Ambiance Eyenga.

This piece from mid-June explains one reason why Black Lives Matter reaches all the way to Belgium -- a very solid reason, in fact:

"A renewed global focus on racism is highlighting a violent colonial history that generated riches for Belgians but death and misery for Congolese."

Later that month:

King Philippe of Belgium on Tuesday expressed his “deepest regrets” for his country’s brutal past in a letter to the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the first public acknowledgment from a member of the Belgian royal family of the devastating human and financial toll during eight decades of colonization.

The king’s letter, issued on the 60th anniversary of Congo’s independence, acknowledged the historical legacy and pointed out continuing issues of racism and discrimination, though it stopped short of the apology that some, including the United Nations, had asked for.

Among the legacies of Belgium's colonial experience called rightly into question is the "official" museum in Brussels, which has struggled to rebrand in recent years.

"Belgium’s revamped Africa Museum is a magnificently bizarre hybrid."

In Congo itself, it's perhaps surprising that there'd be a city with 100 surviving Art Deco structures. We harbor so many misconceptions about Africa. One is size; Congo is 3.5 times larger than Texas, and that's huge. It is striking, and also slightly puzzling, that some people in Bukavu view the legacy of these buildings as something worthy of protection. Maybe they view it in the context of cultural education. In spite of what I've been told the past few days, history is important.

The Art Deco Capital of Central Africa, by Carly Lunden (Atlas Obscura)

In Bukavu, beautiful buildings have an ugly colonial history. But locals want to save them.

... Bukavu has more than 100 Art Deco buildings. Walking through its streets, you see geometric lines, chevron motifs, stepped rectangles, curved walls with cylindrical roofs. But most of these structures, with the notable exception of the Cathedral, are now dusty and beginning to crumble. “People used to call this city the ‘Switzerland of Congo,’” says Pierre Mpemba, 55, a local historian. “We were known for all these beautiful buildings. But that’s disappearing.”

Too often, this architectural history is forgotten in a city that outsiders associate with endangered gorillas, Africa’s First World War, the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize winner Denis Mukwege, and the ongoing presence of humanitarian agencies and UN peacekeepers.

Beginning in Europe in the 1920s and 30s, Art Deco symbolized modernism, the technological future, the “machine age.” All clean and curved lines, geometric shapes, bright colors and glamour, the style was meant to signal wealth and sophistication. As it spread from Europe to places that Europeans colonized, it also symbolized and beautified imperial domination, according to scholars such as Swati Chattopadyay in the Routeledge Companion to Art Deco ...

"Belgium’s revamped Africa Museum is a magnificently bizarre hybrid."

“Colonialism as a system of governance is now considered immoral, authoritarian, racist, based on military occupation and exploitation.”
-- Guido Gryseels

I'm an unrepentant fan of most things Belgian, including beer, food, beercycling and the invention of the saxophone; in a pinch, you can even throw in Jean Claude Van Damme, who was born in Brussels in 1960, 70-odd days after me (in New Albany).

However, the story of Belgium's colonial experience is sad and instructive. It cannot be repeated often enough. King Leopold is one of those nasty historical figures best forgotten, except doing so would risk burying the complete story of his genocidal reign in the Congo.

King Leopold and "The Horrors of Belgium's Congo."

I was unaware that the Royal Museum for Central Africa had undergone an ideological refit. During two or three of my visits to Belgium, I was within range, but wasn't able to seek it out.

Next time, maybe it will be possible.

The struggle to tell the story of colonialism: Belgium’s revamped Africa Museum is a magnificently bizarre hybrid (The Economist)

It is a magnificently bizarre hybrid. Still officially called the Royal Museum for Central Africa, but better known as the Africa Museum, it cannot help but ooze colonial triumphalism, despite recent protestations of egalitarian diversity. Housed in a majestic purpose-built palace 20 minutes’ drive east of Brussels, it stands above a lake amid parkland. Immaculate gravel paths sweep around the site. However radically the interior may have been refashioned to reflect new attitudes to Africa, the grandeur of King Leopold II’s design and the fervour of his desire to promote his imperial venture into the continent’s heart still overwhelm the visitor. The monarch ruled Congo as a private estate nearly 80 times bigger than his European homeland from 1885 until a year before his death in 1909; his double-l motif is embossed on almost every wall and above many an alcove.

Short of knocking the entire edifice flat, the museum’s current regime, run since 2001 by Guido Gryseels, a 66-year-old agricultural expert, has spent the past five years behind closed doors seeking to put a modern imprint on an irredeemably archaic structure. It reopens on December 9th. “We’ll be criticised on both sides,” predicts Mr Gryseels, who, like many modern museum bosses, is perforce a canny diplomat. “For not going far enough and for being too politically correct” ...