1) Supreme Court strikes down Article 22 of National Assembly's rules and regulations; and 2) Playing it by ear: Kabila's wasted first 100 days

1) DRC Supreme Court strikes down Article 22 of National Assembly's
rules and regulations

Article 22 of the rules and regulations of the new National Assembly
was struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Justice on
Monday, March 26.

The article provided that the bureau and the committees of the
National Assembly had to be proportionally earmarked for majority and
opposition parties according to their numerical strength.

In its ruling, however, the Supreme Court found that the article was
"discriminatory" and thus violated Article 13 of the Constitution,
which proscribes any form of discrimation.

The Supreme Court determined that independent MPs were unfairly
excluded from this power sharing arrangement in the National Assembly.

The National Assembly then scrambled to rephrase that article, by
including independent MPs--with former Communication Minister and
newly elected MP Lambert Mende playing a leading role in the
reformulation of the article.

After this correction, the new rules and regulations were sent back to
the Supreme Court.

2) Playing it by ear: Kabila's wasted first 100 days

In a stinging op-ed published today, Kinshasa daily Le Potentiel
charged that Kabila wasted his first 100 days (December 20, 2011-March
30, 2012) stuck in "limbo." The op-ed also argued that during that
period the government seemed to have been "playing it by ear,"
"without benchmarks." A "grace period," the paper intimated, whose
political capital Kabila may have wasted.

Le Potentiel points to the following dysfunctions, among many others:
a) The provisional government is operating on a stopgap budget (1/10th
of the last one): the previous MPs had refused to vote this year's
budget on the flimsy pretext that they weren't paid their golden
handshake; b) The information mandate of MP Charles Mwando Simba might
have been superfluous as after the election Kabila had a clear
majority in parliament; c) The new National Assembly is 15 days late
in its operations, with a permanent bureau still to be elected; etc.

But the op-ed failed to mention the ongoing crisis in the provisional
government, pitting the acting Premier and the acting Minister of
Higher Education.

A crisis that shows that Congolese pols have either taken leave of
their senses or put paid to the notion of good governance.

It is reported that a few days before resigning, the outgoing Civil
Service Minister and elected MP decided to shuffle secretary generals
of different ministries, that is, making them exchange posts with one
another.

A strange decision as it were, since in DRC civil service secretary
generals are not political appointees: they had moved up through the
hierarchy within their own ministries and are typically considered as
experts or technocrats in their own right.

When he took over, the acting Premier voided that stupid ministerial
ordinance and ordered secretary generals to go back to their previous
posts.

But the acting Minister of Higher Education is refusing to comply and
keeps within his ministerial cabinet a secretary general he'd
appointed by conniving with the outgoing civil service minister. There
are now 2 secretary generals at this ministry--the legitimate one, a
lady who's worked for over a decade in that position, being shown the
door!

Strangely, the acting Premier can't do anything about that.

I'm receiving word that this rogue minister is one of the most vocal
sycophants of Kabila and therefore thinks he's somewhat untouchable.

In other words: the more that changes, the more it's the same bullshit!

Read More

Charles Mwando Simba wraps up information mandate with report to Prez and press briefing

Former Defense Minister and newly elected MP, Charles Mwando Simba,
wrapped up his information mandate at 11:00 this morning with a press
conference at Venus Hotel, in downtown Kinshasa.

Mwando's press briefing comes hard on the heels of the audience he had
yesterday with Kabila at the latter's office at the Palais de la
Nation. During the short audience with Kabila, Mwando handed to the
Prez his final report on his information mandate that consisted in
identifying the parliamentary majority (from which will stem the
oncoming Prime Minister), paying heed to the opposition's observations
and recommendations, and consulting with civil society members as well
as experts and "extra-parliamentary" politicos (such as former
vice-presidents Azarias Ruberwa and Arthur Z'Hahidi Ngoma) in order to
register their inputs on governance and the profile of the those
expected to fill cabinet positions.

Mwando has to be commended for accomplishing his mission in just 16
days, a far shorter period than the 30 days mandated by the
Constitution.

Mwando started out by decrying the fact that shameless and heedless
ambitious pols kept bombarding him with their resumes--most of which
highlighted their "tribal membership"--despite his prior warning and
reminder that his task was only limited to identifying a parliamentary
majority.

He then laid out what he called the "contours" and the "methodology"
of his mission.

The political consultations, he said, were carried out in 2 stages:

1) With parliamentarians of the majority and their independent
associates within the National Assembly. With this group, Mwando
asserted, the task was easy enough, as it was only question of their
confirming by signing their "adherence" to the "charter" binding this
group to Kabila's program so-called "modernity revolution" along its
main axes and indicators: social improvement, economic development,
security reform, governance, etc.;

2) With opposition pols. This group comprised 3 subgroups: a) Those
willing to compromise with Kabila on his program. Some in this group
even joined the majority (this is the case of François Mwamba
Tshishimbi, former secretary general of MLC expelled from his party on
the accusation of attempting to replace Jean-Pierre Bemba as its
chairman); b) Those expressing the need of creating a new majority
within parliament (a view voiced by Senate President and former
presidential candidate Léon Kengo wa Dondo); and c) Those demanding
that a national dialogue be opened to resolve the "political crisis"
and re-establish "political legitimacy" (memo sent to Charles Mwando
Simba by Etienne Tshisekedi's UDPS).

As could be expected, Mwando gave short shrift to the last two propositions.

In dismissing Kengo's suggestion, Mwando explained that this kind of
search for a new parliamentary configuration could only take place had
Kabila's coalition not achieved a clear majority in parliament. In
this event, the Prime Minister would issue from the opposition. This,
he said, was the schema of "cohabitation" in France. In the current
situation, said Mwando, such an arrangement isn't warranted.

As for the so-called "political crisis," Mwando forcefully asserted
that this "crisis obsession" only existed in the minds of some
Kinshasa politicians.

With the close of Mwando's mandate, the ball is now in the camp of the
Supreme Court, which still has to confirm the newly elected MPs and
determine the constitutionality of the new rules and regulations voted
by the National Assembly, prior to Kabila appointing the new Prime
Minister.

Read More

1) Looming Africa's Water Wars; 2) DRC to UN Joint Human Rights Office: "Show us those mass graves!"

Several years ago, when Africa's World War was still raging on, my
Burundian buddy and then housemate Alexis Sinduhidje told me one day
in Cambridge, MA: "If you think this war is bloody, then brace for the
looming bloddier Africa's Water Wars, whose battleground will also be
the Congo!"

I've always taken seriously everything Alexis says.

But most Congolese I've talked to since then about the looming water
wars didn't take that possibility seriously--with the exception of one
senior officer of the FARDC General Staff who actually brought the
subject in a conversation I had with him several weeks ago.

March 22 was the UN World Water Day. And on that occasion, DRC
Conservation Minister José Endundo Bononge, whose ministry's purview
is also naturally water resource management, made a 5-minute nightly
television appearance to remind citizens about this year's theme of
that celebration: Water and Food Security.

The only interesting part of Endundo's address was when he mentioned
the disruptive impact of climate change on agriculture
calendar--especially as agriculture here relies on rainfall--resulting
in dramatic decreases of annual yields.

Not a word however about silting that threatens streams, brooks, and
waterways. Not a peep about water jacinths choking life out of the
Congo River and its affluents. Nothing about the sediments of plastic
bags and raw sewage killing brooks right here in Kinshasa. And more
importantly, a total blackout on the link between water and conflict.

Had I been able to talk to the minister, I'd have brought to the
attention of Endundo two scary articles published respectively on
March 22 and 23: 1) Karen DeYoung's "Water as a weapon" (Washington
Post) and Steven Lee Myers's "U.S. Intelligence Report Warns of Global
Water Tensions" (New York Times).

Both articles report ominous findings in the declassified version of a
report on future water-related conflicts released Thursday by the
office of the Director of National Intelligence, which alleges that,
in the coming decade, "Fresh-water shortages and more droughts and
floods will increase the likelihood that water will be used as a
weapon between states or to further terrorist aims in key strategic
areas, including the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa"--thus
having an "impact [on] U.S. security interests" (Washington Post).

Interestingly, notes the Washington Post, while "the unclassified
version does not mention problems in specific countries, it describes
'strategically important water basins' tied to rivers in several
regions."

Which means that the Congo Basin, being among the world's 4 largest
river basins, was most definitely mentioned in the report. Which begs
the following question: What are the designs or the assessment of the
classified version of the report on the Congo Basin?

These articles also mention that the release of the report "coincides"
with Secretary Hillary Clinton's "scheduled announcement" of a new
public-private partnership to help the world face up to this water
challenge (Washington Post). And the article in The New York Times
specifies that among the private partners Secretary Clinton has in
mind is Coca-Cola!

This would certainly sound as a cruel joke in India ...

Secretary Clinton is well aware that Coca-Cola has been repeatedly
sued by peasants and landowners in rural India... for sucking ground
water dry so as to manufacture its products... and in drought-stricken
areas no less! In one instance in an Indian state, a court ordered a
Coca-Cola plant to shut down its operations and pay more than $1m in
damages to water-deprived local farmers. And another court case is
still pending in another Indian state.

It thus follows that no one in India would ever buy this Foggy Bottom
bunkum. Indeed, it's all about US national security interests, not
those of some Indian impoverished peasants. And if it suits US
interests to let Coca-Cola dry those suckers out of their livelihoods,
so be it! Remember that under Ronald Reagan, Coca-Cola, taking its cue
from the administration, refused to divest from apartheid-ruled South
Africa.

Security-challenged DRC and other countries in the Congo Basin will be
particularly vulnerable in those water wars.

A dystopian movie pitch... Sometime in an unspecified future. Dawn of
a new scramble for Africa... Africa, where a third of the population
has already been wiped out by "climate weirding," to use Thomas
Friedman's phrase. Mightier countries within the UN Security Council
vote a resolution to send their armies to seize the mismanaged water
resources of the Congo Basin... where the Congo River is slowly drying
up after the implementation of the crazy notion of deflecting a part
of the water of the Congo River to the shrinking Lake Chad, which
didn't help: the Chad ended up drying out completely.

In that venture, the US outsources water management in that region to
Coca-Cola and other American soda companies... under the protection of
AFRICOM and mercenaries.

2) DRC to UN Joint Human Rights Office: "Show us those mass graves!"

The report released Tuesday by the UN Joint Human Rights Office on the
alleged killings and other human rights violations during the election
period in November of last year is so outlandish that one doesn't
where to start to refute it.

It is just such exercise that the government has been attempting since
the release of the report. Furthermore, the government has now upped
the ante and is demanding a full-scale investigation into the
selective, partial, and spurious allegations contained in the report.

Justice Minister Périclès-Emmanuel Luzolo Bambi Lessa came out first
swinging two days ago. He denounced the report as a web of lies and
an attempt to torpedo the hosting by the DRC in October (12th to 14th)
of this year of the 14th Francophonie Summit.

"This report appears to only aim to tarnish the image of Congolese
authorities," Luzolo said.

Luzolo is dead on target there. In fact, some of the allegations in
that report had all the earmarks redolent of worn-out and preporterous
cliches of Zaire-Congo Bashing.

Consider for example the allegation that Kabila has his torture
chambers in the basement of the Palais du Peuple, the seat of National
Assembly.

This ridiculous allegation reminded me of the documentary "When We
Were Kings" in which you hear Norman Mailer lie through his teeth
when he makes the stupid claim that Mobutu had his torture chambers in
the basement of Tata Raphael soccer stadium where Ali and Foreman had
their Rumble in the Jungle bout. The problem with Mailer's lie is that
there's no basement at that stadium!

The DRC government is so exercised by the many lies contained in the
UN Joint Human Rights Office report that Foreign Affairs Minister
Alexis Thambwe Mwamba, flanked by Luzolo and his deputy, convened
today ambassadors accredited to Kinshasa to a press conference where
he vented the government's outrage over the "lightness" and frivolity
of the report. Thambwe also earnestly demanded that a joint
investigation be carried out to look into the bizarre accusations made
in the report.

Thambwe acknowledge however that there were 22 dead in
election-related violence, more than half of whom were killed by UDPS
members--not the 33 killed the report alleged
to have been killed by security forces or the 16 people that still
"remain unaccounted for." He was also stunned by the fact that the
report didn't even bother to mention the call to ethnic hatred or
violence repeatedly made by one of the candidates (Tshisekedi) during
the electoral campaign.

(Tshisekedi was clamoring that Kabila is a Rwandan Tutsi who needed to
be sent back home. He also called for countrywide prison breaks, and
asked his followers to "terrorize" then Communication Lambert Mende
and to physically seize and bring him Kabila.)

Thambwe also showed a brochure seized a while ago by immigration
agents from UDPS Jacquemain Shabani at N'Djili Airport. The brochure
purported to document election violence in the Congo. The photographs
of slain people in Shabani's brochure were in fact taken from press
accounts documenting violence in Cote d'Ivoire and in Uganda!

Thambwe also demanded that UN Joint Human Rights Office investigators
show those mass graves they allege to have uncovered in Kinshasa.

Read More

Updated by my daughter on Jason Russell's Incident

Yesterday at 7:31 (Kinshasa Time: GMT + 1) I got a call from my
daughter Elikia who was on board a plane on the tarmac of Edinburgh
airport, Scotland, en route to Washington, D.C. She was using Skype on
her laptop.

A part of the conversation went like this:

"Hey, dad, you know that guy on Kony 2012 video--the narrator?"

"Yeah... Jason Russell."

"Right. You won't believe this: he was arrested in San Diego. He was
naked in the street, masturbating!"

Unbelievable! At the moment, as Elikia only mentioned the incident by
the end of the short phone call, I thought Russell had gone Pee-wee
Herman in a big way. So I laughed my head off.

But later on, when I Googled the story, I wasn't laughing anymore. The
stories I read talked of a "meltdown," a "brief psychosis," or a
"nervous breakdown"...

Commenting on the incident, John Ross Bowie said: " You realize this
doesn't automatically make Joseph Kony a nice guy, right?" (Hollywood
Reporter, 3/17/2012).

Right!

Nonetheless there are two biblical twists to this story... (I am after
all in deep millenarian immersion these days: almost everyone in
Kinshasa thinks rapture could happen within the next few minutes.)

The 2 twisted biblical readings would go something like this:

1) Twist # One

God was really mad at the flak Russell got for exposing the murderous
false prophet called Kony. To make his point in a dramatic way, He
altered the mind of Jason Russell and sent him naked in the street of
San Diego, jerking off and mumbling: "He's the devil! He's the devil!"

2) Twist # 2

Prophet Kony was maligned by a heathen, name of Jason Russell. And the
God of hosts, in order to confound the miscreant for the all world to
see, sent him jerking off in the street, all the while muttering:
"He's the devil! He's the devil!"

Take your pick...

Read More

Three-month house arrest for Staff Sgt. Robert Bales

You'd know right away that times have dramatically changed at the
sound of those cans of worms popping open and the clamor of the
outraged posse zeroing on Staff Sgt. Robert Bales--the "Infidel" and
the financial crook who, drunk and high, went postal in Boondocksistan
on Sunday, March 11.

The once valorous combatant, drunk and high, just snapped... and
blacked out. According to credible testimonies from his comrades, Sgt.
Bales had sneaked out of Camp Belambay and gone on a killing spree in
the nearby village... Body count: 16.

Remember this though: the man has no memory of the deadly event.

Now, fast rewind to... forty-four years ago almost to the day that
deadly Sunday...

On Saturday, March 16, 1968, 2nd Lieutenant William Calley led his
platoon to two hamlets of the village of Son My, in Nam, and ordered
his men to round up civilians, shoot them dead, or burn them alive in
their huts. They were all cong gooks, anyway...

Lieutenant Calley gleefully killed scores of them himself.
Methodically and without blacking out prior or afterward--simply
carrying out orders from his direct superior officer in the chain of
command, as he claimed at his court-martial. Body count: 504 (official
Viatnamese body count).

Now, as we all know, Lieutenant Calley was convicted and sentenced to
life without the possibility of parole.

Then the outrage of the whole country bubbled up and crystallized
around that unjust and unfair sentence meted out against a war hero
who had put himself in harm's way to defend the American way of life,
a rampart against communism!

In such sacred patriotic missions, there are necessarily blunders to
be made. Especially as there was no way of telling "enemy combatants"
from civilians...

Georgia Gov Jimmy Carter was at the forefront of this national
outrage, ordering flags to fly at half mast and asking drivers to keep
their headlights on as a sign of support (maybe Prez Carter will have
the guts to defend Sgt. Bales when he is sentenced to life at his
court-martial). Then other governors followed the high patriotic
standard set by Gov Carter: they also flew their flags at half
mast!...

To make a long story short: Prez Richard Nixon ended up commuting that
iniquitous sentence to... three years and a half of house arrest
and... partially pardoned Lieutenant Calley!

The current POTUS ought to follow that precedent in the case of Sgt. Bales.

Why not?

It's not like Sgt. Bales came up with the silly COIN surge project in
Afghanistan, a country that has proved this particular historical
constant for the past 2,500 years, as someone pointed out a few years
ago: no foreign expeditionary forces have ever won or will ever win a
war there! Period!

These guys are the wrong people to mess with!

Notwithstanding the dogmatic assertion of Prez Obama to the effect that
that historical law amounts to a "false reading of history," as he
claimed in a speech at West Point on December 1, 2009 (see my post of
December 2, 2009 for a counter-argument).

Just as his victims, Sgt. Bales is likewise a victim of politicians'
doggedness, short-sightedness, and stupidity.

After all, the real
blood-thirsty war-mongers who should give denizens the heebie-jeebies
are politicians!

By the way, American politicians treat their fighting men and women
with utter contempt--no matter what empty mantras they usually blurt
out at patriotic pageants...

Just take a look at the monthly paycheck of Sgt. Bales, who was under
heavy financial pressure, we are told, and compare it to the paycheck
of a mercenary working in Afghanistan for an outfit like the company
"formerly known as Blackwater"--and you'd realize that those politicos
don't care about all those ghost soldiers of the empire!

Besides, those mercenaries operate with total impunity in war theaters.

Then, what kind of double or triple standard is this?

If Lieutenant Calley got three years and a half of house arrest
for the cold-blooded slaying of 400 innocent civilians, and if
Blackwater mercenaries got a slap on the wrist for killing dozens of
non-combatants in Iraq, then why should Sgt. Bales get sentenced to
life or, God forbid!, to death for killing a mere handful of civilians?
In a just world, he should at the most get a three-month house arrest!

Read More

Lubanga 2012 vs. Kony 2012

Thomas Lubanga, a former child army general and molester of Ituri in
northern Democratic Republic of Congo, was found guilty yesterday on
all 3 counts of war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC)
at The Hague. And Congolese hope the sentence would ensure that this
criminal will be out of commission and off the streets of Congo for
the rest of his evil life.

This was not a sexy affair, despite the presence in court of glamorous
Angelina Jolie. Nor was this a "savvy media campain," to borrow
Washington Post's Hayley Tsukayama's phrase to describe what his own
paper's editorial board billed as "the most explosive viral video
phenomenon in history"--yeah!, you guessed right: both superlatives
refer to Invisible Children's "Kony 2012."

At The Hague, it wasn't about "slactivism" but the painstaking piecing
together by the much-criticized ICC prosecution of one of the most
horrendous crime in history: turning kids into killers and zombies.

While there are still Lubanga's associates roaming the hills and the
streets of North Kivu--the name of FARDC Gen Jean-Bosco Ntaganda comes
to mind--this conviction can for now be rightly hailed as one of the
single most dramatic action the international community, often
indifferent to the plight of Congolese, has ever taken on behalf of
the much-maligned people of the DRC.

And it's fitting that Kinshasa Radio-Trottoir should be abuzz with
this "landmark conviction."

The other day a western journo wanted my commenting on "Kony 2012."
And he was somewhat taken aback by the fact that I still had to watch
the "the most explosive viral video phenomenon in history."

Well, truth be told: the damn thing can only be viral in Europe and
North America where people have enough leisure time to play that kind
of games. Not here in Kinshasa, mind you!

For one, it costs more than $3 to watch the half-hour video at a
cybercafe--double that amount if the Internet connection is slow that
day! In a country where the majority of denizens survive on less than
$1 a day, that proposition is simply preposterous.

For the other, "Kony 2012" is a fundraising and marketing tool (and
the raving reviews it got were all about that). And its proxy is
Ugandan kids. Not Congolese kids who, since the long trek of Kony from
Uganda to the jungle of DRC and the Central African Republic, are
these days being killed, maimed, abducted and raped. Nothing new
there: Congolese are generally unfit for sexy black and white, good
vs. evil, linear binary narratives.

Meanwhile in Kinshasa, Radio-Trottoir is unraveling its paradoxical
non-linear fractured and fractal narratives. Some are saying, "Lubanga
out; one more to get out of the picture: Jean-Pierre Bemba!," while
others hotly reject that and point out that the ICC prosecution case
against Bemba is thin, even bare, and not beyond a reasonable
doubt...

Read More

Mudslinging in the Kleptocratic Republic of Gondwana: ex-Premier Adolphe Muzito responds to MP Gérard "Gécoco" Mulumba

Mamane is a Nigerien stand-up comedian who is a comedian in residence
of Radio France Internationale in Paris. Mamane has a mock chronicle
of a fictional African country he calls Republic of Gondwana--so named
after the Precambrian supercontinent--where anything goes, especially
when its mercurial president, aptly called Président-Fondateur, wakes
up on the wrong side of the bed. And these last few days, the DRC is
more and more resembling Mamane's Republic of Gondwana.

Consider the mudslinging now splattering major players within Kabila's
Presidential Majority... just days before a new government is formed.

On Sunday, as my two previous posts have chronicled, the newly
elected Kinois MP Gérard "Gécoco" Mulumba accused former Prime
Minister Adolphe Muzito of grand theft.

On Tuesday, Tshibangu Kalala, Muzito's attorney, called a press
conference to respond to the accusations leveled at the former Premier
by Gécoco. The problem with Kalala's statement is that it lacks
credibility and strength, the two most important characteristics of
robust denial. Furthermore, some of the arguments put forth by
Muzito's lawyer are in fact damning for the former prime
minister--like the one that alleges that one could build a real estate
empire after a career as a civil servant and a politician.

More importantly, there's also the oddness of referring to Muzito
throughout the statement as THE Prime Minister, while he's already
tendered his resignation!

The following is the full statement made by Tshibangu Kalala:

"Ladies and Gentlemen of the media:

Prime Minister Adolphe Muzito, whom I am representing in this case,
charged me to make, on his behalf, the following statement intended
for national and international public opinion.

For several days now, a public campaign of denigration and defamation,
highly mediatized, has been launched against Prime Minister Adolphe
Muzito by some Congolese political actors.

Respectful of the freedom of expression recognized and extended by the
Constitution and the laws of the DRC to all Congolese, and in his
capacity as head of the government of the Republic, he let the
interested parties quench their hatred and their jealousy, without
doing anything to stop them.

This campaign of destruction of the honor, dignity and reputation of
Prime Minister Muzito reached its climax in the evening of Sunday,
March 11, 2012, when MP [Gérard] Mulumba Nkongolo aka Gécoco had CCTV
television channel broadcast and comment on certain real estate
properties allegedly belonging to my client.

Generally speaking, I should point out that my client has been working
for several years and it is therefore normal that he should own real
estate properties.

Without involving ourselves in controversy at this stage and without
going into any details--details to which Prime Minister will soon
return-- MP Mulumba Nkongolo's statements call for the following
observations:

1) MP Mulumba Nkongolo aka Gécoco, who has appointed himself the
vigilante of the Republic, the witch hunter of the DRC and the teacher
of lessons on public morality in the DRC, didn't provide any proof
evidencing that all the buildings presented to the press belong to Mr.
Muzito and that they were built or renovated with money from public
treasury put to private use;

2) For example, one of the houses shown to the public by Mr. Mulumba
Nkongolo as belonging to the Prime Minister is instead a private
property that belongs to another public personality of the Republic
and that therefore has nothing to do with my client;

3) The house in the neighborhood of Mbanza-Lemba, close to Université
de Kinshasa, and the one in the GB neighborhood, are family properties
bought by my client since 1996, about 16 years ago, well before the
start of his political career, property he has renovated and valorized
right under the noses of all his neighbors;

4) Mr. Adolphe Muzito worked as a Finance Inspector for several years
prior to getting into politics; he was a Member of Parliament for 3
years; a Budget Minister for close to 2 years, and a Prime Minister
for nearly 4 years. (...)

It is therefore normal he should have the personal income to allow him
to enter into an entrepreneurial partnership in a real estate project,
as is the case with many other Congolese in the city of Kinshasa;

5) Mr. Mulumba Nkongolo didn't say, in order to justify his political
combat and his doggedness against Mr. Adolphe Muzito, whether the
latter is the sole Congolese to own a ranch in the suburb of Kinshasa.

Mr. Adolphe Muzito calls the particular attention of the public on the
moment chosen by Mr. Mulumba Nkongolo and his backers hiding in the
dark--since it's obvious that Mr. Mulumba aka Gécoco doens't carry out
alone his diabolical scheme--to launch this cruel campaign of
destruction of a political adversary, and on the violence of attacks
targeting him.

The chosen moment and the intent of this campaign are not innocent, to
the extent that had Mr. Mulumba Gécoco's intention been to defend
public interest and to seek the truth, he could have gone to a court
of law to denounce those facts instead of mobilizing the national
press to launch virulent attacks against my client.

It's clearly a machiavellian scheme of political destruction
orchestrated by the political adversaries of the Prime Minister, the
very members of his political family, on the eve of the appointment of
senior members of the institutions of the second legislature that has
just begun, to tarnish his image to the Congolese public's eye, to
politically destabilize him, to prevent him from holding public
office, and thus wreck his political career for good.
MP Mulumba Nkongolo aka Gécoco, having promised to publish in the near
future the list of about a hundred other houses of my client, located
as well here in Kinshasa as overseas, the Prime Minister is very
curious and in great hurry to find out about all these houses
attributed to him and awaits patiently and calmly the publication of
that list.

In light of this situation that gravely soils his honor, his
reputation and his dignity as a human being, a husband and a father
and a high-ranking political actor, the Prime Minister reserves the
right, in the coming days, to file a lawsuit against MP Mulumba
Nkongolo for defamation and damaging imputations in a court of law.

It should be stressed here that MP Mulumba Nkongolo has engaged in the
production of unlawful acts of serious gravity, not within and in
front of a microphone of his parliamentary assembly in the course of
his mandate, but on television shows, that is, in the streets of
Kinshasa.

We need to remind people here that the immunity due to parlementarians
wasn't designed for their comfort or their prestige. It wasn't
designed for the impunity of MPs who fall into delinquency and
dishonor their parliamentary function, an important function that
should be exercised with dignity and responsibility by noble people.

We do hope that the parliamentary assembly to which belongs MP Mulumba
Nkongolo will not hesitate to quickly waive his immunity so that he
could be answerable for his acts before the Congolese justice system.

Prime Minister Muzito ends [his statement] by solemnly stating that he
had carried out the high functions entrusted to him by the President
of the Republic with dignity, dedication and a heightened sense of
responsibility. The rest is all but calumny, jealousy, meanness and
tactical moves to eliminate a competent and loyal political rival.

Thank you."

Read More

1) Radio-Trottoir: Kabila unleashed Gécoco upon Muzito; and 2) Stampede at the door of the “Informateur” Charles Mwando Simba

1) Radio-Trottoir: Kabila unleashed Gécoco upon Muzito

Radio-Trottoir sees the hand of Joseph Kabila behind the recent accusations heaped upon former Prime Minister Adolphe by MP Gérard “Gécoco” Mulumba. And Radio-Trottoir put forth four reasons to back this claim.

Firstly, Gécoco’s accusations, backed by photographs and video clips, are so detailed they could only have been gotten by professional intelligence-gathering services—especially in light of Gécoco’s claim that he’s also sitting on more evidence of Muzito’s ill-gotten gains overseas.

Secondly, and this is closely related to the first reason, in order to level such damning accusations against a powerful individual like Muzito, you better have the evidence to back them up in a court of law.

Thirdly, Gécoco is a pal and a confidant of MP Francis Kalombo, the leader of Kabila’s PPRD youth wing. Now, both are known to have informal direct access to the Prez.

And lastly, Gécoco closely treads the party line within the Presidential Majority and, without solid backing, couldn’t have gone out on a limb to attack a high-ranking official of PALU who also happens to be the nephew of that party’s leader, former Prime Minister Antoine Gizenga.

2) Stampede at the door of the “Informateur” Charles Mwando Simba

About a week ago, Gabriel Kyungu, former governor of Katanga and an elected national MP of that province who has just resigned his seat, said in a television interview that more than 60 power-hungry members of the Presidential Majority have already applied to the position of prime minister.

And at his Monday press conference, MP Charles Mwando Simba, revealed that he’s drowning under the flood of CVs he’s getting from candidates to ministerial jobs. Mwando Simba also said he’d received dozens of phone calls from politicos applying for various positions in government. Which shows that the executive branch is the natural turf of shady pols out there to make a quick buck.

Mwando Simba asked those corrupt and opportunist politicians to cease and desist; and reminded them of the provisions of Article 78 of the Congolese constitution which stipulates that,

“The President of the Republic appoints the Prime Minister from the ranks of the parliamentary majority after consultation of the latter. He terminates the functions of the Prime Minister upon presentation by the latter of the resignation of the Government.

If such a majority does not exist, the President may entrust an exploratory mission to a person with a view to identifying a coalition.”

Therefore, Mwando Simba insisted, the consultation doesn’t involve individuals but political parties.

Mwando Simba also laid out his “methodology” and said that he’ll consult with: 1) parties belonging to the Presidential Majority to seek out a “confirmation” that they still belong to the majority; and 2) opposition parties to find out their “perception” of governance as well as their “observations” and “advice.”

Read More

Kleptocracy Alley (Redux): Outraged MP Gérard "Gécoco" Mulumba resigns over massive theft by former Prime Minister Adolphe Muzito

Controversial businessman, former Kinshasa Provincial lawmaker and
newly elected national MP Gérard "Gécoco" Mulumba, a member of the
Presidential Majority, appeared on national TV to announce his
resignation from parliament.

The reason?

Well, Gécoco claims that former Prime Minister Adolphe Muzito, who has
just been elected MP, has bilked the state of millions of dollars to
build a vast real estate empire in Kinshasa--which, he alleges, is
just the the tip of the iceberg of Muzito's massive theft.

"I don't want to be sitting next to someone who didn't declare his
assets between his stints at the budget ministry and at the
premiership, and [not even] today at the end of his tenure," said
Gécoco, who is a hero in the eyes of Kinois who've long admired his
straight talk and blunt language.

Gécoco even showed photographs and video clips of some of the 57
mansions Muzito is alleged to have built or purchased at various sites
in Kinshasa.

"I also asked my subsitute not to sit in parliament either," Gécoco
angrily said. "I am and remain of the [presidential] majority... My
gesture is to tell profiteers enough's enough!"

Read More

Two capitals in mourning: Victims of Brazzaville blasts lay in state and Kinshasa TV relays signal of telecast

DRC state-owned TV channel "RTNC" relayed today Sunday, March 11, the
signal of the 3-hour telecast by Congo-Brazzaville's government-owned
"Télé-Congo" of the lying in state, in the plaza of the Palais des
Congrès (the seat of parliament), of 3 dozens or so of identified
victims of last Sunday blasts of the high explosives depot of the
armored regimental Mpila barrack in eastern Brazzaville. (A DRC
official told me Congo-Brazza authorities are holding back victims'
remains at morgues to avoid public outry and shock.)

Among the attendees were 3 dignitaries from Kinshasa: 1) Laurent
Cardinal Monsengwo Pasinya; 2) Kinshasa Governor André Kimbuta Yango;
and 3) FARDC Chief of General Staff Lieutenant-General Didier Etumba
Longomba.

The most heart-wrenching moment of the event occurred at 10:17
Brazzaville Time (GMT + 1) when 9 tractor-trailers slowly moved in the
plaza amid the sudden surge of wails of victims' family members
carrying the photographs of their loved ones.

On the trailers' draped flatbets were lined the victims' caskets
wrapped each in the green, yellow, and red flag of Congo-Brazzaville,
with, between the rows of biers, bright yellow and crimson flowers.

Filing after members of Congo-Brazza's constitutional bodies, Kinshasa
Gov Kimbuta and FARDC Lieutenant-General Etumba stood the funeral
wreaths in front of one of the caskets-laden tractor-trailers.

The second act of the tribute happened at noon, with the arrival of
Congo-Brazzaville's Prez Denis Sassou-Nguesso and First Lady
Antoinette aka Anto. (Mrs. Sassou-Nguesso is a native of Orientale
Province in the DRC.)

A one-hour ecumenical service then followed the arrival of the
Congolese presidential couple.

Another dramatic moment happened when Minister of State Florent Tsiba
broke down at the end of his long-winded but heart-felt 15-minute
funeral oration.

Sassou-Nguesso and his wife stood the funeral wreath at 1:13 p.m.,
after which they briefly mingled with representatives of victims'
families, then left the plaza at 1:28 p.m.

Soon afterwards, the 9 improvised hearses headed for the cemetery in
downtown Brazzaville.

The telecast, which began a few minutes past 10 a.m., ended at 1:40 p.m.

Read More

Kleptocracy Alley: The passel of ministers that recently resigned ought to be audited

In the previous post I relayed the alleged malfeasance of former
Higher Education Minister Léonard Mashako Mamba who, according to
reliable sources at Kinshasa Univerity, just days before resigning his
ministerial post after his election to parliament, stuffed the already
plethoric personnel of universities and colleges with the whopping
number of 800 new administrative hires.

There are now calls issuing from the opposition and from at least one
Kinshasa daily paper for an audit across the board of the passel of
ministers who've just resigned. Those making these calls claim that
there's ample evidence that the outgoing ministers and their
associates carried out systematic pillages of state property and
monies before vacating their ministries.

It now appears that the audit should extend to the outgoing parliament
as well, where Acting Speaker Timothée Kisi Kombo has now suddenly
turned into a repo man! As a matter-of-fact, the Acting Speaker has
issued this Friday a scathing communique demanding that those still
keeping in their possession vehicles or other properties belonging to
the National Assembly return them two days hence; failing that, the
Parliament will forcibly repossess them!

Read More

1) Minister Léonard Mashako Mamba hires 800 before resigning; and 2) Kabila appoints MP Charles Mwando Simba as oncoming government's "formateur"

1) Higher education minister Léonard Mashako Mamba allegedly hired 800
before resigning

Anger and resentment are palpable these days among mid- and high-level
administrative managers at Université de Kinshasa and other colleges
in the Congolese capital city as well as countrywide.

These administrators allege that Léonard Mashako Mamba, the minister
of higher education, hired 800 new university and college personnel
hours before resigning from office last week.

Various administration sources at Université de Kinshasa told me that
this hiring could spell the doom of the cash-strapped institutions of
higher education that are already under the crushing burden of a
bloated personnel as well as of unsustainable overheads.
"He basically woke up one morning and decided to hire people in
droves," one administrator told me. "People from his village or
province maybe--who knows?"

The major problem and injustice is that previous new hires who were
awaiting the recognition of their formal administrative status called
here "mécanisation" (civil service computerized matriculation) will
soon be fired in order to accommodate this injection of unnecessary
personnel.

A professor at Université de Kinshasa told me that former minister
Mashako Mamba--and all his predecessors, by the way--had the habit of
using the national university and college systems' students fees as
their personal cash cow.

Out of the $220 annual fee each Université de Kinshasa student pays,
for example, 5% goes to the minister as "discretionary funds," of
which the minister is accountable to no one.

Now, add to that drop in the ocean of dollars 5% of students' fees of
all the universities and colleges countrywide, and you find that the
minister's slush fund is quite staggering.

Meanwhile, still taking Université de Kinshasa as an example, for
decades not a single red penny has gone to the university library and
bookstore. Which means that you have a situation where students, who
learn by rote from notes taken in classes or from the professor's
printouts, have never ever read one single book throughout their
academic studies!

"You'd think it's a vast conspiracy to kill the country's future," the
professor concluded.

2) Kabila appoints MP Charles Mwando Simba as oncoming government's "formateur"

At 15:15 HRS Kinshasa Time (GMT + 1) this Thursday, March 8, the
state-owned TV channel RTNC abruptly interrupted its live feed of the
International Women's Day parade on Boulevard Triomphal attended by
acting Prime Minister Louis Koyagialo Ngbase te Gerengbo to broadcast
what it billed as "an important communiqué from the Presidency of the
Republic."

The communiqué announced that Prez Joseph Kabila has appointed the
74-year-old former Defense Minister and MP-elect MP Charles Mwando
Simba as "formateur" of the oncoming government. The communiqué
further informed the public that Mwando Simba is tasked to negotiate
with various factions of the parliamentary majority in order to come
up with a new prime minister.

Mwando Simba is a native of Moba, in northern Katanga, and is the
chairman of the party "Union Nationale des Démocrates Fédéralistes"
(UNADEF).

I think Mwando Simba was chosen, not for being a Katangan like the
Prez, but for the male-centered gerontocratic bent of the Congolese
cultural and political systems (he is the oldest politico among the
newly elected MPs within the Presidential Majority). A bad symbol, if
there could one, telegraphed on the day that the world celebrates
women.

*

Incidentally, Acting Premier Louis Koyagialo is from Mobutu's Ngbandi
ethnic group of Equateur Province. And this afternoon, as he was
walking towards the lectern to deliver his address, a sycophant
yelled: "They claim Kabila doesn't like people from Equateur. Here's
one specimen--and a tall one at that!"

Koyagialo is well over 6-foot tall.

Read More

1) Government resigns; and 2) DRC evacuates its citizens from shell-shocked Brazzaville

1) Government resigns

After three years and a half in office, Prime Minister Adolphe Muzito
tendered to Prez Kabila his government resignation on Tuesday, March
6. Kabila then promptly appointed the Presidential Majority
stalwart--and one of the vice-prime ministers of the outgoing
government--Louis Koyagialo Ngbase te Gerengbo as acting Premier.

Two dozen other members of the outgoing government who have been
elected to the National Assembly have also resigned--including the
outspoken Information Minister Lambert Mende and Planning Minister
Olivier Kamitatu.

2) DRC evacuates its citizens from Brazzaville

The voluntary repatriation of DRC citizens from Brazzaville is
underway. The DRC government started ferrying hundreds of Congolese
from the shell-shocked capital of the other Congo on Monday.
Brazzaville and Kinshasa are the world's closest capital cities.

Read More

1) Aftermath of Brazzaville blasts; 2) Double-cross within Presidential Majority; 3) CENI at Zelenograd, Russia; and 4) A dog screwed Obama's mom!

1) Aftermath of Brazzaville blasts

Congo-TV, the state-owned TV station of Congo-Brazzaville I'm
monitoring here in Kinshasa, is continuing broadcasting local
Christian soukouss video clips in a loop, interrupted now and then by
official communiqués (among several other communiqués, those related
to a curfew around the perimeter of the Mpila armored regimental
barracks in eastern Brazzaville where the ammunition depot exploded
and in the business district, and a communique on the locations of
improvised shelters for IDPs), footage of devastation in the Mpila
neighborhood, news related to the deadly Sunday blasts, appearances by
Brazzaville mayor Hugues Ngouélondélé (who claimed the blasts reminded
him of the "events of September 11 in New York"!) and the country's
Information Minister and government spokesman Bienvenu Okiemi (who
just announced that a national mourning has been decreed) and an
interview in French and Lingala given on Monday by Congo-Brazza Prez
Denis Sassou-Nguesso.

In his interview, Prez Sassou-Nguesso deplored the loss of life of
Congolese citizens, speculated that the blasts might have been caused
by the scorching heat of the season--on Sunday evening, Information
Minister Bienvenu Okiemi said that, pending the results of the
unfolding investigation, military experts have a working hypothesis
that the explosions might have been sparked by an electrical
short-circuit--and said that the wounded are being taken care of by
the government and that victims' families will be compensated for the
loss of life of their loved ones and for the destroyed property. (How
the government would rebuild the sprawling neighborhood entirely wiped
out by the blasts is anybody's guess.)

He also reminded reporters that his government had already been
planning on moving army barracks outside city limits; and as the
"inevitable" has occurred, the authorities are now speeding up the
move. The money has just been earmarked by the Finance Minister, he
said, and construction companies identified.

Sassou-Nguesso finally warned Brazzavillois "deviants" who'd be
tempted to take advantage of the devastation to engage in "negative
actions" that they'd feel the full brunt of the "Force Publique," the
police security forces.

Television footage featured scenes of pandemonium during the
spectacular blasts as crowds were fleeing shrapnel and fire raining
down, the apocalyptic destruction of the Mpila neighborhood, the
missile hit the Mpila thermal power station sustained, and the visit
to the wounded at various hospitals by Prez Sassou-Nguesso.

(On a personal note: Contacted by phone, my nephew Alain, a crewmember
of a passenger ferry and a Brazzaville resident, reassured our family
by telling us he was unscathed. However, there's still no official
mention on both banks of the Congo River of casuaties among the other
thousands of Congo-Kinshasa citizens residing in Brazza.)

DRC Foreign Minister Alexis Thambwe Mwamba crossed yesterday the
half-mile stretch of the Congo River to meet Congo-Brazzaville Prez
Sassou-Nguesso and deliver DRC aid to its neighbors--aid consisting of
5 ambulances and one mobile hospital, 21 physicians as well as the
availability of 5 Kinshasa hospitals to treat the wounded. (France and
Morocco have also substantially contributed medical supplies and
personnel as well as tents for the IDPs.)

Talking to reporters after meeting Prez Sassou-Nguesso, Thambwe
Mwamba, whose own Kinshasa office suffered some damages in the blasts,
said it would've been "indecent" for him to bring up at the meeting
the minor damages sustained by Kinshasa after being shown by Prez
Sassou-Nguesso photographs of the devastation.

2) Double-cross within Presidential Majority

As political parties are busy bending themselves to securing the
oncoming premiership, there are now visible instances of double-cross
within the fractious alliance of the Presidential Majority--a deadly
stampede by politicos jockeying for positions in government and
parastatal companies. Which evidences the fact that the corruption and
neopatrimonialism of the Mobutu regime corruption has perhaps
metastasized to a terminal condition.

The first victim of this bloody fratricidal war seems to be former
Speaker and PPRD Secretary General Evariste Boshab. Just days after
Radio-Trottoir lined him up as the likely "formateur" of the oncoming
government, a lone union member of the personnel of the National
Assembly came out of the woodwork to accuse the outgoing speaker of
embezzling salaries of parliamentary staffers.

Now, as it turned out, Boshab, as speaker, was nowhere near the
financial offices of the National Assembly. The elected official at
the National Assembly in charge of finances is the Questor, whose
books, by the way, are impeccable!

It now appears that that union member wasn't a whistle-blower, but a
hitman hired by Boshab's enemies within his own political cartel to
block what they saw as his rise to premiership.

Having failed in that insidious move, PPRD's allies-qua-mortal enemies
have now come out in the open toting statistical big guns.

They first accuse Kabila's PPRD to have manufactured, prior to the
general elections, a host of tiny satellite political parties, thus
morphing into a "mosaic" of parties. The move was crafted so as to
confuse voters for whom the label of the ruling PPRD party might have
become unattractive.
Despite this maneuver, they point out, the PPRD "mosaic" garnered less
than 150 seats, far too short of the 251 seats--the absolute
majority--needed to dictate its will to the rest of the parties of the
Presidential Majority (PPRD won 62 seats, followed by MSR party with
31 MP-elects).

On paper, the Presidential Majority is a formidable force in the new
National Assembly with 342 seats out of the total of 500 seats. But,
as this wrangling shows, the Presidential Majority could just be a
paper tiger!

3) CENI at Zelenograd, Russia

If there's a damning symbolism of the "rounding up of the usual
suspects" CENI could have avoided, it was this one.

At the invitation of the Central Election Commission of the Russian
Federation, CENI Chair Rev Daniel Ngoy Mulunda and a delegation of the
DRC electoral commission played the role of unaccredited election
observers on Sunday, March 4, at Zelenograd--the Russian Silicon
Valley, some 20 km or so from Moscow.

According to newswires, Rev Mulunda touched down in Moscow on February
29 and was immediately received by Vladimir E. Churov, Chairman of the
Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation.

Just as in the DRC after the publication of presidential results,
western election observers unanimously decried massive irregularities
in the Sunday presidential election in Russia.

4) A dog screwed Obama's mom!

Some of you guys may have already enjoyed this witty email joke
Montana Chief U.S. District Judge Honorable Richard Cebull shared with
some of buddies by the end of last month.

Hon. Cebull wrote:

"A little boy said to his mother; 'Mommy, how come I'm black and
you're white?' His mother replied, 'Don't even go there Barack! From
what I can remember about that party, you're lucky you don't bark!'"

The joke doesn't end there.

On March 1, the ever jocose Honorable Cebull then composed another
email joke--this time mirthfully addressed to Obama "hizzself."

In that email, Hon. Cebull typed the following sequel to his joke
while unsuccessfully trying to contain his irresistible merriment:

"I sincerely and profusely apologize to you and your family for the
email I forwarded. I accept full responsibility; I have no one to
blame but myself. I can assure you that such action on my part will
never happen again."

Wow! This is brilliant--this kinda jokes with dramatic sequels. A new
genre altogether... And what does Hon. Cebull mean by "forwarded"? Did
Hon. Cebull or didn't Hon Cebull author the joke? What kinda bullshit
is that?

Anyhoo, this is a barroom joke that runs like this, "A dog fucked
Obama's slutty mom... Not!!!"

A lame adaptation by me, no doubt...

My bet is that Hon. Cebull is an ultraconservative Republican
contributor and a big contributor to nutty presidential hopefuls Rick
Santorum and Newt Gingrich...

Read More

1) Panic in Kinshasa by Brazzaville proxy; 2) Cat's cradle within Presidential Majority parties for premiership; and 3) UDPS goes to parliament

1) Panic in Kinshasa by Brazzaville proxy

At mid-morning this Sunday, several high explosive deflagrations shook
houses to their foundations. A TV remote-control I was holding fell
from my hand when the house shook.

Billows of smoke loomed over the northern horizon of Kinshasa, the
downtown area, particularly over the Gare Centrale.

Panic started spreading throughout the city as people feared that a
coup or a mutiny was in progress.

Soon afterwards, however, the government-owned TV station RTNC
interrupted its regular programming to announce that the explosions
were occurring on the right bank of the Congo River--that is, in
Brazzaville, the capital city of the other Congo.

Subsequently, Euro News and Brazzaville TV stations reported that
there was an "accidental" fire that caused the explosives to blow up
at the armory of the Mpila armored regimental barracks in Brazza.
According to diplomatic sources (Euro News), the death toll stands
this evening at 200 killed (and more than 1,500 injured).

This deadly accident occurs shortly after Congo-Brazza announced plans
to start building this year new barracks in the periphery of
Brazzaville where barracks now existing in the capital city would be
moved. (Kinshasa government plans the same move.)

A few explosives landed in Kinshasa where glass window and door panes
were shattered in government buildings and private homes located
downtown.

Ominously an unexploded ordnance landed just a stone's throw from the
armory and logistical base at Kokolo barracks where, decades ago, a
similiar accident had happened with deadly consequences.

That both Congolese governments should continue to keep huge armories
containing such deadly ordnances within the precincts of their
heavily-settled capital cities is a testament to their lack of
foresight.

2) Cat's cradle within Presidential Majority parties for premiership

In a previous post, I hazarded the prediction that the oncoming Prime
Minister would come from PALU party--and that PM Adolphe Muzito would
in all likelihood keep his job.

Well, I was wrong.

For one, Muzito has just thrown in the towel, in a letter to Kabila in
which he told the prez he'd rather be an MP than work in the executive
branch.

For the other, though PALU and its leader, former PM Antoine Gizenga,
were key to Kabila win in Bandundu Province with their endorsement of
the incumbent, PALU has in fact lost its position as the second
strongest party in parliament within the alliance with the
Presidential Majority.

The MSR (Mouvement Social pour le Renouveau) party has taken that
position and wants the new premier to come from its ranks. This
ambition doesn't sit well with others within the Presidential
Majority.

A complex game of cat's craddle is thus now being played between major
parties of the Presidential Majority vying for premiership--which
makes the guessing game all the more difficult, though a consensus is
still holding around the proposition that the next prime minister will
still be a politico from Bandundu Province.

3) UDPS goes to parliament

At a press briefing held over the week's end, UDPS MP-elects announced
they've finally decided to go to parliament--though they still
continued to cast doubts over the validity of the very elections which
had them voted as MPs!

This strange caucus of nitwits has still to explain and live with the
exclusion of the acting speaker from their party decided by their
harebrained leader.

Read More

(Re)reading Notes: René Lemarchand and Michela Wrong's fallacious Amnesia Theory creeps in Jason Stearns's "Dancing in the Glory of Monsters"

My pointing to this small factual error in Jason Stearns's "Dancing in
the Glory of Monsters" is in no way akin to, as someone said in
another context, the labors of hairsplitting "pedants who correct
grammatical errors in love letters."

This error evinces instead the characteristic underplot inscribed in
many analyses by some western observers (political and social
scientists and reporters alike) of the Congo: the alleged shallowness
or outright lack of historical memory of the Congolese people and its
politicians.

By contrast, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton--an "accidental
tourist" in the African Great Lakes region, if that--proved to be far
more perspicacious than those foreign "seasoned observers" of the
Congo. Indeed, during her landmark visit to the Congo, she made her
now infamous comment to a Kinshasa audience of university students to
the effect that Congolese need to forget the past and move on! Kudos
then to Secretary Clinton for at the very least her keen perception
and for reminding everyone of the ineffaceable and resilient
historical memory of the Congolese.

René Lemarchand rightly castigates what he sees as the common mistake
among "some Belgian historians, like Jean Stengers," in their claim
that "the absence of memories of the Congo Free State among Congolese
is sufficient proof of its negligible impact on present-day
developments."

But Lemarchand himself errs in assuming that there is such an
"absence" or hole in the collective memory of the Congolese and,
quoting out of context Michela Wrong's "In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz"
(59, 60) to back his speculation, "that, indeed, amnesia--whether
individual or collective--could sometimes be the only way of dealing
with horror, that human behavior could be altered forever without the
cause being openly acknowledged" (Rene Lemarchand, "The Dynamics of
Violence in Central Africa," 303n3).

According to this piece of pernicious Freudian psychobabble that
rehearses the gist of the topos of Congo as the Heart of Darkness, the
Congolese psyche (both collective and individual) is at bottom
unhinged. A deranged country peopled by millions of psychotics with no
clue about their immediate time-space surroundings!

In other words: the Belgian colonists' cliche of the Congolese as
savages behaving like children has morphed into the postmodern cliche
of the Congolese as amnesiac psychos--the flip side of the same coin,
no matter how sophisticated the jargon in which this latter cliche is
couched.

First, this interpretative flub has since been contradicted by the
famous Congolese historian Elikia M'Bokolo who went with a documentary
film crew in remote villages of Equateur Province where some of the
most horrific incidents of the "Red Rubber" episode took place at the
turn of the 19th century.

Villagers and peasants had still vivid memories of the atrocities that
took place there more than a century ago. They even exactly
remembered the names of the tormentors of their ancestors, those of
the latter who were killed or maimed, as well as the names of western
missionaries who had denounced those crimes at the time.

Secondly, even prior to the documentary in which M'Bokolo was
featured, repeated and strident denounciations of King Leopold's
genocidal rule in the Congo Free State had been the cornerstone of
Mobutu's Afrocentrist ideology called "Authenticity," whose
underpinning was a systematic "deconstruction" of Leopoldian and
Belgian rule--that policy was accompanied by the dismantling of King
Leopold and Henry Morton Stanley's monuments countrywide.

And thirdly, the Congo Free State and its bloody extraction of "Red
Rubber" and other raw minerals feature prominently in the curriculum
of history of Congolese primary and high schools!

So much then for Lemarchand and Wrong's pernicious and wrong-headed
"amnesia" theory (no pun intended) ...

Now, pace Stearns, the claim of Congolese collective and individual
"amnesia" seems to have crept in, in another guise, in his
book--albeit not willingly, I surmise; and a mere (re)check of images
through Google search engine could have saved Stearns's book from this
glaring blunder.

Recounting the aftermath of the fall of Lubumbashi to AFDL and its
mainly Rwandan allied forces in 1997, Stearns states:

"The old flag of the Congo Free State, yellow stars set against a
peacock-blue background was resurrected and unfurled at government
buildings in town" ("Dancing in the Glory of Monsters," 125-126).

Was Mzee Kabila an idiot? Certainly not! The blood-stained flag of the
Congo Free State, the bane of the Congolese in postcolonial Congo?
Definitely not! The Congo Free State flag unfurled by none other than
Mzee Laurent Kabila, a history buff to boot? The very man described
elsewhere in the same book (on page 82 for instance) as a youth who
"could often be found in public libraries in Lubumbashi, [...] his
nose buried in books"? This tale of Mzee Kabila unfurling the hated
flag of the Congo Free State is most definitely a fictional tall tale!

Stearns needs to correct that sloppy mistake in the next edition of
his otherwise gripping book, which I just finished rereading.

Nevertheless, in this particular unfortunate instance involving the
flag, there's this jarring factual error in Stearns' book: the flag of
the Congo Free State consisted of a single big yellow star in its
middle against a dark blue background.

The flag Mzee Laurent Kabila had unfurled at the fall of Lubumbashi
was the flag of the DRC at independence in 1960: a column of 6 yellow
stars on the left corner and a bigger yellow stars in the middle;
representing, respectively, the country's then 6 provinces and one
capital city--against the backdrop of light blue. (This flag has since
been appropriated by PALU party.)

This independence flag was in turn changed when the new DRC
constitution reverted to the flag designed in 1963 and adopted by the
1964 constitution: a yellow star on the upper left, under which a
diagonal of red strip bordered on both sides by thinner yellow strips
runs down from the upper right corner down to the lower left
corner--against a sky-blue background.

It's my contention--tenuous, I must concede--that had Stearns not been
wearing the thick blinders of the Amnesia Theory, he'd have checked
the image of the flag of the Congo Free State on Wikipedia or on
Wikimedia Commons before concocting his outlandish fiction.

Read More