Kinshasa and Brazzaville are like hostile siblings. The inhabitants of the two capitals live side by side, they share culture and language – and yet look at the other river bank with suspicion.
It is said that there are no two capitals in the world that are as close together as Kinshasa and Brazzaville. They are only separated by the Congo River. The international flight to Brazzaville stops in Kinshasa. Then the plane takes off and lands in Brazzaville after ten minutes. Brazzaville is the capital of the Republic of the Congo with five million inhabitants, Kinshasa that of the Democratic Republic of the Congo with eighty million. Because, despite the different sizes, hardly anyone can tell the two countries apart, we speak of Congo-Brazzaville and Congo-Kinshasa for the sake of simplicity. The city of Brazzaville with two million inhabitants is like the little sister of the twelve million juggernaut Kinshasa. But, as is so often the case, the siblings have to differentiate themselves permanently, precisely because they are so similar.
The senseless bridge of prestige
They once belonged together and were part of the Kingdom of the Congo. In 1885, King Leopold II of Belgium sacked the lion’s share of the former empire, made the vast fertile land his private property, and had his subjects chop off his hands if they did not deliver enough rubber. To this day, the descendants of the enslaved people are overcome by a mixture of anger and shame when it is mentioned. The people of Congo-Brazzaville are completely different. It was the Italian seafarer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza who mapped the country on behalf of the French and thus first took possession of it symbolically and then more and more real.
He later turned against his clients and wrote a report on the colonial atrocities of the Grande Nation. Brazzaville still sees the eponym as the good counter-model to evil Leopold II. On the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of his death, the government built a bombastic marble mausoleum for the equivalent of CHF 10 million in 2006 – one year late. One wonders why. A special permit was required to visit the grave, and signs everywhere warn people before entering the lawn: “Respectez la pelouse”
For years there has been talk of a bridge over the Congo, which is supposed to connect the two capitals. Because the project was not making good progress, Brazzaville already built its bridge. It is 2500 meters long and completely pointless. It runs over a Congo sidearm, not much more than a trickle. But it is said that Denis Sassou Nguesso, the country’s president, wanted to annoy his rival Joseph Kabila on the other side of the river because he had no bridge. At night, the pseudo bridge is opulently illuminated to ensure that it is also noticed from the palace in Kinshasa, which is directly opposite.
