The Congo free state, where everything you do, does not come with a price.
It is hard to imagine that such a rich country such as the Congo it is being destroyed by outsiders, as well as by their own people. In her play Ruined, Lynn Nottage touches on some of the issues that are contributing to the Congo’s devastation. Women are being sexually and psychologically abused every day, communities are being destroyed, and the entire Congo its being ravished. Lynn Nottage titled her play Ruined, because her play reflects on all these different factors contributing to the ruin of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. One of the most important points that Nottage makes in her play is that women are psychologically and sexually brutalized in the
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(56) How is that part of democracy?
Kisembe and his rebel soldiers are no better, they killed fifteen Hema men in order to steel coltan from their own mining pit. One of the Hema men stuffed coltan into his mouth to prevent the rebels from stealing it, needless to say they split his belly open with a machete. (31) So as you can see, Kisembe was also no one to be trusted.
At the same time that this is going on, the Congo is being ripped off of its natural resources. Coltan is very abundant in the Congo and highly in demand. Forests fauna and flora are being ruined in search for this precious metal at a rapid rate.We learned from Christian how bad things are escalating in the Congo: “I was just by Yaka-Yaka. When I was there six months ago, it was a forest filled with noisy birds, now it looks like God spooned out heaping mouthful of earth, and every stupid bastard is trying to get a taste of it. It’s been ugly chérie, but never like this. Not here.” Such a shame that such a beautiful place it is being destroyed and drained from all its riches, and that includes their animal life and
“Leopold had to recruit not just Belgians like Leon Rom, but young white men from throughout Europe, attracting them by such get-rich-quick incentives [...]” Much of the torture that Africans faced was due to either not producing enough rubber, killing the vine, or not being productive and efficient enough. “Although some whites in the Congo enjoyed wielding the chicotte, most put a similar symbolic distance between themselves and the dreaded instrument.” Hochschild used first-hand accounts from the very people who committed these atrocities in order to illustrate how desensitized they became, and how they saw it as nothing more than their obligation, that it was needed in order to be successful and prosperous.
This play carefully outlines the roles of women and how they are treated based on their gender. Many of these women do not have a say so in what happens to them. They are looked at as sexual objects. As a result, it is decided that mutilation will be the answer to keep them from exploring other areas of their sexuality. Honestly it is terrible to see women in different regions of the world looked down upon because of their role in society. Granted that, Nottage does an exceptional job explaining the life of a female who has suffered genital mutilation and how one can succeed beyond means as a
In Lynn Nottage’s playwright Ruined, some would argue that having been previously raped and sexually tortured, the women working for Mama Nadi are comparatively more sexually empowered when working in the brothel, as they consent to sex with the men; unfortunately, that is not the case. The situation is the same, the women are still being sexually objectified and exploited, only by a different perpetrator—Mama Nadi. Thereby, Mama Nadi is the only character that embodies sexual empowerment in the play. Her sexual empowerment is derived from her ability to take active ownership over her decisions, which are ultimately self-serving. Therefore, by placing Mama Nadi in a position to benefit by treating other women as commodities without regard to their personality or dignity, Nottage creates a unique dynamic in both power relations and conventional gender roles. More specifically, Mama Nadi is advantaged despite the gender norm of women being oppressed in her society. Compared to the other girls, Mama Nadi is substantially well off,
This relates back to Congo, where violence spurred by ethnic rivalries is due to local groups’ desire to make money by getting into the extractive industries. In another example, Newmont, an American company, mines Ghanaian gold and pays the government part of the profits. Here, Burgis shined the spotlight on an environmental issue: the sodium cyanide spill in Kwamebourkrom that killed aquatic life and posed hazardous living conditions for locals (Burgis, 134). Finally, in the last few chapters, Burgis touched on Cecil John Rhodes’ legacy as the founder of De Beers, blood diamonds, imperialism, and violence carried out by local governments and mining companies in order to protect their interests.
Over the course of human history, many believe that the “Congo Free State”, which lasted from the 1880s to the early 1900s, was one of the worst colonial states in the age of Imperialism and was one of the worst humanitarian disasters over time. Brutal methods of collecting rubber, which led to the deaths of countless Africans along with Europeans, as well as a lack of concern from the Belgian government aside from the King, combined to create the most potent example of the evils of colonialism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century’s. The Congo colonial experience, first as the Congo Free State then later as Belgian Congo, was harmful to that region of Africa both then and now because of the lack of Belgian and International attention on the colony except for short times, the widespread economic exploitation of the rubber resources of the region, and the brutal mistreatment and near-genocide of the Congolese by those in charge of rubber collecting.
A mineral that the Democratic Republic of Congo has vast wealth in is Columbite – tantalite, which is commonly referred to as coltan. Coltan is mined for the use in electronic devices. Some of these devices that coltan can be found in include: cellular phones, computers, jet engines, missiles, ships, and weapon systems. This mineral has an impact on our daily liv...
In the 1800’s, western countries such as the Belgians also took away the natural resources of the Congo such as ivory and rubber in the 1800’s. In modern times, western countries not only take away minerals such as coltan to produce technology, but they also take away other precious minerals such as cassiterite, gold, tantalum, and tourmaline. These instances are similar in that the materials that are being taken from the Congo are being used to make consumer goods that are sold to the public to profit the western
Lynn Nottage’s play Poof! is noteworthy due to the combination she used of realism and the fantastic which played well in the effectiveness as a piece of drama. In drama, realism is the attempt to imitate real life which, Nottage does with the two leading characters in her play. Loureen and Florence both endure spousal abuse which connects them as friends. Nottage opens Poof! with an element of the fantastic (the spontaneous combustion of Samuel) following Loureen's curse “Damn you to hell Samuel” to grabbed the audience’s attention. When reading a play as opposed to seeing it the author really needs to try to convey the emotions of the characters and to relay what the dramatic conflict is. In the essay Poof! Nottage uses realism and the fantastic
Like Hochschild says, this true story was “the great forgetting”. Many folks overlooked this detail, and ended up concluding that King Leopold and his reign over the Congo was one of the worst. However, this is not true, what with “what the Americans and the British were doing, or had done, elsewhere.” Yes, King Leopold was not so good of a guy, but that point is emphasized too far as Hochschild points out, “that is so only if you look at sub-Saharan Africa as the arbitrary checkerboard formed by colonial boundaries”. This brutal and even worse behaviour could be seen in various ruling countries, some of which include: France, Portugal, Germany, America, and Britain. One great example of these countries’s brutality is how “thousands of refugees ….fled across the Congo River to escape Leopold’s regime”, and how they “eventually fled back to escape the French”. This piece of evidence really helps contrast the things that were going on in France and the Congo, and with this, it seems as if things are going way better in Congo, which is saying something. Another country that gives a bad impression based on this evidence is America. During this time, America was in the middle of a war in a war with the Filipinos, where they “tortured prisoners, burned villages, killed 20,000 rebels, and saw 200,000
Located in the heart of the continent of Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is a diverse nation with rich, intricate history. Despite political, economic, and social struggles, the large African country has continued to endure and develop against adversity. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is abundant in natural resources and is home to many different cultural and ethnic groups of people. The geographic, demographic, economic, and governmental history and conditions have helped shape the territory into the developing state it is today.
One can easily note the physical and sexual violence brought upon the people (black and white) of Congo after independence, but we must locate the other forms of violence in order to bring the entire story of Patrice Lumumba to light. The director’s attempt at bringing the story of Patrice Lumumba to the “silver screen” had political intentions.
In April 1992 Joseph Momoh was removed from office in coup, led by Capt. Valentine E.M. Strasser, who claimed that there were poor conditions endured by the troops engaged in fighting the rebels. A National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC) was established with Strasser as the head of Sierra Leone. During Strasser’s administration the civil war escalated, with the RUF increasing the amount of territory under its control. This territory included large proportions of unregulated diamond mines. Astonishing reports were made about atrocit...
Military force led by the United Nations eventually muzzled the rebellion and with United States and Belgium’s help, Mobutu gained power. His leadership has been shown through history to be not much better.
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has had a long history of bloody conflict, civil war, and western exploitation dating back to 1885 when King Leopold II of Belgium brutally exploited the country for rubber. Agents of King Leopold II would storm a village, hold the women hostage until the men reached a quota of rubber. When the men left in search of the material, often for days or weeks, dying of exhaustion in the process, the women were raped and starved (Adam Hochschild, 161). Since that time the DRC has been caught in a cycle of continuous exploitation of natural resources by more developed countries. The DRC is caught in the political science theory called resource curse. Resource curse states that a developing country with a high amount of natural resources is at an increased risk for civil war and doomed to slower development because of political corruption, lack of economic diversification, and failure to invest in human capital (Nadira Lalji,
As Marlow passes through the waters of the Congo, it is easily visible the trouble of the natives. “Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees, leaning against the trunks, clinging to the earth half coming out, half effaced with the dim light, in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair.” (20) Show that the holding of these colonies has started. The soldiers have come in and taken the inhabitants and are destroying them and taking from them the one thing they deserve over everything, life. The imperialists seem to not care about the Africans and are just there for their land.