A very black Maundy Thursday for Kinshasa football club DCMP

(PHOTO: Mangled Toyota RAV-4 in which three DCMP soccer players died

on Maundy Thursday)



***



There was not so much as a peep on Kinshasa streets in terms of

comments on the extraordinary landmark UN Security Council resolution

2098 (2013) creating an "Intervention Brigade" to be based in Goma,

but so much fuss over the deaths on Maundy Thursday of three players

of the football team Daring Club Motema Pembe (DCMP) in a traffic

accident on the 14th street of Limete where they were allegedly

broadsided by a military truck.



The three players pronounced dead at the scene were the international

goalie Guelor Dibulana, and strikers Hugues Muyenge and Mozart Mwanza.

They were all riding in the Toyota RAV-4 SUV of their teammates,

Mbidi.



The whole team was coming out of Maundy Thursday mass celebrated at

St. Dominique Parish in the Limete Commune.



Well, DCMP archrival is Vita Club whose president is the infamous

rogue Gen. Gabriel Amisi aka Tango-Four, suspended a few months ago as

FARDC ground forces chief based on a damning report issued by the UN

Groups of Experts.



And Vita Club supporters aren't buying the itinerary or the cause of

death of the deceased players.



"They weren't coming from Maundy Thursday mass," Vita supporters

maintain. "They were coming from the house of a 'nganga' who gave them

'nkisi' to win the Easter match against Vita. As it turned out, the

'nkisi' backfired; hence these preventable deaths!"



I hear that there are bloody running battles pitting "Imaniens" (DCMP

supporters) against "Vitaclubiens" (Vita Club supporters) over this

uncharitable version of the deadly accident.



***

PHOTO CREDITS: Via radiookapi.net

Read More

Congo Chaos Theory: The Rwandan butterfly effect

(PHOTO 1: Rogue Rwandan warlord Bosco Ntaganda at the International

Criminal Court at The Hague, Tuesday, March 26, 2013)



(PHOTO 2: Presidents Denis Sassou Nguesso, Joseph Kabila, and Paul

Kagame at Oyo (Congo-Brazzaville), March 24, 2013)



***



"When a butterfly flaps its wings in Rwanda, it can cause mayhem in the Congo."





***



The epigraph above is a piece of conventional wisdom adapted from the

butterfly effect of chaos theory often heard these days among

Congolese intellectuals in the streets of Kinshasa ever since news

broke out that the infamous Rwandan warlord Bosco Ntaganda had turned

himself in at the US embassy in Kigali.



This particular version of the butterfly effect is also meant to

convey the fact that all the upheavals experienced by the DRC since

the mid-1990s were concocted in Rwanda.



There was even a saying, now almost extinct, that went like, "The

abode of Lucifer is a stinking hole called Rwanda!"



That adage not only pinpoints the exact geographic location of doom in

the psyche of the Congolese but it also conveys the level of

resentment bordering on hate mixed with contempt that Congolese have

for Rwandans of all ethnic persuasions.





Congolese know that the invasion of Congo that triggered Africa's

World War was planned by President Paul Kagame (and his sidekick

Yoweri Museveni) and executed by General James Kabarebe.



Months earlier, before the opening salvoes of Africa's World War,

Kabarebe, a Rwandan army officer, was openly operating in Kinshasa in

the capacity of the chief of staff of the Congolese army.



(Eerily, the man is today Rwanda's defense minister!)



And before that travesty, the Rwandan invasion, occupation, and

looting of the Congo was presented as an autonomous Congolese internal

revolution to bring down the Mobutu regime.



As Rwandan soldiers who provided the backbone of the Congolese

revolutionary troops were moving deeper into DRC territory, they

encountered their own fellow citizens whom they massacred in the tune

of hundreds of thousands.



The extent and the scale of these massacres and pogroms--like the one

that took place at Tingi-Tingi near Kisangani--made some observers

(including myself) describe these events as a counter-genocide.



Uncannily, these vast scale massacres ordered by Kagame and carried

out by Rwandan special forces on Congolese territory obtained the

strange situation where a Congolese (puppet) regime paid a hefty

diplomatic price at the UN for horrendous crimes it didn't commit!



These bizarre occurrences were made possible unfortunately by the

active participation by some Congolese leaders--from Kabila-père to

Kabila-fils.



People here in Kinshasa and elsewhere in the Congo feel therefore

they've lost the plot of their national narrative to Rwanda and its

associates of the so-called "international community."



That's why denizens here were weary of the closed-door summit at Oyo,

in Congo-Brazzaville, between Joseph Kabila, Kagame, Denis Sassou

Nguesso and Yoweri Museveni just about the same time as Ntaganda was

taken into custody by the International Criminal Court (ICC).



The sense of lost narrative was compounded by Ntaganda appearing at

the ICC and insisting on speaking in Kinyarwanda language--the only

"Congolese" in the country who couldn't function in French, Lingala or

Swahili!



And what came out of this criminal's mouth in the much-hated

Kinyarwanda language further convinced people that their leaders might

have sold out to the enemies of the Congolese citizens.



Ntaganda acknowledged--in Kinyarwanda--of having been born in Rwanda

and to have moved at some point in his miserable life to the DRC where

he mysteriously acquired Congolese citizenship before launching his

criminal career as mass rapist and murderer, and plunderer on behalf

of Rwanda.



Watching the reports on the court proceedings at The Hague, residents

of the republic got the opportunity to witness firsthand the first

inkling of the materialization of the Congo chaos theory:



How a low-life Rwandan citizen, propped up by the murderous Rwandan

regime and taking advantage of the hapless government of the DRC,

caused wanton destruction on the Congo and its people.



About seven years ago, Congolese soukous artist Papa Wemba came up

with the recipe for solving Congo eastern woes: erect a tall and

sturdy wall on the border with Rwanda in the fashion of the wall

Israel has erected!



The idea is getting some traction today after Ntaganda resurfaced in

his native Rwanda.



***



PHOTO CREDITS: PHOTO 1: AFP via bbc.com; PHOTO 2: Flickr Paul Kagame Photostream

Read More

Africa's Madman of the Year 2013: Raila Amollo Odinga

(PHOTO 1: March 18, 2013, Changamwe constituency, Kenya. "Residents

[...] acknowledged greetings from Prime Minister Raila Odinga (atop

his car) before he addressed them" and proclaim himself winner of

March 4 presidential poll.)



***

(PHOTO 2: Kenya Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission

Chairman Issack Hassan, left, "presents the certificate of

presidential results to Chief Justice Dr. Willy Mutunga at the Supreme

Court in Nairobi, March 11, 2014.")



***



There are two age-old African presidential-election-cycle shibboleths.



The first one--now rare--is the Ivorian kind of shibboleth where, as

it happened in 2010 in Côte d'Ivoire, the electoral commission, whose

majority of members were the incumbent's political clients and tribal

allies, aided and abetted electoral fraud.



The most common shibboleth nowadays, however, is this second one,

where a losing (opposition) candidate--with the bloated ego of a

madman--defying statistical and sociological logic, claims to be the

rightful winner of the poll.



(In this crazy post-apocalyptic world, there's no such thing as the

swift concession defeat like the one made by then Senegalese President

Abdoulaye Wade made in April 2012 to rival Macky Sall. Here, people

have to die for the narrow ambitions of a sociopath.)



This latter shibboleth is often accompanied by another minor

shibboleth--a sub-shibboleth, as it were--which consists in

systematically denigrating the country's so-called independent

electoral commission.



This happened in the DRC where opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi so

successfully demonized the Independent National Electoral Commission

(CENI) and its chairman before, during, and after the November 2011

general elections that many citizens ended up losing confidence in an

institution created by their own representatives in Parliament and

whose members were rigorously vetted and chosen by the National

Assembly.



Rejecting the results of the presidential election, Tshisekedi refused

nevertheless to petition the Supreme Court, the constitutional

arbiter, charging that the entire judiciary of the DRC was populated

by creatures entirely beholden to President Joseph Kabila.



Upping the ante not only on the ruling majority but on his own party

as well, Tshisekedi barred his party members freshly elected as MPs

from taking their seats in Parliament.



All MPs belonging to his party--with the exception of his own son and

sister--chose to disobey this directive.



Tshisekedi retaliated by excluding all of them from his party--though

some pro-Kabila MPs are now expressing misgivings about Tshisekedi's

son and sister continuing to be paid huge salaries as MPs, in blatant

violation of stringent and clear-cut attendance rules of the National

Assembly.



In some cases, the madman would even come out and proclaim himself

president-elect, and hope, against all odds, that somehow, the

"imperium" would be conferred upon him, his family, his entourage and

his tribe.



This is what happened in the DRC where, to this day, Tshisekedi still

deludes himself of being the president of the republic.



The delusions of these presidential election madmen and fraudsters are

often heightened by election monitoring organizations, like the Carter

Center, which would point to apparent poll irregularities.



In Kenya, the situation was slightly different at first, then it

somewhat rejoined the DRC narrative.



Both running presidential tickets--Uhuru Kenyatta and running mate

William Ruto on the one hand; and Raila Amollo Odinga aka RAO and

Deputy President candidate Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka--were all

incumbents, as they all belonged to the grand coalition government

brokered after the debacle of the 2007 presidential election.



Odinga, who lost to Kenyatta in the March 4, 2013 presidential

election, came out at first as a reasonable fellow, backing, prior to

the poll, Chairman Issack Hassan and the other 8 members of the

Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC).



Then, as the results of the election started trickling in--after a

massive glitch of the IEBC electronic system--and as Kenyatta took an

early lead, Odinga and Kalonzo denounced a flawed electoral process

and demanded that the count be halted.



On March 11, the IEBC announced the winner of the presidential

election as Kenyatta. Its chairman, Issack Hassan, then went to

present both president-elect Kenyatta and Chief Justice Dr. Willy

Mutunga a so-called "certificate of presidential results."



Refusing to concede defeat, Odinga, alongside a civil society group

whose leadership is uncannily mostly made of the Luo--Odinga's ethnic

group--filed a petition in the Supreme.Court to declare Kenyatta win

"null and void" as the poll was a "sham" and a "travesty" as RAO kept

repeating at rallies and press briefings.



Odinga even clamored that "dark forces" were working deep inside the IEBC!



Whereas in the DRC Tshisekedi had dismissed justices of the Supreme

Court as Kabila's henchmen, in Kenya, Odinga was training the big guns

of his coalition on the IEBC while heaping praise on the Supreme

Court.



Odinga was even quoted as saying:



"The one institution in which all Kenyans still have faith is our new

Judiciary. It is faith-based on their achievements in the last two

years."



He then urged his "brother" Kenyatta to join him in pledging to accept

the Supreme Court ruling--whatever the outcome.



One could sense that Odinga was clearly emboldened by the pending

trial of president-elect Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy president-elect

William Ruto at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

He might have wrongly calculated that the time was ripe for him to

seize power from his weakened rival.



While his petition was still pending in the Supreme Court, however,

Odinga cranked up several notches his assault on (and contempt of) the

electoral commission when, at a rally on March 18, Odinga claimed he'd

won the election with 5.7 million votes against Kenyatta's 4.5 million

votes--though it is still a mystery as tow how Odinga got those

numbers.



This prompted the Kenyan Supreme Court to slap gag orders on the

petitioners and the presumptive winner and their lawyers, while--thank

God!--Inspector-General of Police David Kimaiyo banned all "illegal

groupings" around the Supreme Court in Nairobi and political rallies

countrywide.



Police boss Kimaio explained the "move [as] aimed at ensuring that we

do not elicit unnecessary emotions, or generate apprehension or even

tension."



Odinga is indeed aiming at stirring tension, violence, and mayhem.

This is a calculated strategy that could, he hopes, lead to another

coalition government.



In initiating this dangerous maneuver, Odinga emerges as Africa's

scumbag of the year 2013.



***

PHOTO CREDITS: PHOTO 1: Gideon Maundu/ nation.co.ke; PHOTO 2: Via nation.co.ke

Read More

Watching the vanishing forests of the Congo on Kinshasa highways

I snapped this picture of a flatbed logging trailer on Lumumba

Boulevard in the Kinshasa N'Djili commune with my iPhone from the roof

of the broken-down car that was to take us for our usual weekend

outing to Maluku, the small port and fishing community on the Congo

River Channel, about 120 km northeast of the Congolese capital.



Logging trailers of this kind are ubiquitous in Kinshasa where at

times--like three weeks ago in the southwestern Mbensenke Futi

area--they cause mayhem, destruction and death among unsuspecting

Kinshasa pedestrians when cables securing logs snap and spill their

cargoes onto crowded streets.



The Mbensenke accident I just alluded to involved a logging trailer

barreling down the slope of a hillside road and attempting a hard turn

without slowing down.



The jolt made the logs wobble uncontrollably, causing the metal straps

to snap, the forwarder and the trailer to overturn, and the bulky logs

to roll onto the highway--instantly killing a half-dozen pedestrians.

The drunk driver, who'd miraculously survived, fled the scene on foot

and is still at large.



But besides these horrendous traffic accidents, the frequency of these

logging trailers could frame and support the narratives of advocacy

groups such as Global Witness that allege that "in the future, there

will be no forests left" as the November 2012 Global Witness report is

titled.



This sounds like the alarm issued a few years back by the WWF about

"empty forests" (i.e., forests without games) in the DRC.



And, by the way, those logging trailers seen on Kinshasa streets

originate from Maluku where the port is so insignificant and so out of

sight to attract the attention of conservation and civil society

groups. Those logs come from upstream, from the rainforest of the

Equateur Province.



According to Global Witness, the industrial deforestation now taking

place in the Congo was hastened by a combination of logging reform

laws hijacked by the elite, a languishing "Community Forest

Management" decree, and the active encouragement of World Bank's

foresters.



A press release by Global Witness introducing its October 2012 report

titled "The art of logging industrially in the Congo" states (I

reformat for readability):



"The "Artisanal Logging Permits" are designed to allow Congolese

communities to carry out small-scale logging in their forests.



"But in practice, they are being used by foreign loggers to exploit

Congo's forests on an industrial scale, primarily for buyers in China.



"DRC is the second most forested country on earth and 40 million

Congolese depend on the forest for income, food, building materials or

medicine.



"However, decades of weak laws and poor government have allowed

logging companies to plunder the forests, with very few benefits

reaching communities.



"A 2002 freeze on the creation of new logging concessions was designed

to stop the expansion of industrial logging until long-promised

reforms of the sector have been carried out.



"However, this misuse of artisanal permits has provided a way for

officials and loggers to continue opening up new swathes of forest to

industrial logging."



According to that press release, the report "finds [that] 146

artisanal permits have been handed out to loggers in Bandundu Province

alone since 2010, affecting an area equivalent to over 11,000 football

pitches."



As for the so-called "forest community management," the press release

had this to say:



"A draft Decree on Community Forests would allow communities to play

more of a role in managing forests and to benefit from properly

managed artisanal logging. However, the decree has been awaiting

signature by the DRC's Prime Minister since 2010."



The press release also read as if lifted from a page of the book "Law

and Disorder in the Postcolony" edited by Comaroff and Comaroff in

which it is evinced that the uncanny proliferation of laws in

postcolonial states is often accompanied and offset by massive

instances of scoffing of the same laws:



"The Congolese authorities have been routinely breaking their own laws

when handing out these logging permits.



"This should set alarm bells ringing for anyone who is buying hardwood

from DRC and working to comply with US and EU laws against importing

illegal timber."



(Source: http://www.globalwitness.org/library/widespread-abuse-logging-permits-opens-congo's-forests-more-destruction)



Another Global Witness press release issued in February 2013 reads in

part (once again, I reformat for readability):



"An independent evaluation leaked earlier this week found that the

World Bank's support for the logging of tropical rainforests is

failing in its key aims of preventing their destruction and addressing

rural poverty.



"But, according to sources in the Bank, its forestry department is

refusing to reconsider its approach, is lobbying the Board hard to

avoid being held accountable for its failures, and has stated its

intention to continue supporting tropical forest logging.



"The World Bank's evaluation confirms what has long been obvious –

cutting down trees on an industrial scale is not the way to preserve

the world's remaining tropical forests or help the people that live in

them." said Rick Jacobsen, Head of International Forest Policy at

Global Witness. "When Bank Board members meet on Monday to decide next

steps, they need to act on the evaluation's findings and demand that

the Bank pursue alternatives to industrial logging in tropical forests

that better help the poor and preserve forests."



"Over the years, the World Bank has supported the expansion of

industrial logging in some of the world's most important and

endangered rainforests in countries such as Cambodia, Cameroon,

Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, and Liberia. In Cambodia,

Congo and Liberia this prompted formal complaints from communities

living in the forests that the Bank was harming their livelihoods.

[...]



"The Bank's foresters remain in denial and resistant to all efforts to

hold them accountable to the people whose interests they are supposed

to serve. In the meantime, the evidence continues to pile up that

industrial logging in tropical forests mainly benefits a few

international logging companies and corrupt government officials,"

said Rick Jacobsen. "Increasingly, scientific research is revealing

that the decades-old dogma about the benefits of industrial logging is

more about politics than science, and is certainly not backed up by

the reality on the ground. The Bank and its member governments have

avoided this reality for too long; now they need to take action."



(Source: http://www.globalwitness.org/library/world-bank-refuses-review-support-logging-tropical-rainforests-despite-criticism-its-own)



In the meantime, disenfranchised residents of the republic can only

watch powerlessly the merry-go-round of logging trailers on Kinshasa

highways and pray that they don't happen to be in the proximity when

these road mastodons go rogue!



***



PHOTO: Alex Engwete

Read More

Hoo-hah in Kinshasa over Côte d'Ivoire National Assembly Guillaume Soro's remark linking Congolese music with DRC politics

(PHOTO: Côte d'Ivoire National Assembly Speaker Guillaume Soro

speaking when still Prime Minister in 2011)



***



A hoo-ha broke out in the streets of Kinshasa this Friday shortly

after the speech delivered by Côte d'Ivoire National Assembly Speaker

Guillaume Soro, the guest of DRC National Assembly Aubin Minaku, at

the ceremony of the reopening of the Congolese parliament.



Soro said that "Democratic Republic of Congo has a major role to play

in the development of Africa in the fashion of its musical culture."



Adding that he wished to see the day when "Congolese politics would

rejoin Congolese music in a marvelous rumba."



As a great fan of Congolese soukous, Soro no doubt thought that

Congolese would appreciate very much those remarks.



Well, he was mistaken, for those comments rubbed thin-skinned Kinois

the wrong way.



Lost in the translation of the grapevine of Kinshasa Radio-Trottoir

was Soro's appreciation of Congolese music.



What Kinois retained from the speech was something completely

different, summed up by what a man was telling commuters on a bus this

evening:



"Soro dissed the Congo today. He told Parliament, If only Congolese

politics was as sophisticated as Congolese music, Congo would be far

ahead on its path to development, instead of being at the bottom of

UNDP human development index!"



Go figure...



***

PHOTO CREDITS: AFP Via sueddeutsche.de

Read More

Kinshasa opposition contrasts Alexis Sinduhije's "triumphant" homecoming in Bujumbura to Etienne Tshisekedi's hectic return to Kinshasa

(Alexis Sinduhije in the garden of his Kinshasa retreat in downtown

Gombe Commune hours before his return to Bujumbura via Nairobi)



***



Pro-Kabila presidential supporters were celebrating over the week's

end the historic election of Uhuru Kenyatta as the fourth president

of Kenya--a collective national middle finger shown at the West.



Kinshasa oppositionists were instead dreaming to see on Monday

afternoon the re-enactment for Etienne Tshisekedi of what Radio France

Internationale (RFI) had billed as the"triumphant" homecoming Saturday

of Burundi's radical oppositionist Alexis Sinduhije to Bujumbura after

a two-year self-imposed exile.



Excitement was already building up in the past week with leaflets

announcing the return to Kinshasa of the "presidential couple"

(Tshisekedi and wife Maman Marthe) after a few weeks stay in South

Africa.



Rumors spread by pro-Kabila forces had it that the UDPS leader,

crippled by many an ailment, had gone for medical checkup and

"intensive treatment" in South Africa.



The dream of pro-Tshisekedi was however nipped in the bud upon

touchdown at N'Djili International Airport of the aircraft carrying

the UDPS leader.



Tshisekedi's supporters, who faced a formidable deployment of riot

police at major city intersections, were mercilessly tear-gassed at

the airport and in the neighborhood of Tshisekedi's residence in

Limete.



About two dozen Tshiskedists were apprehended for what Kinshasa police

commissioner, General Jean-de-Dieu Oleko, called "traffic violations"!



After a brief rest at the VIP lounge, Tshisekedi was then whisked to

his residence at breakneck speed--with an escort of about 6 SUVs,

including, according to eyewitnesses, one belonging to MONUSCO.



Radio Okapi claims that a police driver had taken control of the SUV

that chauffeured Tshisekedi to his residence.



The leaflets dropped throughout the city were also announcing a rally

by Tshisekedi in front of the Palais du Peuple, the seat of

Parliament.



That didn't happen, anyway, which had pro-"President" Tshisekedi MPs

seething with anger.



MP Martin Fayulu, one of the scions of the pro-Tshisekedi movement blurted out:



"All the cops that the city of Kinshasa counts, they sent them here

[at the airport]. But why don't they send them to Kiwanja, Rutshuru or

Goma to defend our women who are being raped?"



Another MP, obviously hooked on RFI, observed:



"A radical oppositionist [Sinduhije] was given a triumphant homecoming

in Bujumbura. Why couldn't the same treatment be given to President

Tshisekedi in his hometown?"



Well, that comparison doesn't hold water.



For one, Sinduhije went back to Bujumbura on a UN-brokered dialogue

between the government and the opposition.



What's more, Sinduhije is a vibrant young rational party leader, not a

slobbering ailing old geezer, high on medications, who'd proclaimed

himself from his deathbed as the president of the Republic of Burundi!



***



PHOTO: Alex Engwete

Read More

Kinshasa: Butterfly Season

(PHOTO 1:A butterfly feeding on a discarded piece of banana)



(PHOTO 2: A basketful of safous aka butterfruits)



...



This is the rainy season in the Kinshasa area.



And rainy days in Kinshasa, which alternate with stifling and terribly

hot days, are more often than not very violent and deadly events.



Not to mention the weird multi-pronged progression of highly active

erosion heads that are literally gobbling up--live--entire

neighborhoods--corrupt cadaster officials having in the past sold

plots at improbable locations, obtaining today that Kinshasa may be

the only metropolis in the world without the tiniest park...



Anyway, strangely, this rainy season saw the Congo River quietly

return within the confines of its natural bed, after two months of

scary overflow that threatened the livelihood of fishermen and had

some people fear a repeat of the November 1999 mini-"flood of the

century" that disrupted lives on both shores of the Congo in Kinshasa

and Brazzaville.



Swarms of butterflies are fleeting about these days--a bane, for sure,

as they intrude into your glass of beer, plate, or at times they even

alight on your head.



A bane indeed, as butterflies are also reputed to bring in the urban

epidemic called "Apollo" in Central Africa--conjunctivitis, that is.



And as the local customs allow for intense touching--what with

head-butting greeting rituals and prolonged handshakes--the thing is

assured to spread like wildfire when it hits.



A woman was complaining today that an acquaintance of hers, hiding her

conjunctivitus behind dark glasses, had the gall to shake her hand

this morning--a "sorcerer," she said, hellbent on spreading her

infection around.



But butterflies also happen to usher in some delicious dietary experiences.



For butterflies often rhyme with treats like caterpillars, which are

now all but entirely gone till next season, and pulpy safou fruits,

also known as butterfruits.



Those nutritionists who marvel at how Kinois are so healthy despite

the so-called poor diet available should take a closer look at those

seasonal treats--particularly safous these days.



I just read this from "Shan Newspaper" for instance (I reformat for

readability as I am blogging from a mobile phone):



"People in West and Central Africa have been eating safou for

centuries as a fresh fruit between meals and cooked as a main course.



"When roasted or quickly boiled in salted water, the pulp separates

from the skin and seed and takes on a buttery texture.



"In Nigeria, cooked pulp is combined with starchy foods like maize to

make a main course. And if cooked for even longer, a healthy oil,

primarily made up of unsaturated fats, can be extracted from the pulp

and seed.



"Like its namesake, butter, safou is high in fats and very

calorie-dense. But unlike butter, safou is also high in amino acids,

the chemical building blocks of proteins. Concentrations of some of

its essential amino acids, such as lysine and leucine, are comparable

to concentrations found in eggs and meat.



"Plus, the fruit is also high in micronutrients and minerals,

particularly potassium, calcium, and magnesium, making safou a

superfood with the potential to help alleviate hunger and

malnutrition.



"Aside from producing nutritious fruits, safou trees also yield a

variety of other products.



"Its wood is stiff and elastic, making it useful for tool handles. The

bark produces a resin that makes both a glue for mending pottery and

topical treatment for jiggers, a parasitic flea that embeds itself in

the skin.



"And the leaves and roots are also found in a variety of traditional

medicines used to treat everything from dysentery to joint pain."



(Source: http://www.shan-newspaper.com/web/english-page/442-safou-the-butterfruit.html)



A basketful of safous as shown in the photograph above is hawked by

female vendors in the streets of Kinshasa for less than five bucks!



Oh, I forgot: butterflies this season here also mark very auspicious

catches by fishers...



***



PHOTO CREDITS: PHOTO 1: Alex Engwete; PHOTO 2: Via shan-newspaper.com)

Read More

Radio-Trottoir: North Kivu: DRC-government fueled merry-go-round

(PHOTO: M23 General Sultani Makenga)



***



Kinshasa is at fever pitch after news broke that on Sunday night the

FARDC, without any credible explanation, handed back to renegade

General Sultani Makenga's M23 several cities (including Rutshuru) the

Congolese armed forces had occupied after they were evacuated by M23

last Friday.



The evacuation of those cities happened in the midst of a bloody power

struggle within M23 between pro-Bosco Ntaganda and pro-Makenga

factions.



The civilian population in Rutshuru celebrated the takeover of the

city before the jubilation was cut short by the sudden withdrawal of

the FARDC.



The spokesperson of the FARDC in North Kivu, Col. Olivier Amuli,

explained that the "chain of command" ordered the withdrawal.



As it also happened that these strange military maneuvers took place

while President Joseph Kabila was holding talks with President Yoweri

Museveni in Uganda, the "chain of command" clearly meant Kabila.



With the whirl of rumors about a deal the DRC is about to cut with

Makenga's faction and about the alleged pressure by the international

community on the Congo to pull back to the status quo ante, people in

Kinshasa now fear that the nefarious "balkanization" of the country is

occurring as we speak.



Kinshasa citizens now refer to the ongoing hostilities in North-Kivu

Province as either the "Phony War" or the "merry-go-round" fueled by

the government!



And they see the handover of territory to M23 as yet another act in

the long concatenation of actions of "treasonable collaboration" of

the Congolese government with its Rwandan and Ugandan counterparts.



"This is the Somalization of North Kivu," I overheard a female

Kinshasa University official claim yesterday during a heated debate

with her colleagues. "To render the area ungovernable so that

Americans and their multinationals can pillage natural resources with

impunity! What would Mende come up to explain this one?" she added,

referring to DRC Media Minister Lambert Mende, who had claimed over

the weekend that the FARDC had moved in to "restore the authority of

the state."



Some in the opposition can hardly hide their glee. A pro-Tshisekedi

oppositionist was joyfully predicting on a political TV show that

Kabila has just "signed there the death certificate of his regime."



In any event, whichever rationale the government would invoke to

explain its uncanny action, with the mill of "Balkanization Conspiracy

Theory" at full swing and on autopilot, Kabila and his administration

might have squandered a huge amount of political capital.



***



PHOTO CREDITS: Via news24.com

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A callous buckraker called Tony Blair

(PHOTO: Tony Blair surrounded by the human shield of his buckraking

operations in Rwanda)



***



It seems to me to be not even worthwhile to respond to the wild

imaginings on the Congo produced by callous buckrakers of the ilk of

Tony Blair.



But you can't just sit idle and leave unanswered the kind of crap

passing for analysis that Blair co-wrote with Howard G. Buffet titled

"Stand with Rwanda: Now is no time to cut aid to Kigali" published on

Foreign Policy on February 21, 2013.



By the way, Foreign Policy is turning into a redoubt where enemies of

the Congolese people feel comfortable enough to spew their anti-Congo

venom.



In March 2008, it was on Foreign Policy that two

mercenaries-scholars--Jeffrey Herbst and Greg Mills--working as

lobbyists for Rwandan president Paul Kagame--published their infamous

essay purporting to demonstrate that Congo, as we know it, doesn't

actually exist.



At the time, though about more than a year later, I also wrote on this

very blog a rebuke to that preposterous notion.



Reading the essay penned by Blair and Buffet, I'm amazed at the way

the pair rehearses Herbst and Mills's argument.



Once again, in Blair and Buffet's paper, Congolese citizens have all

but disappeared. But what I find in it more troubling is that, in

their attempt at defending Kagame, they've completely erased Rwandan

citizens as well.



For instance, nowhere in that piece is there any mention of the

systematic intimidation and assassination campaign being waged by

Kagame against Rwandan opposition leaders.



Well, it's true that Blair and Buffet clearly wrote their piece for

the sole purpose of undoing international pressure on Rwanda that took

the form of withholding foreign aid to the Kagame regime.



They state:



"We believe this is the wrong approach. Slashing international support

to Rwanda ignores the complexity of the problem within DRC's own

borders and the history and circumstances that have led to current

regional dynamics. Cutting aid does nothing to address the underlying

issues driving conflict in the region, it only ensures that the

Rwandan people will suffer -- and risks further destabilizing an

already troubled region."



"Complexity"! This sounds pretty much as Kagame advocating a "holistic

approach" to solve problems he's time and again manufactured in the

Congo.



If Blair and Buffet really wanted to help the region solve the

"current regional dynamics"--and in keeping with Kagame's "holistic

approach"-- they'd advise their client to talk with the FDLR, many of

whose members decry the usual hermetic response of Kagame to such

overtures.



Why should the DRC be stuck with the FDLR when time and again Congo

had been compelled to talk with "negative forces"--including the

Rwandan-created M23?



Blair and Buffet go on to say:



"Cutting aid to Rwanda also risks undoing one of Africa's great

success stories. In the last five years, Rwanda has lifted 1 million

people out of poverty, created 1 million new jobs, and is poised to

meet most of the U.N. Millennium Development Goals. It has safe

streets, functioning Internet and communications, and is building

roads and schools at an astonishing rate -- all without the benefit of

natural resource wealth or access to the sea. Much of this has been

accomplished with the help of Western aid."



Are these guys a pair of fairies? Rwanda has "safe streets"?



Maybe someone ought to tell these fairies that streets are only safe

in Rwanda for Rwandan cowards toeing Kagame's line. Obviously, it

seems that Blair and Buffet have never heard for example of the

beheading in July 2010 of opposition leader André Kagwa Rwisereka, an

assassination the Kagame regime blamed on Rwanda's unsafe streets!



I could go on and on refuting the ridiculous claims made by Blair and

Buffet in their insipid essay.



It'd only suffice to say that no one would ever take Blair seriously

ever since the New Republic's Ken Silverstein wrote his seminal exposé

on the former British Prime Minister titled "Buckraking Around The

World With Tony Blair" published in September 2012.



In that piece by Silverstein you learn that Blair is a mercenary who

had advised Gaddafi's son on his Ph.D. thesis and is a cheerleader of

Stalinist autocrat Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president-for-life of

Kazakhstan!



As we know that Kagame is jetting him to Kigali, we can only

legitimately assume that Blair is getting paid for his cheerleading on

behalf of Kagame!



***



PHOTO CREDITS: tonyblairoffice.org

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DRC Gender Minister Geneviève Inagosi goes to war against March-8 sarongs

(PHOTO 1: A March-8 commemorative sarong on display at a store in Kinshasa)

*

(Photo 2: Geneviève Inagosi, DRC Minister of Gender, Family and Child

at a press briefing in May 2012.

***

I am told that it was in 2003 that March 8, the UN International

Women's Day, turned into a kind of Dionysian mass ritual countrywide

in the DRC.



As usual, the trend was allegedly set in Kinshasa.



On that day, women from all walks of life, clad in commemorative

pagnes (sarongs) specially designed for that year's commemoration by

the Kisangani-based French textile company SOTEXKI, would first march

on the martial beat of the army and the Kimbanguist church fanfares as

Kinshasa governor and a bevy of officials would be looking on from the

platform.



After that parade along the Chinese-built Boulevard Triomphal running

by the also Chinese-built People's Palace, the Parliament building,

the governor and the gender minister would then each make a speech

celebrating the Congolese "mamans" (as women are called in the Congo),

the backbone of society, deploring gender violence, and denouncing

"rape as a weapon of war" in eastern Congo.



Women would then leave Boulevard Triomphal and storm the "ngandas"

(sidewalk bars) where they'd drink till late in the night.



Evangelical pastors and self-appointed public moralists often accuse

women of losing all their sexual inhibitions at those drinking parties

of the International Women's Day.



For Congolese men, it's an ominous day, what with the mandatory

expenses entailed by showing appreciation to their wives and daughters

by buying them expensive commemorative pagnes.



Kinshasa urban legend has many tales of men who have committed suicide

after their wives quit them for failing to buy those commemorative

pagnes on Women's Days.



The International Women's Day is also a costly proposition for the

government as well, for it has to foot the bill of the pagnes of all

its female civil servants.



This year, however, the government hopes to do away with that ritual for good.



By mid-February, Gender Minister Geneviève Inagosi had taken to the

airwaves to announce that this upcoming March 8 won't be a holiday and

that the government wouldn't be ordering bulks of pagnes from SOTEXKI.



The country is at war, Inagosi keeps repeating, and could ill afford

to engage into such onerous expenses.



Inagosi further explained that the country's theme for this year's

Women's Day being, "Together against war and violences towards women

and girls by strengthening peace and justice in the DRC," there's only

one way to mark March 8, 2013: through education and meditation.



Adding:



"The government, through my ministry, isn't against wearing

[commemorative] pagnes. [...] But a certain opinion has a tendency to

reduce the International Women's Day to the wearing of the pagne

solely. And that isn't acceptable."



Well, Inagosi was expecting to get attaboys from "patriotic" women and

men; what she reaped instead was massive flak.



SOTEXKI bemoaned a move it described as unfriendly toward the

struggling national textile industry, while women feel robbed of their

hard-won right to pagnes and street parties.



I heard a man on a bus decry the government action that would deprive

men of "easy access to easy women."



Many women vow to celebrate anyway, even without any official seal of

approval. And SOTEXTI obliged by producing thousands of yards of

commemorative pagnes.



At any rate, on March 8, the DRC government might well find out it's

hard to dismantle a Congolese ritual by decree.



***

PHOTO CREDITS: PHOTO 1: Alex Engwete; PHOTO 2: via groupelavenir.cd

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