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<p><strong>By Scott Graber</strong> <br><br>It is Saturday and a rising, low-angled sun has illuminated the pink blossoms that cluster on a single azalea. It has also flared the white fans atop a stand of pampas grass. For the last 30 minutes our lawn has given me silent satisfaction.</p>
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<p>Although I take pride in our well-ordered yard, I am more conversant, more at ease with confusion. Like most of my generation, I sometimes seek the order, the understandable familiarity of a grid, but for me real excitement comes with an unfamiliar, chaotic landscape. All of which brings me to Africa.</p>
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<p>Actually it brings me to the recent presidential contest in Congo-Brazzaville.</p>
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<p>Congo-Brazzaville used to be called the Republic of the Congo. Before that it was the French Congo to distinguish it from the Belgian Congo. It is small, only 5 million people live here, and most Americans confuse it with the larger, more turbulent Democratic Republic of the Congo, a.k.a Congo-Kinshasa, f.k.a Zaire, which is chaos, confusion and conflict made flesh.</p>
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<p>In the early 90s I made two visits to Congo-Brazzaville. I was there, at the invitation of its President, Pascal Lissouba, for the purpose of creating a promotional hand-out that the President would distribute when he visited the United Nations later that year.</p>
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<p>“I need photos, Excellency, and directions to Congo’s National Archives where I can get photographs,” I said one afternoon.</p>
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<p>“We don’t have a National Archives,” he replied in French. “But I see you have a camera of your own. What’s wrong with that?”</p>
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<p>“Its a cheap point-and-shoot,” I said holding up the plastic, use-it-once throwaway I had brought along. “I also need transport into the interior.”</p>
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<p>President Lissouba did not reply, and so I was surprised when his driver arrived at the Bamou Palace Hotel the next morning.</p>
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<p>“Where are we going?” I nervously asked my Kalashnikov-accessoried companion as we got into the President’s Mercedes.</p>
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<p>“Aeroport,” he said. “Where Excellency keeps his helicopter.”</p>
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<p>And so began a years-long love of Congo with a flight up the Zaire River where I was stunned by the lushness, contrasted against large de-forested tracts that were testament to Asia’s appetite for Congo’s mahogany.</p>
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<p>Shortly after my trip, Pascal Lissouba was deposed by a former paratrooper, Denis Sassou Nguesso, who remains President after years of despotic leadership. In the aftermath of that coup I developed a lasting friendship with another Congolese — Herve’ Miabey — an expatriate who now lives and teaches (math) in Washington, D.C.</p>
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<p>I was surprised, last week, when Herve’ called saying, “I have news about Congo.”</p>
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<p>His said his friend, Parfait Kolelas, had been a candidate for President running against Sassou Nguesso. Herve’ said that in the run-up to the voting, Kolelas had been polling well, then suddenly got sick. Kolelas thought it was Malaria, or Covid, but he died in route to medical care in France.</p>
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<p>“I think he was poisoned,” Herve said.</p>
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<p>“How do you know that?”</p>
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<p>“I can’t prove it. But isn’t it remarkable that the only person who had the courage to repeatedly run against Sassou is now dead?”</p>
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<p>After 23 years Sassou Nguesso is third in line (behind dictators in Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea) in terms of one-man, authoritarian longevity. He has taken a country that was admittedly poor; admittedly non-ambulatory; and made it worse. He has done this in spite of vast oil reserves in the Gulf of Guinea.</p>
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<p>For most of those 23 years of mis-rule, Herve’ has been a relentless critic of Sassou, a tireless advocate for transparency, organizing Congolese expatriates living in America and in France.</p>
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<p>He has made videos, sold commemorative mugs, and has tried his best to raise Congo’s profile — to distinguish it from Congo-Kinshasa. Herve has also spoken with President Biden — when Biden was a Senator — and no doubt he will seek another audience.</p>
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<p>But when things go south in “Big Congo,” that blood-borne pathology, internecine butchery and killing of nuns dwarfs any ongoing misery generated by Sassou in the “Little Congo.”</p>
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<p>Boundaries, drawn with help from the Belgians, French and those other nations that participated in the “Scramble for Africa” in 1884, put Congo-Brazzaville in the same neighborhood with Congo-Kinshasa. And Congo-Kinshasa sucks every ounce of empathy, anger and outrage out of that neighborhood.</p>
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<p>I don’t suppose Herve’ will ever stop preaching his gospel; but geography makes it hard for him to get America’s attention.</p>
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<p><em>Scott Graber is a lawyer, novelist, veteran columnist and longtime resident of Port Royal. He can be reached at cscottgraber@gmail.com.</em></p>
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