Better than nothing: archaic devices keep Bumba supplied with a few precious goods.
Scooters: the best way to carry a heavy load.
Democratic republic of the Congo
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Timeline
1960: The
Republic of the Congo gains independence from Belgium. Civil war breaks out, exacerbated
by foreign intervention.
1961: Assassination of the first head of state, Patrice Lumumba.
1965: General Joseph-Désiré Mobutu seizes power in a military coup.
Backed by western powers, he embarks upon unifying and pacifying the country, renamed
Zaire.
1970 : Mobutu establishes his Popular Revolutionary Movement (MPR) as the sole
legal party.
1986-1990: The country draws mounting foreign criticism for its human rights
abuses. Mobutu announces the advent of a multi-party system, which never comes into
effect.
1994: Following the Rwandan genocide, some 1.3 million ethnic Hutus, including
many who actively took part in the genocide, flee the country and settle in camps
in eastern Zaire.
1996-1997: Rebel party leader Laurent-Désiré Kabila forms the Alliance
of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of the Congo. He launches an expedition in
the east of the country. Supported by Rwanda and Uganda, he attacks Hutu camps in
Zaire, some of which served as bases for guerrillas attempting to destabilize the
new regime in Kigali. Mobutu flees into exile and dies four months later. Kabila’s
troops enter Kinshasa. Kabila declares himself president of the Democratic Republic
of the Congo.
1998: Kabila turns against his former allies, Uganda and Rwanda, with support
from Angola and Zimbabwe. The country descends into civil war and is split in two.
1999: A ceasefire accord reached in Lusaka never comes into effect.
January 17, 2001: Kabila shot and killed in an attempted coup d’état.
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We
shall either find a way or make one.
Hannibal,
Carthaginian general
(c.247-183 B.C.)
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Key
figures
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Population:
49.8 million (1999)
GNP per capita:
$110 (1999)
GNP per capita
annual growth rate:
–8.3 % (1990-98)
Life expectancy
at birth:
51 years (1998)
Adult illiteracy rate:
41.1 % (1998)
Sources: World Bank, UNDP. |
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Once
supplied by the Congo River, this city controlled by rebel groups has lost its vocation
as one of the country’s bread baskets. Instead, cycling shopkeepers travel perilously
to bring back prized goods from afar, while the Internet offers a reprieve from isolation
A
little
Cessna from Aviation without Borders loaded with crates of drugs for the hospital
makes big circles in the sky before touching down in Bumba. Seen from above, the
runway looks like a strip of sand in the middle of vegetation. The sound of the purring
engine stirs Bumba out of its lethargy. Men in uniform rush towards the runway, blocking
it with a wreck of a truck, which a Ugandan officer soon orders them to move. Civilians
hurry over on bicycles, and a European priest waves his arms.
As soon as the plane arrives, local taxis called “tolekas”—ancient bicycles with
rear seats padded with wool—pick up the passengers. Gently crunching in the sand,
the bikes have become slumbering Bumba’s sole means of transportation, except for
a few sputtering motorcycles owned by diamond-hunters who display their luck until
they run out of fuel: a barrel of oil costs $300.
The immense, majestic Congo River, the main artery of this country, which is as large
as Europe, is now impracticable. The whaling ships have stayed in Kinshasa, the capital,
the ferry boats are motionless, the dug-out canoes lie carefully hidden in the tall
grass of the banks for fear that soldiers will requisition them.
Bumba was once the centre of a fertile farming area that kept Kinshasa supplied in
manioc, rice and palm oil. Nowadays, the sleepy city lies in territory controlled
by one of the rebel groups sharing what remains of the Democratic Republic of the
Congo, the former Zaire: the Movement for the Liberation of the Congo, headed by
Jean-Pierre Bemba, strongly supported and flanked by Ugandan troops.
Since the outbreak of the war, the shopkeepers who once were supplied by the river
have no other choice but bicycles. The local population hails them as veritable heroes.
The bravest travel all the way to Kisangani, capital of Eastern province, or Butembo,
on the Ugandan border, to bring back two highly-prized treasures: bales of second-hand
clothes and blocks of salt. They reach astronomical prices because the cyclists risk
life and limb pedalling across a thousand kilometres of forest in war-torn areas
where armed gangs survive by looting and kidnapping civilians for ransom. These men,
who weigh an average of 60 kilos, carry loads that sometimes exceed 100, and each
trip takes over two weeks.
Throughout the city, which has no potable water or electricity, palm oil burns in
small lamps ironically named “Bemba lights” after the local warlord. Elsewhere, they
are called “Kabila lights” after the recently shot chief of state. Palm oil also
turned Father Carlos, a Belgian priest who has been living in Equator province for
30 years, into a hero. It powers a generator he patched up to run an ancient wireless
telegraph, Bumba’s only means of communication with the outside world.
But it would be wrong to think that this forlorn place lives in a vacuum without
order and authority. First, rebel leaders, like the central government elsewhere,
maintain structures that keep a close watch on the population and have the means
to transmit information without delay. Second, the Congolese have formed thousands
of grassroots groups that oversee and organize day-to-day activities, perform the
function of social control, distribute meagre resources, and even mete out expeditious
justice. And a foreigner cannot walk around the market stalls without paying a prior
visit to the “president.” Elected by the shopkeepers, he is responsible for keeping
order. He chooses stall locations, sets prices and settles disputes.
Like in the poor neighbourhoods of Kinshasa and other towns, crime is relatively
low in Bumba, not because people are more virtuous but because “vigilance committees,”
which were formed a long time ago to try and prevent atrocities by the military,
use every means at their disposal. When a thief is caught in the act, he has the
living daylights beaten out of him and, in some cases, finds himself with a flaming
tyre around his neck. But human rights organizations have also spread throughout
the country. They make observations, take notes, publicize atrocities (and there
are many) and write reports.
Standing in the middle of Bumba, the hospital is impeccable. The staff is dressed
in white; the rooms are swept clean; a young pharmacist proudly shows off her rows
of neat shelves. It takes visitors a few moments to figure out why they feel uneasy.
The only healthcare facility in this city of 100,000 people is practically empty.
At the end of a long, deserted corridor, nuns have thrown a sheet over a motionless
shape on the floor, leaving only the army boots sticking out. It is the body of a
government soldier taken prisoner who died of hunger because no one could afford
to feed him and he had no relatives in the area. A physician on duty summed up the
situation: people have no money. Not even enough to pay for a doctor’s visit, which
costs the equivalent of two French francs, or the barest minimum of drugs, much less
sterile gloves, thread and bandages for operations.
“Deaths outnumber births,” says Father Carlos, “and there are more patients than
pupils. My parishioners stay away from Sunday mass because they’re ashamed of being
seen wearing rags, or nothing at all!”
The schoolhouse doors have been stripped off, the benches and blackboards taken away
by people who used them to make coffins. But they remain remarkably organized. The
student population has dropped because families can afford to spend the tiny sum
required to pay school fees on only one of their children. The government has not
paid teachers for ages, but every three months, parents contribute the equivalent
of one dollar, and the teachers eke out a living on small incomes.
The classrooms at the Institut Notre Dame, a private school run by nuns, offers a
surprising spectacle: the pupils have no textbooks. Instead, they work with a few
overcrowded note-
books. Neat rows of arithmetic problems are written out next to English and Latin
grammar lessons on the blackboard, and the pupils, who speak polished French, eagerly
greet foreign visitors, asking them, for example, whether the election of a new president
in the United States will change anything in a devastating war that nobody wants.
Civil servants nostalgically recall the one time they have been paid in the past
three years: a few months after Kabila’s seizure of power, they received $180 in
wages and back pay. Since then, they only go to work to keep their spirits up and
preserve their social standing, carefully recording each visitor’s name and position.
Bumba may have few means of communication, but one of them is virtual: the Internet
has breathed new life into grassroots organizations. When Father Carlos’ generator
works, volunteer groups use his satellite phone. Perhaps the Internet has also enabled
the Congolese, who are living in a divided, occupied country, to keep in touch with
each other, circulate information and, when necessary, contest the authorities in
place. The self-organization of civil society has offset the vacuum of government
and preserved what, in the eyes of the Congolese, represents the basics: the identity
and unity of their nation.
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Wamu
Oyatambwe*: “You’re on your own!”
Although the
famous “article 15” does not appear in a single law, it is the golden rule for survival
in the former Zaire. “Article 15” stands for four little words: “You’re on your own!”
In what was once the personal property of King Leopold II and, from 1908, a Belgian
possession, economic exploitation was imposed on the “natives” with a harshness unparalleled
in any other African colony. The relationship between the indigenous population and
the colonial power was based on fear and reprisals.
After the Second World War, half-hearted efforts to make up for lost time fell short
of offsetting the accumulated social and administrative backwardness. In 1960, the
year of independence, the country counted just one university graduate. The lack
of qualified personnel to manage the state, combined with the Cold War and Belgium’s
manipulations of ethnic conflicts, were in large part responsible for the Congo’s
plummeting into chaos.
The first social services, which mainly appeared in education and training, followed
Mobutu’s seizure of power in 1965 and the country’s pacification. But the use of
the state to satisfy personal interests to the detriment of the common interest emptied
the government of its substance and threw the country into a bottomless pit. Because
of the lack of separation between the single party and the state, the nationalization
of the economy and, especially, the spread of corruption, government structures were
moribund when Laurent Kabila seized power in 1997.
Faced with a disintegrating state that nonetheless remained a predator, the population
gradually developed mechanisms of self-regulation and self-defence to survive. They
could be seen everywhere. In the economy, everybody—especially women—plied a petty
trade or owned a small business off the books. In the legal sphere, informal mechanisms
steeped in traditional practices made up for the vacuum left by the state. They were
also visible in the social arena—schools and hospitals—even though the traditional
domination of the churches in this sector is on the wane. Lastly, in politics, a
myriad of farmers’, neighbourhood, professional and confessional (religious or secular)
organizations has cropped up since the late 1980s to promote common interests and
stand up for people’s rights against the appetites of what remains of the state,
or even against other groups. Their leaders are members of the educated but financially
bankrupt middle-class, traditional chiefs or simply strong figures.
But self-organization also has its limits. At best, the informal economy enables
people to survive. Might makes right is often the rule. Poor management, scheming
of every kind and cronyism are widespread. There is a blatant shortage of financial
and material resources; the only available aid, which is difficult to obtain, comes
from the west. Lastly, the war that has been raging since 1998 has cut the country
into two more or less equal parts, one of which is occupied by rebel factions under
the control of Rwanda and Uganda. The conflict has shattered the mechanisms of family
solidarity, which used to play a primordial role.
* Congolese
researcher, author of “The Catholic Church and Political Power in Congo-Zaire:
the Democratic Quest” (1997) and “From Mobutu to Kabila : the Avatars of an
Unexpected Handover” (1999), published in French by L’Harmattan, Paris.
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