02 novembre 2007
Representation of Feminity: Dr Faida Mitifu
Three things strike one as odd in the life of Her Excellency
Dr. Faida Mitifu, the Congolese Ambassador in Washington, D.C.: 1) She’s a
woman and the mother of three in the competitive male-dominated arena of
Congo’s diplomacy; 2) She was born in 1959 in the city of Bukavu, in the
eastern Congo, where most of atrocities
against women are currently taking place; and, last and not least: 3) Her
doctoral dissertation in Francophone literature at the University of Georgia,
in Athens, Georgia (USA) is entitled “The
Representation of Feminity in Zairian Novels”---representation of feminity
in Congo's patriarchal diplomatic corps being the very thing she's doing in her
daily life today! Before this life in the limelight, she concurrently taught
African and Caribbean Francophone literature at
Ambassador Faida Mitifu in an unguarded moment at Willard InterContinental
Hotel in Washington, DC/Photo: Alex Engwete
This post first appeared on my blog under the same title on MyTelegraph
The Holy Bible has eaten the soul of my nation from the inside and left it an empty and stinking shell
At Congo’s independence in 1960, Mircea Eliade, the expert
on myths and religion, had this anecdote to comment about the way Congolese
people lived the event, or rather turned it into a cargo cult, in the opening
pages of his book “Myth and Reality”: “In
some villages the inhabitants tore the roofs off their huts to give passage to
the gold coins that their ancestors were to rain down. Everything was allowed
to go to rack and ruin except the roads to the cemetery, by which the ancestors
would make their way to the village. Even the orgiastic excesses had a meaning,
for, according to the myth, from the dawn of the New Age all women would belong
to all men.” He then went on to add: “We
may suppose that “mythical behavior” will disappear as a result of the former
colonies’ acquiring political independence.”
Eliade couldn’t have been more wrong. With political
independence now in its 47th year, a far more nefarious myth has now bugged the
soul of the Congolese nation: The Holy Bible and the vicious fundamentalists
totting it everywhere, even in market places and in packed and stifling “taxis-buses.”
After more than fifteen years of absence from the Democratic
Republic of the Congo (DRC), my homeland, I started going back there on a
regular basis in 2003, and even living in the capital city of Kinshasa for half
of the year since then. This experience was not so much a narrative of
non-return than a cultural turbulence of reentry. For instance, during the
Congolese presidential electoral campaign in July 2006, watching television one
night, I was mystified to watch and hear a pastor who was being interviewed
exclaim: “This is a special country and a
special people: God had prophesied on this land and its people! Politicians
better watch out.” Asking people around me what he meant by that
admonition, they advised with condescension that I read Isaiah 18. And I, for
one, was among those who used to claim: “No
one reads anymore in the Congo."I meant by this aphorism that the practice and performance of literature as
experienced in the West has all but disappeared in the country. But I was
discovering that night that I needed to amend that aphorism as follows: Congo“The one book being read and misread in the is The
Holy Bible.”
Consider this other instance: On another one of my stays in
All this galore could have been great materials for comic relief had it not also parasitized the political arena!
In February 2006, after years of dictatorship and more years
of the bloodiest war in Africa dubbed “
On August 17, 2006, as the country was awaiting the
publication of the results of the first turn of the presidential elections, the
“communications” people of Jean-Pierre Bemba, the most formidable contender to
the incumbent president Joseph Kabila, produced a narrative of the country on
their party-owned television network “Canal Congo TV” (CCTV). They brought on
the set this young “prophet” who “had a dream” on the outcome of the elections.
Strangely, the text of the Congolese prophet was the very text of the dream of
another prophet: Daniel (2:31-45).
“Show me the dream and its interpretation” (6) were the
threatening words Nebuchadnezzar had thrown at the “magicians,” “enchanters,”
and “sorcerers” of Babylon who were put to the ordeal of finding
out not only the king’s disturbing dream but its interpretation as well. The
biblical narrative goes on to say that “the
mystery was revealed to Daniel in a vision of the night” by God (19), thus
saving those “wise men” from
destruction by unveiling Nebuchadnezzar’s dream and its interpretation to
Daniel as the narrative of the Babylonian kingdom: the famous messianic “Dream
of the Golden Image.” Duplicating Daniel’s process, the Congolese television
prophet likewise had a nightly vision too, in which God allowed him to crack
open the unfolding mystery of Congo’s
future.
According to the Congolese television prophet, Nebuchadnezzar’s dream as pertaining to the Congolese situation was to be interpreted as a narrative in six installments:
1. The “head of [the] image” in “fine gold” represents the Belgian colonial regime, as gold is associated with a monarch’s crown;
2. The “breast and
arms of silver” represented the administration of
3. Mobutu’s brutal regime was the image’s “belly and thighs of bronze”;
4. The regime of Laurent-Désiré Kabila, the assassinated father of the incumbent, was the image’s “legs of iron”;
5. The transitional government led by the incumbent Joseph
Kabila was the image’s “feet partly of
iron and partly of clay”;
6. The regime that was about to unfold in the wake of the
presidential elections will be Jean-Pierre Bemba’s upcoming regime of “stone” (the French word “pierre” (stone) having been extracted
from Bemba’s first name and conflated with the biblical “stone” which, according to verse 34, was set to shatter the image’s
legs: “As you [Nebuchadnezzar] looked, a
stone was cut out by no human hand, and it smote the image on its feet of iron
and clay, and broke them in pieces[.]” The Congolese prophet, however,
doesn’t stop there. Contradicting himself, he then equates the stone, which he
had previously conflated with the person of Bemba, with the Congo, “the
stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth”
(35).
Congolese street and television preachers have a built-in
disclaimer in their prophetic dithyrambs. The television prophet who made these
predictions about a month prior to the runoff elections couched his disclaimer
as follows: if you choose the incumbent despite these dire warnings, everything
he does will be doomed to fail as he is already doomed by the Good Book. The
incumbent did win at long last (with 58%), but to some Congolese who voted for
Jean-Pierre Bemba, who obtained 42% in the runoff elections, the new
democratically-elected president’s administration is doomed by God Almighty as
he might have stolen the elections through black magic or by a devilish
conspiracy with the international community that claimed the elections fair and
square!
Not to be outdone in the religious realm, the incumbent’s camp circulated its own prophecy, which even found its way on the official website of Congo’s President, authored by his official editorialist, Marcel Nzazi Mabidi, who had furbished his pen under Mobutu with his magic realist lyrical praises to the Zairian dictator.
There’s a national “Jesus Christ” in the Congo: Simon Kimbangu (1887-1951); and a “New Jerusalem,” the city of N’Kamba, in the Bas-Congo
Prophet Simon Kimbangu, a catechist, had turned into a
political and religious leader in the early 1920s, a change that made him the
enemy of the colonial state number one. He was swiftly deported into another
province where he died in internal exile under Belgian rule in 1951. Unlike
Daniel, Kimbangu didn’t write prophecies but he’s alleged to have left a
“word-of-mouth” corpus of prophecies that his family and his followers have
used to set up one of the most successful money-making churches in Central Africa, spanning multiple countries, complete
with radio and television stations in Congo-Kinshasa and Congo-Brazzaville, as
well as schools and one university. And still unlike Daniel, Kimbangu is today
a messiah, God’s “Special Envoy” as
the Kimbaguists call him in the full name of their church, the ECSK---“Eglise du Christ au Congo par l’Envoyé
Spécial de Dieu Simon Kimbangu” (the Church of Christ in the Congo by God’s
Special Envoy Simon Kimbangu).
Here’s Kimbangu’s prophecy, as captured by Marcel Nzazi
Mabidi:
"Congo will one
day be independent. For 40 years the country will go through chaos and will
experience daunting difficulties and sufferings of every kind. Then good
fortune will come. The country will first be led by a sheep (Joseph Kasavubu,
the first president). That man will be a native of the province where I was
born.
The country will then
be led by a wild beast (Mobutu) who will come to cast aside the sheep. During
the rule of the wild beast marked by terror, the country will be ransacked.
Money will be lacking in the country. Even banks will be empty.
Then a man will come,
a meteor, a native of the province where I will die (Laurent-Désiré Kabila).
His rule will be very short. His main role will be to chase the wild beast from
power.
Then someone will
come, a young wise man (Joseph Kabila). It’s him that will save this country
and bring to the people true independence.”
To really understand that this country has lost its marbles,
we have to turn back to Isaiah 18, which now passes as the foundational text of
the Congolese “imagined community.”
Even the most seemingly rational Congolese read in Chapter 18 of the Book of Isaiah the prophecy that confirms their narrative as the Lord’s chosen ones, beside the people of modern-day Israel, especially the first verse of this chapter that has the prophet relaying God’s message intimating to a nation “which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia” to
“Go, you swift
messengers,
to a nation, tall and
smooth,
to a people feared
near and far,
a nation mighty and conquering
whose land the rivers
divide.”
A very twisted reading indeed, for if there was in the
African Great Lakes a nation of “tall”
people, it would be the Tutsi Rwandans, the archenemies of the Congolese. When
all this happened, I don’t have a clue. But The
Holy Bible had effectively done its damage…and today most Congolese live
with the expectation that Armageddon---and the ensuing high---might strike
anytime!
This article was first published on "OpedNews" under the same title.
While Congo is being destroyed, America has other African fads
America’s
African fads have laws that are often unfathomable for Africans
themselves. There was an Ethiopian fad when footages of starving
children used to fill the screens of our TV sets. There was an Apartheid fad---with Nelson Mandela’s turning into a household name.
There was also a Rwandan genocide fad. Nowadays, there’s a Darfur fad,
fuelled by powerful iconic figures like George Clooney and Angelina
Jolie. While these fads are by no means detrimental, as they put Africa
on America’s psyche, they have a negative tendency however on putting
heavy blinders on Americans willing to invest energies on other crucial
plights facing the African continent. In this regard, President Bush’s
focus on malaria as well as former President Bill Clinton and Bill
Gates’s initiatives on this malarial scourge on the African continent
are worth hailing as the exception that confirms the general rule of
America’s African fads. This article was originally posted on "OpedNews" website where it was featured as "headline."
As energies are
rightfully being mobilized on the Darfur genocide in the Sudan, right
next door in the Congo a Darfur-like catastrophe is in the
making---involving, amid the ongoing indiscriminate killings of
innocent civilians, the destruction of women through “sexual terrorism,”
the use of brutal mass rapes as weapons of war, as well as the
displacement, this year alone, of more than 350,000 people. There’s
scant mention of this humanitarian disaster and of these atrocities in
the media beside the recent notable exception of the harrowing report
by New York Times’ Jeffrey Gettleman entitled “Rape Epidemic Raises
Trauma of Congo War” (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/world/africa/07congo.html?_r=1&oref=slogin)
with the companion photo slideshow by Hazel Thompson (http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/10/06/world/20071002CONGO_index.html).
One legend of the horrific slideshow reads: “Every day, 10 new women
and girls who have been raped show up at the hospital. Many have been
so sadistically attacked from the inside out, butchered by bayonets and
assaulted with chunks of wood, that their reproductive and digestive
systems are beyond repair.”
Beside this
kind of occasional reporting, one has to rely on heroic voices in the
wilderness of the likes of Georgianne Nienaber or Keith Harmon Snow.
Late
in the rainy afternoon of October 24, 2007, Congo’s President, Joseph
Kabila, landed at Andrews Airforce Base (AFB) in Maryland, for his
meeting with President Bush on October 26.
As
if to greet him The Washington Post published the same morning, on its
A13 page, a piece entitled “Atrocities in East Congo Attributed to All
Parties: Fighters Routinely Terrorize Civilians, Report Says.” The
Report the article was referring to is the Human Rights Watch on
eastern Congo published the previous day that blames the atrocities on
all those involved in the Kivu provinces conflict, including the
Congolese regular army. What this report and the Washington Post
article failed to mention was that nowadays these atrocities aren’t the
norm within the ranks of the Congolese army nowadays and when they do
occur, they are met with stiff penalties. And the Washington Post
article failed to mention one key finding of the Human Rights Watch
report: the active and direct involvement of the Rwandan government in
the misery of the Congolese. According to the Report, “Hundreds of
Rwandans have joined Nkunda’s units and then become soldiers in the
Congolese army (…) Furthermore, according to Congolese and MONUC
officers, several soldiers currently active in the Rwandan Defense
Forces have been captured in Congo, fighting with Nkunda’s forces” (http://hrw.org/reports/2007/drc1007/).
The report has also evidence of forced child recruitment into Nkunda’s
militia carried out on Rwandan territory by Rwandan officials
collaborating with this war criminal.
Rwanda
has been playing all along this card of the victim and of genocide to
divert international attention 
from its terrible enterprise in the
Congo---a plunderous venture that some social scientists have called
“military entrepreneurship.” Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame for
instance has always maintained that his troops invaded Eastern Congo to
pursue Hutu militiamen responsible of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. But
what he doesn’t mention today is that it’s in the mountainous forest of
the Kivu provinces that these militiamen are entrenched, a territory
his troops controlled during the five years of Rwandan occupation of
eastern Congo. Were his troops too busy pillaging the place instead of
pursuing the murderous militiamen? Does anyone bold enough to confront
him and tell him that whereas there were a million victims of the
Rwandan genocide, his continued meddling in Congo has cost the lives of
upward of 4 million Congolese?
What’s more,
Dr. Denis Mukwege, the Congolese surgeon who treats these women victims
of “sexual terrorism” and who was also featured in the New York Times
piece mentioned above, recently gave an interview to “Radio France
Internationale” in which he clearly established the overwhelming
responsibility of Nkunda’s forces in the recent atrocities. But by
lumping together Nkunda and the Congolese government in these
atrocities, the Rwandan government and its ally Nkunda have achieved
yet again avoiding the full brunt of their culpability and
responsibility in the wanton murders and atrocities in the Democratic
Republic of Congo. There’s now talk of granting a way out to exile in
South Africa to Nkunda while his surrendering troops are being sent to
Congolese army training centers for their retraining and incorporation
into the army without first determining their guilt in and prosecuting
them for these atrocities.
The rationale
of Nkunda for setting up his militia is to defend the Congolese Tutsis.
In a country that counts 450 ethnic groups, if this idea is to be taken
seriously, then Congo would need to have 450 separate armies---with
each defending their own tribes! As every single Congolese keeps
repeating ad nauseum to whomever would care to listen: “There are no
majority ethnic groups in the Congo; we all are minority tribes.”
In
the general official indifference that greeted Congo’s President Joseph
Kabila in the American capital, there was one notable exception. On
October 26, 2007, as President Bush was hosting the Congolese
President, Senator Barack Obama issued a press release that stated in
no uncertain terms what the American government needs to do urgently in
the Congo: ““It’s time the Administration stops ignoring the call by
Congress to appoint a special envoy to the DRC, and strengthen the U.N.
peacekeeping force which is working to stabilize the eastern part of
the Congo. The seriousness of the situation there was recently
highlighted by devastating reports about the escalation of sexual
violence against women in the region. I’ve asked Secretary Rice for
answers to how our government will help curb this violence, and I urge
President Bush to address this issue today.” President Bush met Obama
halfway in ordering that an antenna of the American Embassy in Congo be
set in the eastern provincial capital of Goma, at the Rwandan border,
in order to have a close monitoring of the situation on the ground.
Furthermore, there are also plans for the U.S. to train Congolese
anti-insurgency units. Until then, Congo is having a hard time shaking
a stubborn monkey from its back. It’s about time the American public
also see through the smokescreen of genocide that the Rwandan
government keeps throwing around to justify its criminal endeavors in
the Congo.
Le Rapport de « International Crisis Group » : une insulte au Gouvernement congolais et au peuple congolais
La RDC est un Far-West des ONG occidentales
Il est
intéressant de noter que le Rapport No.133 du 31 octobre 2007 de International
Crisis Group intitulé « Congo : ramener la paix au Nord Kivu »,
rapport censé être destiné d’abord au gouvernement de la RDC, qui figure en
tête de liste de ses recommandations, ne comporte dans sa version française que
le sommaire exécutif étalé sur une page internet alors que le rapport complet en
langue anglaise en format PDF---après élimination de la page du titre, de la page
des tables des matières et des 6 pages d’appendices en fin du
rapport---comporte 31 pages. Qui seraient donc les vrais destinataires de ce
rapport ? On se le demande…
Le plus
troublant, dans ce sommaire exécutif, c’est que ICG diagnostique, sans la
moindre preuve et en porte-à-faux par rapport à toutes les analyses des experts
de la communauté internationale, l’échec de l’expérience démocratique en RDC :
« Cette nouvelle crise est le
résultat des échecs du processus de paix congolais en matière d’intégration de
l’armée, de gouvernance économique et de justice transitionnelle. Au cours de
la seconde moitié de la transition – qui s’est achevée officiellement avec
l’élection du président Joseph Kabila et celle d’une nouvelle assemblée
nationale en 2006 – les tensions avaient diminué grâce à une politique
d’endiguement, d’apaisement et la priorité donnée, sur le plan international, à
la tenue des élections. Les causes à l’origine de ces tensions n’ont toutefois
jamais été traitées. La province est ainsi restée coupée en deux et les
territoires de Masisi et Rutshuru comme pris dans une guerre froide entre l’ancien
groupe rebelle soutenu par le Rwanda, le Rassemblement Congolais pour la
Démocratie (RCD) et l’armée nationale (FARDC). Il y eu également très peu
d’avancées en ce qui concerne le désarmement et de la réintégration des milices
Mai Mai ou le rapatriement des rebelles hutu rwandais (FDLR). L’exploitation
illégale des ressources naturelles s’est ainsi poursuivie et toutes les
communautés ont continué à s’armer, animées par de profonds ressentiments les
unes envers les autres, liés aux problèmes d’insécurité foncière, aux
violations massives des droits humains pendant la guerre et aux rivalités pour
le contrôle des ressources naturelles ». On voit clairement ici la
tentative de cette ONG belge d’établir une équivalence morale entre le
gouvernement légitime issu des élections en RDC et la milice armée de Nkunda,
soudainement et sans préparation pour le lecteur non-averti assimilée au RCD de
Ruberwa qui, rappelons-le, a participé au processus démocratique et a des
représentants tant dans l’Assemblée Nationale que dans l’Exécutif de certaines
provinces. C’est le même programme d’équivalence morale utilisé par l’ONG
américaine « Human Rights Watch », dans son dernier rapport sur le
Congo, qui blâme les violences infligées aux femmes des Kivu à toutes les
parties en présence : FDLR, nkundistes, FARDC et les groupes de résistants
Maï-Maï. Pourtant, à la différence des conclusions et recommandations extrêmes
de ICG, « Human Rights Watch » a au moins eu l’honnêteté
intellectuelle de reconnaître que derrière Nkunda, il y a toute la
participation active du gouvernement rwandais pour saper la paix en RDC. Dans
son rapport du 23 octobre 2007 intitulé « Nouvelle Crise au Kivu »,
Human Rights Watch dit en effet : « Le
Rwanda, une force majeure dans l’Est du Congo, a régulièrement exprimé son
soutien à Nkunda, disant qu’il jouait un rôle vital dans la protection des
Tutsis au Nord-Kivu. A l’occasion, certains fonctionnaires rwandais ont
autorisé Nkunda à recruter de nouveaux combattants, y compris des enfants, au
Rwanda même ». Mais, contrairement à toute évidence, et contredisant
Human Rights Watch dont les travaux sur le terrain sont très approfondis et ont
une triangulation rigoureuse des sources, International Crisis Group nie toute
implication directe du Rwanda dans le conflit : « Jusqu’à présent, la crise n’a pas franchi la frontière et
entraîné une implication directe du Rwanda ». Avec des mensonges flagrants
de cette sorte, on pourrait sérieusement se demander à quel jeu joue ICG dans la
région africaine des Grands-Lacs. On pourrait aussi se poser des questions sur l’objectivité
de ses enquêteurs sur le terrain, qui sont pour la plupart des Rwandais et qui souvent
se bornent à rédiger leurs enquêtes à partir des bureaux climatisés de ICG à
Nairobi !
Les mensonges de International
Crisis Group ne s’arrêtent pas là. ICG prétend que Joseph Kabila et Laurent
Nkunda ont directement négocié : « Renforcé
par son élection, le président Kabila a engagé des discussions discrètes avec
Nkunda, avec la facilitation du Rwanda, et conclu un accord portant sur
l’intégration progressive des troupes de Nkunda dans les forces armées
régulières, un processus connu localement sous le nom de mixage. De façon
implicite, il était également convenu que les troupes de Nkunda ne quitteraient
pas la province tant que les conditions générales de sécurité ne se seraient
pas améliorées de manière significative. Cependant, ni Nkunda ni Kabila n’ont
été en mesure de contenir les extrémistes de leurs camps opposés à cet accord ».
Encore une fois, on élève Nkunda en partenaire équivalent au Président de la République
Démocratique du Congo. On rappellera d’abord que ce processus de « mixage »
était une idée de la MONUC, pour laquelle elle a vu ses véhicules essuyer des « caillassages »
en règle de la population des Kivu. Dans les réunions occasionnelles du groupe
appelé « 3 + 1 » (Ouganda, RDC, Rwanda + la facilitation américaine),
des réunions ponctuelles des chefs d’états-majors des pays des Grands-Lacs, il
était plutôt convenu une sorte de monitoring au niveau des frontières pour
contenir des groupes armés. Au fait, selon un court article de « Jeune
Afrique » daté du 22 octobre 2007 intitulé « L’exil pour Nkunda », au cours de l’une de ces
réunions, il était plutôt question pour Nkunda de prendre le chemin de l’exil.
De là à prétendre que Kabila avait négocié avec Nkunda, on voit dans quel
délire est plongé ICG et ses analystes.
International
Crisis Group ne s’arrête pas à des mensonges. Il prend le prétexte de son
rapport pour lancer des insultes au peuple congolais et à son armée : « Afin de compenser la faiblesse de
l’armée nationale, le président Kabila a cherché à coopter la MONUC dans les
opérations ». On connaît en réalité ce qui se passe dans le Nord-Kivu
depuis que les FARDC ont massé 20.000 hommes dans la région : la reprise
de tous les avant-postes de Nkunda et des désertions massives dans les rangs de
sa milice---certaines recrues rentrant chez elles au Rwanda où elles ont été
recrutés.
C’est dans ses
recommandations que International Crisis Group montre ses vraies couleurs. Les
destinataires de ces recommandations sont au nombre de quatre : 1) le
gouvernement de la RDC ; 2) le Procureur de la Cour Pénale Internationale ;
3) la MONUC ; et 4) les principaux pays donateurs, notamment les Etats-Unis,
le Royaume-Unis, la France, l’Afrique du Sud et la Belgique.
Aucune part dans
ces recommandations de ICG, on ne retrouve une injonction à la poursuite, à l’arrestation
et au procès de Nkunda, reconnu comme un criminel de guerre par la RDC. Bien au
contraire, ICG recommande une accommodation avec ce criminel de guerre. Sa
première recommandation l’énonce clairement : « Suspendre les offensives militaires contre les troupes de
Nkunda, adopter une stratégie d’endiguement et nommer un officier militaire de
haut rang à la tête d’une task force (un groupe de travail spécial comprenant
des officiers de la Structure Militaire d’Intégration – SMI – du Programme
National de Désarmement – PNDDR – et des observateurs militaires de la MONUC)
afin de discuter avec des représentants de Nkunda au Masisi et au Rutshuru,
sous la supervision de la MONUC ». On saute alors aux recommandations
de ICG au deuxième destinataire de son rapport, le Procureur de la Cour Pénale
Internationale, dans l’espoir d’y voir figurer un langage fort contre Nkunda. Rien !
Une seule phrase, d’une généralité absconse et d’un laconisme de sage
bouddhiste : « Ouvrir des
enquêtes sur les crimes atroces commis depuis juin 2003 dans les Kivus et
poursuivre leurs auteurs ». Sans la moindre mention du nom de Nkunda.
On croit rêver…
S’il est une
chose qu’on a constatée en Afrique et en RDC, c’est que ce territoire est
devenu le Far-West des ONG. Il y a bien des ONG qui aident à alléger la misère
des gens, telle que « Médecins sans Frontières ». Mais il est d’autres
ONG qui cherchent à enfoncer les Congolais dans la misère et qui sont des
collaborateurs de facto des ennemis de la RDC. International Crisis Group
rentre dans cette deuxième catégorie.