Book on Congo shows what a pathetic history of sorry nation

Gino Frobel
   The country of Congo has always been a mess and in the nineties it suffered what some called the African War. A series of confusing conflicts erupted in this region that was so confusing and didn't make any sense that it garnered little international attention. I remember some of these miniscule press reports of the tremendous casualties and atrocities that were occurring by all these different ethnic groups that even a brain wiz spelling contest winner would have difficulty remembering. David Van Reybrouck brings us the history of this nation in a long novel that goes back to the Congo free state and early Belgium rule in one of the harshest colonial domination of colonialism in Africa . He goes through the intense rubber quotas that many Congolese would need to meet for the economy and how eventually and suddenly the people took control and demanded independence. The book goes through the Mobuto dictatorship and his stylish hats. I always thought this was one cool dictator and the book brings up the wonderful transitions back to African names throughout the Zaire society and how the rumble in the jungle was brought to the Congo as a major international event. This was a great fight between Cassius Clay and George Foreman. Congo was such a mess in the sixties and seventies that even the great Che Guevara left the country in disgust about the corruption and ineptitude of these people. The most intense part of the book is when Mobuto was finally overthrown and Congo was thrown into a new stage of utter chaos. Rwanda invaded and several African countries invaded to aid their rebels. It is amazing there was such fighting and on,y the scarce resources for a consuming world justifies this delusional warfare. The Hutus were massacring and being massacred all over the place. The Congo was really a country whose borders were drawn in a hope and achievement that all that could go wrong did go wrong for this once prosperous colony. If there was any African country that had the resources and could of been an industrial giant and major economic  power in the region it could of been Congo. This country is utter crap and will be taken over by the Chinese and perhaps only the Chinese can turn it around. The Congo is so messed up as a country and society and this is what happens when you cannot get along with the people down the river because they hunt fish a different way and have a weird dialect.