Blood River Read Free

opened. At the bottom of a set of
stairs, manually wheeled into position, a crowd of people had
gathered, all claiming to be an official of some sort and all
demanding payment. I watched as the Asian lady I had spotted at
Johannesburg airport stepped gingerly into the melee, only to be
tossed and spun like a piece of flotsam, blasted by loud demands
for payment. The last I saw of her was an unedifying spectacle.
She was fighting back tears, bidding for her own luggage that was
being auctioned back to her.

    Before boarding the flight, I had played the first of my
Congolese jokers. I had contacted Clive, the Zimbabwean
businessman who had good connections with the Kabila regime,
and asked for his help. The Kabila family originally came from
Katanga and, while the regime's control of much of the country
was nominal, they made sure their home capital remained in their
hands. Clive's cobalt-mining operation was based in Lubumbashi
and although he was not going to be in town when I arrived, he
warned me the only way I would get through the airport in one
piece was if his people smoothed the way. It was with relief that
in the crowd down on the tarmac I spotted a man holding up a
piece of paper with the name `Kim Butcher' written across it. I
caught his eye and he threw himself bravely into the muddle,
before grabbing me reassuringly by the shoulders and leading me
through the scrum.
    'Welcome to Lubumbashi. My name is Yav,' he said in French
from behind imitation Ray-Ban sunglasses. He had to shout to
make himself heard above the din of jet engines and grasping
officials, but there was a steadying calm about him. Turning to a
large man standing next to him, he spoke again. `Let me introduce
you to the director of immigration at the airport. This is the man
who helps us, when our visitors come through the airport.'
    The director looked at me coldly and nodded a silent
acknowledgement. I knew enough about Congolese officialdom to
keep my mouth shut. Yav was clearly happy that the nod represented all the necessary formalities and he nudged me firmly past
the director and up the path to the 1950s-built terminal, where
some of the noisier luggage-auctioning was going on.
    'There is just one fee you need to pay, an entry fee of ten
dollars,' he said. I handed him a twenty-dollar note, which he
then passed to an underling, who disappeared into a side-room
with my passport. The man came back two minutes later and gave
Yav change of a ten dollar note. Yav immediately rubbed the note
between his fingers and frowned. `This is not a real dollar note. This is counterfeit. Get me a good one,' he said, raising his voice
at the underling and sending him back inside.

    It took a few minutes for my rucksack to appear. I stood in the
crowd trying to look inconspicuous, yet confident. The Congo is
a police state maintained by numerous security services, military
units and gendarmerie, all of whom take a close interest in any
outsider daring to venture into the country. I knew from my
earlier visits that roving journalists in the Congo are subject to
particularly close scrutiny, and I was anxious to get through the
airport as quickly as possible. Journalists were routinely expected
to go to Kinshasa and pay officials large amounts in bribes for
`accreditation' that took weeks to complete, before they could
even think about trying to move around the country. I wanted to
avoid this lengthy detour to Kinshasa and was hoping to slip into
the Congo through Lubumbashi and then use the UN flight to
reach the east of the country, where Kinshasa's authority did not
hold. If I made it up there, I had in my rucksack a `To Whom It
May Concern' letter signed by the Congolese Ambassador to
South Africa, introducing me as a writer trying to follow Stanley's
historical route. This, I gambled, would at least allow me to open
negotiations with what passes as officialdom in the east of the
Congo before they