DRC and the Rhetoric of Despair

The image of the Democratic Republic of Congo dominating the media is that of “the heart of darkness and the ultimate failed state”. The DRC conjures up images of strife, corruption, rape, ethnic hatred, meaningless war, an absence of justice, rule of law, and authority. Academics have also perpetuated this picture of the Congo as the paradigm of a “failed state”. Jeffrey Herbst, a major academic writer on Africa argued that “there is no Congo,” while Richard Dowden of the Royal African Society described the state as “a Congo-shaped hole in the map”. Within the label of a “failed” state, a frequently unexamined assumption is that selfishness and anarchy will reign. The DRC has attracted many other labels including “shadow state”, “pariah state”, “parastate”, “collapsed state”, “stateless state” and even “vampire state”...[continue reading]