DR Congo polls chaos invokes a country with a violent history

Supporters of Joseph Kabila on streets.

As tension is brewing in the Democratic Republic of Congo following elections results announced this month, there is fear that the country may slide back to civil war even as a defiant Jospeh Kabila took the oath of office, this invokes a country marred by a history of violence since the 30^th June 1960  independence.

The results had been delayed with Joseph Kabila, 40 trouncing ten contestants to garner forty-nine percent of 18 million votes against his closest rival Etienne Tshisekedi, 78, who got thirty-two percent in polls with had a fifty-nine voters turnout.

“I consider this declaration an outright provocation to our people and I reject it in full. As a result I consider myself from this day on as the elected president of DR Congo” Tshisekedi said in a statement insisting that he garnered fifty-four percent of the votes against Kabila’s twenty-six percent.

Four other contestants have already rejected the results which the international observers say the voting was flawed but it wasn’t fraudulent enough to skew the results.

As tension escalates dozens of citizens have died while others including international expatriates have fled the capital Kinshasa where the government have deployed over 20,000 forces to try and restore calm.

“I call on the international community, which has relentlessly encouraged me to guarantee a peaceful process, to not only find a solution to this problem but take all possible measures so that the blood of the Congolese people is not spilled again” Tshisekedi is quoted by AFP correspondent before he sow himself with a bible in his house.

Analysts have ruled out the Supreme Court which will arbiter on the results before announcing the winner on 17 this month not to be able to quell the tension. Earlier during the campaign Kabila expanded the apex court from seven to twenty seven sitting judges believed to be his supporters.  Earlier this year the clause that required a seconded runoff in case of no definite winner with a 50% win was scrapped off stoking the legality of the court ruling.

“We saw what happened in Kenya . We saw what happened in Zimbabwe and we saw what happened recently in Ivory Coast . Things have got worse because we have not anticipated this” Vital Kamerhe, third placed contestant said.

As sporadic armed conflict starts, memories of conflict as started with the birth of the nation is rekindled. While other African countries stared as colonies, DR Congo started as a personal estate of King Leopold II of Belgian to make him the richest men in Europe with ivory, copper, timber and rubber from the country.

Leopold’s ambition and greed which spurred the scramble and partition of the continent saw him hire Welsh born journalist-explorer Henry Morton Stanley in 1878 to cut treaties with over 400 chiefs to form the current DR Congo.

Stanley was nicknamed by locals as Bula Matari- ‘Breaker of Rocks’ from dynamite, for his ability to hand out severe punishments to dissents. By independence several millions, estimated to be a half of the population had lost their lives to what Joseph Conrad in his famous book on Leopold’s Congo Heart of Darkness call “the vilest scramble for loot to ever disfigure the history of human conscience”

As reality of independence dawned and faced with the wind of change engulfing the continent Belgium tried to rig the first election in country against first Prime Minister who had irked the colonialist with his pan-Africanist ideology he got from the 1958 All African conference in Ghana .

“Who can forget the volleys of gunfire in which so many of our brothers perished, the cells where the authorities threw those who would not submit to a rule where justice meant oppression and exploitation” Lumumba said told Belgium delegates during independence “We are no longer your monkeys”

This caused the first loose coalition government headed by Lumumba as election winner and other 12 parties forming to shaky like an extension ladder and lasted only a few days of peace in the country. Chaos was sparked when the army controlled by 1,100 Belgian corps mutinied for salary increase.

Hell bend to outset Lumumba Belgium flew in more troops, liaised with the mining companies on 11^th July and reinstate Moise Tshombe to declare Katanga , rich in mineral an independent state.

The bloodshed that followed saw assassination of Lumumba on January 1961 for siding with Russia and Czech Republic to aid in military expedition to rein Katanga and control an uprising in Kasai . USA cold war interests and Belgium mining welfare aided in propping Tshombe and Joseph Desire Mobutu to power fast on 14th September 1960 and later in 1965 as the absolute president. As the western ‘friendly tyrant’ Mobutu lead a kleptomaniac regime enjoying a $9Billion aid, US contribute $860Million of this. 

“The Congo paid heavily for the chaos surrounding the advent of independence. For years to come it became the battleground for warring factions, marauding soldiers, foreign troops, mercenaries forces, revolutionary enthusiasts and legions of diplomats and advisers.” Martin Meredith writes in his book The State of Africa .

Most serious and detailed conflict detailed in The UN backed report on Illegal Exploration of Natural Resources and other forms of Wealth from the DRC published from 2001-2003which unearth the extent of the great lakes war fought in the country.

It is from the start on 1988 that DRC was engulfed in humanitarian crisis in four stages according to the report; 1993-1996; July 1996-July 1998; August 1998-January 2000 and the final transition of January 2001- June 2003.


From 1988 to 2003 conflict drew a score of African countries; Angola , Zimbabwe , Rwanda , Burundi , Uganda , Namibia , Chad and all the way to the bloody diamond fields of Sierra Leone . The main allure being DRC’s vast mineral resources with the uncanny ability to bring to her doorstep hounds picking on he carcass amid plundering, war inhumanities and smuggling. 

In 1988 DRC was rotting under corruption, weak central government and huge debt. Mobutu was ‘dinosaur’ against the second democratic wind of change which turned the world against him. The fall of the Berlin wall and the extent at which aid was misused was enough cocktail to bring the world against Mobutu.

Joseph Kabila

To shore his failing image, Mobutu took a populist angle by being a regional powerbroker to meddle in Rwanda and Burundi’s genocide conflict despite DRC hosting over 1.5 million Rwandan refugees like Interahamwe, Mayi Mayi and Banyamulenge escaping the prolong tribal conflicts in the region.





Rwanda and Uganda resentful at cross border raid in Kivu and Eastern Congo chose to support Laurent-Desire Kabila rebellion against Mobutu. Angola too joined the fray by supporting Katanga rebels to hit back on CIA and Mobutu’s support to Jonas Savimbi and Unita by spying on her and the support offered by Cuba and Russia . 


When Angolan backed rebels tried to overthrow Mobutu in 1977 & 78 the west swiftly came to his aid, this was hit back time for Angola .

The second stage saw Kabila becoming the president of DRC on 17th May 1997 while Mobutu died four months later in Morocco . Uganda ’s Yoweri Museveni is quoted by Times journalist Martin Meredith in State of Africa to capture the all incident thus:

“The big mistake of Mobutu was to involve himself in Rwanda . So it’s really Mobutu who initiated the programme of his own removal. Had he not involved himself in Rwanda, I think he could have stayed, just like that, as he had been doing for the last 32 years – just doing nothing to develop Zaire, but stay in what they call power, by controlling the radio station, and so on”







The third stage (August 1998-January 2000) flared when Laurent Kabila dismissed Rwandan who aided his rise to power. His advisers couldn’t understand why a country ‘so small to be found in the map’ could control their government.



After propping him to power, Burundi , Rwanda and Uganda financed rebels because Kabila could not control the cross border raids by rebels from DR Congo to their country. On the other hand, Zimbabwe and Angola aided Kabila with help from Namibia and Chad .

Although the initial aims was to control their borders, the president’s otiose ambition of being regional kingmakers and unbridled greed for diamond, petroleum, gold, timber, Colton and other minerals the  DRC was a proxy war for looters. Generals from these foreign countries unleashed terror on citizens on mines to loot minerals. 

The acme of this stage was in 2000 when Rwanda and Uganda turned against each other in three occasions to control Kisangani the diamond hub. The illegal exploitation become an open secret.

Etienne Tshisekedi who sow himself as president

“Outraged by their ill-concealed looting enterprises and the damage inflicted on Kisangani, The UN Security Council demanded that Rwanda and Uganda withdraw from Congo with both Museveni and Kagame cited as ‘accomplishes’ by the UN panel” Meredith writes.


The last stage (January 2001-June 2003) saw the withdrawal of foreign armies after the July 2002 peace treaty by Joseph Kabila after his father was shot at a close range by his bodyguard on 16^th January 2001. 

The just concluded election rekindles a history of bloodshed in DR Congo as the world waits with abated breath the outcome of Supreme Court ruling as Tshisekedi , US and France already call for calm in the country.

Is Africa Depicted Negatively In The Foreign Press?

To the West an African Pornography: Starving girl trying to get to feeding center,in Sudan famine, 1993. Photo by Kevin Carter who committed suicide not long after receiving a Pulitzer for the photo. No one knows if the girl lived. 

Though depicted negatively by foreign media, Africa is not the first continent in the world to suffer. China is awakening giant even after the military aggressiveness of Japan on its population.

Japan itself picked up after the devastating effect of atomic bomb in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Aborigines of Australia were executed and discriminated upon. The Nazi German’s treatment of Non-Aryans (not only Jews) is amongst the most horrific historical event and culminated to WWII.

The mighty USA has its own bag of mysteries. The northern states fought relentlessly with southern conservatives to abolish slave trade. The African-Americans suffered discrimination akin to apartheid with the FBI campaigning to drive The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jnr to suicide. Biological weapons were used to exterminate Red Indians from the Colorado gold rash.

The bottom line is that blood has to be split for nation building. It is a catharsis. The land is turned red mud with blood. The mud then binds the nation together in a common cause like independence, peace (formation of Southern Sudan) and industrial revolution.

War is an opiate to a solution or a break up like former Yugoslavia.

Always the foreign journalists may depict Africa negatively. Their audience and editorial policy may dictate. But at times it borders in sheer ignorance. A bleak nth Africa for the Western world.

Two cases exemplify, firstly Ori Brafman the New York Times intelligence columnist wrote of Al Qaeda job opportunities in African slums. Brafman gave example of Kenyan Mathare and Kibera slums (biggest in Africa after Soweto in Johannesburg, South Africa).

“The poverty in those slums-no running water, no electricity, sewerage flowing- is difficult to describe. As a small group of us walked down the street, our guide pointed to some men in an alley ‘See, over there?’ he said almost nonchalantly, ‘that’s is al Qaeda’’ Roots of Extremism (Sunday Nation, March 22^nd 2009)

This is far sited; there are organised crimes in Kibera, like in all ghettos similar to Harlem, but the idea of an Al-Qaeda cell nauseate!

I’m a Kenyan, there is Al-Qaeda encroachment in Northern coast at Lamu and around Somali border, but a cell in the capital city in farfetched.

The second case standing out like a sore thumb is Washington Post former Nairobi bureau chief Blaine Harden’s Africa: Dispatches from a fragile continent, (Harper Collins Publishers, 1990)

The book raises the thorny issue on how Africa and Africans are portrayed in the western media. The title dispatches from a fragile continent espouses the idea. The author ‘weeps’ for Africa not out of pity but due to lack of understanding.

Blaine Hardens quips in introduction that people in his home town, Moses Lake in Washington DC die properly. When old or in a car wreck but not by famine, leprosy and cholera like Africa.

While meeting together with other journalists in Addis Ababa at the ‘first world famine watcher’ harden writes: “(we) dined together over discussions of the advisability of repeated shampoos to get germs out of our hair….we warned each other to be careful: keep your fingers away from your mouth while in the camps. The children who want to touch you do not use toilet paper. Their little cute hands carry all kind of disease.”

I wasn’t smiling while reading the lines.

The negative coverage is echoed too by Dr. Kofi Annan, Ms Graca Michel and Mr., Michel Camdessus, members of Africa Progress Panel.

“The remarkable progress that Africa has made in the past decade is not widely recognized. Across the continent, there are numerous success stories. We have seen the spread of free and fair elections, a rise in school enrolment rates, and determined effort to combat malaria…..recently, the Africa Progress Panel, on which we sit, launched its 2009 state of Africa report in Cape Town. We recognize that the root of development crises always begin outside Africa” (http://www.africaprogresspanel.org/)

The forth estate illusions

Intellectually how western media cover African news boils down to the fourth estate issue. For the state’s affairs to run smoothly both estates must work with one goal.

The four estates including the media are executive, judiciary and legislature.

In reporting the fourth estate always places the states interest first.

UK Times Martin Meredith in The State of Africa: A history of fifty years of Independence. (Free Press, London. 2006) writes of the ism-schism of capitalism and communism. The elephants- USA and USSR- descended on the African grass for the struggle of world supremacy.

The cold war, Otiose to Africa, was triggered by emergence of sovereign states which could topple the scales at world scene.

At its peak in ‘60s US supported Mobutu Sese Seko to plunder Zaire and aided in usurping Liberia’s resources. American firestone controlling rubber plantations helped prop semi-illiterate Samwel Doe. Liberia and Zaire become the largest information centers for CIA spy information. VOA turned the other way since it was broadcasting from Liberia to Africa without paying a dime!

On the other hand Russia, in association with Cuba, propped Major Mengistu Haile Mariam red terror in Ethiopia and thwarted west influence in Angola against rebel leader Jonas Savimbi in a blood bath.

In his book Blaine Harden gets abrasive at the United States involvement in Zairian crises. The blame is placed on Mobutu Sese Seko. President Eisenhower regarded Patrice Lumumba; Mobutu’s rival a mad dog and personally ordered his assassination. Mobutu answered directly to CIA Kinshasa chief Lawrence Devlin while being on the CIA payroll even when he was the president!

On 20^th August 1965 President Eisenhower gave orders to CIA to use

$100,000 to eliminate Lumumba so as to avoid ‘another Cuba.’ Mobutu was thus propped even though Zaire was collapsing. Within 23 years Mobutu’s regime received $860 million aid for the CIA to operate base in Zaire and supply UNITA guerrillas under a one Jonas Savimbi in fighting Marxist forces in Angola.

To digress, the US at this age still hold on the Cuban embargo when they could finance Mobutu, don’t you feel the irony?

The two authors, Meredith and Harden, give insight on the state affair stance when they tackle Sudan civil war.

Meredith treats Sudan with velvet gloves; he argues the war started after the introduction of sharia laws.

This is far from Blaine Harden, placing the problem on British rule. Harden, an American, writes that by the failure to effectively colonize the Muslim North the Britons segregated the Christian South.

The segregation brought two distinct cultures. At independence the ‘suit’ wearing Christian South considered the northern Muslims with suspicion. The Arabs had sold them as slaves.

The passing of sharia laws just exploded a simmering volcano and turned the fissures into a mountain of a problem.

With otiose cultural misgivings Anglo-phone and Franco-phone flex their muscles to neo-colonize their former colonies with devastating effects. French propped and turned against Jean Bedel Bokassa of Central African Republic because he was a French soldier during the WWII.

In a bid to suppress the spread of Anglo-phone influence in central Africa, French propped and maintained a genocide regime in Rwanda against the Tutsi and moderate Hutus. The effect was the 1994 Rwandan genocide which spread towards DRC and Northern Uganda causing the fall of two ‘Anglo-phone’ leaders, viz. Mobutu Sese Seko and Milton Obote.

BBC and UK press inclusive of Meredith’s book relished in the coverage of above stories! My gripe with The State of Africa: A history of fifty years of Independence is casting of French as villains in expense of the Britons.

The BBC hardliner stance on Zimbabwe is a state gimmick against the retaking of white farms by the government.

May I not be misunderstood. The foreign press should not be wholesomely criticized for writing negatively on Africa. Impact of a story is what makes news. The foreign media in Africa is always free from influence and threat in news reporting.

This has helped Africans to get news above partisan reporting.

When the Kenyan government during the 2007-08 election crises banned live broadcast, Kenyans got the news from CNN, BBC, Al-Jazeera and Sky News.

The tribal tension forced people at home, including me, to shun all radio stations and newspapers and gather for the evening Swahili BBC broadcast!

That is why foreign journalists are always banned from some countries. BBC’s John Simpson rubbed Zimbabwe’s government the wrong way by his reports. He was forced during the tension between Robert Mugabe and Morgan to report from Johannesburg, South Africa.

Blain Haden was almost thrown out of Kenya for accurate reporting when the government’s crackdown on the media was rife. Kenyan media houses were forced to self regulate to skirt around the government’s shears.

Book Review: The State of Africa: A history of Fifty Years of Independence by Martin Meredith

TITLE: The State of Africa: A history of fifty years of Independence.
AUTHOR: Martin Meredith
PAGES: 752
PUBLISHERS: Free Press, London (2006)
GENRE: History

Martin Meredith book is conceive and offer insightful knowledge on the historical development of Africa as a continent, before the settlement of European colonialist, through the struggle of independence, the emerging of nations and the state of Africa, as a continent, in the world map.

As Times journalist who did corresponding in Africa, an auto-biographer and a writer, Meredith has written an outstanding book. A masterpiece. Albeit if his use of facts is anything to go by, the author went to greater length to glean for facts and figures from respected authors and sources. The authoritative bibliography speaks for itself.

The book’s magnitude in understanding the contemporary state of the African continent-from whichever facet you see it- is echoed by Bob Geldof. The Irish pop singer who has been involved greatly with charity work in the continent (notably the fund raising record Do they know it’s Christmas’ for 1984 Ethiopian famine victims), says “you can’t even contemplate about the contemporary state of Africa without first having a look at why Africa as a continent is where it is.”

The State of Africa starts with the ancient African kingdoms before the scramble and partition of the continent by European colonialists lead by Germany’s Otto von Bismarck in the Berlin conference. With little knowledge the colonialist least cared as they curved out states transcending across ancient lands separating kingdoms, tribal lands and merging other which never existed before.

Notable are the Bakongo of Congo, Ashanti of Ghana and King Moshoeshoe of Tswana. The Britons got their protectorates to Great Britain, the French assimilated minor French provinces in Africa; the Belgians were content to reap Zaire to enrich king Leopold II, together with the Portuguese, Spaniards and Italians.

The seed of discord was thus implanted.

The Europeans forcefully struggled and settled in Africa. As Christianity and western education spread in the Africa, an elite class emerged and fought for independence. The old guard- African leaders who inherited power from colonialists- brought the birth of nations amid glimmer of hope riding the crest of expectations about the future of Africa.

The European colonialists retreated- hastily like in Algerian independence struggle- to leave the leadership to Africans. The old guards experimented with ideologies. Some countries picked up economically shortly before the coups, the cold war effects and the lingering neo-colonialism.

Martin Meredith writes of the effects of the East and West power struggle effects on the continent. In their ism-schism of capitalism and communism the elephants- USA and USSR- descended on the African grass for the struggle of world supremacy.

The cold war, Otiose to Africa, was triggered by emergence of sovereign states which could topple the scales at world scene. At its peak in ‘60s US supported Mobutu Sese Seko to plunder Zaire and aided in usurping Liberia’s resources. American firestone controlling rubber plantations helped prop semi-illiterate Samwel Doe.

On the other hand Russia, in association with Cuba, propped Major Mengistu Haile Mariam red terror in Ethiopia and thwarted west influence in Angola against rebel leader Jonas Savimbi in a blood bath.

The struggle of Anglo-phone and Franco-phone effects on the continent in former colonies is tackled. With otiose cultural misgivings Britain and France flex their muscles to neo-colonize their former colonies with devastating effects.

French propped and later turned against Jean Bedel Bokassa of Central African Republic because he was a French soldier during the WWII. In a bid to suppress the spread of Anglo-phone influence in central Africa, French propped and maintained a genocide regime in Rwanda against the Tutsi and moderate Hutus.

The effect was the 1994 Rwandan genocide which spread towards DRC and Northern Uganda causing the fall of two ‘Anglo-phone’ leaders, viz. Mobutu Sese Seko and Milton Obote.

In the story “In the name of prophet” The State of Africa has extensively covered the Egyptian revolution against the monarchy of King Farrouk and it culmination to pan-Arab fever that culminated to 1965-67 Arab-Israel war. Muarmar Gadaffi’s taciturn involvement in internal affairs of Chad and the bloody diamond fields of Liberia and Sierra Leone war by training guerrillas.

The root cause of Nigerian conflict on Biafra war is caused partly by the murder of Chief Abiola is elaborately written. In addition, the assassination of Patrice Lumumba by Belgians and The CIA, and the culmination of the Zaire’s war is written with historical flair.

My gripe with the book is the casting of France. Meredith, a Briton, espouses the idea of treating the French as villains in expense of the Britons. It aligns with the Hollywood blockbuster Godzilla with a story of a French illegal nuclear testing gone haywire.

The effect, a giant dinosaur, creates havoc in New York City. The French in the movie are down casted and stereotyped like the Arabs and Russians.

Meredith treats British colonies, especially South Africa and Sudan with velvet gloves.

In “A degree in violence”, a story of Robert Mugabe (need I say a villain); little is said of suffering of Zimbabweans under the apartheid rule, And Mugabe’s house arrests and the death of his infant son. Likewise the impact and magnitude of apartheid rule in South Africa is sidelined.

In addition the book places the onset of Darfur war after the introduction of sharia laws. This is far from Blaine Harden, once a Washington Post bureau chief Nairobi, book Africa: Dispatches from a Fragile Continent placing the problem on British rule. Harden, an American, writes that by the failure to effectively colonize the Muslim North the Britons segregated the Christian South.

The segregation brought two distinct cultures. At independence the ‘suit’ wearing Christian South considered the northern Muslims with suspicion. The Arabs had sold them as slaves.

The passing of sharia laws just exploded a simmering volcano and turned the fissures into a mountain of a problem.

Insightful
Martin Meredith’s book gives insight into understanding the winding politics and events in Africa easily. You will understand why French President Nicolas Sarkozy personally attended, and got booed at Omar Bongo Ondimba’s funeral for interfering with Gabon’s internal affairs. Paul Kagame’s gripe with the France over the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

The book should miss in the shelf if you need to know how Charles Taylor ended up at ICC in The Hague and why Omar el-Bashir is wary of ICC indictment and southern Sudan supporting him though the Janjaweed militia kills with impunity.

The reader will be conversant with how Somalia warlord Aideed drove Americans and UN officials out of Mogadishu in ‘Black Hawk Down’