Die Akte James Knopf: BBC Documentary. "White King, Red Rubber, Black Death"

Sonntag, 8. Mai 2011

BBC Documentary. "White King, Red Rubber, Black Death"

King Leopold II

"The horror (Das Grauen)". Those happened to be Mr Kurtz last words, reflecting his involvement in the atrocities commited in the Belgian Congo. Back in colonial times of course. In case you haven't read Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, you might just be familiar with the movie Apocalypse Now. It's an interesting adaptation of Heart of Darkness set in Vietnam/Cambodia. You might remember Marlon Brando as Colonel Kurtz. "The horror, the horror...". Yes, he said it, too.

Back to colonial Congo: "White King, Red Rubber, Black Death" is a BBC documentary about King Leopold II's personal genocide in what is now called Congo DRC. The wealth Leopold acquired through the brutal exploitation of the Congo's peoples went straight to colonial Belgium. Making it the classical, culturally cultivated European country that one might encounter during tourist sight seeing trips. You know, museums and statues and fine turn-of-the-century nostalgia.

Mutilated Congolese child

It makes you wonder about all those other former colonial super powers (incl. Germany). Makes you wonder who paid for the gorgeous old Amsterdam waterfront? Who paid for Liverpool, Lisboa and numerous other European cities that flourished in the era of the transatlantic slave trade? How much wealth derived directly from colonial exploitation? Would a non-colonial Europe even bare the faintest ressemblance to the fat cat fortress of today? Grand Europe, the one that shits its knickers when debating on the fate of a couple shiploads of North African refugees locked in on Lampedusa? Let's not talk about this.

Sankofa is this mythtical bird of the Akan symbolism that tells you to watch your behind and learn from past. Maybe Europe should replace their damn war mongering eagle seals with the Sankofa bird. Maybe it would trigger some panoramic insight into their actual role in history. Just a thought.