Kin Update: 1) MP Christophe Beyeye's Conspiracy Theory; and 2) Cyberattack at Central Bank

Opposition MP Christophe Beyeye (TV screen shot by Alex Engwete)

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1) MP Christophe Beyeye's Conspiracy Theory

Yesterday afternoon at the National Assembly, MP Christophe Beyeye
introduced a motion calling for an investigative commission based on
the findings of the recently published UN Mapping Project Report.

The motion was promptly dismissed by Speaker Evariste Boshab for lack
of "terms of reference" and the uncertain constitutionality of using a
report crafted by an international body.

But what was most interesting was the outlandish preface of the motion
by MP Beyeye, erstwhile minister of Mobutu.

MP Beyeye claimed that in 1992 he accompanied Mobutu on a trip abroad
where an unnamed powerful foreign leader told the Zairian dictator
that he could no longer control such a huge country. Nor could that
foreign power control it either. Hence, the need of splitting the
country into 4 smaller and more manageable entities.

As Mobutu didn't mince his words when it came to the territorial
integrity and sovereignty of the Congo, MP Beyeye went on to say, the
exchange with the foreign leader became unpleasantly heated.

Fast forward to 1995. In a security meeting "at the highest level," MP
Beyeye learned about a "balkanization plot" that was being hatched by
countries on the eastern border of the Congo.

MP Beyeye then wrote an "opuscule" titled "Zero Notice, Army Officers"
that he circulated and even sent to the local press.

When the country's enemies read Beyeye's brochure, they delayed their
balkanization plot by one year, that is, till the AFDL/RPA invasion of
the Congo!

Wow!...

The problem with MP Beyeye's claims is that he may have misplaced his
"opuscule."

Beyeye seemed to imply the "opuscule" had vanished soon after
publication and urged his colleagues to check with MP's Kin Kiey and
Modeste Mutinga, owners of local newspapers, who might still have in
their archives the prophetic "opuscule."

2) Cyberattack at Central Bank

The government-run RTNC (Congolese National Radio and Television)
reports today that the computer system of the Central Bank is now up
and running at 60% of its capacity after being crippled by a
cyberattack!

An investigation is underway to unmask the hackers. The report seemed
to allege that it was an inside job.

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(Post sent via BlackBerry)

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The Chinese have switched off rain in Kinshasa

(Post sent via BlackBerry using local SIM card. Post format could be affected.)
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Chinese have switched off rain over Kinshasa, says Radio-Trottoir.

"They're nearing the deadline for road constructions in Kinshasa,"
claimed a Kinoise in a taxi-bus today. " So, they just switched off
rain."

Asked how the Chinese did it, the woman said it was with their
"sorcery" that they are warding off rain!

She then went on to say that even in the Congo there are "tribes,"
like the Bakongo, that can switch off rain at will. The Bakongo would
use a pestle and a broom to block rain, she told the captive audience
in the crammed rusty VW bus!

The "elanga" or the relatively chilly dry season ended on September
15, when heavy rains were supposed to usher in the rainy season. But
since then there have only two very short drizzles.

The heat is stifling and the agricultural calendar has already been
disrupted. The price of some foodstuffs has spiked. For instance, the
price of a bunch of cassava leaves--basic vegetable for low-income
households--is normally between 150 to 300 Congolese Francs. But that
price has now jumped to 1,000 Francs (about $1).

It therefore imperative that the Chinese working for the Rais' roads
project stop interfering with the weather!

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Armand Tungulu, who stoned the Rais's car, has committed suicide

(Sorry for any formatting problems: I'm sending this post via BlackBerry.))

The guy who threw 2 stones at the Rais's vehicle in Kinshasa has been
identified.

It was ARMAND TUNGULU, a Brussels resident who was on a family visit
in Kinshasa, radio stations of the Congolese capital reported last
night.

The reports also stated that Armand Tungulu had committed suicide with
a cloth he used as his pillow in his cell. An investigation and an
autopsy have been ordered by the authorities.

If anything, these reports establish the credibility of Radio-Trottoir
which reported the incident while the mainstream media put a lid on
it.

Radio-Trottoir now claims that Tungulu "was suicided" instead.

Be that as it may, adds Radio-Trottoir, you just don't wake up one
morning and go on an impulse stoning of the vehicle of a President of
the Republic. With impunity!

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Kinshasa Abuzz...

The posture of this Kinshasa contortionist showing off his butt is
emblematic of the general attitude of the Kinois toward the UN Mapping
Project due to be released today.

The report documents acts of targeted atrocities in eastern DRC
against Hutu refugees--helpless women, kids, infants and the elderly.
BBC reports this morning that though "toned down," the report retains
the "charge of genocide" perpetrated against Hutu refugees...
A vindication indeed for the claims made by Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza.

I have all along claimed here and elsewhere, based on contemporaneous
press and eyewitness accounts, that there was a systematic "counter-genocide" against Hutu refugees in the DRC... A conclusion widely shared by the Congolese who experienced first-hand the horrific
cruelty of Rwandan and Ugandan troops.

I mentioned the UN report to some Kinois. One of them repeated the
plan dreames by Papa Wemba a few years back of building a long wall
on the border with Rwanda, "just as Israel has done." Another
one told me that if it only depended on him he'd move Rwanda to
Patagonia!

So, if Kinshasa is abuzz today, it's not over the UN Mapping report.
It's all about a freak incident that involved the Rais yesterday in
the Commune of Lingwala, along the avenue re-christened Mulele Pierre
at the fall of Kinshasa to Laurent Kabila's troops, but which the
Kinois stubbornly continue to call "Avenue du 24 Novembre," the date
of Mobutu's infamous coup in 1965.

President Joseph Kabila was driving himself in his SUV as he usually
does when, around the taxi-bus stop called "Rail," a well-dressed
young man (some Kinois claim he just returned from France; others from
the U.S) threw 2 stones at the president's vehicle. One stone landed
on the hood, and the other on the back.

As the crazy guy was being promptly apprehended by the "bana-mura," as
the presidential guards are called by the Kinois, the baffled Rais
stopped and got out of the car to look at the stone-thrower.
Well, the Iraqi shoe-thrower got I think 3 years in jail; this stupid
Kinois scofflaw might have landed himself a long stint at Kinshasa
Makala Prison.

Strangely, though the news of the incident spread yesterday through
the channels of "Radio-Trottoir" (Radio-Sidewalk or Congo's
grapevine), not a single press report has so far mentioned it.

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Meet Jarule-2, endangered specimen amid Kinshasa dog-eaters

Jarule-2

A "ferocious dog"

(Photo: Alex Engwete)

This is my family pet, name of Jarule-2. 

He's called Jarule-2 because there was a genuine Jarule before him who got stolen and probably ended up as stew in some cooking pot!

Traditionally, only Baluba men were reputed dog-eaters. Tribal culture no doubt. Which doesn't mean that there are no certifiable crazy cultural cravings. Like the traditional Tetela appetite for human flesh that was banned and repressed by Belgian colonial authorities... Strangely, some Tetela were arrested in the 1970s for having for dinner a Lokele health professional working in the Kasai-Oriental Province. These Tetela cannibals were caught because a dispute broke out when they couldn't agree on which clan  had the traditional right to eat the head, allegedly the yummiest part of the human "meat"... And, still more strangely, as late as the early 2000s, armed bandits and rapists under warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba routinely barbecued pygmies, who, according to them, are a sub-human species populating the Ituri forest... 

Well, as I just said, there are crazy traditional cultural features. But there are also some other aberrant and abhorrent cultural practices that just spring up nowadays out of nowhere. Eating pygmies by Jean-Pierre Bemba's rebels belongs to the latter category. Eating dogs and cats in Kinshasa too, for it's not like people are starving in the Congolese capital.  

There are now restaurants that serve dog and cat delicacies in the Congolese capital. Well, I wouldn't care a bit about these dog-eaters if they kept to eating their own dogs and cats! 

Jarule-2 had two close calls when he used to roam this neighborhood before returning home. The first time, a dog-eater attempted to kidnap Jarule-2 by grabbing him by his collar. But it was at the dog-eater's own peril: Jarule-2 nearly cut off his hand with his fangs! The second time, another dog-eater was so badly mauled by Jarule-2 that the family had to pay for the medical care of the thief who was threatening to sue the household for harboring a "ferocious dog"... 

But ferocity seems to be the only survival weapon for dogs like Jarule-2, an endangered specimen in Kin where ferocious dog-eaters patrol streets in search of dogs and cats! So don't attempt to pet Jarule-2 when you see him in the streets--whether he's accompanied or not!     

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A Rwandan Joke or a setup for future incremental massacres: "26 Congolese among FDLR returnees" ... who then vanished!

FDLR Returnees at Kigali International Airport

Photo: J. Mbanda

(Credits)

Jean Sayinzoga, chairman of Rwanda's Demobilization and Reintegration Commission (RDRC), came up Tuesday with a really tall one: 26 of the 58 FDLR combatants recently returned to Rwanda courtesy of the Congolese NGO PAREC [Ecumenical Program for Peace, Conflict Transformation and Peace] of Pastor Daniel Ngoy Mulunda, are actually DRC nationals!

Sayinzoga told The New Times of Kigali the following unbelievable tale: 

“We received [on August 19] a total of 58 returnees and we screened them thoroughly only to find that 32 of them were Rwandans. Of the 32, 16 were Rwandan civilians and 16 are former FDLR combatants. The remaining 26 are purely Congolese nationals.”

Is this guy kidding me?

Just consider this act of utter idiocy or sheer madness: a Congolese, living in peace and joy in the Katanga Province (this particular group of 26 FDLR combatants were sent to Rwanda from the Katanga where they had been resisting this repatriation), suddenly decides to impersonate an FDLR combatant in order to go to Rwanda... to get what? Diamonds and other minerals that a Katangan could find in Katanga? Is this Sayinzoga guy out of his mind to come up with this stupid lie?

There are zanies, scatterbrains and outright wackos in the DRC, but I don't see any single one of them relinquishing his Congolese nationality for Rwandan nationality and, in so doing, taking on the dubious identity of known killers and rapists!

Sayinzoga then alleged having attempted contacting Congolese officials (including Pastor Mulunda) to have them take back these unwanted African version of the Roma people:

"The problem right now is that the DRC government has rejected them. People have to realise that we have a screening system, we just don’t receive people and take them in just because they say they are Rwandans...

[...]

I have tried to explain to these officials on phone but they refuse to understand. These people don’t have proper names, they don’t know anything about where they lived before they went to Congo. We are looking for a solution but these officials have to know that we screen returnees before integrating them."

Well, The New Times doesn't report the fact that Jean Sayinzoga has also claimed that the 26 hardcore FDLR combatants to whom he'd given Congolese nationality "have progressively escaped from the Mutobo camp," near Gisenyi, according to Kinshasa L'Avenir. Sayinzoga further speculated in the L'Avenir report that the 26 FDLR combatants might have "secretly left Mutobo camp by their own means or those provided by their families or friends."  A speculation that prompted L'Avenir to pose this rhetorical question to Sayinzoga: "Would these Congolese have families in Rwanda?"

I'm not going to beat about the bush like the recent UN Mapping Project. We are witnessing here a case of the broad daylight "disappearance" by the Rwandan government of 26 Hutu returnees. A case of incremental massacres the Rwandan army is known to have repeatedly perpetrated. It's through these incremental massacres that the Rwandan army "genocided" the Hutus in the Congo... And, mark my words!,  if this lie uttered by Jean Sayinzoga is swallowed by the international opinion, then other future "escapes" by Hutu returnees would necessarily ensue...

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1) Mwasi’s Electricity Woes; and 2) The Balubas launched “motos-taxis”

1. MWASI'S ELECTRICITY WOES:

Mwasi's Electricity Woes
envoyé par aengw. - Plus de trucs et astuces en vidéo.

I caught this Mwasi (again, Lingala for woman) literally fighting to start her small particularly stubborn Japanese-made Elemax Fujisawa gasoline generator. With the rolling electricity blackouts throughout Kinshasa communes, mechanics and electricity are now among routine housewifely chores.

This particular Mwasi is an IDP from Kisangani where she’d worked as a professor of clothing design/sewing as well as the Director of the Mama Mobutu Center for 18 long years, before fleeing to Kinshasa via Kigali and Nairobi shortly after the massacres carried out there by Laurent Nkunda in June 2002. (Mama Mobutu Foundation was set up by Mobutu who named it after his deceased first wife, Marie-Antoinette. It had orphanages and vocational schools for underprivileged girls. It was attached to the Ministry of Social Affairs.)

While in Nairobi, where I was at the time of her arrival, Mwasi was told by other Congolese women she encountered to stay there and seek a refugee status. But Mwasi has an unquenchable love for her country and decided to return home by way of Kinshasa. (BTW, I know this matriarch so well because she also happens to be the mother of all my children, save Elikia, whose mom is American.) In contrast, our daughter chose to take advantage of the UNHCR relocation program in Nairobi and hails today from the boonies of the boondocks called the Ukraine!

Upon arriving in Kin, she bought a tiny house in the Commune of Selembao—again, the boonies within the boondocks of the Congolese capital.

Mwasi attempted to be reassigned at the headquarters of the Marie-Antoinette Foundation, an organization currently in limbo. To no avail… “Come back tomorrow,” that was the answer she got every time she’d up at the headquarters in the Commune of Limete, till she realized they wanted to tell her in so many words that she better think for career change. (The Foundation dropped the name of Mobutu from its official designation to avoid antagonizing the new regime. Apparently, this didn’t help them much as the organization has floundered.)

After being turned down, Mwasi launched a small clothing shop. But it turns out that she might have made a very bad investment by buying that house and opening up that clothing business. The kind of clothing she offers is made of expensive fabric that sells around $15 apiece whereas people can get well-made and hard-wearing second-hand clothes imported from the U.S. for $5 apiece! Additionally, the Commune of Selembao is among the hardest hit neighborhoods by blackouts. What’s more, when electricity gets to her house, the voltage is so low that her powerful electric sewing and embroidery machines can’t work.

To make things worse, for the past 3 weeks, the electricity that used to get to her house every 2 days has been cut off by a gang who have decided 1) to plunge a whole section of the neighborhood into the dark so as to maximize the voltage in their own section of the neighborhood (mode 1) and 2) to ransom those thus deprived of electricity (mode 2). These young men went from mode 1 to mode 2 when they realized the desperation of their neighbors.

Mwasi is now the de facto treasurer of the war chest of the neighborhood lords—she’s collecting $5 (the US dollar is now the default currency of the DRC, all the banks allowing their customers to open accounts in USD) or the equivalent in Congolese Franc per household “to buy a new 30-m cable” that would supposedly assure a better connection between the neighborhood cabin and the relay box, interred at the depth of less than 15 cm in the sand of the curb near Mwasi’s house! The money collected has to be given to these guys who’ve turned themselves into SNEL, the national electricity company.

I asked Mwasi why she wouldn’t just report this con on public service in broad daylight to SNEL offices and to the authorities—the neighborhood police precinct for instance.

She looked me up and down as if I were an alien from deep space or an impostor bent on playing for the gallery the part of the naïve and out-of-touch American (Kinois from the diaspora are adept at playing such games when they go back home) and told me: “If you don’t have eyes to see, you better grow a pair very soon. Where do you think we are, America? SNEL has declined its responsibilities in this neighborhood for quite some time now. SNEL doesn’t even bother to send us bills anymore. Young guys in neglected neighborhoods of Kin like ours are now the SNEL. You cross them, and welcome darkness!”

When Mzee Kabila deposed Mobutu, he ordered the creation of neighborhood “proximity” police “precincts” to combat urban insecurity. They are housed in containers painted in national colors (blue, yellow and red) and their role today is mostly confined to serving as parking areas for motorists of the vicinity (one vehicle fetches around $1 to $5 a night, depending on neighborhoods) and to resolving small-scale neighborhood conflicts or petty crimes. They’re understaffed, and lack communication equipment and adequate weapons.

But the lack of teeth of the local police isn’t why Mwasi turned down my suggestion of notifying the neighborhood police container.

She has far serious reasons for playing by the rule set by neighborhood lords: their families could be a nest of sorcerers who would come down hard on her household with all the evil spells they got in their malefic arsenal! I dare you to laugh when this Mwasi is making her point…

2) The Balubas launched “motos-taxis” in Kin:

(Photo: Alex Engwete)

One day, a friend (on the back of the motorcycle-taxi in the photo above) accompanied me to go see another childhood friend in the Kingabwa-TP neighborhood of the Commune of Limete. The outskirts of Kingabwa-TP were set up on the marshes of northern Kinshasa by the Congo River without much urban planning to speak of. Some of these Kingabwa neighborhoods, like where my friend’s house is located, have no suitable roads for vehicles. We had to either walk for about 3 km to get to my friend’s house from the taxis-bus terminus or hop on one of the ubiquitous “moto-taxis,” a means of transportation that didn’t exist 4 years ago when I was last in Kin.

This phenomenon of “motos-taxis” has been baffling me even since I got here. Of course, there were massive traffic jams caused by road constructions by the Chinese, but traffic jams have always been part of the urban landscape of Kin where avoidable huge gridlocks occur instantly due to drivers’ stubbornness and lack of cooperation. But why “motos-taxis” and why now in Kinshasa? Is Kin, which prides herself of being the country’s trend-setter, now emulating the provinces? This was very intriguing to me. And I got the answer to my interrogation that day…

I also forgot to mention that Kingabwa-TP ranks among the toughest neighborhoods of Kinshasa where you could get mugged for the sheer pleasure of muggers, robbed of your money, shoes and clothes or, worse, get killed. Last year, Christophe, another childhood friend, got killed right at the bus station of Kingabwa-TP as he sat in a taxi between two bandits who didn’t appreciate the fact that he was penniless. One of them seized his balls and crushed them, before tossing the dead man out of the taxi.

B.B. told me yet another tale of Kingawba-TP. A woman bandit would come up to you out of nowhere, hug you and scream something that would go like: “Oh, Richard, my love, why this long absence? Why this long silence? I call you and you don’t even bother to pick up the phone?” As if on cue, three or four muggers would show up, and one of them would pretend to catch you red-handed in the act of adultery with his beloved wife! Then the robbery would start, with passersby jeering you for wooing another man’s wife “just because you have money!”

That’s why I chose this friend (unbeknown to him) to accompany me (he works in the security sector and is a muscle man). And that’s why I also felt confident enough to get my camera out and snap the photo above from the backseat of a moving bike.

My biker-cabbie was Hilaire, a Ngbandi like Mobutu. At one point during the perilous ride on slippery sandy roads, I asked Hilaire about the phenomenon of “motos-taxis” that didn’t exist in Kin till very recently.

“It’s the Balubas that started the whole thing,” Hilaire said. “Last year, during the economic downturn, diamond prices fell sharply. The Balubas were biting their nails in disbelief and despair. They impoverished diamond traffickers flocked to Kin where it them: they could bring their bikes from Mbuji-Mayi and make money this way!”

Since then, many more people from other ethnic groups have followed suit, though Baluba entrepreneurs have achieved some kind of monopoly on this new untaxable activity of the informal sector—and pardon my redundancy! The “Ndingaris,” as all West-Africans are called in Kin, have also benefited from the unexpected windfall of the “motos-taxis”. Not so long ago, Hilaire tells me, the Ndingari used to sell motorcycles imported from Dubai for $450. Now the price of a motorcycle has shot up to $850!...

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