By B. TUMANOV

It is always cool and dark in the
radio relay station. The long squat
building was put up by the French in
those remote times when air condition-
ing was unknown and people sought re-
lief from the heat behind inordinately
thick stone walls. The director of the
station, a portly grey-haired Frenchman
from Marseilles, laid aside my check
without glancing at it. He knew the
sum it was for—the rent for the cot-
tage he had !et to me.

“A formality, Monsieur,” he murmur-
ed. “I thank you for calling in person,
for this opportunity to have a chat.”

The Frenchman spoke in a hoarse but
well modulated voice. He was an excel-
lent raconteur. He had lived in the
Congo the greater part of his life and
now that he was about to go on pen-
sion and return to France I asked him
how it felt to be leaving the country
he had spent so many years in. After
a few minutes of silent thought he
slapped his palms down on his desk
with an air of decision.

“Young man,” he began, “what I’m
going to say may sound high-flown to
you. All the same, I want to say it: I’m
leaving with a bitter heart, with a serise
of failure, both my own, and on the
part of my countrymen. I have lived in
this city thiry-five years. Some of the
houses in it I built with my own hands.
My fellow-countrymen here have been
of different types: some were moved to
live among the Congolese by the finest
feelings, others settled here by force of
circumstances. I taught the Congolese
to grow tomatoes—it took some doing,
let me tell you. At first they just

“™couldn’t understand what anybody
should want tomatoes for. Well, try
and make a Frenchman somewhere in
Provence grow manioc. But we, if you
please, were the first to invent canning,
gramophones and the. guillotine; we
looked down our noses and wished for
no human contacts with these people
who—oh, horrors!—could not see the
use of tomatoes. And so we declared
them just naturally stupid! That was
the simplest course for us. Meanwhile
the Congolese saw and took note of
everything, understood everything and
withdrew into themselves.”

The aged Frenchman hauled himself
out of his chair and began to pace the
room. As I shook hands with him in
farewell he retained my hand in his:

“Tll be leaving soon, young man. I
realize that the past cannot be brought
back, the past is irreparable. What we
should have sent here were sociologists,
economists, mechanics, agronomists,
doctors—and none other. Instead we
sent soldiers and administrators among
whom even the best sought only to
rule and subdue the people, not to un-
derstand jthem. With the result that
today, when the Africans are free, we
have ceased to be their enemies, as it
were, but remain strangers. Yes, I am
a stranger in this land too, for all my
thirty-five vears in it. And the worst of
it is that we white people are ourselves
to blame.”

The word “colonialist” has become
pretty hackneyed. It is automatically
associated with a definite historic

epoch, a definite economic system, defi-
nite emotions. Yet undeservedly little,
in my opinion, has been written about
the ordinary individuals who carried
out the colonial mission. I refer to the
European settlers who lived in Africa
during the last fifty years. Europeans
who had nothing in common with such
romantic explorers as Livingstone or
Savorgnan de Brazza. Here is a rough
portrait of the type: he is anywhere
from 35 to 60 years old, generally he is
married and has children. Most often
he is a businessman, a bar or restaurant
keeper, a planter or the owner of a
small factory. More rarely he may be a
clerk in some “‘colonial” firm, still more
: rarely a fitteryor;mechanic,;who has lost
A = all sense of belonging to the working

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—FRIDAY, JULY 30, 1971—PAGE 4

class. Except for those who were in
government service (in the colonial
period), the sole thing that brought him
to Africa was the hope of making his
fortune.

Politics, he insists, “doesn’t interest”
him. The problems of his own country,
which he left ten, twenty or even thirty
years ago, leave him indifferent; if he
does discuss them it is only by force of
habit. International problems are gen-
erally Greek to him and his picture of
the modern world is all black and
white. Because of his utter political ig-
norance, he is impressionable, easily.
frightened, quick to believe rumors,
often starts them himself. He suffers
from an inferiority complex, especially
now when he compares himself with
those of his countrymen who come to
Africa as specialists or advisers. Still
more distressing to him is the growing
number of Africans with a university
education acquired in Europe or, some-
times, right there in Africa. For that
reason he is eager to give the “new-
comers” advice, condescendingly assur-
ing them that they do not know the
“black man’s soul,” that it takes skill
to deal with the Africans—“You don’t
know-them yet!”—that fine feelings are
out of place. He is convinced (and
secretly proud) that he is smarter than
his cook and his. house boy.

Without their masks

The name of the bar is “La Bar-
rique,” which means “The Cask.” The
words “Air Conditioned” are lettered in
blue on the glass doors. After two hours
in the broiling heat it is incredibly cool
inside. The moment you enter your wet
shirt turns into a cold clammy com-
press. The decor is irritatingly absurd
—an imitation of a sailors’ barroom in
Ostend or Le Havre. Barrels set in the
wall, sham antique candlesticks, a huge
photograph on the far wall of a street
on a rainy autumn day, wet cobble-
stones gleaming, the lights of a small
bistro on the corner.

There is a noisy crowd at the bar,
Belgian businessmen of all calibres air
their opinions before dinner. This is a
daily ritual. The subjects discussed are
also ritual: slack business, taxes—“My
God, they want to ruin us!”

“Have you heard? Reinsen—yes the
one in wholesale trade—they closed
down his shop yesterday. I tell you,
there’s no end to their nerve!”

“Nerve? That’s putting it mildly!
They’re stepping all over us! They
haven’t a grain of common sense in
their heads, they think they can get
along without us!”

“This morning I gave it to one of my
clerks straight from the shoulder. He’s
one of those who like to flaunt a tie.
Here, look, ask that fellow...hey,
what’s your name? André? André....
Can you beat that! You ought to be
called Makala...or Makolo...Ha-ha!
Do you have a tie, too? Of course, of
course.... Yes, so that character said
to me this morning: ‘I think, sir...’
You hear? ‘I think.’ Well, I told him
flatly: ‘Get this into your nut once and
for all: you people aren’t capable of
thinking. I do your thinking for you’.”

The Congolese barman continues to
wash and wipe glasses with an impas-
sive face. The Belgians speak over his
head and he keeps his eyes fixed on
the water running from the tap. Only
fleetingly does a look of hate flash in
his eyes.

How shatteringly has capitalism all
unwittingly exposed itself in its colo-
nial form! Do not think that the men-
tality of the colonialist is something
special that was formed in Africa. The
mentality required to engage in rob-
bery was formed in Europe; in Africa it
merely showed itself in its naked form.

Human attitudes and social antagon-
isms manifest themselves very vividly
in Africa, with the minutest detail
etched in startling relief. They cannot
be hidden or masked as‘in the bustling

crowds of a big city, in its museums
and monuments, the comfort of its
restaurants and bistros, the silence of
its libraries, the peace and quiet of a
Sunday’s fishing, the expectant flutter
of a theatre audience—in short, in all
the activities which serve to cloak the
philistine who yearns to be a big boss
but knows his place in the hierarchy of
the capitalist society of a metropolis. In
Africa the philistine casts all convén-

tionalities aside. Know j
never climb to thé ‘ the
finds compensation ica th
earning more in Af in £00
and, more important,

a superior being
others and knows t S
number of people W' The)
on the social ladder
purpose of his life .
at all.costs: eae