Congo: Two Stories, Two Lives

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fisttap afroeurope & tomdevriendt

Roland Gust was born to a Congolese mother and a Belgian father. He grew up in Congo, believing he was White. That is, until his family decided to return to Belgium when he was twelve. Twenty years later, he made a film about his life: The Belgian Colour Bar.

As long as I kept it to myself, there was no problem. Not for the outer world, that is. I remained Roland, the perfectly integrated coloured. I didn’t want to come across as a frustrated black man who was ungrateful for what Belgium offered him. I didn’t want to be expelled after so many years of trying, because I was begging for a recognition of my Belgian identity. I had to serve Belgium and remain silent.After all those years of absolute and blind dedication to the country of Belgium I have now crowned myself a Belgian. I have earned my place in Belgium and no longer need the Belgian’s approval to be a Belgian. As a Belgian I make use of my freedom of speech to tell my Belgian story. I no longer lie awake about the potential repercussions following my critical discourse about Belgium and the Belgian identity.

- From 5 Questions for Roland Gust by Tom Devriendt from Africa is a Country - The Belgian Color Bar

fisttap @telamigo (tomdevriendt)

Kwa Heri Mandima (kwaheri means goodbye in Swahili and Mandima is a village/growth point in DRC) by Robert Jan-Lacombe is a short, biographical exploration of his early life in the Congo. He never expected to say goodbye, but conflict made it so. Like The Color Bar above, this film explores similar issues of identity, belonging and non-belonging, race, memory, migration and displacement, albeit from a different perspective. It provides a good juxtaposition.

Why Rape?

fisttap @texasinafrica

Howard French asks about some thought provoking questions on the recent report on rape statistics in the Congo about how the Congo is constructed in the media and our rather limp global response to the ongoing war which has killed well over five million people to date. I think it's interesting to consider French's critique alongside this extract on the Congo from a longer, interesting piece about the lack of media attention to the protests in Burkina Faso recently published in Pambazuka:

The Guardian's 2010 list of most tagged countries confirms to some extent that history of familiarity with a place guarantees coverage. Egypt, South Africa and Zimbabwe got tagged more times than the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) and Sudan. Possibly because of its hosting of the World Cup, South Africa had 547 tags, outranking earthquake-stricken Haiti, which had 436 tags. Egypt had 219, while Zimbabwe had 144 tags, and yet the DRC had a paltry 124 tags, Sudan had 122 and Somalia even less at 113. All three are among the most unstable African countries of 2010 and yet they ranked lower than the World Cup host South Africa. The war-stricken Congo is one of the world's suppliers of raw materials for mobile and computer technology and ironically constitutes just over a fifth of the 604 articles on Apple. This is not a criticism of the Guardian as the paper does provide some of the best and insightful international news coverage, but these tags are unfortunately a skewed quantitative reflection of coverage patterns and the consumerist nature of public interest.

Saying this with all flippancy intended, the formula is simple. Reports of anti-British and homophobic comments by the African dictator everyone loves to hate, and shark attacks in Sharm el-Sheik make catchy headlines. Never-ending sagas of jungle wars and mass rapes, unless involving powerful countries, do not. Or unless they're packaged as humanitarian causes fronted by celebrities and award-winning journalists like George Clooney and Nicholas Kristof. Their combined interest in the Save Darfur campaign, malaria awareness and referendum for north–south separation ensured Sudan received frequent coverage in the New York Times. Unfortunately, no similar twin-set of movie star and scribe of Clooney's and Kristof's stature have permanently adopted the DR Congo or Somalia as their primary cause. Although one of the aims of international news is to appeal to as broad a global audience as possible, how broad is our interest and genuine our humanity as people if we suffer war and compassion fatigue towards stories on the DRC, Somalia and Sudan?

But now with all these revolutions and uprisings going on, places like the DR Congo are a distant tragedy. Despite the exceedingly valuable coverage of the uprisings by some news networks, there is an underlying sense of competition within the media to see who can land the best, exclusive interview or provide the most comprehensive coverage. In the face of such fierce competition, taking a few moments in between protest broadcasts to ask the world to remember the 5.4 million (and rising) Congolese dead since 1998 or to take a serious look at Compaoré's megalomanic scheming in Burkina Faso wouldn't be a suicidal gamble with the ratings. Events in Africa and the Middle East shouldn't be placed in competition with each other; what's happening in Nigeria, Syria or Libya can share the spotlight with many other untold or under-reported stories. It’s a question of willingness to pluralise news stories and cover unfamiliar terrain.

Joy Dibenedetto, a broadcast executive and founder of alternative news site, Hum News, reports that in 2009 research conducted by Hum News found that there are 237 countries or territories in the world, and the world's largest news organisations report from only 121 countries or territories. Out of 237 global locations, 116 are not covered. If true, that's just under 50 per cent of the world's stories potentially out of mainstream media focus – almost 50 per cent. Allow that to sink in.

And in the Red Corner... And in the Blue Corner...

This past Saturday I witnessed a spat on Twitter between President Paul Kagame and British journalist Ian Birrell. Kagame was featured in the Financial Times series Lunch With ... (insert name of African politician) in which he claimed that because the UN and the international community (i.e the West) had failed to act on the 1994 Rwanda genocide they had no 'moral right' to criticize him. Birrell tweeted that Kagame was 'despotic and deluded' with a link to the FT piece. Kagame, riled by Birrell's tweet and he immediately responded and you can read the whole exchange, thanks to View from the Cave. What's probably most interesting about this conversation is that it's probably the first time a President and journalist have had such a lively exchange on Twitter - praise be to Twitter for providing a platform for spontaneous engagement which would previously have been at a press conference, a chance meeting or something of that sort... Unlike other world leaders (or former) who talk to no one and probably have their PR staff tweeting news links and press releases like Barack Obama (@barackobama), Nick Clegg (@nickclegg), Jacob Zuma (@sapresident) and Ban Ki Moon (@secgen), Kagame, like Hugo Chavez (@chavezcandanga) actually does it himself and interacts with people.

What was different about this particular exchange is that its one of the few times Kagame's engaged with a critic and it comes on the back of a painfully boring but rosy You Tube World Leaders interview in which as 'Africa is a Country' rightly put it 'Kagame spins You Tube'. It was a PR exercise -soft questions with no further probing from an interviewer who although smart, funny and likable on other occasions, was not the best choice for this gig. Kagame's had this social media friendly Prez rep for a while now (also see this) but after seeing Saturday's exchange the cracks are beginning to show because Kagame's not entirely the affable, savvy guy he's appears to be online. Sure he has his pluses but not where the Congo or political opposition are concerned.

Kagame didn't actually answer any of the questions posed by Birrell about his government's silencing of political and media opposition. Instead it was a slinging match in which the foreign minister, Louise Mushikwabo also got involved. In a rather strange move, she protected her tweets the very next day as if it was an act of self-protection from a threat, but its an act of hiding. Doesn't she know protecting your tweets only restricts who can see them, but those already following you, can still interact with you and retweet your tweets for others to see? Restricting dialogue won't stop truth-seekers and critics, nor does it advance the democracy and openness which Kagame claims his government does, in the YouTube interview.

Apart from a self-censoring foreign minister and an angry President slain by a journalist and a global supporting cast of tweeters and bloggers (:0), another interesting thing to emerge out of this online spat was the reactions of Kagame's supporters which ranged from blind praise of Kagame to the 'British' lack of understanding  of the Rwanda situation to censure of a Western journalist for disrespecting an African leader. It goes without saying that the staunch Kagame supporters would say this, but when seemingly more open-minded Africans also pick on Birrell's Westernness and re-buff his use of the words 'despot and deluded' because they're not fit for an African leader, there is a big problem. Birrell's identity has nothing to do with the facts - that Kagame shuts down debate in Rwanda and has had Congolese and Rwandan blood on his hands since 1996 - and Kagame's Africanness doesn't make him immune to being called a despot. Why do we get so defensive about these terms? When people call Bush and Blair war mongers, genocidaires and war criminals there's no problem, but African leaders are untouchable because they're African? Screw that. I'm a previous sufferer still in recovery mode from Afro-centric syndrome; a state of mind which mainly afflicts Africans raised in Africa: we always defend our leaders against Others (i.e Westerners) in the name of Africanness, even if we're defending the wrong thing, because the defensiveness that comes from the Them/Us relation borne of colonialism and lived neo-colonial experience is so deeply entrenched in our psyche. Not so say this is wrong - but there are times when its completely justified and necessary to take up this position and there are times when it just isn't. This incident and in some defenses of the crimes of people like Mummar Gaddaffi, Omar Bashir and Robert Mugabe it isn't. Sorry.

Lumumba's Last Letter

My dear companion [Pauline],


I write you these words without knowing if they will reach you, when they will reach you, or if I will still be living when you read them. All during the length of my fight for the independence of my country, I have never doubted for a single instant the final triumph of the sacred cause to which my companions and myself have consecrated our lives. But what we wish for our country, its right to an honorable life, to a spotless dignity, to an independence without restrictions, Belgian colonialism and its Western allies-who have found direct and indirect support, deliberate and not deliberate among certain high officials of the United Nations, this organization in which we placed all our confidence when we called for their assistance-have not wished it.


They have corrupted certain of our fellow countrymen, they have contributed to distorting the truth and our enemies, that they will rise up like a single person to say no to a degrading and shameful colonialism and to reassume their dignity under a pure sun.


We are not alone. Africa, Asia, and free and liberated people from every corner of the world will always be found at the side of the Congolese. They will not abandon the light until the day comes when there are no more colonizers and their mercenaries in our country. To my children whom I leave and whom perhaps I will see no more, I wish that they be told that the future of the Congo is beautiful and that it expects for each Congolese, to accomplish the sacred task of reconstruction of our independence and our sovereignty; for without dignity there is no liberty, without justice there is no dignity, and without independence there are no free men.

No brutality, mistreatment, or torture has ever forced me to ask for grace, for I prefer to die with my head high, my faith steadfast, and my confidence profound in the destiny of my country, rather than to live in submission and scorn of sacred principles. History will one day have its say, but it will not be the history that Brussels, Paris, Washington or the United Nations will teach, but that which they will teach in the countries emancipated from colonialism and its puppets. Africa will write its own history, and it will be, to the north and to the south of the Sahara, a history of glory and dignity.

Do not weep for me, my dear companion. I know that my country, which suffers so much, will know how to defend its independence and its liberty. Long live the Congo! Long live Africa!

Patrice

Patrice Lumumba

2 July 1925 – 17 January 1961

The Assassination of Lumumba

Georges Nzongola Ntalaja in The Guardian

Adam Hochschild in The New York Times

Hochschild: "...[after the assassination] more fateful was what was to come. Four years later, one of Lumumba’s captors, an army officer named Joseph Mobutu, again with enthusiastic American support, staged a coup and began a disastrous, 32-year dictatorship. Just as geopolitics and a thirst for oil have today brought us unsavory allies like Saudi Arabia, so the cold war and a similar lust for natural resources did then. Mobutu was showered with more than $1 billion in American aid and enthusiastically welcomed to the White House by a succession of presidents; George H. W. Bush called him “one of our most valued friends.

This valued friend bled his country dry, amassed a fortune estimated at $4 billion, jetted the world by rented Concorde and bought himself an array of grand villas in Europe and multiple palaces and a yacht at home. He let public services shrivel to nothing and roads and railways be swallowed by the rain forest. By 1997, when he was overthrown and died, his country was in a state of wreckage from which it has not yet recovered.
Since that time the fatal combination of enormous natural riches and the dysfunctional government Mobutu left has ignited a long, multisided war that has killed huge numbers of Congolese or forced them from their homes. Many factors cause a war, of course, especially one as bewilderingly complex as this one. But when visiting eastern Congo some months ago, I could not help but think that one thread leading to the human suffering I saw begins with the assassination of Lumumba.
We will never know the full death toll of the current conflict, but many believe it to be in the millions. Some of that blood is on our hands. Both ordering the murders of apparent enemies and then embracing their enemies as “valued friends” come with profound, long-term consequences — a lesson worth pondering on this anniversary."

From Our Kenyan Brother in The White House

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

October 25, 2010

Presidential Memorandum--Child Soldiers Prevention Act

Presidential Determination
No.       2011-4

MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF STATE

SUBJECT:    Presidential Determination with Respect to Section 404(c) of the Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, pursuant to section 404(c) of the Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008 (CSPA), title IV of the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (Public Law 110 457), I hereby determine that it is in the national interest of the United States to waive the application to Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, and Yemen of the prohibition in section 404(a) of the CSPA.

You are authorized and directed to submit this determination to the Congress, along with the accompanying memorandum of justification, and to publish it in the Federal Register.

                        BARACK OBAMA

The above is waiver issued by President Obama casting a blind eye to four countries that use child soldiers in conflict because it is in America's 'national interest'. Chad, Yemen, Sudan and the Congo will continue to receive military assistance and aid from the U.S because these are allegedly terrorist hotspots where child soldiers might benefit America as snitches and such. LOL. Seriously, my Kenyan brother Barack WTF is this? Because America is fighting some imaginary war against terrorism and has taken it upon itself to 'reform' the armies of these troubled nations, it's now okay to encourage the military conscription of children. Really??? Where is the evidence showing that child soldiers are a neccessary force in fighting 'terrorism' directly linked to the U.S?  If people in the UK are unneccessarily shrieking over children being involved in student protests what makes it okay for children in the Congo to be forcefully drafted as soldiers? Would it be okay if kids from Texas or Ohio or California were drafted into an anti-terrorist army to snuff out Osama bin Laden from his cave - that is if bin Laden actually exists? Would that be alright Mr President?

Whilst I stand firmly against U.S sanctions against any nation and am highly critical of U.S 'military dictatorship assistance' to other nations, the logic for issuing this waiver on child soldiers is downright ridiculous. It is never okay for young boys to be conscripted to fight or for young girls  to be drafted in as fighters, bait or sex pleasures for the older soldiers. Barack Hussein Obama (insert all totemic titles, family lineages and praise names here), adults start wars, not children and it is governments like yours and the dysfunctional, power hungry leaders in conflict countries that create situations like this. Sod national interest, this is a selfish, heartless move that reflects yet again the U.S's two-faced attitude on children's rights. While there are U.S-inititated global policies to help combat child poverty, the U.S has not ratified human rights protocols like the Convention on the Rights of the Child - only Somalia and the U.S have not ratified this treaty. While it can legitimately be said that Somalia has no functioning government, the U.S does have a government and as a state, boldly proclaims itself as 'the home of the free and the brave', so what gives? 

Somalia is one of the countries not on the US waiver list, but both the U.S and Somalia refuse to ratify the same international law. Under the Child Soldier Prevention law Somalia which currently receives help, will no longer get assistance, while the U.S continues to support and fund Ethiopian invasions into Somalia that have left over 300 000 homeless refugees in the past.  Cue Crickets at their loudest. (KMT) OTOH Burma, receives no military aid from the U.S so the law does not make iota of difference, so the Child Soldier Prevention law is ineffective.  A very roundabout laughable way of doing things, isn't it? Obama would rather have just scrapped the whole thing instead of indulging in more lily livered bureaucracy and waste of tax payer funds. It might not be obvious to Obama, but its plain as day clear to me that stopping U.S aid will not stop child soldiers, neither is issuing waivers in the name of national interest effective in fighting 'terrorism', it's just more of the same ol' faffing from the U.S and this latest faff has our Nobel Peace Prize winning, Kenyan Brother in the White House's signature all over it. Change WE can believe in, yeh?

Global Terrorism

New N*E*R*D Video

 

Available on iTunes, 2 November 2010.

Pictures

1. Lucian Read - Civilian Corpses, Iraq

2. Jerome Delay - Dead Man in the Forest, Congo

3. Unknown - Children Mourning the Death of an Infant, Gaza

UN #Fail ...Again

pic jacked from newsone.com

I recently finished assisting on an academic project on UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on the protection of women from violence and their involvement in peacekeep and conflict prevention processes. After it's unanimous declaration in 2000 in Windhoek, Namibia, the subsequent failure to implement by member states led to a further UNSCR 1820, 1888 and 1889 being passed with the aim of safeguarding women and girls from sexual and gender based violence. Needless to say these were meaningless diplomatic hand-wringing declarations that amounted to piffle.

Even in countries where UN peacekeepers were stationed, violations of women continued unabated, Liberia and the Congo are prime examples. Even in an instance where the UN had a mandate to act as country administrator, like in Kosovo, the rights of women were not protected by UNMIK (UN Mission in Kosovo) or any of the UN Resolutions. On numerous occassions, UN peacekeepers have been found guilty of taking sexual advantage of civilians, trading food for sex or raping civilians as young as 6 particularly in the Congo, Haiti and Sudan. 

The latest in the series of catastrophies is the mass rape of 150-200 Congolese women and children by rebel fighters in Kivu in a space of 4 days, just an hour away from the UN base. How did the UN fail to intervene? How did they not know? A UN official in DRC claimed that "there was no particular suggestion of an attack, much less the kind of events like the mass rape." Lies. Absolute lies. The UN was 20km away for crying out loud! In '09 UNIFEM released statistics showing that in Kivu 40 women are raped per day! And we're s'posed to believe there is no 'particular suggestion'??? The UN should admit it's failure, it's more dignified than trying to weasel one's way out of this. While the UN is not be responsbile for the barbaric rapes (yes we all know that is the work of Rwandan Hutu and Congolese rebels, for want of minerals and military conquest), the UN is responsible for failure to act on them. With a year to go before the UN peace troops pull out of Kivu, this goes down as yet another failed UN mission and proof that a complete, complete, complete (!) overhaul is needed within the UN, that experts like Thomas Weiss have been calling for, for the longest time. But instead all this will amount to is one more beautifully worded 'never again' apology to the victims of Kivu and another non-mandatory, conscience-cleansing Security Council Resolution.