Libyan revolutionaries are blood-drenched racist goons murdering Blacks en masse in Tripoli (The Guardian, The Independent & MSF)

An African migrant worker arrested by racist revolutionaries in Tripoli for being black

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“Libyans don’t like people with dark skins”
--A Libyan racist revolutionary to The Independent the arrests and killing sprees of Black Africans

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I was an early supporter of the February-17 Libyan revolution. I even published a few posts here on their behalf when I was in Kinshasa: the first one going as far back as March 11 and titled “Sarkozy shows leadership over Libya”, when Gaddafi was threatening to kill everyone in Benghazi; on March 8, an appreciation of Congolese president Joseph Kabila for chartering planes to evacuate 400 hundred stranded Congolese from Tripoli (“DRC government evacuates Congolese stuck at Tripoli Airport”); then on March 16, my translation of a post by French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé published on his blog and entitled “Our Honor.”

But then these heroes of mine entered Tripoli and then it hit me: these revolutionaries are blood-drenched racist goons murdering Blacks en masse on the pretext of their being Gaddafi mercenaries.

Now read these wrenching and revulsive reports of blatant racist killing sprees and mistreatments of Blacks by Libyan revolutionaries:

1) The Independent: “Rebels settle scores in Libyan capital” (August 27);

2) The Independent: “'Libyans don't like people with dark skin, but some are innocent'” (August 30);

2) The Guardian: “Libya’s spectacular revolution has been disgraced by racism” (August 30); and

3) A distressed call by Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) on behalf of stranded Black African migrant workers: “Hundreds of migrants need protection in Tripoli-MSF” (August 30):

Paraphrasing the title of the Guardian article, I’d say that these people are disgraceful racists, of the same repulsive ilk as those Arab slave-traders of the bloody past of Africa.

As Belgian journalist Colette Braeckman pointedly writes today in a post ominously titled “Libya, a hell for Black Africans”:

“On top of the anti-Black racism, which is found in Egypt and other Arab countries, the rebels’ attitude can also be explained by the fact that under Gaddafi, Libya employed more than two million [migrant] workers of African origin. The latter filled subaltern jobs shunned by Libyans who disdained these menial workers of their economy who also had however access like them to health care and decent housing.” 

In other words: had these Africans been living in squalid conditions, they wouldn’t have been rounded and killed en masse. These blood-drenched goons are no better than the wife of one of Gaddafi’s sons who burned, tortured, and tormented her Ethiopian maid.

Just as I finish writing, I watch on CNN a report filed by Nick Robertson from a Tripoli prison where Blacks are crammed in jail cells, in contrast to Gaddafi’s captured soldiers whose cells are more spacious. One Black African was featured screaming that she’d been robbed of her life savings before being thrown in jail!

Once again, I commend President Joseph Kabila for chartering those two flights in early March to evacuate 400 Congolese stuck at Tripoli Airport and saving them from these blood-thirsty racists. That’s called proactive leadership. And shame to the other African leaders who didn’t do the same.

Black Africans rounded up by racist revolutionaries in Tripoli

Photo: Reuters

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DRC Elections 2011 Watch: 1) WikiLeaks: US Kinshasa Embassy concerns over "Balkanization Conspiracy Theory"; 2) Common Opposition Candidate: "Squaring the Circle"; 3) Kisombe-gate: Demonstrating journos hit massive snag at National Assembly; 4) Bad blood still brewing between CENI and the opposition; and 5) Cyberwarfare: E-zine Le Softonline hacked again by Cyuzuzo, Rwandan Hacker

1) WikiLeaks: US Kinshasa Embassy concerns over "Balkanization Conspiracy Theory" (2010)

Among the batch of documents and cables released by WikiLeaks on August 26 is a 2010 fascinating US Kinshasa Embassy sensitive-but-unclassified cable to State with the subject line: " 'Balkanization' conspiracy theory -- a challenge to PD outreach efforts in the DRC." (PD stands for "Public Diplomacy" in Foreign Service jargon). Though created in February 2010, the content of the cable is still relevant as "No to Balkanization" is among the slogans shouted with one voice by all Congolese political parties--as well as media.

The cable summary nails down what "balkanization" means in the Congo, all the while expressing the need for PD to confront head-on that strand of Congolese "conspiracy theory" :

"The term "balkanization" has its own special meaning in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where it refers to a conspiracy theory that foreign interests seek to divide the DRC into smaller client states in order to facilitate access to the country's vast mineral reserves.  Many prominent Congolese are quick to assert that United States is among the foreign powers poised to "balkanize" the DRC, just as many Congolese appear to believe that the U.S. favors alleged Rwandan designs vis-a-vis the DRC.  It is not clear how broad-based such views are or if they result primarily from government manipulation of public opinion. Regardless, addressing "balkanization" should be an important element of Mission outreach strategy." 

As I just said, the cable provides fascinating reading--with one caveat: it should be clarified to the US Kinshasa embassy that what it calls "conspiracy theory" is "broad-based" and deeply held as indisputable truth by virtually all the Congolese. What's more, this belief is reinforced by insensitive remarks that some American officials make now and then about the Congo, such as the infamous comment by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during his her visit in the DRC advising the Congolese on the need to forget about the past and to move on!

Besides this cable, WikeLeaks released scores of other US Kinshasa cables from 1994 to 2010.

2) Common Opposition Candidate: "Squaring the Circle"

Opposition leaders meeting to preselect Tshisekedi as opposition common presidential candidate

August 24, 2011

Notre Dame de Fatima Parish conference hall, Gombe Commune, Kinshasa

Photo: John Bompengo/Radio Okapi
"Squaring the Circle"

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Twenty-four opposition political parties chose by acclamation Etienne Tshisekedi as their common presidential candidate on August 24, at a crowded and stormy meeting held at the conference hall of Notre Dame de Fatima Parish in downtown Kinshasa. The moderator of the meeting was MP Jean-Pierre Lisanga Bonganga, president of the party Convention Chrétienne pour la Démocratie (CCD), a die-hard "Tshisekedist."

Representatives of the Mouvement de Libération du Congo (MLC) and of Vital Kamerhe's Union pour la Nation Congolaise (UNC) walked out of the meeting. They said that the only point on the agenda was supposed to be a discussion on the response given by CENI to the opposition memorandum. Therefore, they went to say, adding at the eleventh hour the choice of Tshisekedi as the common candidate was nothing less than an entrapment.

The ever-vocal MLC deputy secretary general MP Jean-Lucien Busa didn't mince his words in criticizing the move by MP Jean-Pierre Lisanga Bonganga: "Is it at a meeting where we got to discuss the responses of CENI to the political opposition that we also have to discuss the issue of the common candidacy of the opposition? The MLC and the other political parties [that had walked out] aren't party to this schema!"

If anything, this shows that choosing a common candidate, quips the daily La Prospérité, amounts to the proverbial "squaring of the circle."   For one, the 24 parties that chose Tshisekedi aren't significant enough in terms of membership and influence. Secondly, as if to further muddy the already murky waters of the opposition, Léon Kengo wa Dondo remarked that you don't preselect candidates by acclamation but the opposition should instead organize primaries!

3) Kisombe-gate: Demonstrating journos hit massive snag at National Assembly

Journos' "March of Wrath" against MP Yves Kisombe

Kinshasa, Friday, August 26, 2011

Photo: John Bompengo/Radio Okapi

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More than two hundred Kinshasa journos took to the streets to vent their anger against MP Yves Kisombe, an MLC defector and a star of Kabila's cartel Majorité Présidentielle (MP), in a march appropriately billed as the "March of Wrath." This march was called after the MP Kisombe's audio of his sexist rant against RTVS1 anchor and reporter Eugénie Ntumba went viral in Congolese blogosphere.

MP Kisombe adamantly denies having ever uttered those insults, bold-facedly claiming that he was set up by his political enemies who made the audio montage, as he brazenly told a reporter of Radio Okapi on Wednesday, August 24: "I've never ever insulted that journalist.That tape recording is a gross montage!" It's pathetic to see an apparently sophisticated individual as MP Kisombe resort to the same infantile denial as the Soukouss singer Marie-José Méjé 30 who, when confronted in 2009 with the pictures of her intentional "wardrobe malfunction" at a concert in Kampala, claimed her images were photoshopped! In this case, the denials of MP Kisombe are simply untenable. 

For obvious reasons. 

Firstly, no such voice-changer software and know-how exist in Kinshasa; and even if they did, no one sees why MP Kisombe would have been singled out. 

Secondly, just as he'd threatened in the taped phone monologue, MP Kisombe went down to the studios of RTVS1 studios where he insulted another female journalist, according to Clément Nzau, the CEO of RTVS1: 

"The same day Yves Kisombe came to our offices. He didn't stop at squabbling with the journalist he found in there, he went into the studio. And with his phone, he redialed the number on his phone to make sure it was the same number he'd called [earlier]. Back in the offices, he insulted another female journalist who advised that he needed some restraints towards women"... 

Anyway, the journos had planned that their March of Wrath would "culminate" at the National Assembly where they would submit a memorandum calling for MP Kisombe's impeachment. This plan ended in a "huge disillusionment," according to Le Potentiel. The journos hit a first snag at the gates of the National Assembly, where they were blocked by a squad of riot cops personally led by the fearsome Kinshasa commander of the unit, Col. Kanyama--nicknamed by students "Esprit-des-morts" (spirit of the dead), for allegedly not hesitating ordering riot cops to open fire on student demonstrators in the past. Still according to Le Potentiel: "At certain moments, one feared the worst, because law enforcement agents were threatening to open fire on this human sea that was keen on meeting the speaker of the National Assembly in person."

Col. Kanyama aka Esprit-des-morts

Commander of Kinshasa riot police corps

Video screen capture: Alex Engwete

(Credits)

Then finally, Col. Kanyama ordered the demonstrating journos to file in without disruption and screaming into the public auditorium of the National Assembly--where the journalists hit another snag in the very person of the Speaker, MP Evariste Boshab.

Speaker Boshab interrupted the session he was presiding at the National Assembly to meet the journalists. But "without reading the memo," Speaker Boshab, who is also a tenured constitutional law professor at the Université de Kinshasa, then "behaved like a professor calling students to order, or as a party leader rising up his party members" (Le Potentiel).

Speaker Boshab told journalists he was amazed at their confusion about such elementary notion as the separation of powers in a democracy. Boshab then went on to say that if MP Kisombe is alleged to have engaged in insulting and libelous statements--and Speaker Boshab claimed not to have heard the audio tape--the proper course of action would be to seek the removal of the parliamentary immunity of the member of parliament by seizing the courts. And it is the General Prosecutor of the Republic who would inform the National Assembly about the necessity of the removal of the parliamentary immunity, which would then be voted in parliamentary plenary session.

Speaker Boshab then bemoaned the "intolerance" evinced by journalists, the very people whose chief mission is to "inform" and "educate" the public about tolerance at this critical juncture. This reaction of Speaker Boshab, who's also the secretary general of Kabila's PPRD, somewhat contradicts the earlier conciliatory stance adopted by his party earlier in the week when Emile Bongeli, erstwhile Deputy Prime Minister and PPRD national secretary in charge of communication, personally phoned Eugénie Ntumba to apologize in the name of his party and to let her know that the behavior of MP Kisombe should in no way, shape or fashion be misconstrued as the position of PPRD towards her or women. The ultimate irony of the soap opera Kinois journos have dubbed "Kisombe-gate" or "Kisombe Scandal" is that for all intents and purposes the name of MP Yves Kisombe continues to be mentioned in the press in spite of the 6-month ban or embargo decreed by the media.

In any event, at the auditorium of the National Assembly, without more ado, Speaker Boshab dispatched the two other remaining points in the journalists' memorandum:

1)  As regards Godens Banza Tiefolo, the alleged fraudster on CSAC list of members, Speaker Boshab responded: "We'll have to compare the lists submitted by your guild and what has been published" in the presidential ordinance, before chastising journalists for jumping the gun by seizing the Supreme Court of Justice.

2) As for the security of journalists, Boshab said they should continue to do their job and avoid taking political positions!

Angered by what they perceived as the Speaker's haughty responses to their memo as well as his cavalier attitude, the journalists walked out on MP Boshab.

Speaker Evariste Boshab and Emile Bongeli (with mike in hand)

Friday, August 19, 2011
Opening of PPRD congress
Kinshasa, Stade des Martyrs
Photo: John Bompengo/Radio Okapi
(Credits)

4) Bad blood still brewing between CENI and the opposition

Fidèle Sarassoro

Deputy UN Secretary General Special Representative in DRC

Photo: John Bompengo/Radio Okapi

(Credits) 

It seems that bad blood is still flowing in torrents between the national independent electoral commission (CENI) and opposition leaders who, memo after memo and after an open letter to the Raïs, want to participate in the audit of the electoral list and in the management of CENI central server, which, according to Rev Mulunda, is in Kinshasa.

The latest attempt at forcing CENI to allow access of its central server to the opposition was made on Friday, August 26, by MP Jean-Pierre Lisanga Bonganga who went to see Deputy UN Secretary General Special Representative in DRC Fidèle Sarassoro to rehash the now quite well known opposition demands. Sarassoro assured MP Lisanga that it is in the interest of all stakeholders in the electoral process to maintain dialogue and that MONUSCO would strive to facilitate such dialogue.

MP Jean-Pierre Lisanga Bonganga

Chairman of the Convention Chrétienne pour la Démocratie (CCD)

A die-hard "Tshisekedist" 

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 5) Cyberwarfare: Kinshasa e-zine LeSoftonline hacked again by Cyuzuzo, Rwandan Hacker

The web portal of the Congolese e-zine LeSoftonline

Accessed on August 28, 2011 at 20:04 HRS EST

"Hacked by Cyuzuzo, Rwanda Hacker"

Screen copy by Alex Engwete

Above is what the portal of the daily LeSoftonline, a Congolese e-zine, looked like on Sunday, August 28, at 8 PM EST. LeSoftonline is an offshoot of Le Soft International created 20 years ago by MP Tryphon Kin Kiey Mulumba, chairman of the Parti pour l'Action (PA) aligned with the presidential majority cartel. MP Kin Kiey hails from the Bandundu province. This is the second hacking this month of LeSoftonline by the Rwandan hacker who goes by the nom-de-guerre Cyuzuzo. The first hacking by the same culprit happened on August 27 and lasted several hours before LeSoftonline could restore its normal settings.

The hacking of LeSoftonline, though the e-zine is a private outfit whose portal is hosted by a European server, should also be a wake-up call to the Congolese government whose investment in cybersecurity an in IT training is non-existent. This lack of vision and proactive action in cybersecurity glaringly displayed by the Congolese government is particularly alarming as sensitive banking and government data are now online. In fact, the system of the DRC Central Bank was hacked in late September-early October 2010, and by October 7 it was "up and running at [only] 60% of its capacity after being crippled by [the] cyberattack." Maybe it was the resourceful Cyzuzo who had also attacked the Central Bank.

Cyuzuzo, the nom-de-guerre chosen by the Rwandan hacker, is a common Rwandan patronym. But it also stems from the verb "kuzuza" (to fill). Maybe the hacker took that moniker for the way his hacking is done by filling the articles' title banners of LeSoftonline.

MP Tryphon Kin-Kiey Mulumba

Chairman of the Parti pour l'Action (PA) and owner of LeSoftonline

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Odds and ends: 1) Summary executions of Sub-Saharan Africans in Tripoli; and 2) Shawshank Redemption botched remake in the DRC: Norwegian convicted murderers Tjostolv Moland and Joshua French attempt prison break in Kisangani

1) Summary executions of Sub-Saharan Africans in Tripoli

Bodies of more than a dozen Sub-Saharan Africans summarily executed

Tripoli, August 25, 2011

 François Mori/AFP/Scanpix

(Credits)

In the general thrill, confusion, and celebration of the fall of the Libyan dictator, scant attention is paid to the atrocities being meted out by the Libyan revolutionary forces against Sub-Saharan Africans. Accused of being Gaddafi's mercenaries, they've been hounded and killed just because they happen to be black. If some of Sub-Saharan Africans were mercenaries, most of them, however, were just plain migrant workers trapped in Libya. In fact, very few Sub-Saharan African countries could send planes to evacuate their nationals from Libya at the start of the conflict. There were, for example, more than 400 Congolese stranded at Tripoli airport in early March. And, standing out as an exception in the region, the DRC government chartered two airplanes to evacuate them. And these 400 were only those who were in the Libyan capital. 

And even if these Sub-Saharans were actually Gaddafi's mercenaries, nothing justifies these kinds of summary executions...

Let me repeat this for good measure: Blacks are being killed like feral dogs in the streets of Tripoli!

Amnesty International claims it has "powerful testimonies" of atrocities committed by both sides and the UN has pleaded that "no acts of revenge" be carried out by the victors. But I'd bet that scores of more Sub-Saharan Africans will be massacred before everything shakes out. And in the total indifference of the international community. 

Photo: Zohra Bensemra/Reuters/Scanpix

(Credits)

2) Shawshank Redemption botched remake in the DRC: Norwegian convicted murderers Tjostolv Molan and Joshua French attempt prison break in Kisangani

Sullen Tjostolv Molan and crestfallen Joshua French

In their 12-square-meter death-row cell of the Kisangani Prison Centrale

August 2009

Photo: Tore Bergsaker/Dagbladet

(Credits)

Do you remember these two guys? If you don't, then get up to speed by reading my post of February 12, 2010, titled "Two Norwegians shoot a Congolese to watch him die, laugh about it, insult Africa, and Norway's media blame Congo." Johnny Cash could have written his hit for these two criminals!

The picture above of the Prison Centrale shabby cell is a chilling commentary on the carceral conditions of the Gulag of the Congo, or of Africa in general, for that matter. I remember that a few years ago, officials of the ex-MONUC were flabbergasted to discover that the only prison that had any fund earmarked in the annual budget of the government was Makala Prison in Kinshasa! The rest of the country's prisons had to fend for themselves. And prisoners who couldn't be fed by their families either had to become the slaves of other well-off prisoners or die of starvation and pestilence. 

Paradoxically, as I used to tell my friends when Mandela came out of Robben Island after more than two decades of hard labor, there was no way the Madiba could have survived 5 years in a "normal" African prison.  We all saw in what conditions M.K.O. Abiola, the  1993 Nigerian president elect who was denied his rightful office and jailed by the military, died promptly upon his release after spending 4 short years in the Nigerian Gulag system! It is rumored that Abiola was kept in such total isolation those 4 years that when Koffi Annan went to see him in prison with Red Cross and other officials, he kept talking to the white people in the room and only at the last minute asked the UN Secretary General: "And who are you, gentleman?"

But more importantly, maybe this photograph should serve as deterrent to all Europeans who, once in Africa, try to rehearse in their heads the swashbuckling feats of a Henry Morton Stanley and, worse, would come up, God forbid!, with the not so brilliant idea of killing an African just for the pleasure of watching him/her die... 

Anyway, on Wednesday, August 24, prison guards patrolling the outside perimeter of the Kisangani Prison Centrale noticed a huge crack high up on the wall of the prison. Alarmed, they immediately went to report the breach to the prison warden, Kudura Ramazani. When he went to inspect the crack, Ramazani realized it was right outside the prison cell of Moland and French. Putting two and two together, Ramazani then went in to inspect the cell of the two convicts and--lo and behold!--found two iron bars the pair used to attempt to drill their way out of prison. One of the iron bars was 1 meter-long, the other 45 inches. In other words: Shawshank Redemption--the remake; a botched remake, as it were... 

The fact that the two convicts came in possession of these dangerous weapons inside the prison is in itself another commentary on the rampant corruption in the Congolese civil service...

Ramazani then proceeded strictly by the book. He called in other authorities to witness the signing of the affidavit of the confession of the attempted prison break by the two convicted murderers: a MONUSCO officer; Col. Gaston Shomari, the JAG who'd presided over their trial at the end of which they were sentenced to death for murder and espionage (weapons charges are tried in military court in the DRC; and though there's the death penalty in the books, there's a moratorium on executions since Kabila took office); and their local lawyer.

Col. Shomari told the Norwegian daily Dagbladet that the two convicted murderers were very close to breaking out of prison, as there remained only a thin layer of bricks standing between them and freedom. Col. Shomari also added that the two felons were repeat escape offenders who wouldn't give up attempting prison breaks. A few months ago they were caught with the whopping sum of $2,000 (more than a sixteen-month salary of the average Congolese of the interior)--no doubt to bribe their way out and make to the Ugandan border where they came from.

Warden Ramazani said that the pair kept perstering carceral authorities with petitions to be moved to Makala Prison in Kinshasa where they expect their lot to improve. But the point of keeping them in Kisangani Prison Centrale is, in my view, in order to give the people of the provincial capital of Orientale and particularly the widow and orphans of Abedi Kasongo, the murder victim, the assurance that the perpetrators are paying for, and in the very juridiction where they'd committed their heinous crime.

The warden also said that the conditions of the two Norwegian criminals will no doubt worsen as the stricter conditions that will be imposed in the prison could cause much resentment in the other inmates who might then try to harm them...

Well, a year or so ago, Moland was laughing his head off at the tribunal, thinking they'd be let go just because they're special people by the mere fact that they are Westerners! He's today a sullen, diminished man--a living illustration of the proverbial "Rira bien qui rira le dernier" (he laughs best who laughs last)...

I strongly believe that his buddy French is the other victim in this affair. A follower, he let himself be enlisted in the criminal spree of his comrade...

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Don’t Mess with my country, French Senator Joëlle Gariaud-Maylam tells Paul Kagame

French Senator Joëlle Gariaud-Maylam

New-Orleans, January 2006

First Day of Back-to-School after Katrina

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Post from the blog of Sen. Joëlle Gariaud-Maylam, published on August 24, 2011
Original Title: “Visite du Président du Rwanda, Paul Kagamé à Paris”
Translated from the French by Alex Engwete

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Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s president, will visit Paris on September 12 and 13. This announcement could by no means leave me indifferent, and today I resolved to submit a written question on this matter.

The Rwandan president has accused French troops sent to Rwanda, on a UN mandate, to be complicit of the genocide that had befallen that country and thus to have contributed in crimes against humanity.

No one could deny in good faith the reality of genocide. The Rwandan people still bear its scars. But genocide shouldn’t serve to feed unjust accusations or to justify unacceptable policies. We had by all means made mistakes like everyone else. We didn’t see the looming catastrophe. We didn’t take quite seriously the calls to murder of Radio Mille Collines. And yet. French troops did everything to reestablish peace and security, at the peril of their lives, in a country blighted by chaos and sanguinary madness. They did save thousands of men, women, and children by heading off exactions and crimes regardless of whoever the perpetrators happened to be. Our political leaders at that time had acted in good faith, with the preservation of whoever could be preserved as their priority. Barring our action, the tragedy could have been even worse.

The visit of president Kagame will take place. One can hardly be happy about it. It happens to be my case. I certainly understand that the interests of France and Rwanda pass by an appeasement of their relations. But it is at least important that on the occasion of this visit, the Rwandan head of state publicly evinces that he will  no longer unjustly impugn France, her army, and her leaders. Let’s not forget that our military devote their lives to defend democracy and human rights, with no other payoff than the honor of contributing, under our flag, to peace and development. France has backed the Libyan people in their quest for liberty against the tyrant Gaddafi; President Sarkozy is winning his bet, after having defended, alone against (almost) everyone else, his vision of a free Libya. We can be quite proud of our action.

The visit should be an occasion to lay stuff in the open in all frankness. About the past and about the present. About the action of Rwandan troops in the DRC. About the repression meted out against Rwandan oppositionists: I notably have in mind Victoire Ingabire, jailed for over a year. The reality of the genocide shouldn’t serve as an excuse for denial of democracy and human rights.

If we speak to the Rwandan president a language of truth, if he understands that France is willing to acknowledge her mistakes but not to relinquish the honor of her army nor to shove Human Rights in her pocket, then, yes, this visit that gives rise to legitimate questions would have maybe been useful.

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DRC-Rise of the Media machines: 1) UNPC seizes Supreme Court over fraudulent designee in presidential ordinance of CSAC composition; and 2) Journalists embargo MP Yves Kisombe for 6 months and will seek his impeachment in a “March of Wrath” on August 26

1) UNPC seizes Supreme Court over presidential ordinance of CSAC composition

Godens Banza Tiefolo and Blandine Lusimana

Usurper and "fraudulent" designee in presidential CSAC ordnance

Undated photo
(Credits)

The Union Nationale de la Presse du Congo (UNPC), the guild and lobby of Congolese journalists, has just seized the Supreme Court of Justice over one member it claims to be an usurper in the newly-minted High Council for Audiovisual Media and Communication (CSAC). This is a major scandal the government doesn't need at this moment fraught with all kind of electoral perils.

The National Independent Electoral  Commission (CENI) and CSAC are defined in Title VI of the Constitution as "democracy-supporting institutions." And just as for CENI, the legislative project defining CSAC was duly voted in Parliament and signed into an "organic law" by the president on January 20, 2011.

The CSAC has a constitutional dual mandate of good cop/bad cop vis-à-vis the press: 1) "to guarantee and ensure the liberty and protection of the press as well as of all means of mass communication"; and to "supervise[...] the respect for good practice standards with regard to the information."

The organic law sets a 4-year term for the CSAC 15 members, who are designated according to the following quota: 1 member is designated by the President; 2 by the National Assembly; 2 by the Senate; 1 by the Government; 1 by the High Council of the Judiciary; 3 by media guilds (1 chosen by radio broadcasters, 1 by TV groups, and 1 by the printed press); 1 by the advertisers' guild; 1 by the Bar Association; 1 by the association of parents of pupils and students; and 2 by groups of media rights.

But the CSAC law has a major flaw: instead of its designees being first vetted by and voted in the National Assembly, as is the case with CENI members, each group of designators of CSAC members have to submit its list to the President's cabinet, and then presented afterwards to both chambers in plenary session before taking office! In the Congo, that kind of loophole is the breach where clientelists of all stripes would dash through in a stampede...

When the presidential ordinance of CSAC was published in the Congolese media on Friday, August 12, the Congolese press lobby UNPC was shocked to find out that the one member designated by its printed guild--Martin Mukanya (photo below), editor-in-chief of the Kinshasa independent daily La Tempête des Tropiques--was not listed! After a painstaking investigation, UNPC just found out this week that people in Kabila's office had replaced Mukanya with Godens Banza Tiefolo.

On Monday, August 22, UNPC seized the Supreme Court of Justice over this usurpation of its quota by someone it deems as "persona non grata"  in the guild since Godens Banza Tiefolo was kicked out of the meetings of selection of designees after assaulting UNPC secretary general Boukar Kasonga Tshilunde. Tiefolo, a Katangan, is a grandstander who bullies people around him by claiming to belong to the "biological family" of the president. And as it happens, all the higher-ups in the president's office are from Katanga Province, just as Tiefolo.

If precedents are any indication, the Supreme Court routinely rules in favor of the government. But I don't think the president will want to cross the press when the electoral campaign is looming over the very near horizon...

Martin Mukanya

The legitimate designee

 (Credits)

2) Journalists embargo MP Yves Kisombe for 6 months and will seek his impeachment in a “March of Wrath" on August 26

MP Yves Kisombe

Fed up by the verbal assault MP Yves Kisombe unleashed upon RTVS1 anchor and reporter Eugénie Ntumba and the mugging of RTGA cameraman Serge Kimbila at the PPRD Congress at the Stade des Martyrs, Congolese journalists decided, on August 23, to "embargo" the sexist injurologue for six months and to hold a "March of Wrath" on Friday, August 26.

The decision to ban Kisombe and to organize the March of Wrath was reached at a media powwow held at the headquarters of journalists' rights organization Journalistes en Danger (JED)--with the participation of powerful media associations such as UNPC, the Observatoire des Médias Congolais (OMEC), and the Association Nationale des Editeurs du Congo (ANECO). The March of Wrath will "culminate at the seat of Parliament with the submission to the President of the National Assembly of a memorandum calling for the impeachment of Mr Kisombe."

It seems to me that journalists are forgetting something... In the editorial denouncing the beating of its RTGA cameraman, the daily L'Avenir (also owned by RTGA) had namely "identified one Willy, bodyguard and member of the biological family of the Secretary General of the PPRD." Well, the Secretary General of PPRD also happens to be the Speaker of the National Assembly, Evariste Boshab--the very person the journalists will submit their memorandum to!

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Nafissatou Diallo: A politico-cultural victim of African leaders’ malgovernance

Nafissatou Diallo aka Ophelia and lawyer Kenneth Thompson

New York City, Monday, August 22, 2011

She told lies "great and small" (prosecutors)

Photo: Seth Venig/AP

(Credits)

Wait a New York minute! Between the long midnight of Gaddafi and the Republican outrage over Jon Huntsman’s “smackdown”(Michael Steele), newscasts made the time and the space to squeeze in packages on Nafissatou Diallo aka Ophelia?

This is an outrage that warrants a rant! And, by the way, "outrage" is a word that will often recur below...

I got no choice… I have to interrupt reading the gripping bursts of confusing and confused tweets streaming from Tripoli—one moment Saif al-Islam is nabbed; the next moment he’s flashing the damning V of victory at a Gaddafi-controlled hotel!—in order to jolt down these few lines about the debacle of the rape allegations Diallo made against DSK...

Well, let me back up a bit…

DSK scandal broke out to us in Kinshasa in mid-May via FM—Radio France Internationale (RFI), BBC, VOA, and their local echo chambers. Thanks to the constant rolling electricity blackouts in Kin, we were spared in my neighborhood, for a few days at least, the images of the indignities of DSK—manacled, manhandled, and paraded for all global television viewership to see.

As the saying goes, shit happens. And it was bound to hit the fan sooner or later for DSK. Sarko had already a full dossier compiled on his putative rival in the 2012 election. It is publicly rumored that a few years ago, when Sarko was Interior Minister, the Parisian “police des moeurs” (vice squad) had caught DSK "shagging" a sex worker in the backseat of his car in the Bois de Boulogne. The vice cops didn’t make a hoo-ha about the incident; they are alleged to have gone all hush-hush on the spot, but later on, transmitted the particulars to their chain of command, up to Sarko!

The man has a “reputation,” all right… but rape?

As I said, I didn’t see the actual footage of the infamy for a few days… Then one fateful night… around May 20 or 21, I think… Let me describe what transpired.

I’m sitting in the living room—slumped on the sofa. Taking full advantage of the 15-minute window of the erratic electricity in the capital to watch television. Stifling heat. The derisory fan whirling at full blast is useless—but its purring works as a placebo to mentally crank a few notches down the oppressive gluiness of the air. But the fan as a placebo isn’t working when it comes to the swarm of malaria-borne mosquitoes that buzz around in the tiny living room. I’m sweating profusely—though I just took a shower, a crime in itself as water is at times a precious commodity here. “Skeeters” vying for our blood.  I wouldn’t mind being bitten, but the noise, the invasive attempts to get into my eyes, my mouth, my ears, are unbearable… Even if I had a mosquito net bubble around my body, the noise would still be torture…

I should be sitting outside.  Though the air is still and muggy outside too, there could be a sporadic short breeze.  In a short while though, I tell myself, when electricity would have vanished into the darkness where it came from...

Five women ranging in age from 18 to 45 are sitting with me in the living room. My cousin Anna, 25, is breading plants onto the hair of Suzie, 18, a neighbor; my niece Nadège, 18, is brooding because she’s missing her favorite Nigerian soap opera narrated in Lingala: I appropriated the only TV in the house to watch Euronews (I don’t care, I got to watch the news!); Suzie, 45, a neighbor, is telling Philo, 17, another cousin, for the zillionth time, the modus operandi of thieves of the central market.

All the while I was crossing my fingers for the electricity to last till the top of the hour so that I could watch the news.

And it was getting there. Two minutes before the top of the hour. The usual theme tune for the weather section preceding the news is playing while the Google map is flickering on the screen…

Then it happened, just after the weather—still breaking news after four or five days…

The chattering women in the living room go all of a sudden silent. We were all spellbound. Riveted to the small screen.

DSK suddenly pops up on the screen like a living nightmare.

DSK! Africa’s last chance at the IMF, according to the propaganda bombarding us ever since he landed the top job in one of the “Bretton institutions,” as the local media are want to call the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

DSK! Disheveled. Hands cuffed behind his back.  Flanked by two beefy plainclothes detectives, all dressed up to the nines: these guys knew it was their 15 New York minutes!...

DSK… Fighting hard not to squint under the probing lights of TV cameras and the staccatos of flashes blasting all around him. DSK. Being eased into an unmarked police car by one of the suited detectives who unceremoniously puts the cup of his hand on the head of DSK.  The detectives cram him in the backseat. Then, jump cut to DSK’s back as he’s pushed—quite gently, I must admit, but firmly—into a seedy police precinct.  Then a loop, back to the beginning of the footage. The impersonal voice of the newscaster hasn’t finished with him yet. He continues to narrate the sordid affair over the same images he’d begun with!...

Chilling. The horror! The infamy! Rape! I was outraged!

Rape, DSK? In the United States of all places? Have you lost your marbles? You could spend a lifetime behind bars for that! That is, if you survive in the general population of an American penitentiary! Didn’t you watch Oz? (DSK is way too refined for Oz!)

Not Oz yet though. We are still at the level of Law & Order Special Victims Unit. For real! I can hear in my head the music that opens the episode and the ominous narrated intro: “In the criminal justice system, sexually-based offenses are considered especially heinous. In New York City, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad, known as the Special Victims Unit. These are their stories.” (I recently heard that the producers of Law & Order have already slated the DSK case for the opening of the new season.)

What were you thinking, DSK? Are you “subconsciously” afraid of success, you, who are systematically trouncing Sarko in opinion polls? My indignation grows all the more intense as he is alleged to have raped a “pious African immigrant woman.” Then, all of a sudden, the electricity is cut off—accompanied by the usual collective rumor of impotent outrage coming from the entire neighborhood, which now fuels mine at DSK as well. “This government, really!,” someone screams from the adjoining compound...

I grope in the dark for the small Chinese contraption that passes for a transistor radio in this part of the world, and fumble with the dial to get BBC. It’s the same spiel, though here I get on top of the sordid facts the pontifications of the BBC Paris reporter who has now turned into a Pierre Bourdieu, psychoanalyzing the French elite, scolding the deleterious sociocultural milieu of the Parisian upper class! Is this reporting or punditry in psychobabble? Another strand of outrage is now stirring inside me…

By now, the 5 women had rejoined me outside. I’m so intent on listening to the BBC that I was unaware of the growing racket around me.

It turns out that the women are outraged. Who can blame them? Who, in her own right mind, can defend a rapist? A devil’s advocate maybe? But I’m mystified by the uncontrollable giggle of Nadège.

Wait a minute! What am I hearing?

Suzie: “I swear to God, she’s a sorceress! A shameless sorceress!"

Nadège (still giggling): “Had I been her I’d have told him, ‘Mister, the 500 hundred bucks you gave me ain’t enough, you got to cough up 500 hundred dollars more!’”

Suzie: “No… They should bring that Miss Goody Two-Shoes here. I’d throw her right into the raging nests of FDLR rapists in the Kivu. Then she’ll know what being raped is all about!”

Anna (aping Euronews report): “A pious African immigrant woman! These guys are all suckers! They bought her story!”

I was baffled… and that’s an understatement…

Now, fast forward to early July. I had just returned to the US when I discovered the YouTube interview of Mrs. Sanou Doussou Condé, a Guinean and a New Yorker too. I was shocked to find out that she had the same reading of Diallo's narrative just like my family and friends in Kinshasa. She didn’t—and had no need to—utilize the heavy Cartesian artillery of Bernard-Henri Lévy (BHL) to see through the whole caboodle of half-truths and outright lies of her fellow citizen. She felt it in her bones—again, it bears repeating here, just like my family and friends did in Kinshasa. I felt compelled to write a post on the subject on July 5, laying down my doubts about her, when almost everyone had already made up their mind about DSK: guilty as charged! BHL attempted to defend his friend and he was "electronically lynched," to use the famous phrase of Justice Clarence Thomas.

Why did I so completely misread Diallo while I had everything there in front of me, like an open book?

In that July 5 post I was quite furious at Diallo. I understand her now. And my anger has abated. Though I don’t think that understanding translates into forgiving her for ruining the life of DSK, and for bamboozling Kenneth Thompson, who looks and sounds like a good man, into believing her, and risking in the process his good name and his reputation. And thank God Rev Al Sharpton stood clear of this storm, as he’s hunkering down these days at MSNBC; otherwise, the good man of God would have jumped with both feet into this murky business too…

Thompson thinks that AG Cyrus Vance has no sympathy for his client. And hence, a special prosecutor should be appointed! A special prosecutor? Is Ken Thompson joking? In this economy? Wasting taxpayers’ money in lengthy frivolous investigations and lawsuits? Maybe Thompson is making all this noise because he knows that the more vocal and outraged he acts, the more certain a juicy settlement might be coming his way, via his client! Who knows?  Maybe the judge would dismiss "the motion for dismissal on recommendation" filed by Cyrus Vance and either singlehandedly prosecute DSK or appoint a special prosecutor. In a million years…

I just said that I now understand Diallo. This is her story in a nutshell. According to the UN, in 2010, the total population of Africa was more than 1 billion people. If I posit that half of that population lived in indescribable squalor, I wouldn’t be terribly way off the mark. To put it mildly, such poverty necessarily begets desperate people.  Or to put it bluntly, and still according to my estimation, you'd have half a billion sociopaths ready to suck anybody down to the marrowbones and the marrow inside to survive. Why have we spawned millions of internet fraudsters?  As long as we have extremely hungry people in Africa—Oh God! the creepy Somali toddler I recently saw in a photograph screaming without a sound (according to the legend of the picture), who was like the living embodiment of Edvard Munch’s The Scream!—many more Nafissatou Diallos are bound to crawl out of the woodwork.  In other words, just like those losers who blame their parents for their shortcomings, Nafissatou Diallo, "I submit to you," is a politico-cultural victim of African leaders’ malgovernance…

Our "tiny living room" in Kinshasa

Photo: Alex Engwete 

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DRC Elections 2011 Watch: 1) Joseph Kabila's PPRD holds Congress; and 2) Timeline Update

A PPRD supporter 

In yellow party colors and "Raïs"(Kabila) written on his back

Kinshasa, Stade des Martyrs

Sunday, August 21, 2011

(Credits)

The frantic cease-and-desist call issued a few days ago by the national independent electoral commission (CENI) to political parties to stop rallies till the official beginning of electoral campaign goes pretty much unheeded. 

In the heels of other party congresses held recently in Kinshasa, Joseph Kabila's Parti du Peuple pour Reconstruction et le Développement (PPRD) just held its 3-day second congress over the weekend (August 19-21) at the Stade des Martyrs. Thousands attended, though the bleachers weren't as crowed as  at Tshisekedi's UDPS rally in that same venue on Tuesday, August 9.  PPRD members were particularly sensitive to this perception of scattered attendance. And at the opening of the PPRD congress Serge Kimbila, the cameraman of the TV channel RTGA, was badly beaten by PPRD supporters for "intentionally filming empty pockets of the Stade des Martyrs"! Reminder: RTGA belongs to pro-Kabila MP Pius Muabilu who was in the crosshairs of the PPRD cadre earlier this month for having his TV station carry live Vital Kamerhe's UNC congress.

Anyway, as could be anticipated, National Assembly Speaker Evariste Boshap, who also doubles as the PPRD secretary general, read the resolution of the the 2nd PPRD congress that designated Joseph Kabila as the party's nominee to run for president. Significantly, Joseph Kabila didn't attend--no doubt to avoid giving ammunitions to his political enemies who would have accused him of "trampling the laws of the Republic" by holding a partisan political rally before the legal period of political campaign.

PPRD party members

Stade des Martyrs

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Photo: John Bompendo/Radio Okapi

(Credits)

Timeline Update:

August 16. In one of the most bizarre developments in the history of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Jean-Pierre Bemba petitioned the court to allow him to travel incognito to  Kinshasa to file his candidacy for president (Belgian radiotelevision RTBF). In a ruling issued on the same day, the ICC rejected Jean-Pierre Bemba's request for lack of precedent and as for being a flight risk.

August 17. Joseph Kabila signs into law the newly passed changed version of the Annex to  Electoral Law. Among many other things, the law divides the Congolese territory into 169 constituencies. Earlier on, Kabila also signed into law and appointed by ordinance members of the Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel et de la Communication (CSAC)--which replaces the transitional Haute Autorité des Médias (HAM)--the national media speech police. CSAC also determines air time and access to official medias by different political stakeholders and has the authority to suspend newsprints or cut out signals of radio and television stations for unbecoming media stances or reports deemed as endangering public order.

August 18. Rev Ngoy Mulunda, CENI president, announces that the offices of the national independent electoral commission are now open to receive files of presidential and legislative candidacies. The period for filing these candidacies runs from August 18 to September 5.

***

UPDATE:

I just got an updated version of the election timeline published in the online MONUSCO newsletter Bulletin de l’Assistance Electorale Internationale No. 13, August 19, 2011. (I think this Bulletin is only published in French).
According to the Bulletin, Rev Mulunda’s announcement mentioned above took place at a press briefing held at Grand Hotel during which CENI chairman announced that the national independent commission has opened countrywide 170 offices of reception and treatment of candidacies (known by its French acronym BRTC).

Rev Mulunda also gave a detailed revised timeline of 11 benchmarks leading up to the election is as follows. The benchmarks are so tightly sequenced that they have all the hallmarks of a Hail Mary pass—as they don’t even allow for any acts of God!

A. August 18-Sept 14: Filing, reception, and treatment of Candidacies:

1.  August 18: Launch of operation of reception and treatment of presidential and legislative candidacies.

2. August 18-September 4: withdrawal of forms by candidates, filing and treatment of candidacies.

3. September 5: End of filing for candidacies.

4. September 6 – 10: Addition to, subtraction from, or substitution of candidacies by political parties.

5. September 11 – 14: Centralization of and deliberation over candidacy dossiers by CENI board.

B.  September 15: Publication of provisional list of candidacies by CENI board.

C. September 16-19: Submissions of petitions of rights of review by disqualified candidates.

1. September 20-26: Treatment of contentious matters relating to candidacies by the Supreme Court of Justice.

D. September 27: Publication of the definitive list of candidates by CENI board.

(E. September 18-Nov 26: Ordering, printing, and deployment of ballot papers for presidential and legislative elections.)

F. October 28-November 26: electoral campaign.

G. November 28: General elections.

H. December 6: Publication of provisional electoral results by CENI board.

I. December 7-16: Submissions of petitions of rights of review and examination of contentious matters relating to the results of the presidential election by the Supreme Court of Justice.

J. December 17: Publication of final results by the Supreme Court of Justice.

K. December 20: Swearing in of the president elect.

***

In a related development, the Dutch Embassy issued a press release stating that the Netherlands has financed the Carter Center for an electoral observation mission already operational in 6 provinces of the DRC. The operation is bound to expand.

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AFRICOM Commander Gen Carter F. Ham in Kinshasa: US to train another FARDC battalion and medics

Gen Carter F. Ham 

Commander

United States Africa Command (AFRICOM)

Kinshasa, August 18, 2011

Photo: John Bompengo/Radio Okapi

(Credits)

It's been less than 5 full months since early March when Gen Carter F. Ham replaced Gen William "Kip" Ward at the helm of AFRICOM, after his confirmation by the Senate on November 18, 2010. But Gen Ham isn't a man to sit and fidget in his office at the Africa Command in Stuttgart, Germany. He's already crisscrossing the African continent, arriving this time around in Kinshasa, and paying, between talks with government authorities and Congolese military top brass, a lightning visit at the FARDC academy, the Centre Supérieur Militaire (CSM) where he gave a talk to officers on August 19, before flying to Kisangani, then heading straight to the northeasterrnmost tip of Orientale Province, at Dungu,  by the border with the Republic of South Sudan. 

Gen Carter F. Ham

August 19

Kinshasa, Centre Supérieur Militaire (CSM)

(Credits)

Dungu and Faradje, buffer zones of the Garamba Park, a natural preserve that has turned into the feeding ground of the Ugandan armed millenarian sect Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), are particularly major security and humanitarian disasters that are often under the radar of the international media. According to a recent assessment by UNHCR, waves after waves of more than 48,000 IDPs have been streaming into Dungu alone to escape the murderous rampages of the LRA in their villages. 

But the actual mission of Gen Ham at Dungu was much narrower and sharply focused. He wanted to get a first-hand feel of the FARDC 391st Commando battalion, a 750 strong force trained by AFRICOM in Kisangani, deployed in the area to combat the LRA. The general is about to make a very important decision that could kill or let thrive the U.S. military assistance in the country's reform of the security sector.

The way this battalion behaves on the ground will determine furthering or not the involvement of AFRICOM in training the Congolese military--especially in light of the proverbial lack of professionalism of the FARDC when dealing with civilians. This is what Gen Ham let his audience understand in Kisangani--something to the effect that quality control of the 391st battalion at Dungu would be critical in helping him make positive recommendations for the program continuance. With the exception of Radio Okapi, the Congolese media felt, however, that Gen Ham was set to authorize the training of another FARDC battalion at Camp Base, 10 km from the provincial capital. 

The misunderstanding of the Congolese media is underlied by the national collective wishful thinking at seeing AFRICOM choose Congo as its headquarters in Africa.

Strangely, everyone now wants to see AFRICOM stay forever in Kisangani, including vociferous nationalists who, just months ago, were screaming "colonialism" when the US Special Operations Command Africa went to the provincial capital of Orientale to train the FARDC 391st commando battalion. 

Well, the windfall of the presence of AFRICOM for the surrounding region is palpable, beyond the military training of the FARDC per se--though it is worth noting that the Americans trained not only fighting personnel but as well "supporting medical and engineering personnel and trainers who can bring similar training to other units within the Armed Forces of the DRC"!

The real immediate impact on the civilian population of Kisangani was the agriculture initiative set up near Camp Base by the Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture with FARDC AgCo (Compagnie Agricole) for providing "sustainable methods of food production" ranging from "fish farming to the cultivation of cassava."

Besides, AFRICOM can deploy jaw-dropping PR operations. For example, a few months ago, when I was in Kinshasa, AFRICOM set up for a few weeks a free dental care in the neighborhood of Matonge where Kinois who'd never seen a dentist in their lives crowded the open air clinic tent from 8 AM to 5 PM. On seeing that, a politician went as far as to say on television that if AFRICOM still needed a permanent home in Africa, they'd certainly be welcome in Kinshasa. Kinshasa? No way! It should be in Kisangani...

Charlie company

AFRICOM-trained 391st Commando Battalion

Graduation Parade

Camp Base, Kisangani

September 15, 2010

U.S. Air Force Photo by Senior Airman Christine Clark

(Credits)

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Gambian-Norwegian TV Star Haddy Jatou N'Jie tapped to host 7-22 Terror Victims Tribute in Oslo this Sunday

Haddy Jatou N'Jie, 32

Gambian-Norwegian NRK TV anchor and musician 

Photo: Siv Johanne Seglem/Dagbladet

(Credits)

Haddy Jatou N'Jie--the famous Oslo-born Gambian-Norwegian television anchor, musician, writer, and columnist--will host this Sunday August 21 (at 3 PM local time) at the 13,000-capacity Oslo Spektrum the mega event of the memorial for the victims of the 7-22 twin terror attacks in Oslo and Utøya. The event is expected to last one hour and 45 minutes. An international cast of more than a dozen musicians will perform at the event--including movie stars who will be reading the names of the victims as well as declaiming inspirational poems. All high-level state officials, monarchs, and crown princes of Scandinavian countries will be in attendance.

Commenting on her being picked to host the event, N'Jie said:

"This may be the hardest thing I've ever done, but at the same time I think it's nice to be part of it. But I'm very humbled by what I'll do and will keep my  focus on the victims and all the great artists who will perform."

N'Jie is quite familiar with mega events anyway, "having hosted, among others, the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest from her hometown of Oslo."

On her 2010 CNN profile I just quoted (see also video below), N'Jie said:

"From a very early age I started thinking, 'Who am I, where do I belong and what kind of person do I want to be?' So I started to make my own platform in a way, somewhere I could be without people, without having to defend myself in a way...I have my own room where I can be Gambian, Norwegian, black or white."

Haddy N'jie: The African Face of Norwegian TV by aengw

A "multifarious personality" and artist as described on that CNN profile, N'Jie is mostly known to African and world music lovers as one the singers of the 5-woman band Queendom made of black Norwegians (with roots in Gambia, Nigeria, Trinidad, Uganda, and Ethiopia). N'Jie has also pursued a successful solo career as a singer. 

Check out Haddy N'Jie and the Queendom's YouTube video clip of their hit "Home is where the heart is" filmed in Bagamoyo, Tanzania--with lyrics in English and Swahili.

Haddy Jatou N'Jie
2010 Eurovision
(Credits)

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A Kinois Injurologue to his bones: MP Yves Kisombe rails against Reporter Eugénie Ntumba: "That fuckwhat whore who just called me..." (audio and transcript)

Eugénie Ntumba

Kinshasa RTVS1 Anchor and Reporter

“That fuckwhat whore who just called me…” (MP Yves Kisombe)

Photo: Facebook Page of Eugénie Ntumba

Red Eye Removal with Adobe PSE by Alex Engwete

***

Context:

MP Yves Kisombe was kicked out of the MLC a few years ago for not toeing the party line at the National Assembly. Since then, though tagged as an independent MP at the National Assembly, Yves Kisombe has been very close to the ruling Presidential Majority (MP). Kisombe is from an old big and rich trading family of Kinshasa, originally from the Bas-Congo Province. Handsome and quick-witted (he’s a lawyer), Kisombe is a darling of Kinshasa radio and TV political shows where he’s often featured at the center of the constant media crossfires between the ruling Presidential Majority and opposition representatives. Radio Télévision Station 1 (RTVS1) is owned by Prime Minister Adolphe Muzito.

On Wednesday, August 17, 2011, RTVS1 Anchor and Reporter Eugénie Ntumba called MP Yves Kisombe to get his reaction to a statement made by unspecified opposition politicians. Kisombe didn’t like the aggressive and “impolite” manners of Eugénie Ntumba, and started to give her lessons of etiquette. Ntumba then hanged up on Kisombe. Angry at being hung up on the phone, Kisombe, whose phone has an incoming call reader display, found out that the phone call originated from the editorial offices of RTVS1. He then dialed back RTVS1 but couldn’t get through to Eugénie Ntumba. His call was instead picked up by another woman, whom I refer to in the transcript as a “Receptionist.” Unbeknownst to Kisombe, his phone call was being recorded by RTVS1.

The phone conversation below is important at many levels. It illustrates the fact that patriarchal attitudes (or male dominance) and sexism are still well entrenched in Congolese society even among the elite who’ve been educated in the West: Kisombe was educated in Belgium. (Anecdotally, the current Deputy Prime Minister Adolphe Lumanu, then Kabila’s chief of staff, was accused  in 2010 of fondling Canadian Ambassador Sigrid Anna Johnson in his office. When confronted, Lumanu said it was the Ambassador who had attempted to turn him on!  He soon was dismissed as the president’s chief of staff.) It also shows that “injurologie” (see Vocabulary below) is the defining character of Congolese politicians (it could actually be a cultural trait, as Congolese, particularly Lingala-speakers, are quarrelsome and quick to insult people). And, lastly, the audio is a mine of data for Linguistic Anthropology. In the transcription of the phone conversation, I was made aware of the way we, Congolese, switch from French to Lingala (or any other Congolese languages for that matter) and vice versa, often in the short span of one sentence. To help the reader grasp this phenomenon, I put in the transcript at the beginning of every utterance in these two languages either (L) or (F) to indicate that the utterance was in Lingala or French.

Below is the original audio of the phone conversation, followed by my transcript of the conversation.

***

Vocabulary:

Injurologue: “A Congolese neologism to describe politicians and TV pundits specialized in heaping [insults] and other verbal abuses upon each other”--African Cities Reader I
Maman: Mom or Lady or Ma'am (here the latter)
Papa: Dad or Sir (here, the latter)

***

AUDIO:




Honorable Yves Kisombe, 17 août 2011 by gabas1090


TRANSCRIPT:

YK: ... (F) This isn’t the postal service of the Prime Minister, do you understand, huh? (L) You understand? (F) I’ll come down there and throw you out of there like… (L) I’d even come out there and beat the shit out of you! (F) I’m not buddy buddy with you people. (L) I’m not your comrade.

RECEPTIONIST: Hmm!

YK: (F) Do you understand? (L) I’m not your comrade. (F) I’m an authority of the country, (L) you hear? (F) That fuckwhat whore who just called me, (L) who’d been picked up God knows from what trash, (F) she talks to me in… Instead of first addressing me properly, by telling me what she wants, she goes like, (mimicking the tone of Eugénie Ntumba), “Hello, Honorable,” (L) she starts right away, (F) “the opposition had issued a statement…” (L) I tell her, “But hold on, Maman, how can you start asking me questions just like that? (F) without first telling me why you’re calling me, what you want, huh? ” (L) She tells me, “Huh, sorry, huh…” I ask her… She starts out, (F) “In fact, I called you because I wanted to ask you a few questions… So, the opposition…” (L) I say, (F), “But, Maman, you want to ask me questions, (L) you are a journalist…,” are you following me?

RECEPTIONIST: (L) I’m following, Papa… I’m following…

YK: (F) Listen, it’s in your best interest to follow me… Because I’m coming down there; if you’re covering up for this girl, you’ll have to deal with me. (L) You hear? (F) Enough is enough! (L) I’m not your pal. There’s another girl who dissed me a while back… (F) I’m not a friend of you people! (L) You hear? I got younger siblings, baby brothers, and my pals who’d not wink at fuckwhat harlots lacking respect (L) for me! You hear? Huh?... (F) That girl hangs up in my face! (L) Does that phone belong to her father or her mother?

RECEPTIONIST: Sorry, Honorable…

YK: (F) Listen to me! Imbecile! (L) You hear? I’m coming down there to show you (F) that I’m a Kisombe, you understand? (F) You and the other fuckwhat, you’re no longer going to work there! You hear, huh? Imbecile! She’s calling, asking me questions… I’m coming down there, I’ll find out her name. You hear? Imbecile! (L) Her mother’s cunt! Animal! (F) Imbecile! Are you kidding with me? Huh?

RECEPTIONIST: (Undecipherable)

YK: (F) Find that girl for me, I’m telling you! It’s an order! Imbecile! (L) Animal!

RECEPTIONIST: (Undecipherable)

YK: (F) Then I call back to point that out to her, (L) she doesn’t answer the phone. (F) Imbecile! (L) You people think I’m your friend?

RECEPTIONIST: (Undecipherable)

YK: (L) Did I call her?

RECEPTIONIST: (Undecipherable)

YK: Huh? Huh? (F) I see here the number of the editorial offices of RTVS1 that she called from. She got the balls of hanging up in my face! From the phone of the editorial offices! Do you understand that? Hullo?

RECEPTIONIST: Hullo, Papa. (F) I’m listening to you…

YK: (F) Tell me the name of that whore! (L) You hear?

RECEPTIONIST: (Undecipherable)

YK: (F) Who?

RECEPTIONIST: (F) I just got in...

YK: (F) Imbecile! (L) I’m coming down there to… You’re the one who’d feel the pain on your body. You hear? (F) I tell you… what’s the name of that bitch who’d dared to disrespect me like that on the phone?

RECEPTIONIST: (Undecipherable)

YK: Huh?

RECEPTIONIST: (Undecipherable)

YK: (F) Listen, if you want to feel my wrath when I come down over there, (L) you’ll find out, (F) and I’ll track her down, that fuckwhat imbecile! She calls me, she asks me questions on the phone, and she has the gall of hanging up in my face. And when I call back, she doesn’t pick up the phone. And she called from the office phone line!... (L) Are you listening? … Hullo?

RECEPTIONIST: (Noises of footsteps)

YK: Hullo?

RECEPTIONIST: Hullo...

RECEPTIONIST: (Background conversation)

YK: (F) No! What the fuck is this?

RECEPTIONIST: (F) But I’m listening to you, don’t I? (Undecipherable background conversation)

YK: (F) And I hope you’re not playing wise-ass with me by recording me, huh?

RECEPTIONIST: I…

YK: Hullo?

RECEPTIONIST: (Undecipherable)

YK: No, no!

RECEPTIONIST: (Undecipherable)… (F) You’re an Honorable … (Indecipherable)

YK: (F) Oh, yeah!... Can you hear the girls who are around me here?

RECEPTIONIST: (Undecipherable)

YK: (L) I’m coming down there.

RECEPTIONIST: (Undecipherable)

YK: (L) This girl who calls me and starts right away by asking me questions...

RECEPTIONIST: (Undecipherable)

YK: (F) Imbecile! (L) Animal! (F) You’re impolite!

RECEPTIONIST: (Undecipherable)

YK: Huh?

RECEPTIONIST: (Undecipherable)

YK: (L) I am saying, huh? Hullo!

RECEPTIONIST: (F) Yes.

YK: (F) Are you listening? I’m talking right now to young ladies who works in the cabinet of the Prime Minister, (L) are you listening?, (F) and who are shocked that someone from RSTV1 without… and who goes about right away asking me questions…

RECEPTIONIST: (Undecipherable)

YK: (L) Are you listening?

RECEPTIONIST: (Undecipherable)

YK: Huh? (F) Tell me, who is the girl who called me?

RECEPTIONIST: (Bursts of laughter)

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