Central African Republic

“ The Republic of South Sudan is bordered by Sudan in the north, Ethiopia in the east, Kenya and Uganda in the south, the Democratic Republic of Congo in the southwest, and the Central African Republic in the west. South Sudan is governed on the basis of a decentralized democratic system and is an all embracing homeland for its people. ”

“ Underscores the primary responsibility of the Government of the Central African Republic to promote security and protect its civilians with full respect for the rule of law, human rights, and international humanitarian law, stresses the importance of bilateral partners’ work enhancing the capacity of the Central African Republic Armed Forces and stresses that such assistance should be in support of the wider security reform process ”

“ These countries are Botswana, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Burma, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Cote d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Thailand, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Population below poverty line: National estimates of the percentage of the population lying below the poverty line are based on surveys of sub-groups, with the results weighted by the number of people in each group. ”

“ Benin, Burkina, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, France, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Togo; note—France includes metropolitan France, the four overseas departments of France (French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Reunion) , the two territorial collectivities of France (Mayotte, Saint Pierre and Miquelon) , and the three overseas territories of France (French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna) ————————————————————————————————————- _#_Front Line States (FLS)
established—NA;
aim—to achieve black majority rule in South Africa ”

“ The Secretary of the Congo Reform Association is an enthusiast who has devoted himself with a noble zeal and unflinching courage to the task of wiping out the black curse of African exploitation and rubber slavery in Central Africa. ”

“ In all discussions and criticism of the mistakes made by European administration in Central Africa there is one condition which seems to me to be never taken into account. That is the necessity of employing officials who have to spend a long time learning how to do efficiently the work that they have to carry on from the day they arrive at their posts. There is no school in which to learn Central African Civil Service except Central Africa, and it is impossible in Africa to obtain a sufficient number of qualified officials. ”

“ England, France, and Portugal, but notably England, had already claimed large sections of Africa for their own, and Italy and Germany—especially Germany—were feverishly anxious to follow suit. But it is doubtful if among all the students of the African problem—and they numbered among them the ablest of every nation—there was at this period another man with prescience to foresee, as we now know King Leopold must have foreseen, the illimitable possibilities of Central Africa. ”

“ Within a decade the population of Central Africa reached the grand total of 25,000,000 industrious, loyal citizens, forming a flourishing dependency, enjoying home rule and liberty, under the protection of British laws and arms. ”

“ Compared with our knowledge of China, our acquaintance with the countries and peoples comprised within the boundaries of the Congo Free State is a thing of yesterday. The nomadic habits of the various semi-savage tribes of which the population of the Congo Free State consists renders their exact enumeration impossible. Besides, there can be no doubt but that vast numbers of the dwarf (Pigmy) race inhabit parts of the great Central African forest not yet penetrated by the white man. ”

“ My experience of the last two years has convinced me that in the district of Katanga at any rate the Belgian officials endeavour to treat the Central African native with justice and leniency, and in as great a degree as officials [Pg 437] of any other nation look on him as a human being, with a perfect right to sell his labour and his food on terms satisfactory to himself. ”

“ It is too early to pronounce on the future of the Central African scheme. A fair prima facie case can be made out for its success, and the result of the first experiments has not been wholly discouraging. ”

“ As stated in the House of Commons, it is only right to recognise that the material and moral regeneration of Central Africa cannot be the work of a day. The results so far obtained have been considerable, and these we shall try to consolidate and develop, in spite of the way in which an effort is being made to hamper the action of the State, which in the real interests of civilisation should rather be promoted. ”

“ There were, therefore, after all, men of practical political foresight at the Conference, whose assent to so radical a policy of free trade was accorded for the purpose of the moment only, and while the great question of civilising Central African tribes dominated their early aims even to the disadvantage of the correlated questions of commerce. ”

“ You are now meeting here to lay the foundation for the establishment of a regional federation of the East and Central African countries. Although this objective presupposes the total emancipation of the territories of Our region, most of which still finds itself under Colonial rule, this should not hinder the already Independent States of our region from going ahead and working out the practical arrangements that would give form and substance to this objective. ”

“ But we, who were elected by the votes of your representatives, representatives of the people, to guide our native land, we, who have suffered in body and soul from the colonial oppression, we tell you that henceforth all that is finished with. The Republic of the Congo has been proclaimed and our beloved country's future is now in the hands of its own people. ”

“ The Congo's independence is a decisive step towards the liberation of the whole African continent.
Our government, a government of national and popular unity, will serve its country. I call on all Congolese citizens, men, women and children, to set themselves resolutely to the task of creating a national economy and ensuring our economic independence. ”

“ Monsieur Fuchs has had twenty years’ experience in Central Africa. He is, perhaps, the best-qualified living colonial official dealing with the black races of the African Continent. The great progress of the country he governs, and the moral and material betterment of the tribes which thrive under his liberal rule, are astonishingly revealed in the report from which the following quotations are made:
The development of the State administration is attested in a general way by the ever-increasing number of Posts of different kinds that are in operation in its territories. ”

“ The civilisation of Central Africa was, and forsooth, still is, an immense task, and the State’s early attitude of welcoming quasi private enterprise to co-operate with it in the development of lands which indolent native races had ravaged—first for their own immediate wants, later at the behest of adventurers and despoiling traders, whose coin was alcohol and shoddy tinsel—was not only justified in a Government seeking rational progress, but it followed the soundest principles of what the higher socialism terms community of interest. ”

“ If our victory is great enough, we can hope to unite under our hand the whole of Central Africa with our old colony South-west Africa; Senegambia, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, Dahomey, well-populated Nigeria with the port of Lagos, Kamerun, the rich islands of San Thomé and Principe with their splendid ports, the Katanga ore district, Northern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Mozambique, and Delagoa Bay, Madagascar, German East Africa, Zanzibar, and Uganda ”

“ The Germans, the Belgians, the English, and the Portuguese, are crying out at present for territory in Central Africa. Meantime humanity is crying out for some one to administer the country; for some one to claim it, not by delimiting a frontier-line upon a map with colored crayons, but by seeing justice done upon the spot; for some one with a strong arm and a pitiful heart to break the Arab yoke and keep these unprotected children free. ”

“ Inasmuch as the Congo Free State starts with the sanction of all the leading powers of civilization, it assumes a dignity, at its very inception, which attaches to no other African dynasty. It is, or ought to be, beyond those jealousies which have torn, and are tearing, other possessions in Africa to pieces, and retarding their colonization and development. ”

“ The Free State is one-third the size of the United States. It lies squarely across the heart of Africa, with an outlet to the sea on the West Coast which brings it many miles and many days nearer European markets. It separates the British African Empire,—the Soudan and the Nile country adjoining the Free State on the north, from the Cape and the Boer war territorial acquisitions on the south. ”

“ I have not mentioned North and South Africa, because my eye was centered on the main mass of the Negro race. Yet it is clear that for the development of Central Africa, Egypt should be free and independent, there along the highway to a free and independent India; while Morocco, Algeria, Tunis, and Tripoli must become a part of Europe, with modern development and home rule. South Africa, stripped of its black serfs and their lands, must admit the resident natives and colored folk to its body politic as equals. ”

“ This was the part of Africa which first drew European enterprise after Portugal and Spain became the world’s sailors, and began to feel their way toward the Cape of Good Hope. Three hundred years ago it was what Central Africa is to-day, a wonderland full of venturesome travelers, a source of national jealousy, a factor in European politics, a starting point for a thousand theories respecting colonization and of as many enterprises having for their object the introduction of commerce, the arts and Christianity among the natives, who were by no means as peaceably inclined as in the present day. ”

“ The system in force in parts of East Africa is a variant of the Angola system. Then we have the comprehensive projects of the Empire Resources Development Committee, with which certain members of the present Government are coquetting. In the view of the spokesmen of the Empire Resources Development Committee, the population of British tropical Africa is an "undeveloped national asset," and the problem of Empire there consists in converting the African into a "useful human being." The land is not, it seems, the property of the people living upon it and using it ”

“ Central Africa had now become in all essential respects a State. It had been recognised as such by the United States on April 22, 1884, seven months before the opening, and ten months before the close, of the Berlin Conference, but now its geographical limits were defined, its political status fixed, its neutrality assured. ”

“ If it is necessary for us as a nation to look for African adventure; if to give a strenuous President the feeling that he is ‘doing something’ we must meddle in the affairs of the Dark Continent, there is a district where we might intervene with more of reason and consistency and grace than we are doing by going to the Congo. We once established on African soil, whether wisely or not I do not intend to discuss, a free republic for the blacks. In Liberia we have an American enterprise, pure and simple. ”

“ This task comprised the exploring of those mysterious territories of Central Africa, their effective occupation by means of advance posts which were to be created, the crushing of the slave traders who spread terror and misery through all this part of the continent—in a word, the organizing of a real State by the delimitation of a vast district and the exerting to its furthermost frontiers, of the beneficent action of the metropolis—a glorious but difficult mission coming to our officers as early as 1878. ”

“ That is part of the animal instinct of self-preservation. Whites and blacks always approach one another for the first time with a general sentiment of distrust. Little by little they learn to know one another, and this sentiment disappears.
The Congo was in truth the darkest part of Africa. To-day with its forests pierced and open, its routes, its stations, it is in advance of all other African States. Take the French Congo, German East Africa, Portuguese West Africa, and compare them! The Congo State prospers in a greater degree than any other part of the black continent. ”

“ For unknown centuries Central Africa had been peopled with many millions of savage, semi-savage, and barbarian black men, hidden from all civilising influence. Their social condition varied. Many were cannibals, some were living in a rude state of primitive tribal order, others were at incessant war with hostile tribes, all were living in the gloom of an interminable night of barbaric existence. Their only touch with the human family had been through the slave trade, of which they were the object and the victims. ”

“ In this connection we come upon an order of events, not to say an era, which favors an affirmative answer to the above questions, which plainly point, not to white encroachment, but to white existence and possibilities in the very midst of a continent apparently destined for other purposes. The very fact that new discoveries in Central Africa have revealed vast populations untouched by civilization has opened the eyes of the world to the usual processes of nation-making afresh. Have any people ever risen out of barbarism without external help? ”