Kolonialzeit

Kolonialzeit is the colonial past that shadows the present-day scenes in Görna. It appears first through a portrait identified as that of a colonial ruler and exploiter, then through the old Belgian-colonist villas of a wealthy district, and finally in Tony Leike’s argument about colonial rule and its aftermath. These traces make the past more than background: it is part of the landscape and a contested explanation of present power.

Historical Traces in Görna

When Harry Hole notices that a portrait is missing from above a bed, he recognizes the absent image as that of a colonial ruler and exploiter. The gap in the room catches his attention before he understands what else is wrong: Van Boorst is absent too. The portrait’s removal makes colonial history legible through an object no longer there, linking a private interior to the violence and authority associated with the colonial past.

Elsewhere in Görna, Kaja Solness follows the Range Rover carrying Lene Gabrielle Galtung into a district of large villas behind high fences and carefully tended gardens. The driver identifies the houses with the old Belgian colonists. The imposing properties, their guarded boundaries, and the concealment of their gardens give colonial history a built presence in the modern city, even as the people inside remain difficult to observe.

Tony Leike’s Account of Colonialism

In conversation with Kaja, Tony frames African life as a cycle of natural forces and inherited experience, then argues that experience can change how people think. He rejects the language of exploitation as a claim originating with white people and says African chiefs adopted it to unite people against an enemy and enlarge their own power after the end of the colonial period in the 1960s. He dismisses white guilt over colonialism as absurd and instead describes the abandonment of Africans to destructive violence as the real crime. He further asserts that most people in Congo had been better off under the Belgians and that rebel groups were driven by the ambitions of individuals rather than popular support. These are Tony’s claims, delivered as an attempt to explain the region; the narrative does not establish them as neutral historical conclusions.

Houses, Violence, and the Limits of Tony’s Explanation

Tony connects his historical account to the architecture of the villas by the Kivu Lake. He says that rebels once stormed Belgian homes there expecting to find valuables, and that houses consequently have two doors: an entrance through which intruders can come and a rear exit for residents fleeing them. The arrangement turns a historical memory of attack into a practical feature of the buildings. Tony then reveals that he escaped through such an exit without Kaja noticing and says that he had been watching her and Harry since they arrived. His explanation therefore does more than interpret colonial history: it exposes the limits of their surveillance and his control over the encounter. The old villas, their second doors, and the missing portrait all make the past tangible, while Tony’s account leaves its meaning contested.