A very black Maundy Thursday for Kinshasa football club DCMP

(PHOTO: Mangled Toyota RAV-4 in which three DCMP soccer players diedon Maundy Thursday)***There was not so much as a peep on Kinshasa streets in terms ofcomments on the extraordinary landmark UN Security Council resolution2098 (2013) creating an "Intervention Brigade" to be based in Goma,but so much fuss over the deaths on Maundy Thursday of three playersof the football team Daring Club Motema Pembe (DCMP) in a trafficaccident on the 14th street...

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Congo Chaos Theory: The Rwandan butterfly effect

(PHOTO 1: Rogue Rwandan warlord Bosco Ntaganda at the InternationalCriminal Court at The Hague, Tuesday, March 26, 2013)(PHOTO 2: Presidents Denis Sassou Nguesso, Joseph Kabila, and PaulKagame 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 thebutterfly effect of chaos theory often heard these days amongCongolese...

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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 (atophis car) before he addressed them" and proclaim himself winner ofMarch 4 presidential poll.)***(PHOTO 2: Kenya Independent Electoral and Boundaries CommissionChairman Issack Hassan, left, "presents the certificate ofpresidential results to Chief Justice Dr. Willy Mutunga at the SupremeCourt in Nairobi, March 11, 2014.")***There...

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Watching the vanishing forests of the Congo on Kinshasa highways

I snapped this picture of a flatbed logging trailer on LumumbaBoulevard in the Kinshasa N'Djili commune with my iPhone from the roofof the broken-down car that was to take us for our usual weekendouting to Maluku, the small port and fishing community on the CongoRiver Channel, about 120 km northeast of the Congolese capital.Logging trailers of this kind are ubiquitous in Kinshasa where attimes--like three weeks ago in the southwestern Mbensenke Futiarea--they...

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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 Sorospeaking when still Prime Minister in 2011)***A hoo-ha broke out in the streets of Kinshasa this Friday shortlyafter the speech delivered by Côte d'Ivoire National Assembly SpeakerGuillaume Soro, the guest of DRC National Assembly Aubin Minaku, atthe ceremony of the reopening of the Congolese parliament.Soro said that "Democratic Republic of Congo has a major role to playin the development...

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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 downtownGombe Commune hours before his return to Bujumbura via Nairobi)***Pro-Kabila presidential supporters were celebrating over the week'send the historic election of Uhuru Kenyatta as the fourth presidentof Kenya--a collective national middle finger shown at the West.Kinshasa oppositionists were instead dreaming to see on Mondayafternoon the re-enactment for Etienne Tshisekedi of what...

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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 terriblyhot days, are more often than not very violent and deadly events.Not to mention the weird multi-pronged progression of highly activeerosion heads that are literally gobbling up--live--entireneighborhoods--corrupt cadaster...

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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 theFARDC, without any credible explanation, handed back to renegadeGeneral Sultani Makenga's M23 several cities (including Rutshuru) theCongolese armed forces had occupied after they were evacuated by M23last Friday.The evacuation of those cities happened in the midst of a bloody powerstruggle within M23 between pro-Bosco Ntaganda and pro-Makengafactions.The...

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A callous buckraker called Tony Blair

(PHOTO: Tony Blair surrounded by the human shield of his buckrakingoperations in Rwanda)***It seems to me to be not even worthwhile to respond to the wildimaginings on the Congo produced by callous buckrakers of the ilk ofTony Blair.But you can't just sit idle and leave unanswered the kind of crappassing for analysis that Blair co-wrote with Howard G. Buffet titled"Stand with Rwanda: Now is no time to cut aid to Kigali" published onForeign Policy...

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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 Childat a press briefing in May 2012.***I am told that it was in 2003 that March 8, the UN InternationalWomen's Day, turned into a kind of Dionysian mass ritual countrywidein the DRC.As usual, the trend was allegedly set in Kinshasa.On that day, women from all walks of life, clad in commemorativepagnes (sarongs)...

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