Go forward by going back

This documentary looks awesome:

Zaire ’74 almost didn’t happen. The festival was “a fool’s mission” from the start, said Stewart Levine…When Mr. Levine heard about the boxing match in Zaire, he said by telephone from Los Angeles, “it just hit me — how about a music festival?”

…The government of Zaire subsidized the boxing match; Zaire’s dictator,Mobutu Sese Seko, wanted to burnish his country’s image. But Zaire would not finance the festival. So Mr. Levine rounded up backing from bankers in Liberia…

…With contacts at ABC, Mr. Levine said, he prevailed on the sportscaster Howard Cosell to hold back for 24 hours the news that the fight had been postponed, lest the American musicians stay home. He was also lucky, he said, that it was Rosh Hashanah, and many of the performers’ managers were observing the holiday.

…Many of the performers and Mr. Ali himself are shown as starry-eyed about Africa. Mr. Withers, who was well-traveled after nine years in the Navy, was more levelheaded. “I felt like a very privileged person in an unprivileged setting,” he said. “This Mobutu guy, this dictator — that didn’t cheer me up, the disparity in the wealth. There seemed to be a large gap between the chosen people that were around him and everybody else.”

Seems like a must see.

Good audio backgrounder on the DRC.

HT: Chris Blattman

Any peace there was or could have been in eastern Congo looks to be in perilous jeopardy.

The Economist provided this recent comment from French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner:

We fear that huge, frightening massacres could start again in the eastern area and in Kivu.

Today’s news suggests that that prediction may be closer to coming true than hoped. From the Mail & Guardian:

A new bout of heavy fighting erupted between government and rebel forces on Wednesday in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)…The fighting was centred in an area about 30km from Goma, where thousands of civilians have been forced to flee amid the advance by Tutsi rebels.

UPDATE: Chaos seems to be the word of the day in Kivu. Jeffery Gettleman is reeling off some good copy on the unfolding events in Kivu. Here’s the quote that speaks the most volume:

“What can we do?”‘ said Kikaya Bin Karubi, a member of Congo’s Parliament. “We don’t have a national army. Our so-called army is a combination of different rebel militias, with a 100 from this group, a 100 from that group, and so on. They haven’t even trained together for a year. How do they stand a chance?”

Samantha at gorilla.cd provides and answer to the honorable MP’s question:

It’s total chaos in Goma. I am being told, through various phone calls and text messages, that the army have now laid down their weapons at Kibumba, 12 miles north of Goma, and are fleeing the rebels. In other words they have totally given up.