Patrick Litanga is from the Democratic Republic of Congo, he is currently pursuing a Masters Degree in African Studies at Ohio University.
It has been 11 years since the second rebellion started in 1998; we, actually, know that it was not just a rebellion. Although the Congolese rebel, Jean Pierre Bemba, was gaining momentum in the region of Equateur, Uganda and Rwanda were deeply involved in the east of Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), as they were attempting to “punish” their former protégée, Laurent Desiree Kabila. In May 1997 Laurent D. Kabila, a drop out mentee of Che Guevara, basically rode to power on the shoulders of Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni. Unfortunately, in 1998 Kabila’s collaboration with Museveni and Kagame went sour, a collapse that saw Uganda and Rwanda’s troops attacking the east of DRC. Since DRC was militarily and economically inadequate, to say the least, Kabila sought help from Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola; this is how the Congolese second war came to be known as “the first African World War”. From 1998 to 1999 these six countries: Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Angola had active troops in DRC; they fought and mined whatever minerals they could, coltan, diamond, cassiterite (tin ore), etc. By 2000 all other foreign troops had left DRC while Kagame and Museveni’s troops continued their activities.
Today, 11 years later, 5.4 million deaths, countless internally displaced Congolese, and millions others in refugee camps in neighboring countries, the east of DRC is still unstable and Uganda and Rwanda are still involved. To put it into perspective, the Congolese conflict, the deadliest conflict since World War II, has taken away roughly 5 times more lives than the 1994 Rwandese Genocide, about twice the population of Eritrea, and way more lives than the Iraq, Afghanistan and the Kosovo war combined, yet the international community is doing almost nothing, and some are even proposing to split DRC in 3 or four countries, explaining that DRC is too big to be a unified country. This proposition simply implies that the Congolese people are incapable of dealing with their own issues; it also hides the fact that foreign companies, both African and European, are illegally mining coltan and diamonds, exploiting wood and many other resources in the east of Congo. From its genesis, the Congolese conflict was not simply a national affair, it was and it is still an international affair, therefore it requires an international approach.
However, my purpose here is to ask us Africaninsts and readers of Bokamoso Leadership Forum (BLF) blog if splitting DRC is the best option for peace in the Great Lakes region, keeping in mind that when Mobutu was backed by the CIA from the 1960’s until the beginning of the 1990’s very few people, if ever, had voiced the idea that DRC was too big and ought to be split. In addition, breaking DRC down in 2 or 3 countries would create at least one more landlocked country in the Great Lakes region, which has had armed conflicts since the 1960’s, and today some scholars have labeled it as the “corridor of war”. Third and most importantly, who should decide and what should be the criteria of splitting DRC?
These questions also arise as a reflection of the series that was run by the BLF blog on Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs), and their possible role in the facilitation of nation building in African countries that are emerging from conflict. The TRC was part of the peace agreement signed at the Inter-Congolese Dialogue that brought the conflict to its ‘end’ in 2004, in Pretoria South Africa. As part of the institutions forming part of the transitional government, Joseph Kabila signed the TRC law that same year. The TRC’s responsibility was to establish the truth about the political, the social and economic violations that took place in the DRC between 1960- 2003 in order to promote healing and reconciliation. However, the president of the TRC Bishop Jean-Luc Ndondo in 2008 attributed the failure of the Congolese TRC to unfavorable political conditions, while the international community condemned the formation of the commission due to the continuance of violent events in places such as Kivu. Therefore, the Congolese TRC unlike the Liberian, South African had little international and domestic support due to the continuance of tensions in the country. One can argue, unfortunately, that its failure was inevitable.
Could it be then that the failure of the TRC here has led to this view that ‘splitting’ the DRC is a better alternative to nation building? If so, then does this mean that justice can only be established by destroying the rebuilding process? Would we not then be trying to foster nation building based on ethnic associations/ geographical locations that the TRC was trying to heal rather than political ideologies? Who is going to pay for the injustices of this “first African World War”? All these questions directly oppose the reconciliation and most importantly, and unfortunately, posit that DRC cannot be reconciled. Lastly, would the splitting of the DRC be setting a precedent for a future North and South Sudan as two different countries? And sadly, is splitting truly the only chance at peace for the African post-colony 50 years after colonialism?
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