Congo (19 page)

But perhaps those are only assumptions. There was, after all, no complete break with the years before 1908. The Belgian tricolor was raised over the capital city of Boma on November 15 of that year, as the flag of the Free State was lowered and folded up for good, but little change was seen afterward. Leopold’s regime continued to cast a long, dark shadow over the colonial period. Furthermore, the half century of Belgian rule was anything but static. In fact it was characterized by a unique vitality—not only the oft-sung, unilinear dynamism of “progress,” but also the multifaceted dynamism of a complex historical era marked by tensions, conflicts, and friction. A long, wide current that grew ever more powerful? No, more like a braided river with numerous side channels, rapids, and whirlpools.

There was certainly a great deal afoot in 1908, but at first that new dynamism was seen more in Brussels than in Congo. On paper, a new dawn had come. The Colonial Charter arranging the transfer of the Free State provided Congo for the first with a sort of constitution. Very much aware of the misery suffered under the Free State, the Belgian ministers and secretaries laid out a completely new system of governance. Colonial policy was no longer based on the caprices of an obstinate ruler
who could impose his will, but was established by the parliament, which was charged with ratifying laws concerning the colony’s administration. In actual practice, such policy was largely conceived and implemented by the minister of colonies, a newly designed post with a rather absurd title. The plural form, copied from its foreign neighbors, was a misnomer: Belgium had only one colony. Parliament itself spoke out only rarely on “overseas” politics. On December 17, 1909, no more than thirteen months after his lifework was taken from him, Leopold died. His successor, King Albert I, adopted a much more discreet and less self-willed stance when it came to Congo. There was also the Colonial Council, a new government body designed to provide the minister with technical advice on a host of subjects. Of its fourteen members, eight were appointed by the king and six by parliament and the senate. And then there was the Permanent Commission for the Protection of Natives, an institution with noble aims but little influence. During the fifty years of its existence, the Permanent Commission met only ten times.
⁵
The financial arrangements changed as well: Leopold’s shadowy arrangements—which allowed him to slush money back and forth between his own personal fortune and the civil list, the means put at his disposal by the nation itself—were gone for good. From now on, black-and-white transactions were the rule. Revenues from the colony were to go to the colony itself and no longer to building projects in Brussels; this also meant, however, that Congo was to support itself in times of crisis (although Belgium, in actual practice, sometimes footed the bill). The colony, in other words, was to bear the joys and burdens of having its own budget.

These were drastic administrative reforms. But a change was seen as well in the attitude with which the colony was governed. The adventuresome made way for the bureaucratic, foie gras for corned beef. After Leopold’s antics, preference was given to a strict and sober approach. Belgium assumed its role as colonizer with more gravity than pride. The administra
tion became highly officialized and in Belgian terms that meant extremely hierarchical and centralized. Its directives originated in Brussels and were given substance largely by people who had seldom or never been to Congo. This resulted on more than one occasion in conflicts with the European people in the colony itself. In Congo the governor general still reigned supreme, but his estimations of the situation in the colony were often at loggerheads with the orders handed down to him from Brussels. What’s more, Belgian colonials had no say in colonial policy: they had no formal political power. They submitted and not always enthusiastically.

But if they felt passed over, how much worse must it have been for the Congolese themselves? The Belgian government’s policies definitely had the natives’ best interests at heart: that insight, after the experiences with red rubber, was quite firmly defined. But Belgium was not answerable to the people in the country. The government was not elected by them, nor did it consult them in any way. It took care of them, with loving kindness.

A
S POORLY AS THE
B
ELGIAN GOVERNMENT LISTENED
to the people in Congo itself, just as carefully did it heed the words of science. The objective, as Albert Thys put it, was “une colonization scientifique.”
⁶
No more ad hoc improvisation, but Cartesian methodicalness. Scientists were the embodiment of this new-fangled sobriety—impartial, businesslike, colorless, and reliable. Or so people assumed. For in actual practice, it was their supposed impartiality that allowed them to gain so much influence.

One of the first scientific groups to gain a say in this way was that of the physicians. Around the turn of the century, Ronald Ross, a British doctor born in India, discovered that malaria was not caused by breathing in “bad air” in swampy areas (
mal aria
in Italian; the disease was still common in the
Po estuary at the time). It was the mosquitoes that lived and bred in the stagnant water there that transmitted the sickness. One of the great mysteries of the tropics, which had claimed the lives of countless missionaries and pioneers, had been solved. Ross received the Nobel Prize in 1902 for his discovery. But that was not all. Yellow fever and elephantiasis, the disease that caused such gruesome malformation of the limbs, also turned out to be spread by mosquitoes. The enigmatic sleeping sickness came from contact with tsetse flies. Leishmaniasis was carried by sand flies, typhoid fever by lice, bubonic plague by the fleas on rats. The bite of a tick could produce stubborn attacks of fever. A new field of study, tropical medicine, was born; it was to become a powerful tool in the service of colonialism. Leopold II had already invited scientists from Liverpool to the Congo to study sleeping sickness. In 1906, on the model of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, he set up the École de Médicine Tropicale in Brussels, forerunner of the Antwerp Institute for Tropical Medicine.

For the inhabitants of Congo, this medicalization had major consequences. Even during Leopold’s regime, field hospitals were set up here and there in the Free State, where the victims of sleeping sickness were attended to by nuns. These
lazarettes
were located on islands in the river or at remote spots in the jungle and closely resembled leper colonies. Hospitalization often took place under duress. The patients were subjected more to a sort of quarantine than any form of nursing. No family, friends, or relatives were allowed to visit. For many, therefore, referral to the
lazarette
felt like the death sentence. The patients served as guinea pigs for all sorts of new medicines, like atoxyl, a derivative of arsenic that produced blindness more frequently than recovery. It was not always clear what was actually being improved, the patient’s health or the experimental medicine. Because the aim was to isolate victims during the earliest stages of the sickness (when it is most contagious but also most
treatable), those who were quarantined often felt perfectly healthy. Swollen lymph glands in the neck were often their only complaint. The characteristic symptoms arose only during their stay at the field hospital itself. The
lazarettes
therefore developed a bad reputation: people believed they were camps where colonial officials had one intentionally infected with the sickness. Riots broke out and guards cracked down, but many patients ran away and went back to their villages.

When Belgium took over Congo, for the first time in colonial history a medical service was set up . . . in Brussels. The chain of command to the local post administrators in the bush was extremely long, yet policy was successfully tailored to fit the new situation. Field hospitals alone were not enough. From now on, the movements of all Congolese had to be monitored. A 1910 decree stated that all natives fell under a specific
chefferie
or
sous-chefferie
(territory administered by a chief or smaller unit).
⁷
The boundaries of those areas were carefully demarcated, and existing territorial limits were taken into account. Anyone wishing to move over a distance of more than thirty kilometers (about nineteen miles) for the duration of more than one month, another decree from 1910 said, were obliged to carry with them a medical passport that stated their region of birth, state of health, and any treatments received to date. A passport could only be obtained with the approval of the village chief or
sous-chef
. Those already infected were kept under village arrest. Anyone traveling without the proper documents risked a fine.

It would be hard to overstate the importance of this measure, which had five far-reaching consequences. First, all Congolese, even those in perfect health, were no longer able to come and go as they pleased; their freedom of movement was severely curtailed. For a region with a permanently high degree of mobility, that took some getting used to. Second, each inhabitant was from now on pinned to a spot on the map, like a
beetle to a piece of cardboard. The sense of belonging in the native communities had always been great, now it became absolute. One’s identity was from then on chiseled in granite. Third, the local
chefs
became part of the local administration. That process had started already in Stanley’s day (see the case of Makitu), but now it was formally confirmed. They constituted the bottom rung on the ladder of the official hierarchy and fulfilled an intermediary role between the state and its subjects. The colonial government, of course, preferred to work with docile local leaders. The officially appointed chief, therefore, was often a weak character with little moral authority; the real, traditional chieftain remained in the lee, in order to go on ruling as before.
⁸
Fourth, because the average
chefferie
comprised no more than a thousand inhabitants, larger ethnic entities dissolved.
⁹
The village fell directly under the authority of the state, and intermediate levels vanished. That too had an impact on tribal awareness: nostalgia arose for a former glory. And fifth, for many, the laws originating in faraway Brussels were their first immediate encounter with colonial bureaucracy. During the era of the Free State, hundreds of thousands of Congolese had been brought under the yoke of the distant oppressor; now, in principle, there was
no one
who remained out of reach. The number of Belgian colonials remained quite limited (a few thousand in 1920), but the colonial apparatus tightened its grip on the population and penetrated further and further into the life of the individual.

The state: in 1885 that had been a lone white man who asked the head of your village to fly a blue flag. The state: in 1895 that was an official who came to conscript you as a bearer or soldier. The state: in 1900 that was a black soldier who came to your village, roaring and shooting, all for a few baskets of rubber. But in 1910 the state was a black assistant nurse on the village square who felt your lymph glands and said that it was good.

The colonial administration hoped to get started quickly with
a large-scale medical examination of the population; King Albert allocated more than a million Belgian francs to that end, but World War I delayed the process. Starting in 1918, however, teams of Belgian physicians and Congolese nurses began traveling from village to village, and many hundreds of thousands of villagers were tested. The state: that was the men with microscopes who frowned gravely as they looked at your blood. The state: that was the gleaming, sterile hypodermic needle that slid into your arm and injected some kind of mysterious poison. The state literally got under your skin. Not only was your countryside colonized, but so was your body and your self-image. The state: that was the medical pass that said who you were, where you came from, and where you were allowed to go.

Lutunu’s life, in any case, became much more domestic as a result. The man who had been to every corner of his country, in addition to making trips to Europe and Ámerica, now remained in his village year after year. As assistant to an adolescent village chieftain, he probably advised the white supervisor about who was eligible for a travel pass and who was not. It need come as no surprise that this system left the door wide open for abuses. Passports were highly coveted, and some chiefs, clerks, and nurses were open to bribes. In the hope of obtaining a new, blank passport, villagers who wished to travel but had only recently been treated for sleeping sickness claimed to have lost their medical papers. Many people viewed the white man’s medicine with profound suspicion. Atoxyl could blind you and the spinal taps used to treat the worst cases were very painful. Yet this is not to say that the people lived in irrational fear of everything wearing a white coat. Some treatments met with general approval, such as the operative removal of tumors caused by elephantiasis, but hypodermic needles were commonly seen as a way to spread diseases. The colonizer clearly underestimated the deep attachment to traditional medicine and rejected it out of hand as quackery and mumbo-jumbo.
For many Africans, this made sleeping sickness the white man’s disease, part and parcel of military domination, economic exploitation, and the political reshuffle.

And in all of this, physicians had power, a great deal of power. Doctors decided who could go where. They established the boundaries of those areas where travel was forbidden. They could force recalcitrant individuals to undergo treatment, and even punish them. They even had the authority to have entire villages moved, should there be sound public-health reasons for doing so. Village communities in areas where the tsetse fly flourished could be forced to pack up and move collectively. And should such a village refuse, doctors could call in the assistance of colonial officials and the Force Publique. More than healing individuals, this brand of medicine was intended to keep the colony on its feet.