Sometimes you wonder if this stuff is all a joke. A dictator forces names changed and people not to wear western suits, he nationalizes industry, and builds great gaudy palaces. Then the money runs out and the west is invited back in to recreate H. M. Stanley. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your fist sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
Todays stamp is from the time when the wheels were starting to come off President Maputu’s party train. You still see him trying, with his leopard skin toque and his abacost. Indeed he was still chartering the Concorde to fly from the international airport he had built in his hometown in the jungle. Now to do it he was inviting in westerners and Chinese to get industry working and even retrace the journey into darkest Africa 100 years before by Stanley. The same man who 8 years before renamed Stanleyville Kisangani. The cheap paper of the stamp shows how threadbare it was all getting.
Todays stamp is issue A166 a 25 la Kuta stamp issued by Zaire in February 1979. It was part of an eight stamp issue in various denominations recognizing the joint British and Zairean Congo River Expedition recreating Stanley’s original 100 years before. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 40 cents. There is a version of this issue printed on gold foil that is worth $50.
Congo when Belgian had a very lucrative copper operation. So independence was difficult has there was much money floating around trying to keep the operation going. See https://the-philatelist.com/2018/03/07/a-failed-plan-de-redressement-brings-a-revolt-of-simbas-in-the-congo/, and this https://the-philatelist.com/2018/07/13/katanga-1961-mining-out-the-chaos/ . By the 1970s the operation was nationalized and there was one party rule under former Army officer and Belgian gendarme corporal Mobutu. Mobutu started a program to make Congo more authentically African. He had a new suit designed called abacost, which meant down with suits. He changed all the place names and made it a crime to baptize a baby with a western name. Speaking of names, he changed his name to include the phrase, “the all powerful warrior, who because of his endurance and inflexible will, goes from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake. This was shortened to Sese Seko. He was born with only Mobutu for a name.
One conquest Mobutu couldn’t manage was against the laws of economics. By the late 70s the west and China were invited back in to try to get things working again. That would not prove possible and the lure of getting those copper mines working again is enough to fund rebel groups from the outside. In 1997, Mabutu was forced into exile. His tacky grandeur in now in ruins, the billions allegedly hidden away were never found and the new guys are just the old guy minus the style. The Scott catalog doesn’t recognize the modern stamps as there is no longer a provable postal service. To bad a new Belgian King Leopold can’t fund a new H. M. Stanley to start over.
H. M. Stanley was a British explorer in the personal patronage of King Leopold of Belgium. He wanted to find the sources of the Congo and Nile River and how they relate to Lake Victoria. His expedition down the length of the Congo River started with 228 people including 4 Europeans. By the time he reached the Atlantic 999 days later he was down to 114 and he was the only European. There are waterfalls and rapids along the route that made it difficult. As Stanley travelled he was claiming the territory for Belgian King Leopold. There however was later a falling out because Stanley’s treaties with African tribes only amounted to renting places for trading posts instead of creating a massive personal colony. The King perhaps should have listened to Stanley.
Well my drink is empty and I am afraid I wouldn’t look good in a leopard skin toque or an abacost. So I will just stick to the smoking jacket and remind you to come again soon for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2019.
