Ngongo Chronicle: Copper: A Memoir 09

Chapter Nine

With my Latin teacher’s hoary pun in mind, I return (however reluctantly) to the latter half of the 1980’s. As a way to understand the events of this period, I am afraid I must have recourse to yet another diversion [digression]. This time, I will try to answer the question, “How could a man with only a lycee’ [secondary-school] education manage to rule a nation of 11.3 million people?” (This was Ngongo’s population in 1987, when I ordered our first census since Independence. The latest figure, from 2017, is 13.8 million.)

The short answer is “barely.” During most of my 37 years of rule, I have accroché par mes ongles [hung on by my fingernails]. (And many a time, there were those who sought to remove those essential coverings!)

I have repeatedly used the word “fissile” [fissiparous] to describe the troubled polities of Ngongo’s neighbors. Among the forms of government that have prevailed in these states, when they were not subject to anarchy, the most common has been autarchy. The autarchs have included benign despots (Kenyatta, of Kenya; Nyerere, of Tanzania; Kagame, of post-genocidal Rwanda; and early on, at least, Mugabe, of Zimbabwe). At the other end of the spectrum are the out-and-out kleptocrats (Mobutu, of Zaire) and the psychopaths (Idi Amin, of Uganda).

Many of my initiatives, during the thirty-seven years in which I have ruled Ngongo, were expressly designed to ward off le mal zairois [the Zairean sickness]. Although my harshest critics have relegated me to the second category of autocrats, I would claim a place among the first. I say this because, although Ngongo lacks some of the earmarks of what are called “liberal democracies” (elections, a free press, an independent judiciary, etc.), I have eschewed despotic, one-person rule. That is, I have jailed, tortured, and/or executed only those who have advocated, and sometimes attempted, the overthrow of my regime, and I have governed with the help of expert advisors.

As the business with Andrew Ennyange demonstrates, even this modest sharing of power can exact an unacceptably high cost. Why, then, did I choose to govern this way? The simple answer is that I had no choice. Remember my relative lack of education! Although I am a lifelong autodidact, whose teachers long ago noted my cerveau spongieux [sponge-like brain], consider the areas of knowledge required for even modestly competent rule in this part of the world. To list four of the most crucial: Metallurgy, Economics, History, and Anthropology.

How have I compensated for my lack of formal training in these four disciplines? As implied, I have always read widely and deeply, and forgotten little. I also measure what I read against my own wide experience. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I know what I do not know. (Modesty has no place in this diversion.)

My handpicked ministers, whom I will not name here (for reasons of my own), have lightened the burdens of rule. Instead of their names, I will list the universities from which they graduated, all with first-class honours: Economics: Ghent, in Belgium; Metallurgy: Nsukka, in Nigeria; History: Cambridge (Jesus College), in the U.K.; and Anthropology: Columbia, in the U.S.. You will note that I do not include Mathematics. The traitor, Ennyange, I believe, attended the University of Nairobi (a.k.a. “Nairobbery”).

As that list implies, I have always chosen my advisors without regard to race, nationality, or ethnicity. (My Ministre de Metallurgie happens to be a Nigerian, of Igbo ethnicity.) The single criterion for selecting these top men (and two of my other ministers have been women) has been excellence. Not only were all four academically distinguished; by the time I hired them, each had amassed an exemplary work records. In some cases, that meant they had made their way up through the ranks of a particular ministry, here in Ngongo; the others came to me with records of outstanding achievement elsewhere.

Do you, Reader, think that surrounding myself with such highly qualified people has been a simple matter? Ha! You forget that I am an African, a ngongien of Lugbara origin, not to mention the pre-eminent member of four separate clans, an initiate of a Lugbara age group, and the father of two living sons! Perhaps, that list will enable you to grasp the difficulty of my ministerial selections.

Not that I have never hired a family member or a Lugbara age-mate. But I hired them for positions for which they were well-qualified (although none happened to be of ministerial timber). To cite but two instances in which personal associations figured in my hiring decisions, for my second son, Paul-Auguste, I secured a clerkship in the Ministry of Agriculture. Still, it was his own diligence that enabled him to rise, in the course of two decades, to the Chief Clerkship of that ministry.³¹

The second example is Joseph Ngbaga, a Lugbara age-mate, for whom I secured a menial job in a pension [hotel] owned by a man named Alphonse Saint-Louis, who is also a valued informant of La Force NKN, the security agency I inherited from M. Saint-Louis’ namesake, Alphonse Batakoudou. When my narrative reaches the oft-promised account of the attempted assassination, I will have much more to say about La Force, including my reasons for overcoming my initial reluctance to keeping it under personal command. Meanwhile, remember the name: Joseph Ngbaga.³²

Returning to my travails, I am afraid that, despite ongoing, strenuous efforts, ethnicity has never ceased to be a leading factor in opposition to my rule. For instance, my arch-enemy, Oscar Odhon’g, never stopped blaming me for the execution of Batakoudou. This flew in the face of the fact that Odhon’g was, himself, the principal architect of that decision.³³ Although Odhon’g was the leader of the Acholi faction in the army, my ongoing feud with this man had nothing to do with ethnicity.³⁴ In order to explain, I must have recourse to yet another diversion.

Ngongo’s Acholi have had a most unfortunate history. Over the course of several centuries, persistent drought and famine have had a devastating effect on the group. These natural disasters were exacerbated by local wars and the incursion of opportunistic Arab slave traders, both of which persisted into the twentieth century. Nor would anyone deny that Nature’s animus against the Acholi has remained constant up until, and including, the years of my Presidency.

But to say that I am unsympathetic to the plight of the Acholi is grossly unfair. All those years ago, in a Literature class at L’institut… I was introduced to a poem entitled “Song of Lawino.” The author was an Acholi from northern Uganda, by name Okot p’Bitek. Seven decades later, I can still remember the exact words of p’Bitek’s eloquent contrast between the lives of rich and poor:

Human nature being what it is, not just the soldiers, but Acholi clan and tribal leaders have blamed their sufferings on me! As if this were not enough, the recurrent floods of troublesome refugees from neighboring Uganda’s civil wars have included many Acholi. These floods began back in the 1980’s, when they were a factor in bringing down my predecessor.

Need I say that Oscar Odhon’g has long been sympathetic to the grievances of his fellow Acholi, both domestic and imported? When I would send the fellow to put down an insurrection at one of our mines, or to apprehend rioters demanding land reform, he would invariably return with the same message: “These people have now been temporarily pacified, Excellency. But you should take this opportunity to lend a sympathetic ear to their grievances. It is crucial for us to separate legitimate protesters from rabble-rousers.” What he really meant to say was, “There is nothing you or I can do to stem these insurrectionists.” Bla bla! [Blah blah!]

Was I really unsympathetic to the plight of Odon’g’s people? To mention yet another counter-argument, the group, like my own Lugbara and Ngbandi, has been heavily Christianized. As for their problems as agriculturists, throughout my reign, I have contracted with eminent global NGO’s to address these problems, especially desertification. (Did I cause that phenomenon, too? Did I beseech the Almighty miraculously to spare Lugbara and Ngbandi herders and farmers from the effects of drought?) A related accusation repeatedly leveled against me is that I have favored urban, francophone dwellers of Lugbara and Ngbandi origin over rural Acholi. Again, slander!

Not to bore you, Reader, with dry technical details, but it has been under my watch that techniques such as water harvesting, management of organic matter, gully harnessing, the ring-barking of trees, and the use of cattle manure for composting, have been marshalled to alleviate the effects of desertification. Needless to say, these measures have known no ethnic boundaries.

So much for the accusations of Odhon’g & Co. that President Nkwema is a tribalist who is not above playing food politics! Of course, pragmatism has made me somewhat unreceptive to this troublesome individual’s persistent demands for promotion. Even so, I did promote Oscar Odhon’g twice: first, to Adjutant-chef, and then to Majeur.³⁶

Note 31: For Paul-Auguste’s career, and his authorship of the Epilogue to this memoir, see infra, and Note 25 to Chapter Eight, supra.

Note 32: For Ngbaga and Saint-Louis, see also [Pierre Tshombe]…, Chapter Thirteen.

Note 33: For FN’s responsibility for the execution of Batakoudou, and for his enmity to Odon’g, see the email of Dalvovo at the end of Chapter Seven, supra.

Note 34: According to Julius Nkwema, his father’s hatred of Odhon’g did, indeed, involve ethnicity. During one of our conversations, Julius went so far as to draw a parallel between his father’s animus against the Acholi and Robert Mugabe’s slaughter of 8,000-20,000 Matabele, the ethnic group of his principal rival, Joshua Nkomo, during the so-called Gukurahundi, from 1983-87.

Note 35: FN’s thumbnail sketch of the sufferings of the Acholi is essentially accurate, at least according to two principal sources, Armstrong and Sebina-Zziwa. (See booklist, infra.) For “The Song of Lawino,” also see booklist, infra.

Note 36: The rank of Majeur is only one step above Adjutant-chef, suggesting that FN did, indeed, keep Odon’g down.

To be continued...