Residents of Kinshasa could be forgiven for rubbing their eyes in disbelief.
First, a statue of the late Belgian king Leopold II, whose rapacious colonial rule of the Congo caused the death of millions of Africans, was reinstated in the heart of the Congolese capital.
Then, less than a day later, it was gone again, mysteriously removed by the same workmen who had erected it.
Officials were at a loss to explain the comings and goings at the end of June 30 Boulevard, the street named in honour of the date of the Congo’s independence from Belgium.
First indications from the government were that it might be part of a historical restoration. There are plans to erect a statue of Mobutu Sese Seko, the dictator who stole billions from the country during a 30-year rule that ended in 1997.
”We are restoring the history of our country, because a people without history is a people without a soul,” said Christophe Muzunge, the Minister of Culture. He added that the six-metre Leopold statue had been brought back to remind the people of their country’s colonial past, so that ”it never happens again”.
But later there was no comment on why Leopold had been removed. Certainly the sudden apparition was not popular with onlookers.
”Look at what they did in Iraq,” Mputu Melo said. ”They destroyed the statue of Saddam Hussein. This shouldn’t be in a public square.”
King Leopold, who never set foot in the Congo, controlled the vast country as his personal colony from 1885 to 1908, when it was handed over to Belgian government rule.
During those decades his agents enslaved its people to harvest rubber, beating workers with a hippo-hide whip known as the chicotte and severing the hands of men, women and children who failed to meet their quotas.
As many as 10-million Congolese are estimated to have died as a result of executions, unfamiliar diseases and hunger. – Guardian Unlimited Â