OBA Newsletter #4
Susan Lyon
Dear Friends,
If you are following events in the DRC, you may have heard about the latest surge of violence in the Lower Congo Region South West of Kinshasa. Militarized police went with heavy weaponry into the cities of Banza Nseke and Luozi at the beginning of March 2008, just before International Women’s Day. Depending on the sources, the death toll is said to be between less than 10 to about 100.
You may wonder why a government which has gone out of its way to organize a two- week Peace and Reconciliation Conference in the eastern part in the country a few months before it would decide to go to war against people who are merely protesting against the manner in which the government has been treating them, more specifically about the fact that the government has failed to respect various provisions of the constitution regarding:
o Sending back to the province 40% of the revenues which had been sent to the central government;
o The election of the provincial government which was imposed by vote rigging;
o A provincial governor who is accountable to the Minister of Interior rather than to the Provincial Assembly.
Then there is the whole issue of the government’s vendetta against the Bundu dia Kongo (BDK), an organization which came about during the days of the Mobutu Regime (1969). Ne Mwana Nsemi is its leader. Sometimes described as a religious sect, it is much more than that. The context which gave rise to the BDK is one which saw the culture and the values of the Congolese people turned inside out, creating such a sense of disorientation and loss that the emergence of the BDK can/must be seen as one of the few positive reactions to the indignities and humiliations inflicted upon the Congolese people following their independence.
Prof Ernest Wamba dia Wamba’s contextualizing of the rise of the BDK as part of the process of resolving the National Question is more than welcome in a country which tends to be seen as so destroyed that nothing good could possibly come out of it. It is an extremely condensed, point by point, analysis/summary of a protracted process seen from a Congolese angle, pointing out with equanimity the various levels of responsibility in the failure to resolve.[See attachment in French--we hope to have a translation on the website soon.]
The readers with superficial knowledge of the post-independent history of the Congo may miss some of the more subtle points and allusions to how blind ethnocentrism stood in the way of building a national community of interest. As might be expected for such a highly condensed text, others with deeper knowledge of our history will find a weakness here and there. As, for example, with regard to the extra emphasis which could have been attributed to external influences (which are mentioned). Among them, the role played by the Congolese hierarchy of the Catholic Church in the demonization of Patrice Lumumba.
Jacques Depelchin
April 21, 2008