Red Rubber

King Leopold's dynamite-carrying agent Henry Morton Stanley—and later, the whole colonial regime—was popularly known in the Belgian Congo as the "Bula Matari" (literally, "rock crusher"). The Belgians ruled the Congo ruthlessly and comprehensively, penetrating into Congolese societies to dominate, govern, and recruit labor from its members. Leopold II of Belgium began his large-scale exploitation soon after being given the Congo Free State as his personal property at the Berlin conference of 1885. Within five years, the Congo Free State claimed to own all natural products of the Congolese forests (Jewsiewicki 1983), and it had seized all land not "directly occupied" by the Africans. With virtually no financial assistance from his homeland, Leopold would have to seek revenues from even the most secluded of forest populations. Local farmers like the Lese, Bila, Budu, and Mamvu would eventually form the basis of the Belgian colonial economy (Jewsiewicki 1983; Young 1983; Young and Turner 1985).

At first, Leopold II was able to provide funding for colonial rule by exploiting ivory and wild rubber. Western demand for ivory had been high for a long time, and after the development of the pneumatic tire in England in the 1890s, the demand for rubber hosing and tubing spurred rubber production in the Congo. Between 1894 and 1905, the price of rubber doubled (Harms 1975). But there were several problems with rubber production, not the least being a shortage of trees. B. Jewsiewicki cites a 1908 report that shows only six rubber trees on average in one acre of Congo forest, each tree yielding only half a kilogram of rubber. At this rate, the rubber supply was nearly exhausted within a decade after production began. Production was further hampered by wasteful methods. Instead of extracting the sap carefully with small incisions, collectors cut and mutilated the trees, making them worthless for future use. By 1910, the Belgians had run out of rubber in Equateur Province, and the supply was waning in the Ituri. The flood of Southeast Asian rubber three years later was a further depressant. The serious human cost of rubber production also began to emerge, and it helped critics of the Belgian regime, especially the English, to influence Europeans of many nations to halt investments and seek goods elsewhere (see Morel 1906). Jewsiewicki sums up:

During the Leopoldian era in Zaire history, only 10 percent of income came directly from the Crown domains, the profit from which was mostly used to finance the activities of the Crown of Belgium. Rubber and ivory, which had

contributed 60 percent of the total value of exports in 1890, were responsible for 95 percent of the total in 1900. Rubber accounted for 84 percent of this figure, but in the long run the system destroyed itself by destroying its own resources of men and rubber trees.(1983:99).

All Congolese were taxed, but since money was forbidden in the Leopoldian Congo, they were "allowed" to pay their taxes with labor for the state or for concessionary companies. In some parts of the Congo, local inhabitants were therefore obligated to give rubber to Leopold's concessionary companies, as a labor tax, also called "taxes in kind" (Louis 1966:274), or the impot de cueillette . The formal quota was four kilos of dry rubber (equivalent to eight kilos of wet rubber) every two weeks for each male inhabitant. In actual practice, the Belgians extracted everything they could, and the requirement of a specific quantity of rubber was primarily a way to make the exploitation look ordered and temperate (Jan Vansina, personal communication). Those who did not meet that burden were subject to beatings, and the Arabisés apparently tried to get rubber in any way they could, including violent acts. Congolese sentries guarded the posts, and they were flogged and sometimes executed or mutilated if the villagers under their supervision did not meet the quota. While there is no accurate estimate on the number of Congolese men, women, and children executed, tortured, or mutilated between 1885 and 1906 (some estimates are as high as one million), the number must have been in the thousands.

Although historians have not documented actual methods of violence committed against inhabitants of the Ituri during the rubber collecting period, some missionary reports, and reports from intermediaries responsible for forcing the local populations to produce ivory, rubber, and other goods for the state, suggest that amputated hands were circulated as a currency to make up for shortfalls (Forbath 1977). The Congo Reform Movement in Britain, fueled by outrage at the fact that an individual could control and own such a large amount of land and people, accepted these reports of violence as accurate. For the purposes of his propaganda, E. D. Morel, the leader of the movement, called Leopold's reign the era of "red rubber," rubber stained with blood of innocent thousands. Even if the stories about amputated hands are inaccurate, the reality is that a large percentage of Congolese died as the result of violence and disease.

Oral history suggests that soon after contact with the Europeans, the great-grandparents and grandparents of the Lese of Malembi collected rubber, though whether or not this was a legal obligation is not clear.

Certainly, however, for the Lese as for all Congolese, the dwindling supply of rubber forced men to travel farther and farther from their villages, beyond the boundaries of their clans and phratries. Out of their own territories, various groups often fought violently with one another for rights to the little rubber that remained. In a letter dated June 15, 1915, D. de D. Siffer, a Belgian official, described to the district commissioner in Irumu the local inhabitants' difficulties in procuring rubber. Siffer's letter suggests strongly that the Lese inhabitants of the Nepoko region were under legal obligation to produce rubber; the obligation was, indeed, a general policy in the Belgian Congo; however, I know of no written documents stating explicitly that the Lese were forced to collect rubber. From his post among the Lese-Dese, Siffer (District du Kibali-Ituri Correspondence, 1920–37, Zone de Mambasa archives) writes of the rubber collecting activities of the "people of Nepoko," presumably the Mamvu:

Their [the WaLese's] forest is just about the last resource of the people of Nepoko. Seeking to take care of their taxes by the harvest and sale of rubber, the people of Nepoko show up in [our] area after walking for five to seven days, already poorly received because they come to exhaust the forests that the Walese would prefer to keep for themselves. They are starving and want to eat; they steal from the plantations, and the Walese have a great sense of property. Quarrels follow, arrows are shot, and there are wounded at every battle. The Walese is constantly vigilant.(my translation)

Siffer goes on to point out that in addition to the human casualties, many houses were burned and destroyed.

My Lese informants were clear in their association of the rubber collection era with a time of feuds that made travel beyond one's boundaries all the more perilous. The period seems to be a significant reference point for the Lese. Three elderly informants (two men and one woman) whom I questioned about the past, though not specifically about rubber, brought up rubber collection as one of the most important events in Lese history. I quote:

1. We were feuding, and the Europeans came and said "stop that." "Go and get rubber for us." They sold the rubber we gave to the BaNgwana [part-Arab descendants] grandfathers. Rubber, rubber, rubber. It went to the ude [Belgians]. The others called themselves Marabo (Arabisé), and their skin was red. My father called them KodoKokbo because it [KodoKokbo] is a long snake that is red, and the Marabo carried long sticks, and beat us with them. We had to give rubber, and they paid us with cups and beads, and bracelets.

2. Our great-grandfathers lived at the time of rubber. They would go out for two days, but stay only two days because they were afraid of being lost or killed. They did get lost, and when Ude-ni, my ancestor, looked for his father, and when he passed the Andisamba Efe, they shot him with an arrow, and killed him.

3. We were at war with the Maru [phratry]. Azima's father showed my father to a place where there was some rubber left. Our children followed, and went to the river to dig for crabs. Aumbu of the Maru heard the children EdiEdi and Aboreke. He knew they were the voices of children, and killed them. And so there the Maru killed us.

When these and other Lese informants discussed the period of rubber collection from the perspective of their relations with the Efe, they often remembered the period fondly, as a time when the Lese and the Efe shared their lives and food much more fully than they do today. For example, the Efe and the Lese cooperated in rubber collecting. The Efe, in fact, produced large amounts of rubber, and rubber acquisition thus became an essential part of their relationship with the Lese.^[2] The Efe accompanied the Lese as guards on most of the Lese rubber-collecting expeditions and guided the Lese on lesser-known forest paths. One Lese man reported: "We lived always with our Efe. Every man cut rubber with his Efe. Every man stopped and stood with his Efe before the ude [European] to sell rubber. Everything. We did everything with the Efe." The Efe not only helped the Lese collect rubber, but in later years would protect the Lese from hunger seasons and the violence of Zairian national political strife.

Rubber was such an important item for the colonial administration that rubber markets were placed on the axis of the north-south trail that later became the road through the Lese residences; markets were also established at Nduye, and later at Biasa (only 40 km south of Malembi) and Paoni. Although the Congo rubber market essentially came to a halt after 1910, the Lese occasionally cut and sold some rubber on a voluntary basis until the 1930s. An elderly Lese man said, "Later the Dese stopped selling [rubber] at Nduye, but we sold at the Andikara clan [Biasa]. From there they started to build roads, and we sold rubber at Uetakukbo [Paoni]. They stopped getting rubber when Alambi became chief of the Lese-Dese [in1936]."

[2] In sharp contrast to the Lese situation, the Aka Pygmies of present-day Central African Republic did not engage in rubber collection, though why this was the case is not clear, especially since the Aka were the principal producers of ivory, another good demanded by Europeans (Bahuchet and Guillaume 1982:200).