Coke en stock

Steven Spielberg is about to hit another rich vein of media revenue when he releases The Adventures of Tintin later this month.

For four years, however, Bienvenu Mbutu Mondondo, a Congolese citizen has been conducting a case of racism against one of the earliest books, Tintin in the Congo. The book was banned in Britain in 2007 for making Africans look like monkeys and talk like imbeciles, however, it is from a bygone age and the publishers when defending the charges have described it as like taking a knife to Charles Dickens works based on his portrayal of Jews.

While Belgium's record on slavery in the Congo still causes emotions to run high, The Red Sea Sharks, the nineteenth of the Adventures of Tintin, written and illustrated by Herge, features the young reporter Tintin and his side kick Captian Haddock as the hero's, when they battle against slavers in West Africa.. Indeed the books original French title is Coke en Stock a codename used by the villainous antagonists of the story for African slaves. This might have been a better book to use as an example of the exploitation of the Congolese population when looking for a racist test case.