Western diamond dealers stamped out Congolese dream

MOST books on growth by economists are either memoirs or dense and difficult technical studies – usually told through a narrow pro-growth lens and within a Western frame of reference. The Tyranny of Growth is a story that’s never been written before.

It is a modern epic that witnesses one of the greatest mobilisations of resources and people since WWII and exposes the lie of growth. It is, above all, a story about people and massive economic deception. It brings to life the individuals and ideas that have created a perfect storm for the present economic crisis. Set in the past, The Tyranny of Growth is a book about the present.

It provocatively recounts how and why the 2008 global financial meltdown and present Covid-19 pandemic have become the leading cause of governments’ and multilateral institutions’ global spectacular failure. Probing deep beneath the surface of the crisis, the book reveals uncomfortable truths about the classical economic growth doctrine.

It traces the costs of close to a century of growth to the fabrication of the growth doctrine in the US after the WWII.

Ray began his career as an anti-apartheid activist during the 1980s and early 90s, when he developed a habit of independent but critical thinking, spawning both his love of journalism and a desire for influencing change from the ground up.

He practised journalism for more than a decade before becoming a financial magazine editor in the early 2000s. Jaded by the rise of “soundbite” journalism, the general decline in the quality of news and rising disinformation and misinformation in media, he traded his suits for casual slacks and made his way into academia as a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Johannesburg before succumbing, eventually, to the magnetic appeal of his first love, creative writing. Now he strives in his writing to integrate complex issues, recognising that news emerges from multiple actors in multifaceted social, political, economic and institutional settings.

Ray has lived most of his adult life in Johannesburg with his son, Liam, whom he fondly describes as the apple of his eye, and an adorable border collie named Bella. When not writing, he can be found walking Bella in a suburban park and hiking trails in and around Johannesburg.

* The Tyranny of Growth is published by Melinda Ferguson books, which is an imprint of NB Publishing. The book retails at R360.

MOBUTU Sese Seko was a child of a last-ditch effort by the United States to break the entire complex of planning, thinking and behaviour inherited from Belgian colonialism and secure a strategic advantage over the Congolese economy in the heady onrush of events after the murder of Patrice Lumumba by the CIA.

Educated in Coquilhatville in a school run by white priests, Mobutu was a precocious teenager. After finishing school, he spent his early adult life dabbling in journalism. His induction to Congolese politics came during a visit to a journalism event in Brussels in 1958 where he met Patrice Lumumba, whose National Congolese Movement had hoped to rise above ethnic loyalties to become a truly national movement. When Belgium gave up its dominion in 1960, the Congo dissolved into four separate authorities – one in the eastern city of Stanleyville loyal to Lumumba; one in Katanga under Moïse Tshombe, supported by the Belgians and Americans; one in Kasai under Albert Kalonji; and one in Leopoldville under President Kasavubu.

Shortly after Belgium’s withdrawal, Lumumba had managed to outrage the former colonial dominion by insulting its king, appalling the West with his flirtation with Moscow and alienating the United Nations.

In August that year, the head of the CIA himself told the Congo station chief, Larry Devlin, that Lumumba’s removal was an “urgent and prime objective”. Now Washington moved to direct action. Lumumba was arrested and put in jail and Mobutu took charge. In December 1960, Lumumba escaped before being recaptured in January 1961, flown to Katanga, severely beaten and summarily executed by a firing squad. Mobutu, meanwhile, as head of the armed forces, watched and waited. By October 1965, another political impasse had developed, with Kasavubu sacking Tshombe in the middle of an election campaign.

Desperate for a way out of the chaos and uncertainty in the Congolese government, the US permitted a limited experiment in bandit capitalism. It worked, but unleashed enormous forces of change.

Its shadow oligarch, Washington decided, was to be Mobutu.

In Devlin’s recollection to the author, Michela Wrong, Mobutu had by this time become a regular visitor to Devlin’s home in Leopoldville, where Devlin’s young daughter delighted in amusing Mobutu with childish pranks. The two men, Devlin claimed, had gotten to know each other’s families well and developed a kinship of sorts. However, in Devlin’s account, what happened in November 1965, when Mobutu seized power, was not the result of any prodding on his part. “The US position and British position was that they did not want a coup; they wanted Kasavubu as president and Tshombe as prime minister,” he said to Wrong.

Dramatic though Devlin’s version of Mobutu’s coup was, it served only to detract attention from what appears to have been a more important link between Mobutu, Devlin and diamond merchant Maurice Tempelsman, who went on to employ Devlin after his retirement from the CIA two years later as a security consultant in the Congo. The relationship between Mobutu and Tempelsman is less well documented than the Devlin-Mobutu collaboration, but some evidence does exist.

Testimony to the US Senate Intelligence Commission, set up by Frank Church to investigate the murder of Lumumba and the events leading to Mobutu’s coup four years later, tells a different story. Paging through the voluminous commission report, I found testimony from an anonymous source that, in the onrush of power and wealth in 1960, Lumumba publicly spoke of using the Congo’s resources to benefit the Congo, and even suggested seizing privately held mineral assets. In this policy vacuum, money masked a dark side of the new Congo. The oxygen of freedom must have been exhilarating for some, like Lumumba, who dreamed of remaking his country, yet many took it as a threat to their interests and an invitation for brazen abuse and sometimes lethal methods of settling disputes.

The gambit to redistribute the country’s assets, according to the Church testimonial, that Devlin, acting on Tempelsman’s advice, ordered Lumumba’s assassination, which explains Tempelsman hiring Devlin as his liaison to the replacement government two years after the assassination. Immediately after Lumumba’s death, the acting prime minister of the Congo, Cyrille Adoula, gave his backing for a major Tempelsman diamond deal, telegramming this to US President John F Kennedy in Washington. The historian, Richard Mahoney, claimed that the Adoula regime was receiving funds from De Beers through its middleman, Tempelsman. A State Department memo dated August 2, 1961, under the heading “Congo Diamond Deal”, stated, “The State Department has concluded that it is in the political interest of the US to implement this proposal.”

If this version is true, it was Devlin, again acting at the behest of Tempelsman and backed by De Beers largesse, who facilitated the coup in 1965 that enthroned Mobutu as the sole heir to the country’s crown jewels. Mobutu, De Beers and Tempelsmen shared a genial collaboration.