The Heart of Darkness by Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad which was set during Congo Free State (1885-1908) is a grim reminder that brutal European colonization of Africa was still going on up to just about 100 years ago. Many aspects of humanity have changed since then, which was relatively very short compared to the time European spent to take Africa's natural resources and enslave indigenous people back to since Roman era, but some are remains unchanged.
The West did popularized many ideas that improve the way we threat each other, such as human rights, racial equality, freedom of thought, etc. However, people are still being exploited for their time and energy in many countries, which bring forth 'modern slavery' term. Many western brands and companies moved their production lines to countries deemed have low labor cost, such as China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Indonesia.Â
Natural resources are also still being exploited by powerful countries and companies without paying fair share to indigenous people. In the novella, ivory was one of commodities highly valued by European (Kurtz) which then lead them to colonize Congo and brought Congolese to miseries. Today, for example, only just recently Indonesian government successfully negotiated a fair share with Freeport after the American company extracted gold from mines in Papua for decades (1).
Kurtz's fiance, referred by him as "My Intended", who was living comfortably in Europe, far from Africa miseries, is many of us who, unintentionally or not, unaware of 'modern slavery and colonization' around us. In many occasion, we proudly bought cheap products without realizing it can be that cheap because it was made by low paid labors from materials freely taped without paying to indigenous people, just similar to the fiance who still holds highly regards to Kurtz, a criminal who steal ivories and other valuables from Congolese. On the other hand, Charles Marlow who tried to maintain the fiance feelings by covering Kurtz bad side and lied that Kurtz's last word was her name was probably best suited to depict our mainstream media which rarely give deep investigation about 'modern slavery', thus keeping many of us uninformed about it.
Africa, the location set of The Heart of Darkness, itself is still largely poor, undeveloped, and corrupt today, long after the West ended its colonization. What even worse is that there are indications that other world powers are starting their own version of Africa colonization. So, the lengthy hardship without clear ending of African also indicated that we could not put the blame for it solely on foreign powers, but African leaderships themselves, either in the past or today, might also need to take some responsibility for allowing it happens.
I read The Heart of Darkness without prior knowledge of its plot, setting, characters or whatsoever at all. So, as an avid moviegoer, I was surprised that the plot was highly similar to movie Apocalypse Now (1979). Turn out, the novella actually did serve as inspiration for the movie (2). In both pieces, the main character were in search of a highly charismatic person (Kurtz) who lost in jungle because he went mad and declare himself king or even God after convincing indigenous tribes to follow him.
Kurtz represents leaders who started out as normal person but have special talent and charisma, so they can easily influence people to follow their revolutionary ideas. However, without proper balance of power, such as in jungle environment which is isolated from outside world, the said leader would be out of control since practically they does not have the need to give up their power. They can do as they pleased to maintain it without fear of retribution. This is another story-line which showed us that people naturally are greedy for power. Therefore, power sharing in different government branches (legislative, executive, and judicial) and term limits is necessary in true democracy and to avoid corrupt leader such as Kurtz (3).
 In short, some parts of society that were depicted in the novella were also can be found on our own today's society. Thus, in my opinion, that was one of the reasons The Heart of Darkness is still widely read today. In a sense, it is now as contemporary as when it was published for the first time. Free market and capitalism are still important part of most countries, including Indonesia, economy. However, their absolute implementation such as in Congo Free State, as depicted in the novella and in history, will only bring slavery and exploitation for many by a few rich and powerful people (4). The real world Congo Free State destruction just in two decades after its establishment actually can be shown as a bad example of absolute capitalism, just as the collapse of the Soviet Union has been used to describe how bad absolute socialism is.
References
1. Da Costa, A.B., Asmarini, W. Indonesia closes long-awaited $3.85 billion Freeport deal. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-indonesia-freeport/indonesia-closes-long-awaited-3-85-billion-freeport-deal-idUSKCN1OK0XU. Accessed on May 6, 2020.
2. Hagen. W.M. 1981. Heart of Darkness and the Process of Apocalypse Now. Conradiana 13(1): 45-54.
