a) Two funerals without bodies
Two empty casket stands draped with UDPS flags
UDPS Headquarters
Kinshasa, Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Photo: John Bompengo/Radio Okapi
Police had seized two bodies from the morgues of Bondeko Clinics and Kinshasa Reference General Hospital, and nightly buried them in unmarked graves at one of the sprawling cemeteries of the Congolese capital. These bodies were the remains of UDPS members Ladi Elale Ngalela, killed on Sendwe Boulevard on September 5 in the violence that took place in the wake of Etienne Tshisekedi’s submission of his presidential candidacy at CENI; and of Junior Gamake Folo, killed the following day when the riot police quelled an unauthorized UDPS demonstration that started in the residential neighborhood of Limete, where Tshisekedi lives.
The authorities may have feared that UDPS crowds would take this opportunity to vent their anger. UDPS members held a funeral service at their headquarters with two empty casket stands draped with UDPS flags.
UDPS secretary general Jacquemain Shabani, who has vowed to sue, said: “Not satisfied with taking the lives of these compatriots, the powers that be have pushed the barbarity to the extent of snatching, then nightly burying the remains of our lamented illustrious dead.”
The authorities have kept mum over this event and Shabani's comments.
UDPS secretary General Jacquemain Shabani
At the funeral service
Photo: John Bompendo/Radio Okapi
B) Resuscitated by Jesus after being killed by Kabila’s firing squad and buried, evangelical presidential hopeful Jean-Paul Moka has $100bn for Congo Marshall Plan
Rev Jean-Paul Moka Ngolo Mpati
The 13th Candidate?
Arrested in July in Brussels after being roughed up by Bana-Congo
Video screen capture: Alex Engwete
Is Rev Jean-Paul Moka the 13th presidential candidate? The Kinshasa daily L’Avenir seems to be assuming so in its September 14 issue. So, until the publication by CENI on September 15 of the provisional list of presidential candidates, I’ll also assume that there are now thirteen presidential hopefuls.
Rev Jean-Paul Moka, 46, is a Kinois from Bandundu Province and the son of the famous retired member of DRC Bar Guy-Barthélémy Moka Ngolo whose law cabinet is still open for business. Rev Jean-Paul Moka's father, who is also a tenured law professor at the Université de Kinshasa, participated in the lawsuit against Belgium over the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in 2001 and was part of the Congolese “juridical commando” that successful defended the DRC against Belgium at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague in 2002. The case resulted from a case brought in Belgium against Yerodia Abdoulaye Ndombasi (later on, one of the transitional vice-presidents) sought for prosecution for his alleged hate speech directed at Rwandans. Moka Ngolo’s win at the ICJ prompted Belgium to change its law on universal jurisdiction. Moka Ngolo is also the tribal chieftain of the Yanzi ethnic group (a proxy is ruling in his stead), the tribe of Congolese musician Tabu Ley. Both Guy-Barthélémy Moka and his son Rev Jean-Paul Moka participated in the Sun City talks.
Anyway, independent presidential candidate Rev Jean-Paul Moka is an evangelical pastor who at times has also been called “Bishop” (in English, mind you!, as Kinshasa pastors want to be called). He’s the creator of the Christian groups “Mouvement du Psaume 23” (Psalm 23 Movement) also known by its acronym P23, and the “Armée Bleue” (Blue Army or “Blue Wave”--blue for the color of the DRC flag). This latter group was actually co-created with other radical evangelicals who believe that the destiny of the DRC is written in Isaiah 18! This group had as its mission to save the DRC from its enemies (Rwandans, mostly, including Kabila who's declared a Rwandan by the radical opposition) and from itself in the run-up to the constitutional referendum. This group was in the “negationist” movement then crystallized around Tshisekedi that deemed the new constitution and the constitutional referendum masquerades by the international community to have their puppet Kabila stay in power.
According to L'Avenir, Rev Jean-Paul Moka told the Kinshasa media on September 13 that he’s got a line-up of donors who can’t wait to disburse the additional $40bn to the $60bn already firmly pledged personally to him in the event of his win in the November 28 presidential election! These idling billions of dollars are loans that would be extended to the DRC at preferential rates because Rev Moka will guarantee the loans repayment. He’d also open a commodities’ exchange in Kinshasa where, still according to L’Avenir, “forests, gold, silver, copper, cobalt, etc.” will be sold and bought.
Rev Moka also said that upon being sworn in, his first presidential action would be to sign two decrees: 1) a decree setting up an international criminal court to prosecute all human rights violations, including rapes of Congolese women (wouldn’t this cause a jurisdictional conflict with the International Criminal Court?); and 2) the second decree would set up an anti-corruption commission “never seen in Africa” (I thought the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission chaired by Patrick Lumumba was one of the best of its kind in Africa).
The list of Rev Moka’s promises doesn’t stop there. Within the first 6 months of his administration, he claims, he’ll multiply threefold the purchasing power of the Congolese. All the schools of the Congo will be furnished with brand new desks, and teachers’ salaries will be paid on time. Health care would be free for children suffering from infectious diseases such as malaria and typhoid. In the security sector, the FARDC 120,000-strong force will be dramatically slashed and reduced to 30,000 men and women, in order to “eliminate the fear and the distrust of civilians.”
Well, Rev Moka is certainly the Moses of the DRC. And he should thank the Lord of hosts that the pro-Kabila L’Avenir is totally unaware of his claim of having been executed by a Kabila’s firing squad, buried, then resuscitated by Jesus, before fleeing to Europe in 2004! This claim comes in two versions: a soft version and a strong version.
In the soft version, on May 12, 2003, Rev Moka was abducted near the US Embassy in Kinshasa. And on July 24, 2004, he was led, alongside 11 other doomed prisoners, to a killing field in the N’Djili Commune where Kabila’s firing squad was waiting in maniacal trepidation. The other prisoners were immediately executed and buried. Then, suddenly, the Lord of hosts, tearing the mantle of the heaven, appeared to Kabila’s soldiers detailed to the firing squad and said unto them “to spare his servant for whom he has slated a momentous mission for the Congo”! How the soldiers would first bury the other prisoners before taking care of Rev Moka was by no means an improbable twist Rev Moka saw in his narrative…
In the strong version, which he told a radio host in Ghana in November 2010 (a version repeated verbatim in his biography on his presidential campaign website), Rev Moka narrates his “miraculous escape from death” as follows (I’d put as background music this song of Psalm 23 we used to sing at mandatory morning class masses at my high-school at Kisangani Collège du Sacré-Coeur):
“Rev. Moka was taken in front of a firing squad with eleven other political prisoners just outside Kinshasa.Needless to say, Rev Moka fabricated these two versions of events—except the date of his arrest. Here is what really happened.
Rev Jean-Paul Moka said that he was shot at on the firing squad and buried with the other prisoners. Miraculously, he was the only survivor, and managed to escape from Congo with the assistance and support of the Zambian and certain European governments (Belgium in particular).”
On May 12, 2003, Rev Moka was taken into custody on charges of petty larceny and “grivèlerie”—or chiseling, a charge specific to hotels and restaurants whereby guests or patrons, having taken lodging at a hotel or having eaten meals at a restaurant, thereafter prove incapable of footing their bills. The charges of petty larceny and chiseling were filed by Kinshasa Memling Hotel, owned by Belgians. Belgian businessmen on a visit in Kinshasa had stayed at Memling Hotel. Rev Moka was their contact and guide in the Congolese capital. Though a Kinshasa resident, Rev Moka thought he’d also stay at the hotel as a guest and was expecting his bills to be footed by the group of Belgian businessmen. When the businessmen left without paying Rev Moka’s bills, the Memling Hotel took the matter to court. Unable to pay the astronomical bill, Rev Moka was thrown in Makala Prison for larceny and chiseling. The case dragged for almost a year until, out of pity, the Belgian businessmen settled the bill. Then Rev Moka was released from prison—otherwise, he wouldn’t be running for president today.
Upon his arrival in Belgium, Moka peddled his fabricated versions of Kabila’s firing squad to the “Kabila-must-go” Bana-Congo radicals, who celebrated him as a hero. Until this July, when word got out in Brussels that the anti-Kabila hero of yore was heading to Kinshasa to run for president; in other words, according to Bana-Congo, a Kabila’s stalking-horse in the presidential election to chip away Tshisekedi’s votes. Then, the Bana-Congo, as per usual, confronted Rev Moka in the street, roughed him up a bit, copiously and raucously insulted him as “fake pastor” and “Kabila’s collaborator,” till Brussels cops arrived on the scene. Rev Moka, emboldened by the presence of Belgian cops, thought this was the right time to strike back at Bana-Congo. Big mistake. He was quickly subdued, handcuffed, and taken away. See for yourself this YouTube video posted by Brussels Bana-Congo.
Rev Jean-Paul Moka’s campaign poster
2) Brooklyn playwright Lynn Nottage in Kinshasa to watch staging of her 2009 Pulitzer Prize winning play “Ruined”
Lynn Nottage
Acclaimed Brooklyn playwright Lynn Nottage is in Kinshasa to watch the production and staging of her 2009 Pulitzer Prize winning play “Ruined.” The play was staged in the evening of September 14 in the theater of Collège Boboto, a high-school in the Gombe commune, in downtown Kinshasa.
This was a huge production funded by the US Kinshasa Embassy, and staged by the professional theater company of the Centre des Recherches d’Arts du Spectacle Africain (Crasa), which had to broaden its casting net across the nation.
The play was directed by the acclaimed Congolese director Alexandre Mwambayi Kalengayi, who also had to adapt and translate the play into French with the active help of the US Embassy. In its French version, the play was translated as “Détruite” (Destroyed). Alexandre Mwambayi Kalengayi is also a playwright and a stage actor.
Said Kalengayi:
“We all know there are tons of films and plays that have previously tackled sexual violence in eastern DRC. We had to think hard about ways to get out of the déjà-vu. Additionally, Lynn Nottage’s text is a collage of interviews. We had either to cut out some parts or play it in its integrality. But I told myself it was important for this American lady to enjoy the full-length play on stage and, with her, we had to select parts to cut out and those to keep for final staging. Keep in mind there is no easy play as long it has not been staged.”This is the African premiere of “Ruined.”
Alexandre Mwambayi Kalengayi
Congolese director, producer, playwright and actor
Directed and adapted “Ruined” as “Détruite”
0 comments:
Post a Comment