed by Belgium when he died on August 4, 1891 in Blackpool, England.
In the case of Rev. William Sheppard, there was neither any attention nor even mention of his early concerns regarding the calamitous events in the Congo. Sheppard was born in Virginia, and became a member of a progressive African-American Presbyterian church.
He was multi-talented, and would later worked as an anthropologist, photographer, art collector and even a big-game hunter. But all of this would pale in comparison to his reputation as a crusading Pan-Africanist missionary and human rights activist whose quest for social justice would lead him to the Congo to probe allegations that were being reported about the Congolese being oppressed.
William Sheppard was only 24 years old when he left the U.S. for the Congo in 1890, the year before his predecessor George Washington Williams would die in England. For the next 20 years the Presbyterian minister would administrate an African-American church mission in Leopold's Congo. What he found there was enough to satisfy any questions he had whether the Congolese were suffering under the harsh treatment of the Belgian ruler and his soldiers and rubber company enforcers.
His work with Morel’s Congo Reform Association became so intense that in 1909, the New York Times April 17th edition reported that, along with Rev. William Morrison, he was sued for libel by a number of Belgian concessionaires for a blistering January 1908 report (the same year that the anti-Leopold campaign forced the maniacal monarch to yield his control over his colossal prize to the Belgian state).
Reverends Sheppard and Morrison had charged that the Belgian capitalist cabal had "committed atrocities against natives who failed to gather sufficient rubber." For his remarkable efforts on behalf of the Congo, Sheppard was dubbed the "Black Livingstone" (whatever that is worth).
And how can we forget about the incident which the "sage of Tuskegee", Booker T. Washington, wrote about in his autobiography "Up From Slavery" when he related about his meeting he had in London with the ubiquitous Henry Morton Stanley, the internationally renowned world traveler of "Dr. Livingstone, I presume" notoriety.
When Washington asked Stanley if he thought there was any assistance that Black people in the U.S. could possibly give to their brothers and sisters in the Congo, he was discouraged by Stanley who told him that there weren't any possibilities that could develop by African-Americans trying to get involved with Africans in the Congo.
Little did Washington realize that Stanley was in the employ of Leopold, and his constant travels across the African continent were as an agent to represent the interests the Belgian royal robber who cataloging such important information on commercial possibilities in central Africa for his own speculations and calculations to further enrich himself and his mother country Belgium.
It was because of Stanley's travels being used as Leopold's advance man and scout that the scheming Belgian potentate could later inveigle his colleagues at the Berlin conference into believing that the Congo was just a large, worthless mass of jungle rather than the treasure trove that Belgian mineralogists would later discover was it to be: a land which contained such a variety of precious minerals and other valuable natural resources that it was "considered a geological scandal." Stanley's speculations were the real reason that Leopold's Berlin Conference cohorts mistakenly gave away the Congo to him so easily.
But even with these critical omissions, and as important that I feel they should have been included, I still feel that Bate's "Congo: White Kings, Red Rubber, Black Death" was a powerful film. During its showing, as the saying goes, the theatre was so quiet, except for occasional sobbing, "you could hear a pin drop." The film provided a valuable information asset which unmasks the cover-up of how the major media covers events of the Democratic Republic of Congo today.
To obtain it and have it shown to the public was a major coup for ArtMattan and they are to be congratulated for doing so. For its inclusion in ADFF 2004 should show us that with a program of 70 films, one can never foretell what you might be blessed to see.
The remaining films concluded their showings at the Anthology Film Archives, located at 32 Second Avenue and 2nd Street, the venue at which the series began on November 26th and continues until Wednesday, December 8th. The venue then moves uptown on Thursday, December 9th to Harlem's Schomburg Center for Black Culture, 135th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard, where the final five films will be shown at 12 Noon, 2:30 PM, 4 PM, 6 PM, and closes out at 8:30 PM featuring independent women filmmakers and the New York premiere of "The Healing Passage" and a question and answer session.
On Friday, December 10th and Saturday, December 11th, the venue will move over to Teachers College at Columbia University, 120th Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, where panel discussions will be held throughout the day. The closing ceremonies will also take place at Teachers College, on Sunday, December 12th, at 3 PM.
Further information regarding the ADFF 2004 can be obtained by calling (212) 864-1760 or by going to the website at http://www.NYADFF.org.
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