The Africa of the great explorers,
the huge land of hunting and adventure
adored by entire generations of children
has disappeared forever.
To that age-old Africa,
swept away and destroyed
by the tremendous speed of progress,
we have said farewell.
The devastation, the slaughter,
the massacres which we assisted
belong to a new Africa...
one which if it emerges from its ruins
to be more modern, more rational,
more functional, more conscious
will be unrecognizable.
On the other hand,
the world is racing toward better times.
The new America rose from the ashes
of a few white man, all the redskins
and the bones of millions of buffalo.
The new, carved up Africa
will rise again
upon the tombs of a few white men,
millions of black men,
and upon those immense graveyards
that were once its game reserves.
The endeavor is so modern and recent
that there is no room to discuss it
at the moral level.
The purpose of this film is only to bid
farewell to the old Africa that is dying
and entrust to history
the documentation of its agony.
The age of compromise has begun.
For the first time,
the gardens of the Ocean Road Palace
are open to the new African bourgeoisie
for the grand farewell party.
Old and new masters search in the lanes
for imitation and symbiosis
in the eagerness to find
something in common.
And that's how two centuries of history
draw to a close.
The last representative of
Her British Majesty
leaves the scene graciously
in that climate of festive cordiality
that always accompanies the departure
of a guest who has overstayed his welcome.
In this remote immensity,
the wail of sirens and firing of cannons
make no more din
than a child's birthday party.
Europe is in a hurry to leave
and on tiptoe
even if, all things considered,
it has given far more than it has taken.
Europe, the continent that nursed Africa,
can no longer manage this big black baby
that grew too quickly,
keeps bad company
and what's more,
hates it because of its white skin.
And so it is abandoned,
still cranky and immature,
just at the moment
when it needs Europe the most.
Africa comes out of its long Middle Age
and exchanges the spear for the gun.
The soldiers of
the most famous African regiment
formed by white men who've lived
in the country for three generations
lay down their arms
without military honors,
and trust the defense of their homes
and families to new hands.
The first spontaneous demonstrations
take place
controlled by
the new African police force.
Products imported from African countries
that aren't yet independent are destroyed.
First to go
are colonialist Portuguese eggs.
Next it's the turn of
oranges from South Africa.
And South African beer.
Once the popular enthusiasm is unleashed,
the new police must prepare to contain it.
The first elections in the history
of the Dark Continent are imminent.
The crowd presses impatiently
toward the polling places.
They're all afraid of arriving too late
and ending up empty-handed.
For this great day of Uhuru,
every party has promised its voters
the prize of the land, livestock, houses
and cars of the whites that remained.
In the highlands of Kenya,
the property of the white colonists
the big, green plateau
that for 100 years
was the fortress of
the rural aristocracy,
the Uhuru is late to arrive.
After 100 years,
the ancient African landscape
is transformed
into the Scottish countryside.
There are even foxhunts,
even if there are no foxes here.
All that's needed is for a black man
to drag a piece behind him
that just arrived by plane from England,
in order to leave the scent for the dogs.
The fox is a harmful animal
that does not exist in Africa.
If the white men
want to hunt it so badly,
they have to teach someone
to act like one.
But the fox is a treacherous prey
and should never be underestimated.
Your honor, in force of
Articles 7 and 19a
of the Repression of Mau Mau
Criminal Activities Act of April 4, 1953
I ask thatJeroke Camau
accused of arson, theft, robbery,
attempted murder and aggravated murder
be given the maximum penalty.
These weapons,
made by him and his accomplices
were used to carry out
the crimes to which he confessed in full
during the investigation.
On the night of April 6, 1961,
Rashidi Singhida entered
the farm at Aberdare Point
of the British citizen, John Fletcher
where the defendant strangled
the Askari guard, Josephi Nathaeli.
The defendant's second victim was
Miss Elizabeth Reagan
the farmer's sister-in-law
killed by a gunshot fired by
Singhida through the window of her room.
Mr. Fletcher ran down the outside stairs
where he was hit by several gunshots
that shattered his legs.
He dragged himself inside the house
in the attempt to protect
his wife, Mrs. Jane
and two daughters, Lois and Mary,
ages 15 and 18,
who had looked for shelter
under the table.
The corpses of the three women
were found headless and without limbs.
The body of Mr. Fletcher,
a former Navy officer,
was found stabbed 72 times
with a panga.
Defendant Rashidi Singhida,
do you confirm the inquiry transcript
already signed by you?
We take the liberty
of pointing out to your honor
that the defendant knows English
and doesn't need an interpreter.
I will reveal to you the facts
that emerged from the investigation.
For nine years, you were the nanny
of Memsa Fosset's three children:
Richard, two years old,
Mary, four and Victor, nine.
You knew them from birth.
You watched them play.
You ate and slept with them.
On the night of February 6,
you opened a window
to let Kimathi and his gang
into the house.
Juana Fosset was grabbed and
his throat slit on the big green table.
The mother and the children
ran toward the door.
Kimathi caught them
and cut them into pieces
right in the doorway in your presence.
The trial ofJomo Kanari
self-styled general
of the "Land Freedom Army"
escapee from the Voy prison
where he was spending 30 years
for theft, burglary, assault
and triple murder.
The inquiry determined that
the defendant organized more than
whereby domesticated
and wild animals were tortured,
and obscenities, together with
the crime of cannibalism, took place.
Besides, the accused,
along with his accomplices
severed the tendons
of more than 400 cattle
that then had to be destroyed
by the farmers.
Irrefutable evidence
of the defendant's guilt was provided
by one of the main victims of Kanari's
acts of vandalism, Mr. Wordsworth,
who along with his son
followed the accused's trail
for 72 days and 72 nights.
In Narok, Kanari was captured
and turned over to the Magadi police.
I consequently ask that
the accused be found guilty
and sentenced to the maximum penalty
provided for by the special law.
Land for the brave Mau Mau!
Amnesty for all Mau Mau!
Kenyatta proclaims them national heroes.
Reasoning:
For the triumph of Uhuru,
yearned for by the blacks
and denied by the whites,
they killed 27 whites
and 5000 blacks.
Kenyatta announces that in addition to
the undying gratitude of the nation
the Mau Mau will be granted the lands
and houses of the white colonists
in which they carried out their deeds.
The whites are itching to get out.
The windows of real estate agencies
are covered with sale offers.
Easy payment terms seem absurd
to anyone who doesn't know how
to savor the bitter irony.
Installments for up to 99 years.
Gloomy irony in the graphic composition,
desperate irony in the text of the ads.
Everything that belongs
to the white colonists is for sale.
Those with time turn to Indian merchants
to hold an auction in the garden
of everything accumulated by three
generations that cannot be carried away.
The Indians do a good business.
The new black bourgeoisie
spare no expense.
The ancient home is quickly emptied.
The family watches on the sidelines.
The seized houses, empty and silent,
await their new owners.
In the entire immense
East African territory
English colonial law
permitted whites to build a house
and acquire property
here and only here.
In two centuries, the new colonists
transformed it into an oasis of green.
The Africans learned to admire it,
then to desire it, and finally to claim it.
When the Golden Age is over,
the Plated Age begins.
In the highlands,
where 150 whites lived yesterday
The agrarian reform ignores
the arid immensity of the Lowlands
to express the new spirit
of Uhuru only here
on these freshly seized fertile estates.
But on the whole, it can distribute
just one acre per family.
So this land that earlier was perhaps
too much for too few
becomes too little for too many.
Uhuru has nothing more to conquer.
Only the dead have remained
to occupy a little land.
Now they, too, have to clear out.
The Indians have sold that off, too.
J. B. Johnson was the most famous
breeder of racehorses in the highlands.
He was killed by Kimathi's Mau Mau
on the steps of his farm.
These were his stables.
Before turning them over
to the new owners,
his sons chased out the horses
and set them free in the savanna.
Six months later, all the
"old land" horses are living in freedom.
But when the Africans surprise a herd
at the mouth of a narrow valley,
they're trapped inside
by the sound of shouts and old gas cans.
For the Africans, the horse is
the symbol of the white man.
Just like the whites,
it refuses contact with other species
and withdraws from
the contagion of mixture,
surrounding itself by an emptiness
that runs from itself to the horizon.
For the Africans,
the horse is physically racist.
It fears the black
and refuses to be ridden by him.
Without the presence of the whites,
its back is bare.
Its natural architecture is mutilated,
like an equestrian monument
from which the hero was toppled
by a sudden act of violence.
Like the white man, the horse is noble.
It has delicate skin.
It's sophisticated
in its choice of food.
Like the white man,
it is timid.
Just a little noise
will frighten it away.
Like the white man, the horse is useless.
All that it's good for is to be eaten.
The Boers are returning to South Africa.
They have revived the wagons on which
they arrived 400 years ago
in search of a homeland.
They could have chosen
boats or airplanes
as the English did to return to Europe.
Instead, with controversial intentions,
they loaded their families
and possessions on old wagons
from their wobbly epic and now move back
across 1000 miles of history.
The demonstration is hard and trying,
just like the entire destiny
of the Boer people.
Its meaning is tragic and precise.
The long African adventure is not over.
It starts here.
The old laws are no longer valid.
The new ones are yet to be written.
There's no one to protect the savanna
from vandals or hunters seeking meat.
For those who want to rob Africa
of all they can as quickly as possible,
the right moment has arrived.
If before it was absolutely forbidden for
Land Rovers to leave the roads or tracks,
now they enter the savanna with impunity
and wildly weave back and forth
among herds of elephants
to frighten them, divide them
and separate the mothers
from the babies.
Here's the quickest way to get
your hands on a little elephant today.
You exasperate the mother little
by little. You provoke her reaction.
Then you draw out her pursuit
as long as possible
giving the illusion
of letting her reach you
and when the poor beast
can't go on any longer
she'll be too far from her baby
to be able to defend it.
The price of a baby elephant
is around $3000...
assuming, of course, that it arrives
safe and sound to the ordering zoo.
The average is one out of ten.
The others don't survive
without their mother's milk.
But today,
Africa is an infinite reserve.
Where you can't go by foot,
you go by jeep
and where you can't go by jeep,
you go by helicopter.
Of all the types of safaris
that a hunter can choose from today
this is the quickest.
It's called
"elephant safari in a quarter hour."
The helicopter leaves from the
hotel terrace and drops the hunter here.
Then it goes to find the elephant
and chases it toward him.
The hunter fires, usually poorly, but with
a caliber big enough to bag a dinosaur.
Then he finishes it off
at point-blank range.
Just enough time for a souvenir photo,
and then he's off.
In the absence of modern transport
and the power of guns,
the Africans make do with numbers.
Up to 10,000 of them gather together and
surround an area as large as a big city.
Then they squeeze the vice.
Across the great line
traced by the Zambezi
the Wildlife Society has established its
headquarters in an old abandoned farm.
It's a large organization supported
mostly by private Anglo-Saxon capital
and does what it can to save what it can
in the midst of so much disorder.
Every message received or sent by radio,
every motion of the rake on the
large table in the operations room
corresponds to a massive displacement
of animals in some remote area.
The goal of so much feverish activity is
to collect at least some of the animals
from the areas most infested
with poachers
and transport them to territories
that are safer and better controlled.
After millennia of fascinating silences,
mysterious habits,
pathways covered in obedience
to the orders of nature,
man has imposed upon African fauna
wild tourism by train, bus, plane
helicopter, and even balloon.
Operation Crocodile calls for the
transfer of all the reptiles in the park
away from the mouth of the Rovuma
that is infested with poachers.
The traps are set during low tide
and marked with colored balloons.
It's estimated that in these waters
more than 20,000 crocodiles
have been killed in the last six months.
The operation in progress
saves 82 of them.
They will reach more peaceful waters
after having slept for 300 miles.
Animals injured by poachers are cared for
by the Wildlife Society's blood bank.
Teams of veterinarians and nurses
carry out tests, administer medicine,
check the temperature
of huge injured elephants,
and keep them happy
with several pounds of tranquilizers.
On February 18, 1964,
a Wildlife Society helicopter
surveying an area on the coast of Kenya
and the Tanarive area
found the carcasses of
a full 750 elephants.
The poachers were surprised
by the helicopter
while they were still
cutting out the tusks.
They ran and hid among clumps of grass.
It was the first inspection operation
after more than a year of total anarchy.
The governments of Kenya,
Tanganyika and Uganda
following serious disorder
and the rebellion of the Armed Forces
urgently requested the return
of English troops.
The old laws that had lapsed
came back into force.
The former Anglo-Saxon administration
retook control of the game reserves.
A brief interlude of order was opened up
which, however, would be closed again
after only one month.
But the level of damage
suffered by the fauna is shocking.
In a first round up,
the police capture 410 poachers.
The great massacre
comes to a standstill.
The police discover
hundreds of caches of ivory and furs
hidden in the underbrush
and dry stream beds.
The gangs of poachers
have used grenades
to kill over 300 young elephants
without tusks
just to get the tails
to make bracelets and necklaces
to sell to tourists for a few coins.
Large tents set up by police
house 82 tons of confiscated tusks.
An even more frightening number
if one considers
only one-fifth of slaughtered animals
are usually found
by the game warden patrols.
In a valley in Semliki,
the police find 2800 skins of zebra,
leopard, gazelle, lion and cheetah
that the poachers left to dry
in the sun.
The underbrush is strewn with carcasses
that foul the air
which the alarmed vandals
did not have time to skin.
In the ancient breeding grounds
that are the richest in the world
columns of acrid smoke now rise
and flames crackle at the pyres.
While the police chase the poachers,
other patrols comb the savanna
to aid the injured animals.
The initiative,
clearly based upon good intentions
is certainly not adequate
for the amount of damage and butchery.
Africa is afflicted by a hundred evils
and no one
vigorously combats their causes.
Only a few, here and there,
do their best to heal the effects.
There's nothing to do.
They won't give us permission to land.
We decide to try it anyway
on an old landing strip further north.
We're preceded by our sister plane,
rented by three German journalists.
We've flown here together
from Tanganyika.
Neither they nor we want to turn back
without first having done
everything possible
to document the worst genocide
in the history of Africa.
It all started last night
when an African named Okello,
backed by Russia
overthrew the thousand year old
government of the Sultan
and, naming himself
revolutionary general,
ordered the massacre of
the entire Arab population of Zanzibar.
All communications have been broken off.
The radio is silent
and the airports are closed.
The only way to know anything
about what's happening in Zanzibar
is to come in person,
as did we and our German colleagues
whom we glimpse for a moment as
they are hauled away by the insurgents.
For today, it's better to skip it.
That cloud of smoke down there
rising from the runway
is the Germans' airplane that's burning.
At least we know
there's no one on board.
We try again a day later, January 19,
with a helicopter.
We waive a red flag
to confuse the rebels.
They direct us toward
the interior of the island,
where it appears that during the night,
Okello has distributed 850 guns
that mysteriously arrived on the island
which the Africans
do not yet know how to use.
It's open hunting season for Arabs.
The propaganda tells the new generations
the Arabs are cursed slave traders
who sell Africans to slave merchants
along the coast.
It, of course, omitted that
this all happened ten centuries ago.
This footage
is the only existing documentation
of what happened in Zanzibar
between January 18 and 20, 1964.
Entire villages destroyed,
trucks filled with corpses,
testimony that's uncomfortable
and embarrassing for all...
for those in Africa today,
spreading false promises,
fomenting a new African racism
and for those
hastily abandoning Africa to itself
in the false modesty
of antique colonialism
authorizing a new Africa
flooded with misery and blood.
Look at these images.
Look at them with pity.
But above all,
look at them with shame.
Endless lines of prisoners marching
toward the site of the massacre.
Hundreds of motionless Arabs,
waiting for death
wrapped in their white sheets,
already more similar to ghosts than men.
Muslim cemeteries transformed
into fields of imminent extermination.
Women and children
trembling under the threat of guns.
Enormous common graves
already half-filled with corpses.
Perhaps the most pitiless mass shooting
in the entire macabre anthology of death.
The exodus toward the sea
of entire villages.
The desperate boarding of boats
stuck in the sand at low tide.
The hopeless run
toward an impossible salvation.
Then, the day after.
These were the national parks
that the mystical
Anglo-Saxon love for animals
and regulations written with the fervor
of an inquisitor
had transformed into
real-life sanctuaries of nature.
Man, who in the text of the English law
protecting national parks
was classified
among the harmful animals
did not even have the right
to set one foot on this land.
He could walk around the edges
in absolute silence
under the watchful eyes
of the game warden
and in full respect of a code
that did not tolerate ignorance.
The most ancient Africa,
the Africa of great navigators
and great geographic discoveries,
is awaking from
a sleep of four centuries.
At the fortresses sown by Vasco de Gama
along the coast of Mozambique
nothing has passed
except for time.
The glory of past centuries puts up
a decrepit resistance against new times:
Battlements in ruins,
bastions eaten away by centuries
silent bronze cannons
and an act of faith
in humility and resignation.
Just on the other side of the walls,
in the invisible guerrilla camps
is the new reality
still draped with the morning fog
where the soldiers move hesitantly
like ghosts of the past.
Wherever man is present,
nature is silent.
The silence of the animals and birds is
the unequivocal sign of a human presence.
The rebels in Angola
avoid forests that are too quiet.
They know that Portuguese patrols
are inside them, lying in wait.
The cleverness almost always works.
Animals and guerrillas
rush to the call of the magnetic tape
and in one moment, the forest is
filled with life and death.
This is the destiny of a people
who wanted to ignore the color of skin.
Aqui es Portugal.
This is Portugal.
Brancos y pretos as todos portugues.
White or black, we're all Portuguese.
But the rebels of Angola don't agree.
This is Africa.
Only blacks are Africans.
Black and white, brancos y pretos,
wart en blank, blanches et noires
a dilemma which is present,
current, universal
that is more and more being colored red.
January, 1964.
The Watusi,
pursued by the Bantu in revolt
flee toward the Ugandan border
carrying their wounded.
The war of the Bantu against the Watusi
is nothing more than racial persecution
fomented for political purposes
by the presence and propaganda of China
in the state of Rwanda Burundi.
In just two months,
the Bantu have massacred 18,000 Watusi.
The underbrush hides the
still-fresh proof of a ferocious horror.
On the banks of the Kwoni River,
under the trunk of a tree still wet
with blood, used as a chopping block.
The border police caught them in the act
and arrested 25 Bantu guerrillas.
But aside from this,
no government, black or white
has lifted a finger
to stop the bloodbath.
Meanwhile, the waters of the Kagera
send thousands of corpses downstream.
For days,
the fishing is macabre and abundant
carried out with lazy diligence
by the residents along the river.
The feeling of compassion
doesn't exist here.
What exists is a good source of
drinking water that has to be kept clean.
Because the river is life. Because
it is life that kills, not death.
Ten days and nights of exodus
along the roads of Uganda.
The Watusi were a people with
a thousand year history as herders.
A people of survivors
who continue to flee toward the unknown
failing to understand and in shock.
It is a people that no longer exists.
This is more or less how Noah's
terrestrial paradise must have been.
Hearing the far-off rumble of thunder,
he set about constructing the great ark.
The same ancient silence,
the same sovereign harmony,
the same divine balance
that man still has not managed to upset.
Image and likeness
of that terrestrial paradise
destroyed with that same divinity
by the sudden wrath of a vindictive God.
It's dawn on February 25, 1964.
After having put down the rebellion
of the African armed forces,
the English troops have left again.
The ancient British law to protect
the fauna having lapsed a second time,
the African governments decide to open up
even the national parks to hunting.
Faced with the most severe measures,
white and black game wardens
now employed by the African authorities
have no choice but to obey and organize
the details of the "cropping" operation
or "harvesting the animals."
From now on, once a week, on Friday,
the harvest operation will resupply
local markets with fresh meat.
For the first time in the history
of the last refuge of African fauna,
in the inviolate sanctuaries of nature
where it was considered sacrilege
to even speak loudly,
men are entering armed with guns.
The take from one day
of hippopotamus harvest amounts to 160.
The park authorities sell them
to butchers for 300 shillings each
or about $45.
The number of animals to kill
is established each time
based upon the demands of the market,
but not one more nor one less
so as not to disrupt the prices.
The rest are left alive
for the next day, completely at peace,
yawning right next to the river where,
up until yesterday
tourists came to photograph them.
Killing them is child's play.
You just have to choose,
like the targets at a shooting gallery.
Babies, adults,
males, females and pregnant females...
Since this is the world's richest park
and hippopotamus will always be abundant,
up to the day
when there aren't any more.
The request for 45 elephants has also
been fulfilled without difficulty.
Now they're butchered on the spot
to simplify the transport
of prime and choice cuts.
Among the butchers,
not even one injury.
Elephants, which hunters described as
the most ferocious animals in Africa
in reality allow themselves
to be slaughtered like goats
whether it's those miserable males
suffering from toothaches
or the legendary pregnant females.
The truth is that in all of Africa
there is only one truly ferocious animal:
Man.
Wounded animals that go to die
at the edge of the parks
must be destroyed much more quickly
than the vultures normally would do.
The tourists must not know and,
above all, must not see.
And now we'll offer you a souvenir photo
of the butchery from 1964,
the richest storehouse
of hippopotamus meat in the world.
Don't worry.
Look over there, in the water.
A few have remained
for next Friday.
And here's another.
Look long and hard,
especially since today is Friday
any Friday in any season.
It's the most recent souvenir photo
in our journey
through what were the safe refuges
of African fauna
the centuries-old game reserves,
the inviolable sanctuaries of nature
where it was considered sacrilege
even to speak loudly.
Now you can scream, shout,
swear and even curse
without the fear of disturbing
anyone or anything.
The most harmful of animals, man,
has passed by here.
You can follow his tracks
for miles and miles
along this dusty white road that today
crosses the heart of Africa,
always winding along scenes
of nothing but desolation and death.
We just left behind
an Africa that's disappearing
and immediately we enter an Africa
that's already disappeared.
The division is a clean crack.
On the other side,
confusion and indiscriminate death.
On this side,
order and discriminating life.
This is the view of Cape Town from above,
one of the largest cities in South Africa,
the country today with
the most enemies in the world.
To the universal cry that proclaims
"Africa for Africans,"
the South Africans respond,
"This is not Africa."
And this, at least, is true.
This is a view
that suddenly and unpredictably appears,
an ignored and distant landscape
that seems to have wriggled away from
the network of parallels and meridians.
If it isn't Africa,
it also isn't Europe or America.
There's nothing that can give sense
to a geographic expression.
It's not an African mirage
because it exists in time and space.
It's not a Promised Land because
it lacks the biblical requirements.
All that's left is to define it
as a miracle...
a weighty miracle carried out
over three centuries
by a persecuted people wanting to prove
that only its God is the true one.
A miracle that,
despite its physical reality,
transcends the limits of time and space,
wrapping men and objects
in a soft blanket of bliss
in a delicate balance between
the transient and the eternal.
The black Africa of tribal dances,
of swollen breasts offered
to the glory of nature
survives only on movie sets.
A film is being shot in South Africa
about the Zulu,
the proud African tribe that made things
so difficult for the Boers.
Today, Zulu maidens
come out of the academy,
speak excellent English,
and receive union wages
for putting on nylon underwear and
dancing the dance of their grandmothers.
During their breaks,
the ancient rhythm of the tom-tom
gives them a few variations
on the theme.
The African female has discovered
she is a woman
and is beginning to behave as such.
She wants to be modern because
she feels the past is against her.
When she was naked,
she had two mammary glands.
Now that she's clothed,
she has two breasts.
She does not wants to display herself.
She wants to be looked at
to make you guess
what's under her alluring clothes.
She covers her intimacy not
out of modesty, but to be flirtatious.
She undresses to surrender
and dresses to attack.
Naked she was prey,
like a black female.
Clothed she is a tyrant,
like a white woman.
Africa covers itself consciously
and all wrapped up in the veils of its
consciousness, Africa disappears.
For their part, the authorities
encourage or even impose modesty.
In the southern regions of Sudan,
thousands of pairs of underwear,
all one size
are distributed to the tribes in
the interior by the "Legion of Decency".
The unconquerable warriors
entrusted with them
must maintain them
with the care owed by every good citizen
to everything that is state property.
Among all things to hide,
underwear covers what's most urgent.
That's enough to decently begin to march
toward the conquest of further dignity.
Never before has a warrior put on pants.
Never before has a lion climbed a tree.
The fact is that times have changed,
and in the new republics
the ancient kings
have fallen into disgrace.
Let's take the poor ex-king
of the animals with the stiff muscles.
Today, his roar doesn't scare anyone.
While zebras and gazelles flee,
pursued by gunshots,
the once invincible, ex-aristocrat,
ex-hunter of noble prey
climbs trees and hunts lizards.
Poor king of the jungle!
His old reputation haunts him,
making his humiliation public.
The tourists crowd the parks
to see him, only him.
Where's the lion?
There's the lion.
Wait, let's see
what the lion's doing.
It's like that the whole day,
and they don't even leave him
a moment of intimacy.
Encouraged by his ancestral laziness,
the African lion has given up hunting,
seeing as how the park rangers
do the hunting for him.
Fresh meat is delivered to his door,
that is, to the areas
most accessible to tourists
where the park administration
has a great interest that he stays.
So, over time, the ancient, nomadic,
independent king of the jungle
has become a stingy retiree
with middle-class habits
forced to defend his steak
against those who up until yesterday
would not have dared to come close.
A new rebellion
has broken out in Tanganyika.
The mob has massacred Muslims,
including women and children.
The mortuaries are full.
The corpses have to be lined up outside.
The vultures wait patiently
for the operation to finish
so they can start their own.
Dar es Salaam
is in the grips of anarchy.
Everyone is in revolt:
The people, the police,
and even the army,
which has mutinied.
President Nyerere has disappeared.
No one knows who's in charge.
For us European journalists,
going out on the streets in search of
footage is a nearly suicidal endeavor.
Everywhere we go, they chase us away.
They insult us. They threaten us.
We try to get to the outskirts.
On the bloody streets, a crowd hides
the victims of the massacre from us.
In one neighborhood,
a Muslim tries to flee from a lynch mob.
He jumps off a seawall.
The mob reaches him and drowns him.
They destroy the houses and shops
of businessmen
accused of having taken over
from the whites in exploiting the people.
With great effort, we push
through the crowd in Uhuru Square.
Someone has killed
three African soldiers.
The police prepare the reprisal,
dragging all the Muslims
out of their homes
and lining them up against the wall.
They yell at us to leave,
they threaten us with guns.
We try to equivocate, to win time,
while the camera continues to roll.
One of us is injured.
They open the doors
and drag us out.
They arrest us.
They put us up against the wall.
We are saved by a miracle
which the newspapers would later report.
Moise Tshombe has returned from exile
as a liberator,
father of the country,
and special envoy of the UN.
Three quarters of Congo is in
the hands of rebels and communists.
Tshombe promises to clean house
in three months.
Two months later, Stanleyville,
stronghold of Simba leader Nicholas Olenga,
has been conquered
by Belgian paratroopers and mercenaries.
The city is a cemetery without graves.
During 100 days of occupation,
the Simba have tortured
and, in part, eaten 12,000 Africans.
Guns in hand, regular Congolese troops
force the Simba prisoners
to carry out this gruesome cleaning.
In the final days, 80 schoolchildren
were burned alive.
Four nurses were raped and killed.
Sixty-four people were shot including
Europeans, Indians and Pakistanis.
Many bodies have a long gash
in the belly
where the Simba cut out the liver
and ate it.
Nine nuns, seven missionaries
and four white children
were tied up with wire
and shot by the rebels in the mouth.
The heat is unbearable.
The air is thick
with the stench of corpses.
There's fear of pestilence.
At the Leopoldville airport,
American C-130s land with the survivors
of the Stanleyville massacre.
Just yesterday, they had been
massed together for execution.
The machine guns had already started
cutting them down
when 320 Belgian paratroopers
dropped from the sky
and, in 10 minutes, managed to pull them
out of the hands of 7000 rebels.
Despite the lightning operation,
The injured were pulled out
from under a pile of 40 corpses
among which were identified Americans
Carlson and Rain
and Belgians Brinkman, Masqueau
and De Smitter.
Five of these wounded, among whom
was a woman who had been raped,
were to die soon after
in a Danish hospital in Leopoldville.
The evacuation of survivors,
the transport of the wounded,
food and medicine,
was carried out in a few hours
by the US Air Force with 40 planes.
Two days later, November 27,
the governments of the new African states
demanded that Washington
make a broad official apology
for the abusive interference by the USA
in private Congolese affairs.
Beyond Polis and Beni, on
the northern border of Congo with Sudan
an attempt is made at the aerial
resupply with food and medicine
of a mission occupied by rebels.
The life of the priests, nuns
and over 100 children is in danger.
The 6000 rebels of the Kirlis army
who rule the area
have threatened to wipe out
all of the besieged
if even one paratrooper
or helicopter tries to land.
For eight days, the planes of the ANC
take turns in the sky above the mission
making drops that end up
in the hands of the rebels.
At dawn on the ninth day,
planes and helicopters take off
and we're with them.
But this time,
there's no one to await us.
We got to know them one at a time.
They are the white mercenaries
ofTshombe's army.
They're the last surviving
soldiers of fortune from another century.
They're former citizens of a world
that kicked them out
or that they're running from.
Dead and survivors,
all of them are or were ex-something.
From a restless past,
an uncomfortable present,
a ruined adventure, lost faith.
They're ex-"Pieds Noirs" from Algeria,
ex-English commandos,
ex-German engineers,
ex-farmers from Kenya,
ex-residents expelled from Sudan, Egypt,
Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanganyika,
ex-veterans of Katanga,
ex-professional hunters,
ex-students from
South Africa and Rhodesia,
come to pursue
with a macabre academic spirit
the idea of glory and adventure.
Two days ago, 15 of them
plucked 400 rebels from Kisala.
Tomorrow, 40 of them
will attempt an endeavor
that 93,000 UN soldiers could not manage:
The conquest of Boende.
The attack plan for Boende calls for
the use of massive aerial forces.
The "massive" aerial forces are
these two 20-year-old P6s
held together as well as possible
with bolts and wire.
They're the personal property
ofTom O'Keefe and Somerset Wilson
former Rhodesian pilots whose families
were massacred by rebels from Angola.
They've hired out themselves
and the planes for $500 a month
which no one has paid for six months
and a life insurance policy
that up to now
no insurance company has underwritten.
This time, as always, before leaving
they've filled out the forms
at the airport in the usual manner.
Destination: Hell.
Reason for flight: Personal matters.
The Simba fled without having time
to slaughter the missionaries
who've lived for three months
under the daily nightmare of the massacre.
Propaganda teaches the Simba to strike
the white man especially at his God,
a white-skinned God responsible for the
centuries-long arrogance of his faithful.
Along the path to Boende,
the skeletons of the Simba
are rotting in the puddles
without glory and without burial.
They advanced unprotected,
dazed by drugs,
intoning the "Mai Mulele,"
the magic spell that was supposed to
transform the lead of bullets into water.
They fell, incredulous and amazed.
They died for nothing and for no one.
Africa has no fallen soldiers
on either side.
It has only corpses.
Boende has fallen.
The last Simba come out of the forest
with their hands up.
Today it's their turn,
but tomorrow
when the mercenaries leave the city
headed toward other objectives,
they'll be on the other side of the gun.
It's an absurd and tragic ballad
that's been going on for five years now.
Whites against blacks
and blacks against whites.
They take turns killing and dying,
like a cruel children's game.
No one wins and no one loses,
once and for all.
No condition is definitive
except for white and black deaths
that together infect the ruins
and dissolve, amidst the buzz of flies,
into absolute biological equality.
The ethics of the Congolese guerrilla
are that to the victor belong the spoils.
The mercenaries have aimed right at
the safe of the revolutionary government
and have blown it open with a bazooka.
Inside was 50 million Congolese francs.
These were the funds destined for
the famous "OK Plan"
according to which General Olenga,
at the head of his 3000 Mulelist warriors
was to invade the United States.
America has been saved.
In the streets,
the soldiers divide up the small change.
The ambitious "OK Plan" has been
postponed for centuries,
just like all of their
naive delusions of grandeur.
Meanwhile, they go into raptures
over a victory as squalid and useless
as their raid,
sharing in a miserable little celebration
from which they get only the crumbs.
For centuries they were poor
out of necessity.
But now that they're rich to excess,
they load themselves up,
even if they will never
be able to carry it away.
Bent under the weight of useless trinkets,
they pursue an ideal of wealth,
robbing only their own misery
from themselves.
The right to plunder
is valid only for 24 hours.
Time ran out 10 minutes ago.
But why could you steal
up to 10 minutes ago, and now you can't?
A good Congolese soldier who fought
for the homeland will never understand.
Nor will he ever understand
why the whites make such a fuss
to find out who ate
this peasant's liver.
Or why there has to be a trial
to condemn to death this Mulelist
who burned 27 children alive.
Or why they're arresting the soldiers
who raped those Mulelist bitch
prisoners in jail.
And why you need so many guns to kill
one single little disarmed Mulelist.
While to kill a bigger and stronger one,
you only need one shot.
But despite everything,
Africa continues to be
an uncontainable sea of life.
Here in South Africa,
for every baby born with white skin,
five come into the world
with black skin.
Racial separation,
which is called "apartheid" here
is a short-lived, provisional dam.
It is the hysterical reaction
to the hysterical situation
that threatens to darken the smile
of the new generations into hatred.
Soweto is one of the largest
black cities in South Africa.
The apartheid laws
prohibit whites from entering.
If it's a prison,
then it's a strange prison
where the doors lock on the inside
and open out.
On the other side of these lines,
there's another big prison...
that of the whites.
It's called Johannesburg.
Apartheid prohibits blacks
from entering.
This is another strange prison
where the doors lock on the inside
and open out.
Apartheid has locked up two races
in two different prisons
whose locks work the wrong way.
Two gilded cages
in the richest country in the world.
The Boers discovered gold
a hundred years ago
when they had been working this land
as farmers for hundreds of years.
There's no question that the Boers
also have a right to this wealth
because the Boers are Africans, too,
even if they're white Africans.
But it's also true that to extract
just one of these gold bars
requires one day of labor
from 1000 black Africans
and the technical assistance
of 100 white Africans.
Because this is a country
of 3 million white Africans
and 11 million black Africans.
And although each needs the other,
they live in suspicion
of the numerical disproportion
and in the misunderstanding
of certain slogans arriving from Europe:
"Whoever is white is not African,"
a racist affirmation.
"Only those who are black are Africans,"
another racist affirmation.
So day after day,
the gilded prisons continue to close
and open to the wail of the sirens
that call white Africans
and black Africans to work together.
As long as it was a poor land,
it was an uninhabited land.
Then, when the Boers
opened the mines
the Bantu came down from the mountains
in search of work.
They spread the word and new crowds
crossed the uncontrollable borders.
Then it was the turn of the refugees
from Congo, Sudan, Angola.
Today there are 11 million
and still growing.
They come in waves
to the entrance of the mines
They flood through the labyrinth
of tunnels that run under the big city.
The great vein of gold, half a mile thick,
winds under the city ofJohannesburg,
the ceiling that separates
peppered with holes
like a huge Swiss cheese.
Crowds of miners dig like termites,
crawling from one shaft to another
like Christians in the catacombs,
following the path of gold with
a secret, methodical, muffled grinding.
Over here, the roof creaks menacingly.
The miners run for cover.
Over there,
the big city vibrates and trembles
from the dull explosions of dynamite,
but no one moves.
No one has paid attention for years.
The stock market goes up continuously.
Share prices are steadily high.
Buy orders for mining shares arrive
from the markets of London,
New York, Geneva and Paris.
On March 10 of this year, Moscow bought
On May 12,
Peking requested 50 tons of gold.
Down below, the great vein of gold
climbs from low to high
just like the stock chart.
Millions of picks and shovels follow it
in a relentless, solid march
toward the surface.
The great floor separating the two worlds
is growing thinner and crumbling.
The growing clamor of the Stock Exchange
mixes with the ever closer
and louder boom of the explosions.
Almighty Lord, now that another day
dies in your glory,
bless and protect our lives.
Bless and protect our forces
as it is written that
the hyena shall prevail over the lion
when the lion has no more claws
with which to rule.
Grant that this sea whence we came
shall always lie before us
and never at our backs.
Bless and protect this,
our last refuge
which you led us to find unspoiled
on the day we came
and in which we have resisted
hatred and violence.
Lastly, bless and protect
the waves and the winds,
that the fury of two oceans united
shall not wrest us away forever
from these final shores.
Amen.
At the end of the Ice Age,
a warm current
broke this little colony of penguins
off of the glaciers of the south
and carried them here on huge rafts
of ice that then melted in the sun.
Isolated and without the possibility
of returning to their original homeland,
they have for centuries been
strangers in a strange land
that is becoming more and more
heated and hostile toward them
surrounded by a sea that grows higher
and more and more filled with rage.
Perhaps a little peace will descend
upon these waters sooner or later,
before a wave stronger than the others
tears them away forever
from this last rock that forms
the geographic end of the Dark Continent.
To close, we would like to apologize
to our families
for having been
away from home for three years.
This film, born without prejudices,
does not attempt and has
never attempted to create new ones.
It has only tried to document the reality
of how blood spilled anywhere
represents a loss of wealth
for the entire world.