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“IF LAURENT DESIRE KABILA WAS GIVEN TIME TO WORK… WE WOULDN’T BE IN SUCH A MESS…,” LAMENT THE IMPOVERISHED PEOPLE OF THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO
Antoine Roger Lokongo, a London-based Congolese journalist has just returned from a three-week trip from his homeland. This is what he saw:
Stepping out of the aeroplane at the dilapidated N’Djili International Airport, I was taken aback by a massive portrait still hanging at the arrival entrance, of the slain leader of Congo, President Laurent Désiré Kabila, who was allegedly shot down on the afternoon of 16 January 2001 by one of his bodyguards. Such portraits still hang all over the shantytown of Kinshasa, whose streets are littered with rubbish as well as street markets. “Kin la belle” (Kinshasa the beautiful, the trendy) has indeed become “Kin la poubelle” (Kinshasa, the dustbin).
“This lends proof to the fact that, in the mind of the people Congo, Laurent Kabila Désiré Kabila’s 44 months at the helm of Congo [and whose son took over as president after his assassination], is not a bygone era”, a soldier who ushered me through the entrance explained.
“But why have they not removed it yet,” I asked.
“Let it be there. Kabila reminds us at least of something. He at least used to pay civil servants, police officers and soldiers $100 a month and regularly, and that was only the beginning. Now, despite the outpouring of money from the IMF and the World Bank, we are paid $10 a month and we are not even sure to get it on time at the end of the month,” he replied after benefiting from my generosity.
You can have all your papers in order, but the people working at the airport would still beg something from you because they have not been paid for ages. Sometimes one cannot resist but one should beware setting a bad precedent in a country where begging is getting more and more a profession. Everywhere, you see people living in crumbling little houses, almost everybody selling small things on the street beckoning passers by to buy them. In Congo there is only private no public transport, no national airline or public transport on the Congo river. All the buses that Kabila bought for public transport have all broken down. So, public transport is non-existant in a city of 6 millions people plus hundreds of internally displaced people, most of whom have fled the war from the countryside and sleeping in stadium and public places, come rain or sunshine. We bought them soaps and gave them the rest of the money in kind., as well as to soldiers amputated and wounded in the frontline roaming the city begging for food and money because they are abandoned to fend for themselves. With a £100, you can help many people in Congo!
What you call taxi are old rusting cars which you take to your destination at your own risk. There no sewage or drainage in the town, except in the best part of the city which boast embassies, the elite and the leaders’offices and residences along the Congo river where you can see Brazzaville, the capital of Congo-Brazzaville, the former French colony on the other side of the rive. It said that when Kinshasa sneezes, Brazzaville catches the cold. In fact, our stay coincided with the return of Mobutu soldiers, the notorious Ex-Forces Armées Zaïroises (Ex-Faz), who had taken refuge in Brazzaville when Laurent Désiré Kabila took over Kinshasa the capital. And now insecurity is yet again the order of the day. From Paris, Honoré Ngbanda Nzambo, once the most powerful Mobutu’s security adviser, had launched a politcal party called Apareco “to salvage what remains of Congo”. Who can hardly believe Ngbanda, then nicknamed the “Terminator” because he used to watch Mobutu’s mood and sensed that such and such person
was giving him a hard time and therefore the “final solution” had to be applied. I was personally shown where he used to feed “trouble makers” to the crocodiles in Kinshasa, but I was not allowed to take photographs because the place is not far from where Kabila was shot dead. I had an audience with Vice-president Abdoulaye Yerodia Ndombasi who heads the national reconstruction portfolio and Laurent Kabila’s right hand man in what used to be Kabila’s private office. It was both an honour and a painful experience. Congolese, then distracted by music and the “Sape” or “Kitendi”, that is “the cult of dressing well”, now realise that they have lost someone very important who showed them the way out of exploitation by teaching them to rely not on foreign aid but on themselves.
So when it rains, most the city is flooded and the mosquitoes have a field day, beside another major and common form of death: death by electrocution. A dozen people, especially children playing barefoot, die a month in Kinshasa by getting electrocuted if they step on the electronic cables along streets and markets hanging overground.
Power cuts are a daily routine in Kinshasa in a country with energy potentials and which can provide electricity to the whole of Africa and up to Europe.
Homeless street children often take the law into their hands across the streets of Kinshasa if they so decide, threatening everybody and snatching hand bags often under the nose of police officers. Kabila had then made them useful to society by incorporating them into the “Service National” – National service, where they used to grow food and make bricks, learn a skill for life. With Kabila gone, they are now back on the street.
There is another phenomenon which spurs the increase of the population of street children in Congo. Parents unable to feed many mouths simply chuck their children to the street to fend for themselves under the pretext that they are witches.
Massacres in the east are still being perpetrated by local militia propped up by Rwanda and Uganda. Local people in remote villages in the eastern Congo are simply ethically cleansed despite the presence of the UN Mission in Congo (known by Monuc by its French acronym) and the Congolese army. The latter is an aggregation of fighters from six rebel movements who have been battling each other for the past six years. Troops of Rwandan origin within this army are categorically refusing to be deployed far away from the Rwandan border. There is a low level war still going on in the east despite the fact that the UN Security Council has now listed all the warlords operating there as terrorists, barred from travelling and their assets abroad frozen, including General Nkunda and Mutebusi of Rwandan origin, two insurgents who who occupied the city of Bukavu in June last year.
Misna, the Missionary News Agency, reported at the end of October that Uganda was still arming the “Mouvement Révolutionaire Congolais” (MRC) militia, the only one which has so far failed to disarm and terrorising people in Ituri.
Similarly, Colette Braeckman reported on 28.10.2005 for the Belgian daily Le Soir that Rwanda was still arming the Rastas, described as a mix of FDLR, Congolese collaborators, local bandits and other disaffected ex-militia. They are generally equated with the FDLR who are terrorising people in South Kivu in order to render the repatriation of Hutu militia (accused of having perpetrated the genocide in 1994 and unwanted in Rwanda) impossible.
Atrocities committed in South Kivu have been mostly attributed to the FDLR. Massacres in past months have occurred at night, and notes left behind were signed the "Rastas." Congolese President Joseph Kabila issued a statement on 29 June 2005 that the FDLR are the enemy of Congo and the FARDC will forcibly deploy against them. The MONUC goal is to displace or drive out the FDLR in what the UN describes as “domination area operations.”
The region has for years seethed with warlords and militias who exact taxes, goods and labor from the poorest people in the world. Local fiefdoms have seen unspeakable horrors and targeted robberies believed to be committed by FDLR factions in cahoots with Congolese military collaborators or civilians. Former combatants of the Maï- Maï, a militia opposing Rwanda’s military presence in Kivu, and Burundian Hutu militia have also been here.
The terror is directly linked to access to minerals. Some villages suffer less than others because combatants and warlords understand that atrocities committed against the population will bring MONUC troops who will threaten their mining and taxation networks. Some areas are tenuously “managed” by both FDLR militias and FARDC soldiers. It is only the Congolese who are doing the dying, not the multinational staff exploiting minerals in the very areas which are rife with insecurity.
In fact, in her book, “Les Nouveaux Prédateurs”, Colette Braeckman, journalist with the belgian dialy Le Soir and an expert on the Great Lakes Region affairs, goes as far as revealing that President Mandela had supplied Paul Kagame with arms worth $100 million to wage war in Congo from 1998 onwards and that South Africa is still awaiting dividends. She went on writing that Eastern Congo’s very fertile land and rich in minerals land is coveted not only by White farmers now kicked out of Zimbabwe and very soon from South Africa and Namibia, but also by Israeli settlers who are vacating the Palestinian occupied territories. Is that why the ethnic cleansing is going on in Eastern Congo? That is the question which led Mathilde Muhindo Mwamini, a Member of Parliament from Eastern Congo to quit the National Assembly, accusing both the UN Mission in Congo and the Government of “staring at the ethnic cleansing of her people in Eastern Congo without taking any decisive action”. As a reminder, it is Ruberwa, a Tutsi of Rwanda origin who is one of Congo’s four vice-presidents who heads the national security portfolio.
The UN Panel on the Illegal Exploitation of DRC's Natural Resources cites “military commercialism” as pivotal to war in Congo. Key agents included military officers from Rwanda and Uganda, with companies from the US and Europe behind them. But the recommendations of the UN investigation were ignored; multinational and regional companies and individuals named for violations successfully lobbied to be removed from the list. No government took action to stop or deter the guns-for-minerals racketeering.
A June 2005 report by Amnesty International revealed that massive arms flows to Congo continue. Weapons keep coming across the Great Lakes from Rwanda and Uganda. Gold departs the area for Uganda; coltan (coumbium-tantalite) used in cellphones and Sony Playstations crosses Lake Kivu by boat to Rwanda; there is also cassiterite (tin) mining here. Human Rights Watch (HRW) recently published a report detailing South Africa-based multinational AngloGold Ashanti's role in supporting war and atrocities in Congo's Ituri zone. On July 12, HRW issued a brief warning that factions are still being armed in North Kivu.
“We see the same situation in Ituri and the Kivus,” said MONUC’s Dutch Major General Patrick Cammaert on July 12. Cammaert commands all MONUC forces in the provinces of Ituri, North and South Kivu. “Groups are receiving arms, equipment and ammunition from groups, organizations, and individuals from foreign countries.”
The Indian General Shujatt Alikahn is more blunt. “The UN Security Council said ‘no forcible disarmament by MONUC.’ Everything changed on May 23 when the FDLR mutilated 23 people. Pakistan has fifty years in the United Nations and we won’t let this terrorism happen to these people. We decided to take the risks upon ourselves.”
MONUC is one player amongst many. The MONUC mission is limited in mandate and troop strength, staff point out, but MONUC is tasked with fighting a bullet-less war against a complex and ever-moving target, and it is criticized for every effort at every turn. While atrocities have abated or declined in some areas under MONUC control, MONUC's security reach is limited. Remote areas of northern and eastern DRC remain completely inaccessible to MONUC peacekeepers; rape remains widespread, with extortion, pillage, and sporadic massacres continuing in many areas.
Frank conversations with UN personnel about MONUC reveal the following: Bureaucracy is thick and unwieldy. Conspirators lurk within and without. Decisions are deeply politicised. Critical reports and investigations are internally buried. Essential maps and information are unavailable. Slackers who should long ago have been fired are getting a free ride because the system disallows appropriate action. Rules and regulations drafted in the 1950’s have not evolved or changed with the times. Ditto for the leadership, who are seen to be stodgy, unimaginative, hopelessly entrenched in a failed system.
Multinational corporations are pulling many strings, and profiting widely. Budgets are obscene, given the absolute poverty evident in the Congo. Member states don't pay their dues, and then their diplomats say that the United Nations is a failure, that it needs to be dismantled. Agents bought and paid for by powerful governments serve only the narrow mandates of their masters. The United States is cited as the most obvious and shameless culprit. Recent stories about Congo that have appeared in western media only reinforce the biases held by the general public.
MONUC has around 20 soldiers from western nations: three French; four British; eight Canadians; three Irish; three Swiss; and zero from the U.S. Soldiers come from the poorest Third World countries: they are cheap, easily manipulated and – notably - they are expendable. Indeed, there is a hierarchy of value attached to the lives of UN soldiers that varies with nationality. While soldiers suffer the hardships of malaria and rat-filled camps, risking their lives against an enemy they know little about, many are happy for low paying work and any opportunity to rise above squalid conditions in their own countries. However, incentives to high performance are often lacking, and military contingents vary in devotion to the peacekeeping cause. However, many MONUC staff, both civilian and military, put in twelve to fourteen hour days, at least six days a week, with no personal life and total dedication to stopping this brutal, ugly war.
UN sources are unclear how many foreign rebels have been returned from DRC to Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda through the MONUC Disarmament, Demobilisation, Repatriation, Reintegration and Reinsertion (DDRRR) program in Bukavu: estimates vary between 12,000 and 4000. Most rebels returned in the early stages of the program, but returnees reduced to a trickle after 2003.
The FDLR foot soldiers are in a tight position. Amongst them are battle-hardened Hutus accused of participating in genocide against hundreds of thousands of Tutsis killed in 1994.
But the Rwandan military led by Paul Kagame has persecuted Hutus and Tutsis alike both inside and outside of Rwanda. Thousands of Hutu refugees and returnees to Rwanda are said to have been killed over the past several years. UN High Commission for Refugees investigator Robert Gersony in September 1994 produced the first report about Rwandan Tutsi forces committing massive atrocities against Hutus. The UN in New York buried the report.
By some estimates, hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees were hunted down and murdered by Rwandan and Ugandan militaries that invaded Congo (then Zaire) in 1996 in what the Congolese know officially as the “War of Liberation” that ultimately overthrew the dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko. New York Times journalist Howard French reported the “counter-genocide” against Hutus by Kagame’s troops as early as 1997: at least 80% were women and children, and 50% were believed to be under 14 years old.
Hutus from Rwanda who survived the RPF onslaught later fought for Mobutu, but Kabila with the support of Rwanda and Uganda - with US-support - ousted Mobutu’s regime. Hutu FDLR in Congo then fought to defend President Laurent Kabila against the second Rwanda/Uganda invasion in 1998, that the Congolese now know as the “First War of Aggression.” Many of the FDLR now in the Kivus are believed to have arrived from Kinshasa as recent as 2003.
In April, 2005, thousands of Hutus fled Rwanda to Burundi after the RPF-organised “Gacaca” village genocide courts began operating, unjustly they said. The village courts - like the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda - are accused of doling out “victor’s justice” that favours the Tutsi-dominated RPF military.
The International Forum for Truth and Justice in the Great Lakes Region of Africa recently filed a lawsuit in a Spanish court, based on years of research, against Paul Kagame and other Rwandan military leaders. The suit accuses them of massive war crimes in the series of conflicts that engulfed Central Africa following the RPF invasion of Rwanda from Uganda in 1990.
“Rwanda will never be interested in these people going back,” a high-level MONUC source said. "The moment these FDLR go back to Rwanda the international mining companies will take over the mining areas that today benefit Rwanda. Rwanda is working with the FDLR and Congolese are definitely involved or these people wouldn’t be able to do what they are doing.”
Paradoxically, the Rwanda regime is accused of collaborating with the FDLR’s resource-extraction operations, even while intervening in Congo to hunt them down, accusing them of being filled with “genocidiares” - veterans of the Interahamwe militias that carried out mass slaughter of Hutus in 1994.
Internal squabbles have repeatedly divided the FDLR over the decade since the militia first arrived from Rwanda. Late June 2005 saw the most recent split, where a local low-ranking militiaman named Amani declared himself the leader of the FDLR and guide for their return to Rwanda.
Col. Joseph Hagirimana, an important local FDLR leader, rejected Amani’s declaration. Some FDLR interviewed by MONUC's DDRRR team appear confused and frightened, uncertain who to trust or where to turn for help. DDRRR personnel face their own challenges here. “We have seen many FDLR declarations,” said Gen. Cammaert. “We want to see action.”
“Many members rejected the FDLR leadership and broke with it in 2004,” says Jean-Marie Higiro, past president of the unarmed political wing of the FDLR. “That FDLR leadership recently split again, into factions led by Lt. Colonel Christophe Hakizabera and Dr. Ignace Murwanashyaka, who both live in Europe.”
In September 2004 exiled and disaffected Rwandans who rejected the FDLR position - mostly Hutu, and mostly in Europe - created a new organization, Urunana, with an armed wing, Imbonera, dedicated to “overthrowing the fascist dictatorship of Paul Kagame in Rwanda." With bases inside and out of Rwanda, Imbonera will intervene in the DRC “if Rwandan refugees are hunted down as animals by General Paul Kagame’s forces.”
Congolese Air Force Gen. John Numbe is adamant that Rwanda uses the FDLR to justify meddling in Congo. “We are finishing these FDLR before the Congolese elections [in November]... Rwandan sources have told us that Kagame has a plan to destabilise the elections in Congo. We must remove the FDLR because they are the reason Kagame is always invading Congo.”
“The UN still hopes that every means of peaceful resolution can be used to deal with the FDLR,” says MONUC’s Sylvie van den Wildenberg. “It is the hardliners, the Hutus, most probably involved in genocide, that are blocking the process. Rwanda has said that there will be an amnesty for people who were under fourteen years old in 1994. We think that every human being should have a choice.”
Colette Braeckman also revealed that Tutsi of Rwandan origin who several times took arm to fight for Congolese nationality, are ready to take arms again before the elections in order to force a pre-electoral agreement which would guaranty them their political future, sure that they will never win elections in Congo. So, they need to be assured of how many seats they will get in parliament, how many ministries they will run and so on before even the elections are held. Every tribe being a minority in Congo, such kind of “divine right” claimed by the Banyamulenge (Tutsi of Rwandan origin living in Congo, branded the “Jews of Africa” by the Economist of London) will be simply unacceptable by other Congolese. The referendum on the new constitution will prove to be a difficult exercise if you take all this into account.
Congo is led by one president Joseph Kabila, flanqued by four vice-presidents, three of whom have been warlords themselves and there are accusations of crimes against humanity still hanging over their heads as a sword of Damocles.
Corruption is rampant. Everybody prays in Congo (almost every political party has a sister church), but the moral and the social order has collapsed in Congo. Young women often trade sex for marks at universities (commonly known as “Points sexuellement acquis ou quotés”) and at offices to keep their jobs or to get promoted (commonly known as “Operation Cuisse”).Congo is the only country in the world where $3 millions can disappear from the central bank without anybody being arrested as was the case during our stay. Congo is the only country where the public or state companies have now been divided between political parties who are milking them as cows for their own pockets. Today a minister can embezzle in Congo but cannot be sacked or imprisoned thanks to the transitional arrangement set up by all the former belligerents in Sun City, South Africa.
Ironically, Azarias Ruberwa, leader of the RCD-Goma former rebel movement backed by Rwanda head the security portfolio of the country but there is no security in the country, especially in the east and even in the capital Kinshasa. Proof? On 3.11.2005, Franck Ngyke Kangulu, a prominent journalist and his wife were shot dead in their home by two armed men, arousing massive protests in the capital.
Jean Pierre Bemba, leader of the former MLC rebel movement head the economy portfolio, but the country is now crippled by teachers and civil servants’strikes who claim the pay of their salary arrears, and which salary?! $10 dollars a month in a country where rent begins at $50 a month for a room and it costs $5 to top up one’s mobile phone for 500 units. Ironically, Bemba then rebel leader branded the $100 a month Laurent Désiré Kabila used to pay civil servants, police officers and soldiers “peanuts”. It easy to destroy and very difficult to rebuild. How true in the case of Congo!
The transitional period is supposed to come to an end on the 30 June 2006, culminating in general, free, transparent and fair elections. There have been no such elections in Congo since the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first and only elected leader in Congo since independence from Belgium on 30 June 1960. The whole process to the tune of millions of pounds is financed by the international community. Almost 18 millions Congolese have already registered to vote next year, despite lack of roads and other transport infrastructures to reach people in remote areas in a huge country the size of Western Europe. The process is beset by irregularities in the east of the country where Rwandans and Ugandans are said to have been registered after bribing some Congolese local chiefs.
There is no justification whatsoever that the people of Congo, citizens of a potentially rich country in minerals, water, very green and fertile land, timbers, a very rich and diverse fauna and flora should be made to be content with absolute destitution. Yet that is the case for almost 99.9 per cent of the vast country’s population. At least let us go the elections. Let whoever is elected be elected. That way there will be some sort of legitimacy at the top and nobody will justify taking arms to overthrow an elected government. We hope that such a government will be accountable to the people and will re-launch the national reconstruction where Kabila left it, or let us say where the war of aggression cut it short.
There is a massive need for investment in national reconstruction in every sector of national life in Congo. Despite the massive return of mainly anglo-saxon multinationals (Canada, Australia, UK, US…) in the mining sector which are making huge profits despite the insecurity in the country, the ordinary people are yet to see the dividends.
“If Laurent Désiré Kabila was given time to work…, we wouldn’t be in such a mess,” you hear everybody lamenting. The point is Congo has had no time of respite since King Leopold of Belgium owned it as his own property!
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