Kinshasa lies on the flat banks of the River Congo like a dissolute mistress in repose—slow and haggard, but with a dignity and washed-out beauty. Most of the city is made up of “le Cite,” the huge slum metropolis that makes up almost two-thirds of this city of 7 million. The landscape is an alternately dusty and muddy sprawl of… return to article
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Reader Comments (2)Page 1 of 1 pagesSadly the Congo is a nightmare. Arguably the very worst place on the planet. Sadly, the only place where Bonobo’s live in the wild. They are being hunted down and killed (for food). When they are gone, which seems inevitable, the only peaceful primates will have left the planet. Sigh.
(Too bad man does not behave more like Bonobo’s, but our natures seem to be that of the Chimpanzee’s. We, like the Chimps, evidently prefer making war over making love. Pity.)
Posted by wolf on Jan 30, 2008 at 9:52 AM It might better serve the purposes of inspiring Africans with the legacy of Patrice Lamumba, Mr. Parenti, were the factual American involvements with his murder emphasized, rather than omitted, in a report by one of our best, leftist writers. You do socialism’s cause and, worse, Dr. Lamumba’s memory, a disservice by merely writing herein that he was 36 when “killed” and then, perhaps to ingratiate yourself with authorities you now must deal with over there, suggest that Mr. Lamumba did not give us ample reason during his life to believe that he would not have “devolved into corruption and megalomania.” I find myself amazed, sir, after reading your writings for so many years, that you would fail to even parenthetically note the CIA’s actions against Lamumba, Che, Allende and others. Had Nelson Mandela been killed in prison, would you today be writing: Who knows what Mandela would have become? Were you to, it would seem utterly out of character with what your readers have come to expect of you. I’m going to assume that you had to tread softly on the Lamumba legacy for this piece, in order that you might more freely and without surveillance, travel through Lamumba’s former homeland. The evident ignorance of Lamumba’s “bravery,” as you allude to it, is most likely the reason that you observed what you report to be depressingly little knowledge of him or, worse, revisionist versions of the factual matters of his stand against the hegemony of western capitalism’s rapacious exploitation of African resources. I suggest, fellow scribe, that had Lamumba survived, western Africa might not be what it is today, a hell hole of depravities enabled by Western manipulations, intrusions, subterfuge, and most condemning, racist indifferrence. What’s next? Karl Marx was a madman, not a learned and inspired visionary?
Posted by Bud Wizer on Feb 6, 2008 at 6:23 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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Also by Christian Parenti
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