When global powers chant never again after atrocities, we must ask: do they truly mean repentance, or do they mean never again without profit? Belgium's colonial strategy had one objective: relentless exploitation. The Modus Operandi? Erasure, identity manipulation, and violence – turning the blood of the Congolese people into the gold that lined European treasuries. A well known example of these horrors is when King Leopold II transformed the so-called 'free state' of Congo into his personal fiefdom, claiming 10 million lives by forcing parents to labour or else have their children dismembered, while Europe's appetite for rubber was surging. By 1909, Belgian colonial administrators acknowledged the existence of the Tutsi people, with Joseph Verloet's ethnographic map precisely documenting their presence. Verloet, a prominent Belgian geographer and colonial administrator, created detailed ethnic maps for the Belgian colonial administration as documented in the Bulletin de la Société Belge de Géographie IV & V (1909). Pierre Boone, a Belgian anthropologist and cartographer at the Royal Museum for Central Africa, revised the map in 1935, collaborating with Joseph Maes, and upheld this truth. Yet, by 1954, a sinister shift occurred: the same Boone who once mapped the Tutsi now erased them from Belgian administrative records. This was no mistake. This was calculated erasure - rendering a people invisible on paper while they remained visible in flesh, stripping them of official recognition while keeping them physically present, a people without acknowledgment, a community without rights. Belgium's cartographers – professionals who create and study maps as scientific, technical, and artistic representations of geographical areas – didn't just draw maps, they manufactured realities. Cartography, the science and practice of making maps, became a political weapon in the hands of colonial powers. The 1910 Belgian conference slashed through the Rwandan Kingdom, carving pieces into what would become British Uganda and the Belgian Congo. These weren't just boundaries; they were wounds, inflicting fractures upon communities that had lived as one. The Banyarwanda did not migrate to Eastern DR Congo; they were turned into foreigners overnight by Belgian bureaucrats wielding pens of destruction. One day, they were sovereign Rwandans; the next, they were colonial Congolese, without moving an inch. Belgium's greed was boundless. When its economy crumbled during the Great Depression in the 1930s, DR Congo became its financial lifeline. Industrial production collapsed by 30-40%, unemployment soared, and the Belgian franc plummeted. Belgium didn't need solutions – it needed salvation. And salvation wore a Congolese face. The salvation? Double down on Congolese exploitation. The so-called Indigenous Rights Cession Act of 1938 was not legislation –, it was legalized theft. In 1945, King Rudahigwa was forced into sending Rwandans to labour in Belgian DR Congo's plantations and mines. These were not immigrants; they were hostages, trafficked through administrative sleight of hand. Their Rwandan identity cards were confiscated upon arrival, replaced with Congolese citizenship booklets – paper chains that would later be used as weapons of exclusion. By 1954, over 200,000 additional Rwandophones had been transferred, joining communities that Belgium had arbitrarily reclassified as Congolese since 1910. Even as DR Congo prepared for independence, Belgium planted time bombs. Three months before liberation, the Belgian Parliament passed legislation, specifically Article 10, prohibiting nationals of Rwanda-Urundi origin from election to national or provincial assemblies which wasn't an oversight but rather a calculated insurance. Even as colonization formally ended, the mechanisms of division would endure. Belgium's commitment to resource extraction didn't pause for independence. On July 10, 1960, they deployed 10,000 troops to DR Congo without consulting the sovereign government, using alleged attacks on Belgian citizens as cover. The next day, Belgian forces facilitated Moise Tshombe's declaration of independence for mineral-rich Katanga. A month later, they engineered the secession of Kasai province. The motivation wasn't complex: control of the Union Mineral de Haut Katanga (UMHK), a concession covering 20,000 square kilometers – 70% of Belgium's own landmass. This corporate entity, now transformed into UMICORE headquartered in Brussels, generated $27.28 billion in 2023, while the communities from which this wealth is extracted remain trapped in conflict. Yet, in a cruel twist of history, the architects of this plunder now posture as defenders of Congolese sovereignty. Western powers, including Belgium, accuse Rwanda of supporting M23 forces in Eastern DR Congo, ignoring the historical reality: the Congolese Tutsi are not invaders, but a people fighting for recognition and protection against genocidal forces armed with French backing since 1994. The same powers that erased Tutsi identity from maps, that forcibly reclassified Rwandans as Congolese, that engineered secessions to control resources, now claim moral authority while perpetuating the same old colonial games. They rewrite history to suit their narrative, branding self-defense as foreign aggression while maintaining the economic stranglehold they first established under colonial rule. The pattern is undeniable. From acknowledging the Tutsi in 1909 and 1935, to erasing them in 1954, to crafting exclusionary laws before independence, to orchestrating military interventions for economic gain – Belgium's legacy in DR Congo is one of calculated violence, for exploitation. The borders of DR Congo were not drawn; they were carved out in blood. Belgium's cartographic erasure was not mere manipulation – it was an attack on existence itself, all in the service of profit. When we say never again, we must ensure it does not secretly mean never without gain.
