M. P. called on us to get out of the rain, and in conversation with M. Q. in presence of myself and R., said: ‘The only way to get rubber is to fight for it. The natives are paid 35 centimes per kilog., it is claimed, but that includes a large profit on the cloth; the amount of rubber is controlled by the number of guns, and not the number of bales of cloth. The S. A. B. on the Bussira, with 150 guns, get only 10 tons (rubber) a-month; we, the State, at Momboyo, with 130 guns, get 13 tons per month.’ ‘So you count by guns?’ I asked him. ‘Partout,’ M. P. said, ‘Each time the corporal goes out to get rubber cartridges are given to him. He must bring back all not used; and for every one used, he must bring back a right hand.’ M. P. told me that sometimes they shot a cartridge at an animal in hunting; they then cut off a hand from a living man. As to the extent to which this is carried on, he informed me that in six months they, the State, on the Momboyo River, had used 6,000 cartridges, which means that 6,000 people are killed or mutilated. It means more than 6,000, for the people have told me repeatedly that the soldiers kill children with the butt of their guns.
In conversation upon this entry, I was told that the M. P. referred to was an officer in the Government service, who, at the date in question, had come down from the Momboyo River (a tributary of the great Ruki River, and forming a part, I believe, of the “Domaine de la Couronne”) invalided, on his way home. He had come down in very bad health. He stated then that he was going home, not to return to the Congo, but he died, only a little way further down the river, very soon afterwards.
The same gentleman stated that he had reported this conversation orally at Boma, as instancing the methods of exaction then in force. It is probable that the issue of the circular quoted was not unconnected with these remarks.
The region drained by the Lulongo being of great fertility has, in the past, maintained a large population. In the days prior to the establishment of civilized rule in the interior of Africa, this river offered a constant source of supply to the slave markets of the Upper Congo. The towns around the lower Lulongo River raided the interior tribes, whose prolific humanity provided not only servitors, but human meat for those stronger than themselves. Cannibalism had gone hand in hand with slave raiding, and it was no uncommon spectacle to see gangs of human beings being conveyed for exposure and sale in the local markets. I had in the past, when travelling on the Lulongo River, more than once viewed such a scene. On one occasion a woman was killed in the village I was passing through, and her head and other portions of her were brought and offered for sale to some of the crew of the steamer I was on. Sights of this description are to-day impossible in any part of the country I traversed, and the full credit for their suppression must be given to the authorities of the Congo Government. It is, perhaps, to be regretted that in its efforts to suppress such barbarous practices the Congo Government should have had to rely upon, often, very savage agencies wherewith to combat savagery. The troops employed in punitive measures were—and often are—themselves savages, only removed by outward garb from those they are sent to punish. Moreover, the measures employed to obtain recruits for the public service were themselves often but little removed from the malpractices that service was designed to suppress. The following copy of an order for Government workmen drawn up by a former Commissaire of the Equator District, and having reference to the Maringa affluent of the Lulongo River indicates that the Congo Government itself did not hesitate some years ago to purchase slaves (required as soldiers or workmen), who could only be obtained for sale by the most deplorable means:—
“Le Chef Ngulu de Wangata est envoyé dans la Maringa, pour m’y acheter des esclaves. Prière à M.M. les agents de l’A.B.I.R. de bien vouloir me signaler les méfaits que celui-ci pourrait commettre en route.
“Le Capitaine-Commandant,
(Signé) “Sarrazzyn.”
“Colquilhatville, le 1er Mai, 1896.”
This document was shown to me during the course of my journey. The officer who issued this direction was, I was informed, for a considerable period chief executive authority of the district; and I heard him frequently spoken of by the natives who referred to him by the sobriquet he had earned in the district, “Widjima,” or “Darkness.”
The course of the Lulongo River below Bassakanusu to its junction with the Congo lies outside the limits of the A.B.I.R. Concession, and the region is, I believe, regarded as one of the free-trading districts wherein no exclusive right to the products of the soil is recognized. The only trading-house in this district is one termed the La Lulanga, which has three depôts, or factories, along the river bank, the principal of which is at Mampoko. This Company has a small steamer in which its native produce is collected, but the general transport of all its goods, as in the case of the Concession Societies, is performed by Government craft. The La Lulanga does not, I understand, enjoy the rights of police as defined by the Governor-General’s Circular of the 20th October, 1900, but it employs a considerable number of armed men equally termed “forest guards.” These men are quartered throughout the lower course of the Lulongo River, and I found that, as with the A.B.I.R., the sole duty they performed was to compel by force the collection of india-rubber or the supplies which each factory needed. As the district in which the La Lulanga Society carries on these operations is one that had already been subjected to still more comprehensive handling by two of the large Concession Companies, who only abandoned it when, as one of their agents informed me, it was nearly exhausted, the stock of rubber vines in it to-day is drawing to an end, and it is only with great difficulty that the natives are able to produce the quantity sufficient to satisfy their local masters. In the course of my dealings with the natives I found that several of the sentries of this Company had quite recently committed gross offences which, until my arrival, appeared to have gone undetected—certainly unpunished. Murder and mutilation were charged against several of them by name by the natives of certain townships close to the head-quarters of this Company, who sought me in the hope that I might help them. These people in several cases said that they had not complained elsewhere because they had felt that it was useless. As long as the rubber tax imposed upon them endured in its present compulsory form with the sanction of the authorities, they said it was idle to draw attention to acts which were but incidental to its collection. The La Lulanga Company, not any more than the A.B.I.R., would seem to have a legal right to levy taxes, but the fact remains that from the natives who supply these two trading Companies with all that they export as well as with their local supplies of food and material, the Congo Government itself requires no contribution to the public revenue. These people, therefore, must be either legally exempted from supporting the Government of their country, or else a portion of the contributions they make to the A.B.I.R. and Lulanga Companies must be claimed by that Government in lieu of the taxes it is justified in imposing on these districts.
In the case of the A.B.I.R. Society, it is said that a portion of the profits are paid into the public revenues of the Congo Government (who hold certain shares in the undertaking), and that these figure annually in the Budget as “produit de porte-feuille.” In making this explanation to me, an agent of one of the Upper Congo trading Companies said the term should more correctly be “produit de porte-fusil,” and to judge from the large numbers of armed men I saw employed, the correction was not inapposite.