Majority of Kinois uninterested in National Consultations

(PHOTO 1: Kinois reading newspapers in April 2012)

(PHOTO 2: Opposition MP Jean-Pierre Lisanga Bonganga)

***

At midday this Monday September 16, Speaker Aubin Minaku opened this year's second session of the National Assembly in the presence of both houses convening in congress, of members of diplomatic missions accredited to Kinshasa, and of Justin Koumba--speaker of the National Assembly of Congo-Brazzaville--who also delivered a long-drawn-out speech as the parliamentary special guest.

Though this session has to deal mainly with budgetary matters, this September session, as Speaker Minaku reminded the audience, is taking place in a "particular context": it overlaps with the National Consultations in which are taking part 85 members of Parliament; and the ongoing aggression by the Rwandan proxies of M23.

These proceedings were carried live on all state-owned television channels of the "RTNC" system, though I'd surmise that most Kinois watching TV at the time didn't actually bother to follow these droning speeches, but flipped through channels to catch some Nollywood yarn.

My surmise is somehow validated by today's publication of the opinion survey of Kinshasa denizens on the National Consultations carried out by the daily "La Prospérité" and the polling company "Les Points"--though the poll results have to be taken with a grain of  salt as the methodology the survey wasn't detailed.

Be that as it may, the survey finds that a whopping "70% of Kinois polled don't follow the conduct of business [in the National Consultations]. In the 22% that are interested in them, only 9% said they were following on a continuous basis as opposed to 13% that follow in an occasional manner."

(http://www.laprosperiteonline.net/affi_article.php?id=337&rubrique=POLITIQUE)

This poll could even be part of the national trend.

Charly Kasereka, who blogs from Goma, claims--albeit without taking any survey--that "90%" of the city residents aren't pleased with the way these National Consultations are conducted, and accuses Kinshasa politicians to have hijacked the proceedings for financial gains. (Each participant is paid a daily stipend of $400!)

(http://actudukivu.blogspot.com/2013/09/concertations-nationales-kinshasa-ou.html?m=1)

Amid this universal indifference laced with acrimony, a controversy erupted last Thursday within the thematic group "Disarmament, demobilization, social reintegration and/or repatriation of armed groups" that risked snarling the proceedings of that group altogether.

In that "thematic group," opposition MP Jean-Pierre Lisanga Bonganga questioned the absence of the very culprits, that is, representatives of armed groups (including the M23); refused to be lectured by so-called "experts on armed  groups"; and threatened to pull out from the talks if this question wasn't solved.

The Presidium--Speaker Aubin Minaku and Senate President Léon Kengo wa Dondo--went to Hotel Invest, the venue where this group was meeting, and convinced MP Lisanga Bonganga to continue attending while this matter of the actual participation of armed groups was still pending.

But MP Lisanga Bonganga remains unyielding and threatens to withdraw from the National Consultations barring the personal intervention of Congo-Brazzaville's President Denis Sassou-Nguesso.

In the streets, people who'd even bother to speak about the consultations, shake their head in disbelief and excoriate the profiteering political class.

***

PHOTO CREDITS: John Bompengo via radiookapi.net

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Kinshasa: More outrage swirls around resumption of Kampala talks with M23

(PHOTO: Lt Col Olivier Hamuli, North-Kivu FARDC spokesperson, talking to Reuters at Mutaho, near Goma, July 6, 2013)

***

There's more outrage swirling around the ill-timed resumption of the Kampala talks between the DRC government and the Rwandan proxies of M23.

Ill-timed because the talks being held in Kampala somehow coincide with the National Consultations in Kinshasa. 

And these consultations have once more caused a political rift, making simmering tension to flare up. 

In Kinshasa, two main political camps have dug their heels in: those attending the consultations (the ruling majority and a section of the opposition, including Jean-Pierre Bemba's MLC) and the "radical" oppositionists who are boycotting this forum (Etienne Tshisekedi's UDPS, Vital Kamerhe's UNC, etc.).

The radicals scold the government for talking to M23 and bandy around its compliance with the resolutions of the ICGLR as illustrative of its listless leadership.

And MP Clément Kanku--leader of the opposition party "Mouvement pour le Renouveau" (MR)--has even blamed these talks with M23, among other rationales, for his pulling out of the National Consultations.

In a scathing communiqué released in Kinshasa on September 10, MP Kanku--who participated in the preparatory phase of the National Consultations and even sat through Kabila's opening address--states:

"While the presidential decree of the Head of State convening national consultations was steeped on national cohesion in order to face the war in the east of the country, we now learn that, at the same time, our government is implementing the dictates of the ICGLR, which forces it to return to the negotiating table with the same negative force that has since been labeled a 'terrorist movement' by the United States of America.

"Today, we can legitimately wonder about the worthiness of resolutions that could be obtained through the National Consultations compared to those coming from Kampala."

Obviously, just like many who feed on rumors from Radio-Trottoir, MP Kanku didn't bother to check the US State Department up-to-date list of Designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs).

If he did, he'd have found out that there was only one single addition so far this year to the FTOs list dating back to March 22: the Malian Tuareg Islamist group Ansar al-Dine (ADD).

But MP Kanku's confusion could have also been caused by the DRC government's own talking points--oft repeated and disseminated by Communications Minister Lambert Mende--which have kept systematically (and rightly) referring to the M23 as a terrorist organization....

As usual, each time M23 delegates show up at Kampala, they run some novel wacky claims up the flagpole--as if these terrorists would continue forever playing their macabre game.

They had even the gall to pretend they got legitimate "ideological demands" other than their base motives of plunder of resources and shakedowns of civilians. 

And  M23 claim they only got left three small demands to the DRC government: 1) Disarm the FDLR; 2) Allow thousands of people claiming to be Congolese refugees in Rwanda to return en masse to the Congo (with thousands of their cows); and, last and not least, 3) Set up a buffer zone between the FARDC and the territory occupied by M23!

Lt Col Olivier Hamuli, FARDC North-Kivu spokesman, brushed off the first one of these three frivolous demands, saying, as quoted by the daily "L'Avenir":

"In the meantime, the M23 have just spent more than a year in Rutshuru and Nyiragongo. We still have to hear in the news that M23 have clashed with the FDLR. Not once!"

Adding:

"The FDLR are at Katemba. It's nearby Kiwanja, which [M23] control." 

And yet not a single shot is fired!...

Lt Col Hamuli went further to claim that this past February, during the clashes that pitted two M23 factions, the "Makenga faction" and the FDLR were coalitionists. "We got proofs" to back up this allegation, he said.

The two other demands also got the same kind of brushoff from the Congolese delegation in Kampala as pretexts made out of whole cloth to derail the talks, maintain the status quo, and accommodate Rwanda--which got in on the ground floor anyway!

Besides the mercurial M23 delegates and their frivolous demands, the Ugandan government keeps thumbing its nose at its Congolese counterpart in Kampala. 

The most recent outrage proffered by Uganda was to suggest to the DRC via the media to have M23 reintegrated into the FARDC.

Ofwono Opendo, Ugandan government's spokesman, told VOA the other day about "the need for the Congolese government to accept them [M23], and if possible perhaps re-integrate the fighting forces into the main stream army; demobilization of those who want to surrender and go home and do other things, and the third issue is not giving amnesty to those who have been indicted with serious war crimes [and] crimes against humanity."

Really!

Maybe--just maybe--UNSG Special Envoy Mary Robinson didn't anticipate that her candid plea to give political negotiations a chance would turn into this charade that's now playing out at Kampala.

***

PHOTO CREDITS: REUTERS/Chrispin Mvano 

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Nine Eleven: Twin Sundown (Olga Vargas)

Artist: Olga Vargas

Title: Twin Sundown (New York Twin Towers)

Dimensions: 60WX36H

Material: Collage on Canvas

Credits: 911memorial.org

Via: olgavargasartist.com

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DRC ranks 18 out of 44 in Africa's Happiest Countries 2013

(PHOTO: Upbeat Congolese schoolchildren in front of their school at Kasese, South-Kivu Province, in 2005)

***

The UN World Happiness Report 2013 was released yesterday.

And according to the Report, "The top five countries are Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Netherlands, and Sweden, and the bottom five are Rwanda, Burundi, Central African Republic, Benin, and Togo."

At rank 61, Angola is Africa's happiest country, while the DRC, ranked 18 among African countries (117 world ranking) is among the first 20 happiest countries in Africa.

Strangely, the DRC is ahead of Ethiopia (rank 19) and Uganda (rank 20).

At rank 40, Rwanda is among the 5 saddest squalid boondocks of the African continent that include Burundi (41), Central African Republic (42), Benin (43), and Togo (44).

It's worth noting that among the countries bordering the DRC, besides Angola, only Zambia, at rank 7, trumps the Congo.

These rankings are significant as they are based, on the one hand, on opinion surveys conducted by Gallup in each country ranked and, on the other, on:

"Six key variables that [...] explain three-quarters of the international differences in average life evaluations: GDP per capita, years of healthy life expectancy, having someone to count on in times of trouble (sometimes referred to as 'social support' [...]), perceptions of corruption, prevalence of generosity, and freedom to make life choices."

So much for those who can't praise Rwanda's good governance without bashing the Congo.

By the way, there's just no way normal people could feel comfortable and happy living in Rwanda, a country I've once described on this blog as "Africa's North Korea."

If you dispute my characterization, just read the recent piece on President Paul Kagame by New York Times East Africa bureau chief Jeffrey Gettleman titled "The Global Elite's Favorite Strongman," which reads in part (I reformat):

"[Critics] argue that Kagame's tidy, up-and-coming little country, sometimes described as the Singapore of Africa, is now one of the most straitjacketed in the world. 

"Few people inside Rwanda feel comfortable speaking freely about the president, and many aspects of life are dictated by the government — Kagame's administration recently embarked on an 'eradication campaign' of all grass-roofed huts, which the government meticulously counted (in 2009 there were 124,671). 

"In some areas of the country, there are rules, enforced by village commissars, banning people from dressing in dirty clothes or sharing straws when drinking from a traditional pot of beer, even in their own homes, because the government considers it unhygienic. 

"Many Rwandans told me that they feel as if their president is personally watching them. 'It's like there's an invisible eye everywhere,'said Alice Muhirwa, a member of an opposition political party. 'Kagame's eye.'"

(http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/08/magazine/paul-kagame-rwanda.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

This devastating description of Africa's North Korea reminds me of Jean-Jacques Rousseau who, astonished by people praising tranquility and peace ensured under dictatorial regimes, blurted out: "Tranquility is found also in dungeons."

***

PHOTO CREDITS: War Child Canada/Jean-Marc Page via getloud.ca

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Kinshasa: Govt scrambles to stem Kampala summit fallout as National Consultations open

PHOTO: Front row: From Left to Right: Presidents Salva Kir (South Sudan), Joseph Kabila (DRC), Jakaya Kikwete (Tanzania) and Yoweri Museveni (Uganda); AU Commission Chair Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma; and President Paul Kagame (Rwanda).

***

The worst nightmare of North Kivu Governor Julien Paluku came to pass Thursday, September 5, in Kampala, Uganda.

The nightmare--in the shape of a "ceasefire," "cessations of hostilities" and continued negotiations between the DRC and M23 (see previous post)--is precisely what's being urged to both the Congolese government and the Rwandan-backed insurgency in the third point of the communique issued Thursday at the close of the 7th summit of Heads of state of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) urgently convened in Kampala by Museveni to deal with he resumption of hostilities in the Kivus and with a view to solving in a lasting manner the crisis in eastern DRC:

"[The ICGLR Heads of state] [d]irect that the Kampala Dialogue resumes within 3 days after this Extraordinary Summit and conclude within a maximum period of 14 days during which maximum restraint must be exercised on the ground to allow for talks to conclude. If the Dialogue is not concluded in the time agreed upon, the Chairman of the Summit shall consult his colleagues on the way forward."

There was simply no way that this kind of communique would go down well with Congolese denizens who view it as a set of historic decisions that finally stripped the DRC of all semblance of sovereignty it still had left thus far.

With the "national consultations" opening two days after the Kampala summit--on September 7--the DRC had to deal headlong with the PR nightmare of the summit negative narratives being disseminated through the channels of the grapevine of Radio-Trottoir.

There was for instance the malicious rumor spreading like wildfire of a meeting between Kabila and Kagame on the sidelines of the summit. 

Just as any good rumor, this one seemed plausible because it was steeped on an actual event that took place in Kampala: the meeting between Kagame and Kikwete on the sidelines of the summit.

Kabila's big guns came out in an attempt to nip in the bud that devastating rumor.

In an almost unprecedented move, André Ngwej Katot, Kabila's communication director, entered personally the fray to confront the rumor headlong.

"President Joseph Kabila didn't hold this Thursday September 5 a one-on-one meeting at the ICGLR summit in Kampala with Rwandan President Kagame," Ngwej Katot reportedly told AFP. "They met alongside all the other heads of state" present at the summit.

Well, the image, like the photograph above, of Kabila grinning with Kagame alongside other heads of state present in Kampala, is scandalous to Congolese reeling from the recent wanton attacks by M23 against civilians in Goma.

What's more, conspiracy theorist claim that Kabila is being compelled by the international community to share North-Kivu mineral resources with Rwanda and its M23 proxies.

Even mainstream media are giving some credence to that vein of conspiracy theory, including the Kinshasa daily Le Potentiel, which published Saturday  a vitriolic editorial titled "DR Congo-Rwanda-Kampala: At the Summit of Hypocrisy?"

(http://lepotentielonline.com/site2/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2548:rd-congo-rwanda-kampala-au-sommet-de-l-hypocrisie&catid=85&Itemid=472&lang=en)

Le Potentiel is flabbergasted by the fact that the UN has recently accused Rwanda of dispatching military personnel into the Congo while Ugandan troops have recently attacked the northern Congolese district of Mahagi. 

And yet--mirabile dictu--the DRC government is pretending to rely on these poachers of its sovereignty to restore lasting peace in the Kivus.

The editorial directly stung Kabila: 

"It's further noted, with astonishment, that President Kabila arrived in Kampala without stopping over at Goma where his people was badly bruised by bombings. The families of victims and the injured in hospitals--civilians and soldiers--would have appreciated (...) some comfort coming from the head of state."

Muddying further the PR waters for the DRC government, James Mugume--Uganda's Foreign Affairs Permanent Secretary and "facilitator" at the Kampala talks between M23 and the Congolese government--is reported to have told Xinhua last Wednesday before the start of the Kampala summit:

"You never get tired of meetings [between M23 and the Congolese government] since you're solving a complex problem dating back to the colonial era. [The DRC] is a huge country, therefore you have to be patient" (retranslated from the French).

This narrative--of a precolonial Rwandan presence on the Congolese side of the border legitimizing Rwandan irredentist insurgencies of the kind waged by M23--is particularly worrisome as it tends to give credence to the conspiracy theory of the balkanization of the Congo.

Worse still, Museveni hinted that the whole purpose of the ICGLR 7th summit was somewhat to ensure that the M23 get off scot-free from the mayhem they had wreaked upon the Congo when he told the press on Thursday:

"We are seeking a path of dialogue so that the M23 come out peacefully to enable the UN intervention brigade deal with other negative forces in eastern DR Congo."

It's therefore understandable that Congolese would fear that the political dialogue with M23 advocated by the UNSG Envoy in the Great Lakes Mary Robinson would end up gnawing at Congo's sovereignty and giving to the M23 "acquired rights" of a micro-state over the territory under their control.

It was against the backdrop of this fallout of the Kampala summit that Kabila opened the National Consultations on September 7 amid widespread skepticism as some major political players have snubbed these talks.

The two-week talks will be held at venues in Kinshasa and Lubumbashi with 600 delegates from the ruling majority and fractions of the opposition and civil society. 

***

PHOTO CREDITS: Village Urugwiro via newtimes.co.rw

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Radio-Trottoir: No ceasefire and No cessation of hostilities with M23

(PHOTO: An anti-M23 rioter in Goma on Saturday, August 24, 2013)

***

The 7th extraordinary summit of the heads of state of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGRL) opens today in Kampala. 

Yesterday, according to Radio Okapi, North Kivu Governor Julien Paluku made some tough comments to the press at Goma regarding the outcome of the summit.

These comments echo what's being hotly debated through the grapevine of Radio-Trottoir, which evinces the extraordinary pressure that the whole nation is bringing to bear on President Joseph Kabila on the eve of the "national consultations between all the driving forces of the nation," in the Congolese political speak. (By the way, those consultations were due to start today but were postponed to September 7 due to the absence of Kabila in Kinshasa.)

Gov. Paluku said:

"What we don't want to hear in Goma [coming from Kampala] is anything that has to do with ceasefire, anything that has to do with cessation of hostilities!"

Adding:

"We've seen in the past how, each time there have been summits of Heads of state, they were asking to either the M23 or to the [DRC] government that each one keep positions they were holding. 

"I believe it's no longer today the business of a summit, be it of heads of state, to consecrate the de facto balkanization [of the DRC] by asking to the the [DRC] to leave to the M23 a given territory.

"We must ensure that the Kampala summit would force the M23 to lay down weapons and to have them let go of the areas they're occupying.

"We shouldn't be doing as if we mostly care about the M23 whereas we should be caring instead about the population that's suffering in IDPs' camps so as to truly be in line with the will of the people of North Kivu."

Those remarks made by Gov. Paluku are a rebuke of the stance of the UNSG Special Envoy in the Great Lakes Mary Robinson--a "Kagame groupie like Blair," charges the grapevine of Sidewalk Radio--who said a few days ago:

 

"We've already tried a military response that has succeeded. Now, there's a window for a political response."

A "political response" or a "political solution" triggers in the mind of the Congolese scenes of back-room "peace deals" packaged by hardened anti-Congolese international brokers who, time and again, have arranged botched reconciliations and abetted public display of impunity.

A military solution that would obtain the eradication of M23 is what the Congolese are yearning for. And it seems more and more certain that this military solution would only be achieved through armed confrontation with Rwanda.

And as I said in the previous post, there's maybe an unhealthy dose of bravado and moxie flowing through the veins of some Congolese hawks who think that in the event of military confrontation with Rwanda, the FARDC would prevail without firing a shot, so to speak.

Among these hawks, there are some nationalistic elements who resent that the DRC has turned into what they call a "MONUSCO protectorate." 

They claim that MONUSCO has the FARDC on a short leash, preventing the Congolese troops from moving decisively against M23 by withholding critical logistical support.

A conspiracy theory that accuses MONUSCO of being an active participant in the "balkanization" of the Congo, as it grants and guarantees M23 a mini-state, that is, the territory they're occupying.

The nationalists see therefore Rwanda's military intervention as the trigger that would cement the resolve and determination of the Congolese to not only resist the invasion but to export war and insecurity on Rwandan territory as well.

"We're facing a real state called Rwanda," one of them told me. "We're a MONUSCO protectorate. And as long as we're a protectorate, Rwanda will continue to trample our sovereignty with impunity."

Other recreant Congolese, however, think that the DRC would rid itself of M23 by magic, without confronting Rwanda head-on.

Yesterday, I sat quietly in a taxi as a woman was scolding one of those phony tough and crazy brave who rode with us in the cab.

"Are you a real man?" she said. "You just said that the international community is in cahoots with Rwanda. How can you then advocate war with Rwanda? That's the only thing I'll tell you before I shut up. I'm not going to listen any longer to your stupid theory of nationalism and patriotism. Tell that theory to the people of Bukavu and Goma who'd bear the brunt of Rwanda's savagery!"

Is a "real man" a coward?

***

PHOTO CREDITS: Photo by Charly Kasereka Via actudukivu.blogspot.com

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Radio Trottoir: Africa's World War II has begun

(PHOTO: A son of Tanzania People's Defense Force [TPDF] Khatib Mshindo grieves by his father's casket at Lugalo Military Hospital in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, before being flown to Zanzibar for burial. Maj. Mshindo, who was with MONUSCO's Force Intervention Brigade [FIB], was slain in a rocket-propelled grenade attack on the frontline in eastern DRC last week)

***

Faceless anchors of Radio-Trottoir, the grapevine of Kinshasa and other DRC's urban areas, are busy these days at street corners spreading rumors about the start of Africa's World War II.

According to them, the trigger and the marker of the new war is what Tanzanian authorities are calling the "murder" in a rocket-propelled grenade attack last week in North Kivu of Zanzibari-born Major Khatid Mshindo. An RPG attack carried out by M23.

The RPG attack occurred about the same time as self-inflicted shelling incidents were occurring at Rwandan border hamlet of Rubavu. (I say "self-inflicted" as it has since been established by the UN that the flak Rwanda got issued from M23-occupied territory in the Congo where US and UN intelligence sources have also established the presence of hundreds of special operators of the Rwandan Defense Force).

Veteran Belgian journo Colette Braeckman quipped about the cruel injustice of those bombs falling in Rubabu on the popular and poor neighborhood of Mudugudu while sparing the quarter called "RCD" where pro-Rwandan former Congolese "notables" have built "multistoried villas with colonnettes." No doubt with money from the plunder of Congo resources, I'd add!

These self-inflicted bombings prompted Ms. Louise Mushikiwabo, Rwanda's Foreign Minister, to come up with the her zaniest statement to date, saying that the time has long past when Rwanda would stand idle by as the allied and combined forces of FARDC-FDLR are targeting Rwandan civilian population.

According to the DRC government, Mushikiwabo's verbal attack was just grasping at straws, in her desperate attempt to come with a rationale to justify Rwanda's ongoing aggression of the Congo under the cover of the "right of pursuit."

But make no mistake: Mushikiwabo has never freelance her ill-mannered and undiplomatic outbursts; she's hen-pecked by President by President Paul Kagame.

This was evident in May of this year when she started insulting Tanzania's President Jakaya Kikwete who made the cardinal sin of suggesting that Rwanda and Uganda also negotiate with their "negative forces"--just as these countries were insisting that the DRC does. Shortly after Mushikiwabo's opening salvos, Kagame followed suit--using the same insults as his Foreign Minister.

A new expression was coined in Rwanda's state-controlled media to refer to the "genocidal ideology" of the FDLR: the Kikwete ideology.

And last week, after Mushikiwabo's ill-founded accusation laced with insults, Kagame ordered Rwandan troops to move west, to Rwanda's border with the DRC.

Colette Braeckman, who was in the region on the Rwandan side, counted: 20 semitrailers carrying 2 armored vehicles each; and 40 troop transport trucks carrying 50 troops each.

Africa's World War II was afoot, as Kinshasa Radio-Trottoir would have it.

Rwanda--having conflated Kikwete, the FDLR, and the FARDC into one single entity--it was obvious that in the event of Rwandan penetration into the Congo, a confrontation with Tanzanian troops on the ground in North Kivu would be unavoidable. 

Especially as tensions were cranked up several notches recently  between Rwanda and Tanzania when the latter kicked out 5,000 Rwandan "illegal immigrants"; whereas Rwanda is charging that some of its nationals deported from Tanzania have "lived there for over six decades," according to the Kigali-based daily New Times, which also adds that 75% of the returnees are kids!

Uganda in the meantime has sent its troops to occupy the  DRC territory of Mahagi over some bogus frontier dispute and is massing more troops as the Congolese army is inching toward Kibumba, close to the border.

Would cool heads prevail this Thursday September 5 at the Kampala summit of heads of state of  the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR)? 

No one knows. But the DRC, whose hand has been strengthened with its recent military victories, is now ratcheting up its demands on M23, demanding that the pro-Rwandan militia lay down its weapons  first, before any meaningful talk with the Congolese government.

And Congolese citizens, who've been spoiling for war with Rwanda, are cheering on the sidelines, crossing their fingers in the hope that more mortar shells would land on Gisenyi and Rubavu so that the ongoing ratatat-tats would turn into the rumbling of an all-out no-holds-barred regional confrontation.

"Rwandans have got to also experience firsthand the woes of instability," I heard someone say today. "Enough is enough! Let's move into Rwanda!"

***

PHOTO CREDITS: Photo by Michael Jamson via thecitizen.co.tz

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