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Address to Oxford University Students
By A.R. Lokongo, Thursday 17 October 2002
HELLO EVERYBODY,
MY NAME IS LOKONGO FROM CONGO
I AM A LONDON-BASED CONGOLESE JOURNALIST AND I WOULD LIKE TO TELL YOU BRIEFLY ABOUT THE REASONS WHY THE WEST IS IGNORING THE GENOCIDE NOW TAKING PLACE IN THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO, MY COUNTRY.
Let me start by drawing your attention to something very, very important that we are all probably oblivious to: the commemoration this year of the CENTENARY of Joseph Konrad’s novel about the Congo, which is called what? The Heart of Darkness, that masterpiece of the 20th century which explores the grim realities of imperialism.
By the way, the story started on the banks of the river Thames in London.
You will be surprised to hear that much of what Konrad described in his haunting tale is still true today, because the people of Congo are still under the yoke of those grim realities albeit a 100 years gone past, and still leave like in stone age.
I have several times in my contacts with prominent journalists in this country, including with Jeremy Paxman, who I hold with the highest esteem, tried to re-dress the fundamental misunderstanding and injustice done to Joseph Konrad novel:
Many people think that by coining the title The Heart of Darkness, he referred to Congo as a wild, wild, backward and uncivilised place to go to.
And I hope that is not the case with you people here at the good old Oxford University.
NO. Konrad was talking about the darkness that surrounded the West’s so-called civilising enterprise in Africa, as well as in the Americas, in Australia and in New Zealand for that matter of fact. Konrad was the first western man of his age to engage in a radical questioning of the nature and values of the Western society.
As you know we deplore death of more than 5,000 people and condemn the terrorist act of September 11 attack on America, although the media here in the West were totally forbidden to show us the photos of the victims of September 11 attack.
Journalist who tried to do so were sacked because they should have learned the hard truth that they were Americans before they were journalists.
But as a Congolese, I find it extremely difficult and inconceivable to reconcile the fact that the Western media widely reported the events of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda or later in Bosnia, or even famine stricken people in Sudan with ribs clearly sticking out
And I bet you are all familiar with BBC’s familiar warning: “You will some of these pictures very disturbing!”
But the same media have totally ignored the awful tragedy taking place in Congo, my country, where, since 1998, a genocide of more than 5 million has gone totally unreported for reasons that I will explain later.
The 9/11 attack on America has been described as an attack against the civilised and civilising world, in other, against the Western world. Let me tell you that is historically speaking quite untrue:
If Konrad was alive today, he would certainly ask certain questions that would in themselves unmask the evils upon which Western power and opulence were based.
Such questions would be:
-What is civilised and civilising in the slave trade carried out by the West, that greatest crime against humanity?
-What is civilised and civilising in going to other people’s territory, dispossessing them of their land, exterminating them, settling, appropriating to yourself what belong to them be it natural or mineral resources?
To stick to Congo, The 42 years that our country had lived as an independent state, have been by and large, years of political, economic, and social insecurity, owing the vast mineral resources that it has. We are always victims of terrorism because of the wealth that is in our country. The wealth of Congo keeps the capitalist system going, from the first tyre, first atomic bomb made out of uranium from Congo to the first computer or mobile, Congo’s mineral resources always come into the picture.
Let me take this opportunity to dismiss Mr Blair’s assertion that Saddam got Uranium from Africa, without naming any African country in his dossier of evidence against Irak.
Our independence followed over 75 years of oppressive colonial rule imposed on us from 1885 onward, when the Belgians occupied our country. King Leopold II of Belgium, as you know, acquired our country as his special private “Royal Domain” at the Berlin Conference and handed it over to the Belgian government as a colony afterwards.
King Leopold II’s “personal” Free Congo State” as it was called officially existed for twenty-three years, beginning in 1885, but many Congolese were already dying unnatural deaths by the start of that period. The ivory and later the rubber boom, was cause of the worst bloodletting in the 19th century. King Leopold sent his agents to cut off the hands of the natives in Congo if they did not harvest enough rubber or collected enough ivory to meet the quota required them. Leopold’s genocide came to an end thanks to denunciation campaign by non-Dutch missionaries, British travellers and journalists. 15 million Congolese were massacred then, the first genocide in the African soil.
Our independence followed years of bitter and protracted struggle incarnated by one man –one great man- Emery Patrice Lumumba, who was killed as a consequence by the CIA and Belgian secret services. His body and those of his two companions were chopped and completely dissolved in a barrel of acid.
Congo’s 42 years of independence have been marred by economic chaos, violence ethnic strife, rebellions (1 million people were killed by Belgian commandos and mercenaries to prop up Mobutu against Lumumba’s loyalists), worst of all a 32-years bloody dictatorship under the Mobutu regime (supported by the West because he was the custodian of the West’s vested interests in central Africa, and an ally in the war against communism in the neibouring Angola. It was Cold War then), and now an aggression on the part of a Rwandan-Ugandan-Burundian coalition, backed by well-known superpowers.
The only short respite the people of Congo enjoyed was during Laurent Kabila’s first year in power, that is 1997. They could eat three times a day again as prices of essential commodities drastically dropped, roads and bridges were repaired, public transport restored, electricity extended to the suburbs of Kinshasa and people liberated from Mobutu’s ill paid soldiers’ransoming. The new currency, the Congolese franc was launched and the inflation rate dropped from 88.28% in 1993 to 6% in 1997. Corruption was severely combated. Ministers who embezzled thrown into jail. All this was achieved in the absence of any help from the IMF and World Bank who conditioned their financial support to Congo normalising its relations with the institutions of Bretton Woods and pledging to pay all the debt the old regime contracted. Such was also the position of the ‘Friends of Congo’ meeting in Brussels in December 1997.
The new government embarked on an ambitious three year programme of national reconstruction and during the third summit of Comesa (common market community of central and southern African countries) held in Kinshasa on 29 June 1998, Kabila clearly tabled out what role Congo would play within the common market and in Africa as a whole.
He explained that ‘more than 40 years of African independence have offered to the world a sad spectacle of a continent looted and humiliated with the complicity of its own sons and daughters’. He expressed the wish ‘to see Africa entering the 21st century totally independent of foreign interference’ and declared that the battle for Congo’s independence and sovereignty is fought in the interest of Africa as a whole.
‘Our country,’ he said, ‘has a vocation of exporting peace, development and security to the rest of Africa. A weak Congo means a vulnerable Africa from its centre, an Africa without a heart.’ The stakes were then raised! America, long suspected of having used Uganda and Rwanda as a front to get rid of an ‘intransigent’ Mobutu, branded Kabila a ‘loose canon that had to be restrained. But as Colette Braeckman, an expert in Congolese affairs, who reports for the Belgian daily, Le Soir, wrote in her book, l’Enjeu Congolais –l’Afrique Centrale après Mobutu, this ‘sudden animosity against Kabila could only be explained by the fact that his nationalist stance collided with or frustrated their economic interests in Congo…Kabila opposed all forms of investments that did not represent the interests of the people of Congo.’
On the political front, the new government promised free and fair elections but did not liberalise political activities until an national assembly was set up, charged with the task of setting the rules of the game stipulated in a new constitution. On the day he was sworn-in as president, Kabila gave a precise calendar of the democratic process which would have culminated with general elections on April 1999. And the people gave him the benefit of the doubt. A front page headline on Focus on Africa magazine, produced from Bush House read: ‘Kinshasans celebrate, but for how long?’ As if they knew what was going to follow.
Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, invoking security reasons for their own stability, have invaded chunks of territory of the Democratic Republic of Congo, with the support of Britain and America and the complicity of a quickly fixed and masterminded Congolese rebellion, very much against all the UN and the organisation of African Unity charters which forbid any member state from violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of another state. Will they subsequently wage war against Kenya, Tanzania and Congo Brazzaville since the Interahamwe also fled there? I doubt it. The problems of Rwandan can only be solved inside Rwanda. Hutu refugees must be allowed to be re-integrated in society there.
Two UN Security Council resolutions – resolutions 1304 (2000) and 1341 (2001) - have condemned the aggression and have recommended that Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda unconditionally withdraw their troops from the Democratic Republic of Congo, half of which they occupy, very much against international law. The resolutions recognised Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola as Congo’s allies in the war, legally invited by the government in Kinshasa, just as Britain had allies during World War II.
A UN Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of Congo on 12 April 2001 confirmed that the reasons evoked by Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi for maintaining their troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo are an alibi because they are instead systematically looting Congo’s fauna and flora, natural and mineral resources, including the highly sought coltan (colombo tantalite) which they illegally mine and smuggle from occupied territories. This has contributed to the proliferation of mobile phones in the West. Even the Pentagon has defined coltan as ‘highly strategic’.
Amnesty International, the International Rescue Committee (USA) and Oxfam International have confirmed a genocide of more than 5 million Congolese by the invading troops. Often people are buried alive, shot dead or chopped with machetes, their bodies thrown into rivers or forced down the latrines. The toll is higher and worse than that of Kosovo and Rwanda itself. Isn’t it? If it goes unreported, it is because stakeholders have managed to suppress the story and to protect the perpetrators from accountability.
Adding to that the destruction on a massive scale of Congo’s socio-economic infrastructure. Whole factories are dismounted and taken to Rwanda or Uganda, such as the sugar cane factory in Kiliba, south Kivu, which has been transferred to Jinja, Uganda with the approval of the RCD rebels led by Adolphe Onosumba. Another rebel leader, Jean Pierre Bemba’s forces are well known for looting the same under their control, and cutting people’s hands if they did not harvest enough timber.
Congonline.com reported that Ugandans have massacred many Congolese in Gemena, Bemba’s own birth town! Twice the armies of Rwanda and Uganda had fought over diamond in Kisangani, leaving 3,000 Congolese dead, the city destroyed, and this at 1,500 km away from their borders with the Democratic Republic of Congo which they claim to be securing from rebel incursions!
But the Democratic Republic of Congo is not Kosovo. The international community has proved indifferent to the tragedy of the people of Congo by being slow to respond and to act quickly (what can 3,500 unarmed UN observers do in the a country the size of the whole western Europe?) with regard to the deployment of a peace keeping force along the border of Congo with its neighbouring Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi, capable of implementing a real cease fire, the unconditional withdrawal of all non-invited forces, the organisation of a conference on a lasting peace in the Great Lakes Region. Congo’s territorial integrity is non-negotiable.
Despite the burden of war, the people of Congo have kept their morale high, and are not ready to let themselves be humiliated. There is only one Democratic Republic of Congo and they don’t want it divided. Congo’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity are non-negotiable!
The Mai-Mai warriors, loyal to the government in the east have taken the resistance into the very heart of rebel-controlled territories where the Congolese flag is still flying in many localities. The aggressors control only the main cities, towns and road junctions, but they dare not go to the interior because they know what fate awaits them. But the Mai-Mai are the target of a negative campaign, including by the MONUC, the UN mission in the DRC. They are being labeled as ‘negative forces’ and put in the same box with the Interahamwe. No! The Mai-Mai are native Congolese fighting against occupation. They held one Kenyan, one Swedish and 27 Thais hostage for over two months after they caught them red handed while harvesting timbers for a Ugandan-Thai forest company called DARA-Forest. Another proof that multinationals are very much involved in the looting of Congo’s resources.
There are serious crimes against humanity being committed in Congo by a Rwandan-Ugandan-Burundian coalition. They must not go unpunished. If the USA and Britain punished Irak, Japan and Germany for invading other countries, why not Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi who are doing exactly the same in the Democratic Republic of Congo? These powers and the international community as a whole, which they influence so much, must do away with selective morality. Justice for the people of Congo now! Nuremberg in Congo now!
Despite several closes in it being unfavorable to Congo’s national sovereignty, the government in Kinshasa signed the Lusaka Peace Accord.
The inter-Congolese dialogue is indispensable. But it should not take place according to the dictate of external forces and should be held in Kinshasa, Congo’s capital. Otherwise, the inter-Congolese could be seen as a “Sword of Damocles” over a sovereign people.
Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi must unconditionally withdraw their troops from Congo in accordance with the UN Security Council resolutions. Only then can Congolese talk freely among themselves, looking at the past and deciding on the future of their country in the framework of the inter-Congolese dialogue stipulated by the Lusaka peace accord.
A national South Africa like truth and reconciliation commission will be very necessary here, because there will be no peace and reconciliation in Congo in particular and in the Great Lakes Region in general without justice.
The international community must set up an international tribunal to try and punish those responsible for crimes against humanity since 2 August 1998, as well as convene an international conference on the lasting peace in the Great Lakes region of central Africa. Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi (and those who support them) must pay for the damages they have caused in Congo.
As long as there is no democracy in Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi - now led by a small clique in power – there will be no peace in that region and these countries will continue to export their problems into Congo. The people of Congo are not responsible for the 1994 genocide which took place in Rwanda where Rwandans killed each other. Why must they pay a heavy price for it and for their hospitality? The Hutu refugees must be reintegrated in society there. It is now four years since Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi invaded Congo. How come they have not managed to root out the rebels?
Finally, instead of deploying its troops and observers inside Congo, the UN must rather deploy them along the borders of Congo with Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda so that all the parties in the conflict may feel secure.
The people of Congo’s priority of priorities is the national reconstruction. But they are aware that they cannot achieve that without cooperating with other countries who really love and want to help them. That is why the people of Congo believe in a mature and fair partnership with ‘any’ country in the world. That is what we mean by a new political, economic and social vision.
But it looks like the war on terror is very much going to imping og Congo’s natiional sovereignty. Why do I say that? Well, read for yourself what in this banner I carried during the last biggest demonstration against the war on Irak in London:
Thank you very much.
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