She is quick to point out that those words have often been presented as an indictment of African ways rather than Kurtz's own acknowledgment of his own fall from grace. And that brings her to the central theme. If Mr. Mobutu was the archvillain of his nation's tragedy, he was not a simple caricature, or, indeed, a man without a context. The momentum behind Zaire's free fall was generated not by one man but by thousands of compliant collaborators, at home and abroad. This is no exculpation of Mr. Mobutu, but, in the present debate over the role of international financial institutions, it helps explain just why Congo and many other African countries to a less dramatic degree got into such an enormous financial mess.
Zaire is a particularly glaring example.
But, as Ms. Wrong points out, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were complicit by default at the very least in creating this monster. Yet throughout this period and particularly after the I.M.F. installed its own representative, Erwin Blumenthal, at Zaire's Central Bank in 1978 those institutions knew full well that Mr. Mobutu was stripping the state coffers not just of aid income but also of receipts from Zaire's fabled riches in copper, cobalt and diamonds. Mr. Blumenthal subsequently reported ample evidence of corruption, but any effort to restrain Mr. Mobutu was thwarted by bigger geopolitical considerations. But, of course, the damage has been done. Debts have piled up, but forgiveness is hard to come by, usually involving wrenching economic reforms that look for signs of macroeconomic health long before they benefit ordinary people.