Category: Foreign Involvement in Congo

2018 Nobel Peace Prize Dr. Denis Mukwege’s Speech in Oslo

On By erasingbordersIn Health in Congo, U.N. Congo MissionLeave a comment
Dr. Denis Mukwege of Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, DRC shared the Nobel Peace Prize of 2018 with Nadia Murad of Iraq. Photo from WHO

Dr. Denis Mukwege spoke on December 10, 2018 in Oslo, Norway on being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. What follows is an edited version of his speech.

“In the tragic night of 6 October 1996, rebels attacked our hospital in Lemera, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (RDC). More than thirty people were killed. Patients were slaughtered in their beds point blank. Unable to flee, the staff were killed in cold blood.

I could not have imagined that it was only the beginning.

Forced to leave Lemera in 1999, we set up the Panzi hospital in Bukavu where I still work as an obstetrician-gynaecologist today.
The first patient admitted was a rape victim who had been shot in her genitals.

The macabre violence knew no limit.

Sadly, this violence has never stopped.

One day like any other, the hospital received a phone call.

At the other end of the line, a colleague in tears implored: “Please send us an ambulance fast. Please hurry”
So we sent an ambulance, as we normally do.
Two hours later, the ambulance returned.

Inside was a little girl about eighteen months old. She was bleeding profusely and was immediately taken to the operating room.
When I arrived, all the nurses were sobbing. The baby’s bladder, genitals and rectum were severely injured.

By the penetration of an adult.

Rape survivors learn practical skills while recovering at Panzi Hospital in Bukavu in eastern Congo in 2009. RNS photo by Fredrick Nzwili

We prayed in silence: my God, tell us what we are seeing isn’t true.
Tell us it’s a bad dream.
Tell us when we wake up, everything will be alright.

But it was not a bad dream.
It was the reality.
It has become our new reality in the DRC.

When another baby arrived, I realized that the problem could not be solved in the operating room, but that we had to combat the root causes of these atrocities.

I decided to travel to the village of Kavumu to talk to the men: why don’t you protect your babies, your daughters, your wives? And where are the authorities?

To my surprise, the villagers knew the suspect. Everyone was afraid of him, since he was a member of the provincial Parliament and enjoyed absolute power over the population.

For several months, his militia has been terrorising the whole village. It had instilled fear by killing a human rights defender who had had the courage to report the facts. The deputy got away with no consequences. His parliamentary immunity enabled him to abuse with impunity.

The two babies were followed by several dozens of other raped children.

When the forty-eighth victim arrived, we were desperate.

With other human rights defenders, we went to a military court. At last, the rapes were prosecuted and judged as crimes against humanity.

The rapes of babies in Kavumu stopped.
And so did the calls to Panzi hospital.
But these babies’ psychological, sexual and reproductive health is severely impaired.

What happened in Kavumu and what is still going on in many other places in Congo, such as the rapes and massacres in Béni and Kasaï, was made possible by the absence of the rule of law, the collapse of traditional values and the reign of impunity, particularly for those in power.

Rape, massacres, torture, widespread insecurity and a flagrant lack of education create a spiral of unprecedented violence.
The human cost of this perverted, organized chaos has been hundreds of thousands of women raped, over 4 million people displaced within the country and the loss of 6 million human lives. Imagine, the equivalent of the entire population of Denmark decimated.

United Nations peacekeepers and experts have not been spared, either. Several of them have been killed on duty. Today, the United Nations Mission is still in the DRC to prevent the situation from degenerating further.

We are grateful to them.

However, despite their efforts, this human tragedy will continue if those responsible are not prosecuted. Only the fight against impunity can break the spiral of violence.

We all have the power to change the course of history when the beliefs we are fighting for are right………..

My name is Denis Mukwege. I come from one of the richest countries on the planet. Yet the people of my country are among the poorest of the world.

The troubling reality is that the abundance of our natural resources – gold, coltan, cobalt and other strategic minerals – is the root cause of war, extreme violence and abject poverty.

We love nice cars, jewellery and gadgets. I have a smartphone myself. These items contain minerals found in our country. Often mined in inhuman conditions by young children, victims of intimidation and sexual violence.

When you drive your electric car; when you use your smart phone or admire your jewellery, take a minute to reflect on the human cost of manufacturing these objects.

As consumers, let us at least insist that these products are manufactured with respect for human dignity.

Turning a blind eye to this tragedy is being complicit.
It’s not just perpetrators of violence who are responsible for their crimes, it is also those who choose to look the other way.

My country is being systematically looted with the complicity of people claiming to be our leaders. Looted for their power, their wealth and their glory. Looted at the expense of millions of innocent men, women and children abandoned in extreme poverty. While the profits from our minerals end up in the pockets of a predatory oligarchy.

For twenty years now, day after day, at Panzi hospital, I have seen the harrowing consequences of the country’s gross mismanagement.
Babies, girls, young women, mothers, grandmothers, and also men and boys, cruelly raped, often publicly and collectively, by inserting
burning plastic or sharp objects in their genitals.
I’ll spare you the details.

The Netflix documentary “City of Joy” tells the story of Dr. Mukwege and Panzi Hospital.

The Congolese people have been humiliated, abused and massacred for more than two decades in plain sight of the international community.
Today, with access to the most powerful communication technology ever, no one can say: “I didn’t know”………………..

With this Nobel Peace Prize, I call on the world to be a witness and I urge you to join us in order to put an end to this suffering that shames our common humanity.

The people of my country desperately need peace…………………

Finally, after twenty years of bloodshed, rape and massive population displacements, the Congolese people are desperately awaiting implementation of the responsibility to protect the civilian population when their government cannot or does not want to do so. The people are waiting to explore the path to a lasting peace.

To achieve peace, there has to be adherence to the principle of free, transparent, credible and peaceful elections.
“People of the Congo, let us get to work!” Let’s build a State at the heart of Africa where the government serves its people. A State under the rule of law, capable of bringing lasting and harmonious development not just of the DRC but of the whole of Africa, where all political, economic and social actions will be based on a people-centred approach to restore human dignity of all citizens.

Your Majesties, Distinguished Members of the Nobel Committee, Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends of peace,

The challenge is clear. It is within our reach.

For all Sarahs, for all women, for all men and children of Congo, I call upon you not only to award this Nobel Peace Prize to my country’s people, but to stand up and together say loudly: “The violence in the DRC, it’s enough! Enough is enough! Peace, now!”
Thank you.”

Thumbs Up to Congo; Thumbs Down to Venezuela

On By erasingbordersIn Catholic Church in RDC, Contemporary Congo Politics, Foreign Involvement in CongoLeave a comment
The Congo’s Election Commission (CENI) declared Felix Tshisekedi President despite leaked vote tallies showing opponent Martin Fayulu the landslide winner. Tshisekedi and Vital Kamerhe pulled out of November agreement tapping Fayulu as the opposition coalition candidate.

In a brief two paragraph press release on Jan. 23 the U.S. State Department endorsed the results of the Congolese elections of December 30, 2018. Without any reference to the conviction of the Catholic Church’s 40,000 observers that opposition candidate Martin Fayulu had decisively won the Presidential vote, the U.S. now officially recognizes Felix Tshisekedi as the nation’s elected leader. The statement for the press concluded with, “We also recognize outgoing President Joseph Kabila’s commitment to becoming the first President in DRC history to cede power peacefully through an electoral process.”

The endorsement of the announced results surprised many Washington policymakers including some who were involved in writing the original draft. A February 1 article in the journal Foreign Policy reports on speaking with “nearly a dozen current and former U.S. officials and experts briefed on the internal deliberations” behind the statement. The original statement, according to the informants, referred to the elections as “deeply flawed and troubling”. One policy maker in a former U.S. administration stated he had learned from current officials that “Everyone knew the elections were crap, but … they thought they had to accept [Tshisekedi], [that] they had no other recourse here”.

Eight days before the U.S. took sides in the controversy, the UN Security Council congratulated Congolese officials and the public for the peaceful electoral process. Despite hearing the report of the Catholic Church’s observer corps, the Security Council urged “concerned parties” to “respect the results of the vote, defend democratic rule and preserve peace in the country”.

At present, the principal foreign policy objective of the Tshisekedi administration seems to focus on relations with the European Union. In a meeting last week with European diplomats, the new Congo President expressed the desire to “reenergize” the relationship with the EU which maintains sanctions against leading members of the previous, Kabila, administration. Paving the way for the EU dropping of the sanctions and the new Congolese administration improving relations with the EU, a leading Belgian commentator on Congo politics, Colette Braeckman, recently dismissed Martin Fayulu’s challenge of the announced election results. Following the Congo’s Constitutional Court’s approval of the results, and describing a lack of public demonstration of support for Fayulu, Braeckman denounced Fayulu as supported by “foreign sponsors”.

An impartial observer has to wonder if Braeckman considers those who have leaked the actual election results among the “foreign sponsors” of the Fayulu candidacy for President. Reporting the leaks in an article titled “Who Really Won the Congolese Elections” the U.S. based Congo Research Group provide evidence that Fayulu won the Presidency by a wide margin . Contradicting the results announced publicly, the leak from the official Congolese election agency, the CENI, “puts his share of the vote at 59,42%, followed by Felix Tshisekedi with 18,97% and Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary with 18,54%.” Results reported by the Catholic Church’s team of observers totaled for the three leading candidates, “62,80% (Fayulu), 15,00% (Tshisekedi), and 17,99% (Shadary). For the complete article on the leaks of the vote totals, go to http://congoresearchgroup.org/congolese-election-leaks/ .

U.S. official response to Congo’s election contrasts starkly with the clamor to unseat President Maduro in Venezuela. It appears official judgment of a regime’s “legitimacy” has little to do with actual election results and professed support for democracy and national soverignty. The U.S. approval of the Tshisekedi-Kamerhe rule also leads us to question which of the Congo candidates for President continues to enjoy the backing of “foreign sponsors”.

Mark Twain’s Defense of Human Rights in Congo

On By erasingbordersIn U.S. Congo Relations1 Comment
Mark Twain’s booklet published in early 1905 contributed to the international human rights campaign that ended King Leopold of Belgium’s personal rule over the Congo.

“We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem…. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.” So stated Mark Twain in an interview published in The New York Herald in 1900. As U.S. business and military figures settled in the Philippines, the most widely read American writer at the time increased the fury of his attacks on the U.S. occupation of the Islands. In 1901 Twain proposed a new flag that would be fitting for the U.S. “Philippine Province”: “We can have just our usual flag, with the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the skull and cross bones.”

Twain deplored his country’s imitating the European pattern of foreign imperial rule and joined in denouncing the European and American suppression of the Boxer Rebellion in China. “My sympathies are with the Chinese” Twain wrote. “They have been villainously dealt with by the sceptered thieves of Europe, and I hope they will drive all of the foreigners out and keep them out for good”. But Twain’s fiercest denunciation of the exploitation of another people by a Western power was directed at Belgium’s King Leopold and his Congo Free State’s systems of extracting ivory and then rubber from the heart of Africa.

The celebrated writer’s 1905 treatise detailed the horrors perpetrated by the agents of a King “whose mate is not findable in human history anywhere, and whose personality will surely shame hell itself when he arrives there.” So wrote Twain in his journal a year after he published King Leopold’s Soliloquy as a small book benefitting the Congo Reform Association. The principal organizer and founder of the CRA, Edmund Morel, supplied Twain with photos of Congolese whose hands had been cut off for insufficient harvesting of rubber. In the writer’s view, the photos would counter the whitewashing by most of the American press of the Congo Free State’s depredations.

The Congo photos taken by British and American missionaries greatly agitated the Belgian King. Leopold, in Twain’s words, mutters to himself, “Ten thousand pulpits and ten thousand presses are saying the good word for me all the time and placidly and convincingly denying the mutilations. Then that trivial little Kodak, that a child can carry in its pocket, gets up, never uttering a word, and knocks them dumb.” The “incorruptible Kodak” was deemed an indispensable aid in countering the Belgian despot’s campaign to portray himself in the U.S. as “the benefactor of a down-trodden and friendless people”.

Providing evidence of the Congo Free State’s common practice of cutting off hands of unproductive rubber harvesters is a missionary of the Congo Balolo Mission. From the collection of the Centre for the Study of World Christianity, Edinburgh.

Twain’s considerable efforts to shed light on conditions in Congo and bring about change were driven in part by the U.S. 1884 official endorsement of the Congo Free State, the first foreign power to do so. He imagines Leopold gloating over his sales job, “Possibly the Yankees would like to take that back now, but they will find that my agents are not over there in America for nothing.” The U.S. President’s Order of Recognition brings a “mocking smile” to the King’s face as he reads, “the government of the United States announces its sympathy with and approval of the humane and benevolent purposes of my Congo scheme”. The guile deployed in establishing his Congo Free State brings another smile as he reads the report from Congo of the American missionary Rev. W.H. Morrison, “Our government would most certainly not have recognized that flag had it known that …..having put down African slavery in our own country at great cost of blood and money, it was establishing a worse form of slavery right in Africa” (author italics, ed.).

Once the U.S. President approved the Belgian King’s rule over the vast Central African territory, leading American businessmen, among them John D. Rockefeller and the Guggenheims, were granted concessions in Congo. Adam Hochschild in his book King Leopold’s Ghost quotes one of the King’s public relations agents in the U.S. as advising the King, “Open up a strip of territory clear across the Congo State from east to west for benefit of American capital. Take the present concessionaires by the throat, if necessary, and compel them to share their privileges with the Americans.”

Always a savvy manipulator of the media of his day, King Leopold sponsored publication of this defense of his Congo rule soon after release of Twain’s booklet

Once Leopold was forced to relinquish his rule of the territory in 1908, U.S. businessmen and government officials developed even closer ties with the agents of Belgian colonial rule. The U.S. business and financial sectors’ heightened involvement in the extraction of Congo’s unmatched strategic mineral reserves led to use of the country’s uranium in the creation of the atom bombs dropped on Japan. At independence in 1960, the international concessions holding the rights to most of Congo’s mineral wealth included a substantial U.S. share. Like the U.S.in the past, China today seems to value access to Congo’s mineral wealth above the human rights and living conditions of the country’s people. Its two billion dollar commitment to the country’s development projects places China in the position of being the leading ally and supporter of the present-day Congolese administration and its defiance of the country’s constitution and those defending its authority.

Africans Rising Will Defend Human Rights In Congo

On By erasingbordersIn Congo and other African Nations, Organizing for Change in Congo2 Comments
Africans Rising movement by Sarah Walsh

The struggle in Congo for fair elections and a government which represents the will and desires of the people has gained a potentially powerful ally. Africans Rising is a new Pan-African movement formally launched on May 25, 2017, “African Liberation Day”. In a conference nine months before the launch, two hundred seventy two activists from 44 African nations representing trade unions, people living with disabilities, parliamentarians, media organisations and faith-based groups approved the new organization’s founding document the Kiliminjaro Declaration.

One of the founding principles of Africans Rising established by The Declaration is the following: “We are committed to a decentralised, citizen-owned future that will build support and solidarity for local struggles, empower local leadership and immerse our activists in grassroots work of building social movements from below and beyond borders.” The first guiding principle reads, “Africa is a rich

Africans Rising Co-Coordinators Muhammed Lamin Saidykhan and Coumba Touré
continent. That wealth belongs to all our People, not to a narrow political and economic elite. We need to fight for economic development that is just and embraces social inclusion and environmental care.”

The Kiliminjaro Declaration overall reads like a manifesto for political and economic change in Congo. Those who work and pray for creation of a just, democratic State dedicated to serving the Congolese people should welcome Africans Rising’s solidarity with and support of activists for change in Congo. Among the co-conveners of the Arusha, Tanzania Conference which produced the Declaration, Kumi Naidoo, is the new chief executive for Amnesty International. In an article in The Guardian on the aims of Africans Rising Naidoo wrote, “We are building a movement that aims to finish the journey of true African liberation, for which so many people laid down their lives in the struggle against colonialism and since. We refuse to accept that all that blood was spilt for the difficult lives people live every day on the continent. The struggle continues!” Read the entire article at: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2017/mar/26/

Among the resources prepared by Africans Rising for last year’s Africa Liberation Day is the following prayer for Africa. Let us consider this prayer as an appeal to God and the divine within each of us :

O God of many names,
We call to you on behalf of our beloved Africa,
Mobilizing around a shared vision: a more peaceful, fair, and prosperous Africa,
Trusting your guidance, as it is through you alone that we can move mountains;
O God of all creation,
As citizens and descendents of Africa, help us as we strive for a better future,
A future absent of corruption and greed; a future of social inclusion, dignity for all, and sustainability of all creation,
A future worthy of leaving to our children and grandchildren;
O God of all humanity,
Heal the people of Africa from the wounds of slavery, racism, and colonization,
Raise new leaders with the moral courage to help put an end to autocracy, tyranny, tribalism, and neocolonialism,
Strengthen and guide those who are already working for a more just Africa;
O God who hears all languages,
As allies in the fight for justice, equality, and equity, let us seek the way of peace together,
Challenging those who work against your will of compassion and liberation for all,
And creating a vision of Africa as your love would have it.
Amen.

Congo’s Cobalt Powers Electric Cars

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A “digger” climbs through a copper and cobalt mine in Kawama, Katanga Province (Photo by Michael Robinson Chavez, Washington Post)

Increased production of electric automobiles worldwide depends on supplies of cobalt from mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo. As sales of electric cars rise, the uncertainy of cobalt production in Congo with over 60 per cent of the world’s known reserves, is a major concern and may keep the cars’ cost beyond the reach of the mass market. First Cobalt mining company of Canada is exploring for cobalt in North America and another Canadian mining company recently cancelled its stake in supplying cobalt from Congo.

The lithium-ion battery in today’s electric cars carries 5 to 10 kilos of cobalt, with its cost accounting for 20 % of the cost of a Tesla Model S. 97 per cent of the world’s supply of cobalt comes from nickel and copper mining in Central Africa with Congo being by far the primary source. While Tesla and other companies are investing heavily in battery research which might bypass use of cobalt in the future, Tesla’s claim that in the meantime its cobalt needs will be met by North American mines is dubious. An article titled “No cobalt, no Tesla” in the journal Technology Crunch points out that Canada and the U.S. produce 4 % of the world’s cobalt, far short of what would be needed for manufacture of a half million Tesla Model 3 cars, the company’s stated short term goal.

Meanwhile, Congo’s political instability, the Western public’s heightened awareness of use of child labor in the country’s artisanal mines and corruption in the Congolese government-controlled mining have discouraged investment in Congolese cobalt production. In September, the Canadian First Cobalt Co. pulled out of an agreement to mine cobalt at seven different sites in Congo’s Katanga Province. According to the Creamer Media’s Mining Weekly , First Cobalt described the Congo sources as “very appealing geologically but its investment climate has deteriorated”. First Cobalt decided to concentrate its investments in Canada’s Cobalt Camp, where no cobalt has been produced to date. A UK analyst for a commodities trader in cobalt told Tom Wilson of the Sydney Morning Herald “The cobalt-supply dependency on the Congo is a risky situation”.

Chinese companies seem willing to take the risk. Today it is Chinese companies in Congo, Zambia and Central African Republic which supply 90 per cent of the cobalt used in lithium-ion batteries. Two Western companies holding a majority interest in Congo’s largest cobalt producing mine, the Tenke Fungurume mine, have sold their shares to two Chinese companies in what were the biggest investments ever in Congo. The head of the government mining company, Gecamines, Mr. Albert Yuma Mulimbi told London’s Financial Times he preferred partnerships with Chinese companies as past deals with the West often left Congo with a minority interest in the revenues.

For the near future, the Chinese will supply most of the refined cobalt for the electric car industry world-wide. They will not be the only ones to benefit from the “greening” of the automotive industry. Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates that demand for cobalt could increase 47 times by 2030 with one analyst estimating that Congo’s share of the world’s cobalt production might need to reach 73 % by 2025. Cobalt prices on the London Metal Exchange have more than doubled this year. As a result, a month ago Kabila urged the Congo legislature to increase royalty payments on cobalt production from 2 to 3.5 per cent. Shortly before Kabila’s efforts, Standard & Poors Global lowered its rating of Congolese debt and currency, citing the political instability in the country.

Dreaming in the Rain

On By erasingbordersIn Congo Rainforest, Contemporary Congo Politics, U.S. Congo Relations, video2 Comments
A “carter” selling potable water in a Kinshasa neighborhood. Radio Okapi/Ph. John Bompengo

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” Mt 5:43-45 (NRSV translation)

It rained all night. Sheets of rain coming down at 3 in the morning. In the morning, the rain gauge registered 5 inches at our place. Cars were submerged at the Toyota dealer where we take our cars for servicing. The normally peaceful, lovely Indian Creek where the mill stood for one hundred years burst its banks.

Like a magic carpet, the downpour transported me to the tropical rain forest and through the night I dreamed of Congo. One story after another. The one that stayed with me concerned a missionary who during the unrest following independence had told his family’s “houseboy” he had started a fund for educating the man’s children. Soon after the conversation, the missionary returned to the U.S. and lost contact with the family’s cook and housekeeper. Two or three decades later, he learned that leaders of the Church in Congo wanted to connect with him. What had happened to the fund he had created for his “houseboy” they wanted to know?

The former employee, now at the advanced age for Congo of 60, had been asking for a way to contact the missionary. Every morning he appeared at the entrance to the Church headquarters wanting to know if they had heard from him yet. It was urgent because the man’s wife needed to have an operation and their only hope to pay for it was the fund the missionary had talked about creating.

Whether going to a poor nation as an aid worker, a “missionary” or a tourist, we travelers from the north are advised these days not to make promises we cannot or do not intend to keep. On recalling the story, after the rain, that counsel came to mind and so did my learning from experience and from study of colonial and post colonial African history that our promises in Africa often do not coincide with what the African people need or want. Although the man’s children likely did not advance beyond the six grades of primary school, there was no call on the missionary to help pay for further schooling. Not surprisingly, the missionary’s help was called on when death threatened the household.

It also occurred to me on awakening after the rain that the story of the missionary speaks to the failure of the U.S. and Congolese governments to serve the Congolese people. Neither State’s investments in Congolese economic development reflect respect for the people’s vision for the country’s future. Massive foreign-financed projects like the Inga Dam stir hopes and make for good media stories, but in what way do they represent progress in realizing the people’s vision?

The speeches of the first and only fairly elected President of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba, articulate that vision clearly and powerfully. “We are going to see to it that the soil of our country really benefits its children” Lumumba declared on June 30, 1960, Congo’s independence day. Despite the Congolese State’s intense, continual repression of dissenting voices, politics in Congo have time and again given voice to this vision of the people sharing in the wealth of the country’s natural resources.

U.S. government aid for Congo has seldom supported the people’s vision. In the first years following Belgian colonial rule, when Congolese saw the U.S. as their best friend, it was the threat of Communist rule and more recently it seems to be unimpeded extraction of Congo’s vast resources that makes the Congolese State’s stability and security the priorities of U.S. Congo policy. It now seems possible that U.S. government aid will never reflect recognition and respect for the enduring vision of the Congolese people.

During the same speech on the day Congo’s independence was celebrated, the now venerated Congolese leader added to his written text this commentary: “The independence of the Congo represents a decisive step toward the liberation of the entire African continent.” Today, with Congo being the most blatant and distressing example, the “soil” primarily benefits a very small elite of many African nations. When will Congo, when will Africa, become truly free and independent? When will justice “roll down like the waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” on Congo and on all of Africa? When will the abundance of the creation uniquely on display in Congo lead to improved health and well being of the Congolese people? The rain assures us that some day it will be so.

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Experience the force and the message of the rain in the Congo rainforest by clicking below (and turn up your volume if you dare!):

Bob Dole and the Congo Cover-Up

On By erasingbordersIn Foreign Involvement in Congo, Organizing for Change in Congo, U.N. Congo Mission, U.S. Congo Relations, UncategorizedLeave a comment
Sen. Bob Dole endorsed Trump prior to the Republican Convention and was seated to the left of Donald Trump Jr. in Cleveland. After the election, Sen. Dole’s lobbying led to the new President’s controversial phone call with Taiwan’s President.

Have you no shame Robert Dole? The former Senator from Kansas and ex contender for the U.S. Presidency Bob Dole has exposed himself as one of those mired in the swamp that Donald Trump pledged to drain in his campaign for President. As Trump himself reaches out to autocratic rulers in the Philippines, Turkey and Russia, Bob Dole just signed on to the budding campaign to improve the ties and the image of the Congo’s Kabila government in Washington, D.C.

When his law and lobbying firm office in D.C. contracted with Mer Security and Communications of Israel to further the foreign policy aims of Mobutu’s successor, it was Sen. Dole who signed the $500 k deal. Why the Congolese sought out an Israeli international security corporate power to gain influence and support in the U.S. is likely due to the moves under the Obama administration to penalize and pressure Congo’s elite to hold presidential elections as called for by the country’s constitution.

In a stunning reversal of the former administration’s policies vis a vis the Congo, less than two weeks after his inauguration, Trump’s administration had succeeded in getting both House and Senate to repeal the “Anti-Corruption” ruling of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as called for by the Cardin-Lugar Section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank legislation . Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md) lamented the repeal vote in a statement noting that Section 1504 required “domestic and foreign oil, gas and mineral companies traded on U.S. stock exchanges to publish the payments they make to foreign governments”. He went on to state, “Big Oil might have won the battle today, but I’m not done fighting the war against entrenched corruption that harms the American people’s interests and leaves the world’s poor trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty while their leaders prosper.”

Congo’s day laborers make a few dollars a day while Congo’s elite reap payments from foreign mining corporations

The corruption in Congo and the “vicious cycle of poverty” there was specifically mentioned as the target in the discussions before passage of Section 1504. EXXON’s then CEO and current Secretary of State Rex Tillerson were among the leading opponents of that congressional action back in 2010. With the quick repeal of the Cardin-Lugar “anti-corruption” measure, Congo’s current leaders could expect further support of the status quo by the Trump administration. The threats by Trump’s UN Ambassador Nikki Haley to curtail U.S. funding for the UN Congo peacekeeping mission can now more clearly be seen as a pretext for realizing the neoconservative desire to weaken the UN and jeopardize U.S. funding of the international body and not in any way intended to undermine Kabila’s government. Haley’s chief adviser at the UN, former Heritage Foundation staff member Stephen Groves, assisted the most extensive congressional investigation ever of the UN in what became known as the Iraq “oil for food scandal” in the late 1990’s.

It is increasingly accepted that one of the UN’s principal aims in Congo, the facilitating of a free and fair presidential election, is now being countered on multiple fronts by the country’s ruling elite. In a blatant violation of the December 2016 agreement between the Kabila government and the opposition leadership, the current administration named a new Prime Minister on its own in April and thereby succeeded in further dividing the opposition’s coalition. Weakening the resistance to Kabila’s rule through naming of opponents to more than 50 cabinet level posts in the governing bureaucracy, violent repression of anti government demonstrations and the closing of non partisan and opposition media outlets outline the government’s plan to prolong indefinitely preparations for the elections in what is widely referred to as the “glissement” (slipping away) strategy.

Following the 2017 death of leading opposition figure Etienne Tshisekedi and Kabila’s naming of other opponents to government posts a la Mobutu, the President’s maneuvers to delay elections has met with little parliamentary resistance.

With the signing of the huge $5.6 million contract with a term of December 8, 2016 to December 31, 2017, the ruling elite’s campaign to gain international acceptance is seriously under way. In the contract, Mer Security pledges to “represent” Congo’s government and advise on “U.S. policy and political concerns regarding African security issues”. Replying to an inquiry from the U.S. Center for Public Integrity, Mer Security’s CEO said in an email the firm was hired “to explore opportunities through which the U.S. government can support the DRC government in its efforts to bring peace, stability and prosperity to the Congolese people.”

Sen. Dole, and his Alston & Bird firm, will not be alone in his work on behalf of close relations for Congo’s elite with the current U.S. administration. Adnan Jalil who served as the Trump campaign’s liaison with the House of Representatives in 2016 has already received $45,000 from Mer Security for his Congo lobbying. Other than his work for Trump and as staffer for Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-North Carolina), Jalil has no experience in Congo and no background with political issues there. He stated, “the Congolese people, their safety and human rights can only improve if the United States takes an active and engaging role in the largest country in Africa”. In a deal that may be separate from the Mer Security agreement, the Kabila administration has also contracted with Cindy Courville, an Africa analyst for the Bush 2 administration, to “develop branding and public relations strategy” in the U.S. Her consulting firm will be paid $8000 per month under the contract terms.

A Malnourished Democracy ??

On By erasingbordersIn U.S. Congo Relations2 Comments
During the decades of segregated baseball in the U.S., many African American teams competed in Mexico in the winter offseason.
During the decades of segregated baseball in the U.S., many African American teams competed in Mexico in the winter offseason.

Dear Friends,

In the United States, we are all trying to decipher the messages sent us by the resounding election victories of Donald Trump and the Republican Party. While the election’s handwriting on the wall will continue to be interpreted in different ways as in Daniel chapter 5, one area of the message is certain. As much as we try to ignore or put it behind us, mistrust, fear and abuse of the Other (persons of other races and nationalities) continue to threaten the rule of democracy in the United States.

Here in Kansas City, the Negro Leagues Baseball Hall of Fame celebrates the African American baseball players who never made it to the major leagues of the “great American past time” not because they didn’t have the talent but because of their exclusion from U.S. professional teams until the year 1947. The Kansas City museum also honors the memory of those white players who in the winter off season during the years of segregated baseball played on teams outside the country with black players.

Surprisingly, some of those white players, like the brothers Paul and Dizzy Dean, had grown up in the fiercely segregationist southern states which enforced separation of the races in their territory. For some of the whites like the Dean brothers, the wintertime move to Mexico, Cuba and other nations of the Caribbean was motivated by the desire to play baseball against and with the best U.S. players, whether black or white.

For the African American players, leaving their home country to play baseball brought benefits the whites took for granted in the U.S. As the black player Willie Wells said of playing ball in Mexico, “We live in the best hotels, go to the best restaurants, and can go anywhere we care to. We don’t enjoy such privileges in the United States.” In short, Wells and the other African Americans found “respect, freedom and democracy. In Mexico.”

Today of course, professional sports teams in the United States are fully integrated and black players excel. But the recent election provides additional evidence of a strategy to restrict if not suppress the rights and the impact of African American and other voters in U.S. elections. Anti- democratic voiding of the ballots of several thousand black voters in Florida in the 2000 presidential election put us on notice. Since then we have learned of defective voting machines, closing of polling places, new voter identification requirements, redrawing of voting districts in the states, and new voter registration procedures all implemented within states, in the south and the north, controlled by Republican legislatures intent on limiting the impact of the increased numbers of persons of color in American elections.

One of the most troubling aspects of the past election is summed up by the observation made by one U.S. political scientist who said, “this is the first election held in this country without the full protections of the U.S. Voting Rights Act of 1965”. One way to better understand the importance of this statement is offered by viewing the 2014 film “Selma”.

This film recounts the history of the struggle for African Americans’ right to vote in southern states. For decades since the Civil War southern politicians had devised various ways to deny African Americans the right to vote. Now in our day, the 1965 Act that prohibited such practices has been weakened through devious legislative maneuvers in many states of the U.S.

What might the long term effects on American democracy be if such practices continue and a wall is built between persons of color and the U.S. polling place? Let me share a story, a kind of parable, that suggests what we might be in for.

In the mid 1970’s a friend here in Kansas City played basketball for one of Kansas’ community colleges. The team had black and white players on it and had a couple of games against teams in the southern State of Texas. When they got to the small town’s biggest restaurant the black players were told, and this only forty years ago, that they would be served in the room behind the kitchen.
My friend and the other black players went to the back room and enjoyed meeting the entirely black kitchen staff and eating what they cooked for them. Their portions were more than ample and the kitchen help offered to make the leftovers into sandwiches for the team’s trip north. That night some of the white players got to sample what their black teammates had eaten. When they returned to the same restaurant after the next day’s game all the white players told the coach they wanted to eat the better food and bigger portions provided in the back room too.

The story suggests what this country will lose if the campaign continues to limit or exclude the human rights of segments of the population. Not only will citizens of the nation, of all ethnic backgrounds, be deprived of the best a democracy offers. The image of the U.S. as a bastion of democracy world wide will be malnourished. And this means we all will suffer the consequences.

Why Congo Matters

On By erasingbordersIn Catholic Church in RDC, Foreign Involvement in Congo, U.N. Congo Mission1 Comment
A man digs for cobalt in the Shaba Province of Congo May, 2015. Photo by Federico Scoppa AFP/Getty Images
A man digs for cobalt in the Shaba Province of Congo May, 2015. Photo by Federico Scoppa AFP/Getty Images

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is the largest French speaking country among the nations of the world.

In terms of area, the DRC is the largest country in sub-Saharan Africa and the second largest on the continent after Algeria.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is widely considered to be one of the world’s richest countries in natural resources; its untapped deposits of raw minerals are estimated to be worth in excess of US$24 trillion. The Congo has 70% of the world’s coltan, a third of its cobalt, more than 30% of its diamond reserves, and a tenth of its copper.

Since its independence from Belgium in 1960, the Congo has received more U.S. foreign aid than any other nation in Sub Saharan Africa

The richest uranium is found in Congo and 65 % pure uranium (contrasted with 1 % pure uranium deposits in Canada and the U.S.) from Shinkolobwe mine in Shaba Province was the crucial ingredient in the U.S. atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“The most important deposit of uranium yet discovered in the world,” stated a top secret American intelligence report in November 1943, “is in the Shinkolobwe Mine in the Belgian Congo.” The Congo’s “known resources of uranium, which are the world’s largest,” added the report, “are vital to the welfare of the United States…Definite steps should be taken to insure access to the resources for the United States.”

Congo (Kinshasa) has the largest population of Roman Catholics on the African continent. The Church remained the most consistent and severe institutional critic of Mobutu’s 32 year dictatorial rule.

The Congo was the focus of the first international human rights campaign. The Congo Reform Association’s “red rubber campaign” brought an end to King Leopold of Belgium’s horrific exploitation of Congolese labor in the harvesting of their land’s rubber vines. It also resulted in the transfer of rule over Congo from the King himself to Belgian State colonial rule.

At the turn of the 20th Century, King Leopold’s Congo Free State along with the Amazon rainforest supplied the bulk of the world’s

Salonga National Park is one of five World Heritage Sites located in Congo. All five are classified by UNESCO as World Heritage in Danger.
Salonga National Park is one of five World Heritage Sites located in Congo. All five are classified by UNESCO as World Heritage in Danger.
supply of rubber. With its love for bicycling, the U.S. consumed half of the rubber produced from 1875 to 1900.

The Congo River has the second largest water flow and the second largest watershed among the rivers of the world (the Amazon is the largest). Its Inga Dam was designed with the intention of supplying hydroelectric power to all of Central Africa. The dam has never achieved close to full operating capacity.

The Congo rainforest is the second largest in the world after the Amazon’s. The two vast expanses of forest have been described by environmentalists as “the lungs of the world”. In recent years, Congo’s rainforest has seen stepped up logging and cutting of the trees for large scale agricultural projects.

Despite the country’s wealth in natural resources, the DRC consistently ranks near the bottom in the UN Human Development Index. In 2011 it was ranked the lowest among the 187 nations evaluated

The former Belgian Congo called on the United Nations in 1960 for support in defending its political independence in the face of attempts by Belgian settlers and mining companies to maintain control of the nation’s mines.

Since 1999 the United Nations has carried out the largest and the longest serving peacemaking mission in its history in the RDC. The chief of the UN Mission, formerly MONUC and now known as MONUSCO, in a report to the Security Council this month declared, “The Democratic Republic of Congo has entered a period of extreme risk to its stability. The electoral crisis has become a constitutional crisis, with deepening political polarization and no immediate resolution in sight.”

UN official reports of the effects of armed conflicts in eastern Congo have led to the area’s description as the most dangerous place to be a woman on the planet. One UN investigator called the area the “rape capital of the world” and the prevalence of sexual violence there described as the worst in the world.

It is estimated that about 4.7 million children aged 5–14 work in Congo. In addition to copper mines, children with their families participate in artisanal mining of the land’s precious minerals. These children use hammers to break free the ore, pour harsh chemicals with no protective equipment, and manually transport rocks from deep pit or open pit mines.

The Atlantic slave trade between Africa and the Americas began with the Portuguese shipment in 1526 of slaves purchased from the Kingdom of Kongo. For three hundred years, Portuguese traders controlled the purchase of human beings at the Congo River’s mouth which remained the leading source of slaves for the European colonies in the West.

Photo from the era of colonial rule in Asia. Martin Luther King once declared: "Racism is no mere American phenomenon. Its vicious grasp knows no geographical boundaries. In fact, racism and its perennial ally - economic exploitation- provide the key to understanding most of the international complications of this generation."
Photo from the era of colonial rule in Asia. Martin Luther King once declared: “Racism is no mere American phenomenon. Its vicious grasp knows no geographical boundaries. In fact, racism and its perennial ally – economic exploitation- provide the key to understanding most of the international complications of this generation.”

At the ceremony declaring the new nation’s independence on June 30, 1960, the newly elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba foresaw that “The independence of the Congo represents a decisive step toward the liberation of the entire African continent”. Thirty four years after Lumumba spoke, the former Portuguese colonies and South Africa had freed themselves from white rule. Lumumba also prophesied in the same speech, “we are going to make the Congo the focal point for the development of all of Africa”. The potential of Congo remains huge, but Lumumba’s prophecy regarding the nation’s economic and social development has yet to be realized. Both Lumumba and the UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold, also a fierce defender of Congo independence, were martyred in 1961.

This posting is inspired by all those who expressed solidarity with the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo by participating in consciousness-raising activities of Congo Week last week. To follow political movements in support of free and fair elections in the DRC go to http://www.friendsofthecongo.org and/or the site of the Africa Faith and Justice Network http://www.afjn.org. The latter site has just published their Congolese staff member’s commentary on political developments in the country, including the September 19-20 demonstration in Kinshasa which resulted in multiple deaths at the hands of the Kabila regime’s security forces.

Global Citizen Muhammed Ali

On By erasingbordersIn Congo culture, Congo Urban Life, U.S. Congo RelationsLeave a comment
Muhammed Ali on the way from Kinshasa to his Nsele training camp 1974
Muhammed Ali on the way from Kinshasa to his Nsele training camp 1974. News coverage of his refusal to be inducted for the Vietnam War had elevated him to heroic stature world wide

“I know that beating George Foreman and conquering the world with my fists does not bring freedom to my people. I am well aware that I must go beyond all this and prepare myself for more. I know,” said Muhammed Ali, “that I enter a new arena.” So spoke Ali summing up the significance for himself of reclaiming the Heavyweight Championship just hours after the 1974 fight held in Kinshasa, capital of the then Zaire.
Before the long awaited match of the powerful, younger Foreman and the cagey former champ, Muhammed Ali had reflected publicly on the larger role he assumed with his conversion to Islam and refusal of induction to the Army. “If I win”, he declared, “I’m going to be the black Kissinger. It’s full of glory, but it’s tiresome. Every time I visit a place, I got to go by the schools, by the old folks’ home. I’m not just a fighter, I’m a world figure to these people.”

During the month-long delay of the fight, Ali had plenty of time in Kinshasa to carry out and describe further his mission as a “world figure”. As the excitement mounted, a few days prior to the bout he said, “Nobody is ready to know what I’m up to. People in America just find it hard to take a fighter seriously.” He then issued an alert, “They don’t know that I’m using boxing for the sake of getting over certain points you couldn’t get over without it. Being a fighter enables me to attain certain ends. I’m not doing this,” he revealed, “for the glory of fighting, but to change a lot of things.”

In his interpretation of the pronouncements and ever expanding persona of Ali before and after the Foreman fight, Norman Mailer wrote, “Was he still a kid from Louisville talking, talking, through the afternoon, and for all anyone knew through the night, talking through the ungovernable anxiety of a youth seized by history to enter the dynamos of history? Or was he in full process of becoming that most unique phenomenon, a twentieth century prophet, and so the anger and the fear of his voice was that he could not teach, could not convince, could not convince?”

Reading Mailer’s account in The Fight of his grappling with Ali’s meaning to people in Congo and the rest of the world, this reader felt the writer had come closest to the measure, the legacy of the recently deceased champ. Mailer wrote, “One only had to open to the possibility that Ali had a large mind rather than a repetitive mind and was ready for oncoming chaos, ready for the volcanic disruptions that would boil through the world in these approaching years of pollution, malfunction and economic disaster.” It seems Mailer had to go to Congo to learn to understand and accept that this “prophet” had been shaped and prepared by his Muslim faith and co-believers.

Mailer confessed in his book, “He (Mailer) had implicitly kept waiting for some evidence that Ali was not a Black Muslim, not really, and that was absurd. It was time to recognize that being a Black Muslim might be the core of Ali’s existence and the center of his strength. What was one to do about that?” On his flight back to the States Mailer was confronted by stunning evidence that the Muslim world claimed Ali as one of them.

Before landing in Dakar, capital of largely Muslim Senegal, the pilot announced they would divert to a remote airport runway to evade the couple of thousand persons waiting for the chance to greet what they thought was their champ’s plane. Undaunted, the crowd surrounded the plane and were persuaded to disperse only after a few were allowed to search thoroughly for Ali inside the aircraft.

In a time when Christians especially in the U.S. need greater understanding of Islam and its approximately 1.5

Ali praying over The Koran in an African mosque
Ali praying over The Koran in an African mosque
billion followers, it is unfortunate that very few obituaries paid homage to the depth and profound influence of the man’s faith. Prior to the fight in Kinshasa he had noted referring to his projected earnings, “I’m left with a million three. That ain’t no money. You give me a hundred million today, I’ll be broke tomorrow. We got a hospital we’re working on, a Black hospital being built in Chicago, costs fifty million dollars. My money goes into causes.” With little understanding of Islam, Mailer cannot escape the insight that Ali’s courage and integrity were founded on the bedrock of his Muslim faith.

In the end, it was that courage and integrity that won over his most bitter foes. In 1981 George Foreman reconciled with the man he had loathed since losing to him. Much later he recalled, “In 1981, a reporter came to my ranch and asked me: ‘What happened in Africa, George?’ I had to look him in the eye and say, “I lost. He beat me.”

Following that interview with the reporter, Foreman softened. “Before that I had nothing but revenge and hate on my mind, but from then on it was clear. I’ll never be able to win that match, so I had to let it go.”[8] Foreman eventually concluded, in 2003: “[Ali is] the greatest man I’ve ever known. Not greatest boxer that’s too small for him. He had a gift. He’s not pretty he’s beautiful. Everything America should be, Muhammad Ali is.” [14] In response to Foreman’s statement we citizens of the U.S. in 2016 are left with the question, “What was one to do about that?”