Justice, Peace, Integrity<br /> of Creation
Justice, Peace, Integrity<br /> of Creation
Justice, Peace, Integrity<br /> of Creation
Justice, Peace, Integrity<br /> of Creation
Justice, Peace, Integrity<br /> of Creation

Through tears and blood, a people is awakening

M0nrovia 28.02.2018 Gian Paolo Pezzi, mccj Translated by: Jpic-jp.org

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is back on the front page and as always telling bad news. During the Sunday Angelus, on February 4th, Pope Francis convened for February 23rd, a special day of prayers and fasting for South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

I came to the Congo to direct some workshops, give some lectures, to which the interviews on television Elikya and Radio Maria were added, on the theme of land grabbing. A world problem that has the huge and rich lands of the Congo, with its water reserves, in the viewfinder.

Just off the plane, around the middle of January 2018, it was the political revolt of the Catholic Church that invested me like a gust of wind. It was not just the fact that President Kabila is clinging to power. The March 31st March was something more: it claimed "the Sylvester's agreements". The elections, according to the constitution, had to be scheduled in 2016. The churches had then accepted the government's invitation to preach patience and calm and stipulated with it the so-called "Sylvester’s agreements” (December 31st, 2016) in exchange for the government’s commitment to hold the elections in 2017, to release political prisoners and to appoint a prime minister chosen by the opposition parties. On December 31st, 2017, however the government's will to not keep its commitments was evident. It was then no longer a matter of judging the actions of a president now in office for almost 15 years or of a government lacking any popular support: Kabila had betrayed his word to the Churches and had to leave.

On Sunday 21st January, Kinshasa and other cities of the country lived a surreal experience: priests leading crowded processions of faithful with their hands up to the sky, kneeling in the dusty streets, singing psalms and religious hymns and churches surrounded by policemen firing real bullets: 7 were left dead, 54 wounded, hundreds arrested. At least ten priests and two nuns were seized by the police, in different locations of the country. Young alter-boys, with liturgical clothes and the cross were forcibly loaded onto the back of the police cars. This image went around the world and became a symbol, and the violent repression of the government awakened the pride of a whole people who refuses to go back to a new dictatorship as that of Mobuto.

That day I was in Kisangani (the third city of the country), celebrating in my old parish, with the present of almost 2,000 faithful waiting for the call, "Out on the street". The parish priest, in the contrary way, at the end of the Mass invited the president of the Catholic men to announce that the manifestation was cancelled, because it is forbidden by the authorities. In defiance, the president did not show up. At the church door some young people shouted: "They do not have this right". "We won’t go", insists the parish priest. "Traitor", called out a young man and in a large group the young people joined those of the nearby parish willing to go out. The images bouncing from one to another WhatsApp showed young people, well organized, guiding their march away from infiltrators, others who collected tear gas canisters throwing them back to the policemen shouting: "We have the rosary, these are yours", and the police charging people with violence the unharmed faithful.

On February 5th, the Lay Coordination Committee of Kinshasa (the capital of the DRC), announced a mass celebration in memory of the victims of the January 21st violent repression. On February 11th, a march of the Congolese community living in Italy was convened in Rome, the Congolese neighborhood in Brussels, is in turmoil as always. The traditional youth procession that takes places every year in Isiro (The capital of the North East) starting from the Blessed Anuarite’s shrine (the martyr of the Simba revolution in the 60s) and reaches the cathedral, was categorically prohibited by the governor. Unlike December 31st, the events of January 21st were held in many cities of the country. The Protestant Churches have joined the Catholics followed closely by the Muslim community; the only church still silent for now is the Kimbanguiste National Church. The January 21st journey marked a no-turning point.

Therefore, what is so important at stake in all this revolt against the government that led the Catholic Church to make a coming out and becoming a leader protest of an entire country and the government slashing back by declaring as its "enemy number one" the Cardinal Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya, archbishop of Kinshasa and one of the 9 members of the papal committee for the Roman curia reform?

Mass Media speak of 4.5 million displaced persons; of conflicts rising in the east of the country; the absence of the state in many areas of public life; of an economy in disarray and of numerous companies (it seems about eighty), including public ones that are now private property of President Kabila and his entourage. The flight between Kinshasa and Kisangani, two near cities, costs as much as an intercontinental flight, because the airline is owned by the President. Public transport in Kinshasa is a drama and forces us to reduce the hours at the workshop. The European Community has distanced itself from the Kabila government even though its economic restrictions are likely to punish above all the population already exhausted by a war that has lasted for twenty years. Pope Francis appealed to "everyone, in conscience, before God, to ask ‘what can I do for peace?’ We can certainly pray, but this is not enough: everyone must say 'no' to violence because the victories obtained through violence are false victories, while working for peace is a benefit for all". But then, what keeps Kabila in power when everything seems collapsing and against him? No one believes he wants to follow the path of Mobuto’s thirty-year dictatorship, but that he tries to cling to power as long as possible with the stick and the carrot policy: the elections are now announced for the end of 2018, in June the President will announce whom he will support, and the registration for candidates and voters is already open. Yet everyone expects other delays because of lack of funds, political disturbances, and foreign interference. Until when?

Neither newspapers nor radios talk about it, but in a whisper, around a cup of coffee or in front of a cool beer everyone expresses him/herself giving basically two opinions summarized in the words, money and balkanization. Corruption, personal corporations, state thefts, accounts opened abroad and private enterprises founded with money and wealth of the country must be secured before leaving power. With money safe and even without power the Sphinx - a nickname of Kabila - will finally be able to smile and live as a Pharaoh. This is the opinion of indifferent people and lukewarm sympathizers. More disturbing is the theory offered by declared adversaries and enemies: the balkanization.

On the Internet there is even a complete and weary story of a state conspiracy under the title Des origines cachées du Sphinx à son accession sanglante au sommet du pouvoir (From the hidden origins of the Sphinx to its bloody accession to the summit of power). It tells of the natural Tutsi parents of President Kabila, of how Mzee Laurent Kabila was forced by the Ugandan and Rwandan allies, i.e. by Museveni and Kagame, both Tutsi by the way, to adopt him and declare him his son. How the young Kabila has jumped up at unbelievable speed all the military-political career steps to join his father in the "liberated" Kinshasa and collect his legacy at the planned time of Mzee’s death, a drunkard and women addicted person who become the ‘useful idiot’ for a dream never put aside, that of the Central African Tutsi empire. Some historical facts are now read as steps towards this dream, for instance, the administrative reform that divided the old 13 provinces into units more in keeping with the balkanization. But important elements of the chessboard are still uncertain. Who will keep power in the divided Congo? Will the Tutsi empowerment take the form of a British Commonwealth or of the formal annexation of entire regions? For all this Kabila still needs more time.

During the workshop and the interviews I tried to make people aware of the dramatic situation brought about in the world by the global land grabbing issue: the politics, confused and conflictive of the Congo country at this time, must not push to the back the land issue because on land depends the future, I insisted. The participants instead made me to understand that the land issue is already in the background of every problem in the Congo. The Congo is not only a country rich in natural resources: coltan, diamonds, forests, water, uranium that have been the throes of many powers since ever and today are to be added nickel and oil of Lake Albert and the gas of Lake Kivu. There is also the demographic problem: the Congo is an immense and not very populated country. An example: Burundi with its little more than 27,000 km2 has 12 million inhabitants, the eastern province of the Congo with its abundant 503,000 km2 does not reach 10 million inhabitants. The biodiversity of forests and Congolese lands, the presence of international Palm Oil companies such as Feronia, the invasion of the northern area by ​​the Mbororo nomads arriving from Chad through the Central African Republic, the subtle presence of the LRA of Ugandan origin, the conflicts for the lands in the region of Bunia are not separate problems, they intertwine and make the Congo a textbook example of conflict and violence: can it become also a school of peace, coexistence and justice? Yes, when the people will wake up and it seems that it is now. But the starting condition is that Kabila leaves. This is why at stake there is more than the only presidential elections. And the day is not too far. On February 25th the demonstrations were repeated in the main cities, Kinshasa, Kisangani, Lubumbashi, and Goma and in other places; the clashes, the dead and the wounded also took place again. Thus at stake are not just the presidential elections.

Leave a comment

The comments from our readers (1)

Manariho 28.02.2018 Un po' intrigante e preoccupante