XXXI. Power
‘You can tell the lion’s savagery from afar, man you cannot, African Proverb, Kommando 52
The plight of The Democratic Republic of the Congo and Lumumba was always something I knew about but did not understand. Soundtrack to a Coup d' Etat slapped me in the face and throat with the truth about that incident. It also introduced new questions about the Congo and the images I saw. After some digging, just reading about this further, I came across a video someone put on YouTube. I thought about the issue with power, and how it is still distributed without much consideration for the average individual in the world. The documentary is titled, Kommando 52 and it’s about 30 minutes long. In this documentary, we get introduced to certain mercenaries in the Kommando 52. There are 53 men, 50 mercenaries and three officers. They’re German which is called Deutsch. When they went to the Congo during Lumumba’s fight for independence and democracy, they went to be on the side of Tshombe, Lumumba’s opposition. They were hired by Tshombe. Tshombe is trusted by the West and Europeans yet Tshombe, a supposed ally, couldn’t even stay in Munich longer than 30 minutes even before any protests. The notion that these men were inhumane was evident when they came across people they instantly killed. The Congolese people lay dead on the ground unarmed carrying briefcases and luggage. The mercenaries didn’t care about their size, age, or gender; they just killed them. A man stood with his hands up explaining his circumstances only to be shot dead. All I could see is a lust to kill coupled with that awful mentality in these mercenaries, that black people are nothing to them but creatures to be conquered to who they would do anything to. The conflict between Lumumba and Tshombe with the West and European leaders were an excuse to kill and take from black people without refrain. This mentality will always keep the world in a horrible and dangerous state because this way of thinking about any race or culture makes atrocities easier. It matters who is allowed to have power in this world. Whoever is given power will determine if we escape evil in the world or if we stay subjugated by it. Nothing in my life made me more serious, cold, and intellectually unreachable as when I realized that people like these mercenaries can be given this kind of power and very few care about what they do as long as it isn’t happening to them. Seems like only the truly empathetic should rule the world in order for it to become a better world.
One mercenary in the documentary said, it was nonsense to kill those who were running away but who could know whether to shoot or when not to shoot in this country. I immediately looked upon the leader Tshombe and thought he didn’t have any real control over them. The disruption of opposing human beings to an end goal of submission is what one would think, strike fear in the opponent, but these mercenaries were shooting people to see how many they could kill like shooting bottles.
I thought about police officers here, the ones who do not belong in the profession at all because they’re terrified. They’re terrified because at the drop of a hat they’re shooting someone, either because they’re scared of what a person might do or scared of any interaction at all. Some people manipulate their way into becoming a cop just to kill or shoot someone for the experience. The Congolese people were dressed in normal clothes not uniforms. We are all dressed in normal clothes here in America. To me, the fix is to simply avoid the job altogether since you have no way of knowing whether a person means you harm or not, and you’re scared. One may try to argue that there is a reason to be afraid as a police officer, but one can’t base their reaction off this fear because this fear doesn’t just resonate in the police officer, or these mercenaries, it can be felt by everyday individuals because anyone can be harmed by a stranger.
Mercenaries tend to neglect humanity anyway because they’re after what they’re after, which causes them to neglect the human being overall thus killing means nothing to them. And when we think about power, who gets it is primary because whoever gets it has to be trusted with lives. In my opinion, a police officer should be chosen like one would choose a person that goes into the military. A soldier knows that at any moment they can go to war, they know that they must have a strong reaction in any situation that may become violent, and mentally they are confident in themselves that their training and their reaction will be stronger and better than the adversary. This is a mentality. The police officer needs to have the same mentality and no biases or discrimination or that individual should not even apply to be one. But this is up to whoever is in charge of the police in that state and county, and our individual responsibility in this is to make sure we elect a chief of police who will hire police officers with the right mindset for the job.
In this documentary, these mercenaries have the soldier mentality but they are only there to kill people. And again before this mini-documentary ends a mercenary said, ‘ who knows if a person is a refugee or the enemy, ‘ but by then we know they don’t really care.
Lumumba’s associates who stand for peace, tolerance, and non-exploitation of human labor (no slavery) are being tortured and killed by being dragged to death. They are hogtied, tortured, and killed. People are skinned after they’re killed, one soldier saying, they made the blacks white when they were dead. They went into the villages of unarmed people to kill. One of the officers kept skulls, killing people by headshot, leaving the head out for eight days, cooking it (their words) and keeping the skull. Exiled Cubans provided two planes for these mercenaries, shooting people to pieces from the sky.
It came to a point that the mercenaries discussed amongst themselves their issue with the killing of anyone, something that with a simple decision they could have stopped and not by continuing the mission and keeping prisoners but by leaving. Feeling trapped there and afraid to leave due to being killed anyway is bad decision-making, but still we must be accountable for the decisions we make. Most people in power have a hard time with accountability, which is always a bad sign that leads to a bad leader. Still, they carried on with their perceived duties, burning the villages so no one survived.
Makitos, an African Commander of the Katanga and Tshombe supporter, took prisoners and let prisoners go. The Deutsch Kommander believed all of them should be killed, and of course, they were mere bottles to them and they were also scared shitless of retaliation. For me, Makitos made the documentary a tiny bit lighter because it felt a little better to see humanity and that it came from a African with power.
Some would argue that these mercenaries had some humanity and they were doing what they were hired to do, until we come across the clip of one of the mercenaries describing the conflict as an adventure that gave him bragging rights.
And of course, there’s all the racism, all the hate, all the demeaning, humiliation, and derogatory insults just for them to lust after the black women there and use them for sex. We’re inhuman yet not so much that they wouldn’t sleep with us. Never understood how one is so disgusted and rejects our race so much they would have a sexual relationship with us. This is where racism became bullshit when I was much younger. As soon as I learned a slave owner would touch a black woman when I was young, racism became a thing that people did because they had nothing better to do with their lives, they didn’t fully understand what they got themselves into, or it was just a tool to be used to get ahead in some way.
The nuns were weird as hell in this documentary. They struck me as happily crazed, excited and chipper while helping to bury a mercenary who was killed that they personally remembered. But that’s to be expected from them since, one, they’re in a war torn area and no one listens to them, and two, they were likely sent from Belgium and on the order by letter from the late Leopold II which involved subduing the land and people using religion and by any other means. It will never cease, the power of religion upon the oppressed and desperate individuals in this world that suffer. Religion is a good thing. The stories are about love, hope, faith and that these will move mountains. Religion provides timeless inspiration and warnings in the ten commandments reflecting the dangerous, destructive, or hellish paths that can be created by certain sins. But in society, religion has ended up in the wrong hands too often and have caused abuse and corruption due to the blatant misinformation provided by some religious leaders. We strive to live a peaceful life, but some fool must always try to take and rape with anything that gives them power due to greed, and they use religion to do it too.
We come in the documentary to a campfire where the mercenaries argued that to label them a murderer isn’t correct. Again, that issue with accountability. In their opinion, they were something else. They discussed whether they were murderers or not and came to the conclusion they weren’t. Then they mentioned why they were really there, which was supposedly due to communism, and how important it was to avoid this kind of government. Communism was their reason for being on Tshombe’s side. Countries and most people in power always come to the same excuse, these meaningless -isms, when all of them all over the world are capitalists. Money rules their soul and their flesh so much so they will end countless lives just to have it. Capitalism consistently proves itself to be the most dangerous -ism to embrace. And these mercenaries wanted to kill, they saw nothing wrong with it. If a person sees nothing wrong with killing people, even small groups of possible opposition, then those are the ones who should not be given any power. The ones with a need to overtake people that they don’t see as human should not be placed in a position of power. And definitely not the individual that is ruled by money, they would see the world population damn near erased all because they want four yachts.
These mercenaries were getting paid to do what they were doing and they were also taking money from the people they killed which they termed, the victor’s right. They took from dead bodies as well as homes. Some of the most terrible things people have done to others are always for or over money. The barbarism in people comes out and destroys like the worst addiction when it comes to money and the control of money and resources. And woe to the truly foolish that tests these people, they’re looking for the devil and the devil will definitely find them. We’re talking about money here, the actual literal means-to, on planet Earth. Most people put it before everything and then when they get it they do nothing with it except buy a too-big house and a boat.
Now one would read this and say toni, this is some yellow-dog wretched hell-fire filled enraging and awful shit. Why did you write this abomination about that abominable documentary?
To remind everyone how much more time and resources, TIME, we the everyday individual, have to devote to make our best decision on who gets into a position of power and who doesn’t from this day forward. We have to make sure as a fellow human being that the right people get into positions of power. We need to be more informed on everyone going into a leadership position and what they stand for and what they believe in. Who gets to delegate authority, make life changing decisions, who gets to effect a policy, change or establish laws, who gets to have power in positions that effect the public, and who gets to be our voice is very important.
Be wary of who you put into a leadership position. That person should be helping the people progress not holding anyone back or taking things away with stupid pointless hate and senseless oppression. Hate and senseless oppression leads to pushback and that can take many forms and have different unforeseen effects. Some people think they won’t suffer when they put the wrong person in a position of power and they are very wrong due to not only the destruction of elements they need to function efficiently but also relationships. Tshombe was forever known as a sellout and in his mysterious end he had no friends.
He seemed powerful but he truly wasn’t. He is only one example of the illusion of power. Don’t be manipulated by the illusion of Power, which is reflected in leaders that attack the weak in the name of some ideal only to pacify their people or their base’s pride. Don’t be deceived by blatant authoritarianism and a violent leadership, a leader like this only governs this way because they have nothing for their people. They have nothing to give their people and are not really there to help them. Attacking the powerless, the trusting, and unsuspecting is not power, it is cowardice in its purest form. It’s easy to use power to harm people. It’s hard-work even with power to exact change in society and make things easier for people.
He hired those mercenaries and his recklessness in this as a leader, coupled with the harm it caused so many, is one of the main points I make about the detriments that having, ANYONE, in a position of power can cause. Not just him, but the governments and their leaders that enabled them, and the mercenaries themselves needed to be responsible with the power they had even though it was only in the knowledge of warfare and the weapons in their hands.
The issue in Gaza looks like a catastrophic repeat of the slaughter of the Congolese people and mass killings in a genocide. The people there are being killed indiscriminately due to the actions of a small opposition group. It’s wrong to treat a group of people and their actions as the fault of an entire race no matter how sad and angry you are. People find it easy to ignore, hate, and kill when they don’t like a race or culture. Cowardly nonsense, take your fight directly to the perpetrator. It’s easy to attack people that aren’t wary of you, who show no violence towards you, nor are prepared to deal with such violence. It’s hard to face a real enemy that was / is determined to harm you and are willing to sacrifice everything and others to do it.
Like most of Africa, everyone took and continue to take away resources without regard for the lives they have harmed and it is a stain of shame that cannot be lost in time. The effects of it are still felt today in that area of the world. No one will have a successful society without more freedoms than restrictions. No country will have a successful society without helping its people more than watching them suffer. No country gets to exist peacefully and prosperously while raping another country. As an ally, one has a responsibility to refrain from enabling the slaughter of humans for any reason. What you take away people will fight for, and you will try to label them a criminal for trying to take back a human right, but they will truly be a revolutionary.
Our attention to power and who gets it is everything in America from State to State, County to County, City to City, and Town to Town. Our revolution begins and ends at the polls. We need to revolutionize the polls here. We need to keep the guns out of the wrong hands. We need to get the right people in charge of our nation’s mental and physical health. We need to go forward into better infrastructure, more means of public transportation, better schools that run off federal dollars and more hospitals that run off federal dollars, a refrain from putting a cost on everything, and prevent other entities from doing this either, and overall facilitate easy living in America. We need not support abuse of power from any Country and we also cannot perpetuate this abuse ourselves. The abuse of power is evident today as it was in the past, but it ends at the polls.