In the steps of Stanley

Of all the world’s under- developed and misruled countries few can compete with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The former Belgian Congo, more recently known as Zaire, has lived for so long with lawlessness, brute violence and neglect, with Belgian colonial and Mobutu’s post-colonial exploitation, that it seems to have justified Joseph Conrad’s selection of this particular slice of land to serve as the continent’s heart of darkness. Recently it has seemed as if someone had switched the lights off altogether: it comes as a surprise, in our Google-mapped age, to discover that somewhere has disappeared from sight. The DRC has managed this. So why, then, would a sane, successful foreign correspondent want to leave his post and partner to travel through what he calls Africa’s ‘broken heart’?

For Tim Butcher it seemed an obvious thing to do. Newly appointed Africa correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, he was doing what correspondents like to do and was sitting by a pool, doing research, when he came across the story of one of his predecessors in the job, Henry Morton Stanley. Stanley, most famous for finding Dr Livingstone (who hadn’t realised that he was lost), made an even more extraordinary journey when he traced the Congo River from Lake Tanganyika to its mouth at the Atlantic Ocean. Others had tried before, unsung heroes such as Verney Lovett Cameron, but it was Stanley who succeeded. Butcher decided he would follow his predecessor’s route along the Congo River; not because the world had forgotten about the river, but because it had forgotten — or was beyond caring — about the tragedy of the country.

The Congo is lush, fertile and endowed with an embarrassment of natural riches — diamonds to take the shine off Damien Hirst’s skull and more than enough uranium to satisfy an Iranian president’s ambitions.