Kin on tenterhooks

If you believe politicos appearing on TV these days, Kin is on
tenterhooks. And though Radio-Trottoir, with its permanent cynicism
towards the political class whose members it deems as irredeemable
thieving thickos, is playing things down, some political jitters are
nonetheless palpable in the Congolese capital.

The headline is of course the return on Wednesday, December 8, of
ÉTIENNE TSHISEKEDI aka LIDER MAXIMO aka TSHITSHI, the veteran leader
of the "Pavlovian" radical opposition. First slated for Sunday,
December 5, Tshitshi's return was finally postponed to Wednesday. The
postponement was necessary as on that Sunday Kin was astir with the
triumphant high mass celebrated by Cardinal Laurent Monsengwo
Pasinya--recently returned from Rome where he was created cardinal by
Pope Benedict XVI--at the packed Stade des Martyrs, with, in
attendance, the Raïs, the cabinet, the MPs and senators as well as the
First Lady of neighboring Congo-Brazzaville--a DRC citizen--who was
representing her husband).

At the Vatican, Congolese diaspora radical opposition activists (many
of whom belong to European section of Tshitshi's UDPS) attempted to
physically bar from the solemn service the official Congolese
delegation led by AMP stalwarts and Kinshasa-born Évariste Boshap,
Speaker of the National Assembly, and MP Yves Kisombe, a defector from
MLC. Vatican protocol, with the muscled backing of the Swiss Guards,
had to intervene to make way for the shaken delegates. (About two
years ago, Yves Kisombe was mugged by the same diaspora activists in
London.). No wonder Cardinal Monsengwo in his homily at the Stade des
Martyrs thanked with uncharacteristic effusiveness the Raïs
(undoubtedly seething with anger at the slighting of his delegation at
the Vatican) for his financial assistance for the feast and the dinner
at the Vatican.

The return of Tshitshi did nevertheless coincide with the Raïs'
(disappointing for many) State of the Nation address before the joint
chambers of Parliament reunited in Congress.

That's why there was so much anticipation at what Tshitshi would have
to say at his residence where hundreds of the thousands that welcomed
him at N'Djili Airport had congregated.

Tshitshi--who was absent from the country for 3 long years for medical
treatment, first in South Africa, then in Belgium--appeared frail and
the old geezer he's become: he just turned 78. Slumped in a chair,
wearing a cap and oddly thick sunglasses in the night that has fallen
over the city, a mike held in front of his face (is he that weak he
can't even hold a mike?), Tshitshi managed to blurt out a somewhat
rambling short speech.

Tshitshi complained about the soaring commodity prices in Kinshasa
markets, announced the UDPS' congress opening Saturday (yesterday) and
his candidacy for president for the presidential election next year
before urging his supporters to "go home and spread the news!"

Tshitshi is arguably a case study of a powerful politico who
needlessly squanders political capital.

His first damning mistake was to sideline his party in the 2006
general elections, claiming that they would be rigged as they were
nothing more than a machination orchestrated by the international
community to legitimize the incumbent president! This kind of
conspiracy theory mindset is what made MP Yves Kisombe, in a recent
interview, rightly qualify Tshitshi's political discourse as "archaic"
and "wacky" [désaxé], and therefore unappealing to mainstream voters.
UDPS willingly forfeiting its rightful place in the political arena
had quite unforeseen damaging consequences. It doesn't have one single
MP or senator in Parliament, and has thus the irrelevance of what is
called here the "non-institutional opposition." Moreover, it won't
consequently have a representative in the Commission Électorale
Nationale Indépendante (CENI) that is about to permanently replace the
transitional CEI. According to the law voted in the National Assembly,
the majority has to line up 4 candidates and the "institutional
opposition" 3 candidates--who would then be approved or rejected by
MPs' votes. The institutional opposition has already lined up its
members, none of whom is from the UDPS.

Tshitshi's call to his supporters (called "combatants") "to go home
and spread the news" shows another "archaic" communication MO gravely
lacking in strategic thinking. With all the funds UDPS has, the party,
unlike all the other political organizations, doesn't own a TV or
radio station that could help spread its message nationwide. In
contrast, MLC's Jean-Pierre Bemba owns two TV and radio stations (CKTV
and CCTV) that continue to unflinchingly support him during his
ongoing ordeal at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

More damning still is the split within UDPS over Tshitshi's slapdash
move of turning his party into a family affair by promoting as his
political heir his unqualified son Félix Tshisekedi.

Beside Tshitshi and his rocky return in the Congolese capital, former
Speaker VITAL KAMERHE rears his head once more by announcing on Friday
that he's resigning from the National Assembly and setting up his own
political party--the Union Nationale Pour la Nation Congolaise
(UNPNC)!

Kamerhe made his thundering break with the Raïs' party, the PPRD, in a
televised interview on the TV station "Congo Média Channel" (CMC)
belonging to Kudura Kasongo, the erstwhile spokesperson of the Raïs.

He revisited his demise from the speakership and his break with the
Raïs over the joint anti-FDLR Rwandan-Congolese military operations.
He said he didn't see how Rwandan and Congolese troops could possibly
wipe out the FDLR in the limited operational time-frame given, while
Rwandan troops couldn't even come close to achieving that objective
during the 5-year Rwandan military occupation of the very same
territory where the FDLR are entrenched.

Bold as brass, Kamerhe didn't rule out a run in the presidential
election of next year! Well, this would prove to have been more easily
said than done. The presidential majority AMP is a formidable
nationwide cartel of 50-odd parties, whereas Kamerhe could only
slightly encroach on the Raïs' constituency in his (Kamerhe's) home
province of South-Kivu.

But Kamerhe is a talented charismatic campaigner who could be
"carbuncular" to the Raïs' AMP if he were to enter into a coalition
with Tshitshi. And, as it turns out, he was among the stalwarts
featured Saturday evening on TV being ushered in on the podium at the
opening of the UDPS Congress for solemn handshakes with the
widely-grinning Lider Maximo.

An appearance that was certainly duly noted and frowned upon by the
presidential majority. Renewed vicious negative personal attacks are
therefore to be expected against Kamerhe and Kudura Kasongo in the
AMP-controlled medias, over their "political harlotry."

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Starbucks Blues: No country for coffee lovers

Please do us a favor...Go to the nearest Starbucks, pick any coffee in
the panoply of coffees being offered, order one of the cup sizes
expressed in fake Italian, and send vibes of existential compassion to
us Kin coffee-loving denizens criminally deprived of that daily
elemental pleasure.

And don't you ever forget to drop something into the tip cup for those
Starbucks heroes clad in green or black aprons. There was a red sign
at the now defunct "Ed's Bar" in Boston that read: "Tipping isn't a
city in China." You remember that...

In Cambridge, Massachusetts--an islet of madness surrounded by the
sanity of Boston; a madness that got the city the dubious
qualification of the "People's Republic of Cambridge"--I used to
"diss" Starbucks in favor of our 2 local "1369" coffee shops, as did
other Cantabridgians.

Well, being now in a city without coffee shops, I've outgrown that
ill-advised anti-corporate romanticism. I wish Starbucks were as
ubiquitous here as in American cityscapes.

Kin is simply hell on earth for those of us for whom a morning coffee
is an experience akin to satori--a shame for this country that once
was a byword for robusta and arabica coffees.

Well, they nonetheless sell here a very bad made-in-Kinshasa coffee
called "Carioca" in 25-g plastic packets that has neither aroma nor
taste to speak of. I still have to find out whether this coffee is
home-grown or imported and just packaged in Kin.

But fortunately now and again a relative who lives in Bukavu would
come to Kin on business trips and bring me one or two 250-gm packets
of Burundian "pure arabica coffee" with "sealed-in aroma" produced by
a company called OCIBU (see snapshot of the packet above).

This past Sunday, my Bukavu relative brought me one paltry OCIBU
coffee packet, which gives my mornings these days some semblance of
normality. But, alas, for how long?...

In the early afternoon of Wednesday, the Raïs read his State of the
Nation address in a soporific drone for more than 2 long hours. Not a
balance sheet of realizations but a petition in bankruptcy as it was
yet another recitation of promises. The Raïs didn't once mention
coffee among the crops he wanted to see their production resume--as he
did for cotton in Gemena.

Well, coffee and palm oil (another erstwhile major export of the
Congo) ought to have prominently figured on the list of the Raïs.
What's more, it's my contention that cities without coffee shops are
travesties of cities...
(Bookstores and cinemas have also vanished here, a far cry from the
urban standards of Nairobi where I used to buy books and enjoy movies
at the cinema of the open mall of the Village Market a short drive
from where I used to stay on Kitisuru Road.)

And as I sullenly look at my dwindling OCIBU arabica coffee packet
this morning, I measure the extent of this country's economic and
urban collapse. One American social scientist spoke of the frightening
"villagization of Kinshasa." That truth has only recently sunk in...
This is an unfriendly city for the urban "flâneur" (stroller)--what
with open sewers, brooks choked by shitty refuse and plastic bags and
bottles as well as layers upon layers of plastic bags...

Frustrated and in a Starbucks-blues mode, I drink up the last drop of
the third cup of my morning Burundian coffee in the city-village of
Kin...

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WikiLeaks (the "Dictatorship of Transparency") vs. The Planetarchy

The imperial chronicle of the Planetarchy. The First 100 Years or The
American Century (concept of futurist George Friedman).

Planetarch's Log...

The Empire strikes back at Julian Assange: trumped-up double rapes,
extradition to the US, life sentence without the possibility of parole
or more expendiently the American signature of Crime and Punishment:
Death Penalty (trumped-up charge of "terrorism": guilty as charged by
Sarah Palin)...
History tells us about the incredible reach of the Roman Empire (my
favorite books used to be the massive volumes of Gibbon's "Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire"): once you were deemed an enemy of the
Republic, the geographical world suddenly contracted under your
feet--you couldn't find shelter or peace anywhere in the "civilized"
territories nor even in some "uncivilized" outskirts, however remote
and peripheral they happened to be relative to Rome--as the Empire
could still "strike back" at will, any time, anywhere...

And the reach of the American Planetarchy is a zillion times more
formidable than that of the Roman Empire and its nuisance capacity
infinite--what with from benign political and economic pressures on
foreign governments and organizations, to the drones that could blow
to smithereens entire communities... In that sense, the world has
shrunk to a tiny global village for Julian Assange...

But the Roman Empire didn't have the elastic territory of cyberspace
and thousands of dedicated cyber-guerrillas to reckon with: "PayBack
Operation." A planetary video game: bring six-packs, boys, and let's
enjoy the game!...

Rogue States--this paradox: the very states (or, in this case, the
Planetarchy and its powerful European satellites) that qualify others
as "rogue" are the planet's most rogue states.

These entities make up their own rules as they go along. They are
above morals as they are the ones who set up states' moral standards.
There is no "moral equivalence" with the rest of the world's nations.
Hence, China behaves "with no morals" in his penetration of Africa
(dixit Ambassador Johnny Carson, WikiLeaks cables)!

China behaves with no morals in Africa? What is lost in the diplomatic
translation here is the fact that Ambassador Carson, who utters this
silly remark (there are no countries with morals), is African-American
and a descendant of enslaved abducted Africans. Slavery, an immoral
system of political economy...

When it was morally convenient and economically sustainable for these
powerful rogue states to set up slavery, colonization or racial
discrimination as systems of government and political economy, these
states readily erected those systems of governance as norms.

And when it was politically expedient in the name of "national
security interests" to go around the world murdering expendable
"commies" of the likes of Patrice Lumumba and propping up in their
stead "compliant allies" of the ilk of Mobutu, they did so without so
much as a second thought or any consideration for the devastating
long-term consequences such ill-advised choices could have for
millions of innocent people. One could demonstrate, for example, that
the assassination of Lumumba for instance was the first in a series of
events that lead directly and logically to the 5 million victims of
Africa's World War and the current endemic of rapes in eastern
Congo...

And when it suits the Planetarchy to go after a patron saint of the
First Amendment like Julian Assange, heavy artillery is brought out to
fire from the hip.

Julian Assange's materials are important in that they show
contemporaneous diplomatic choices being made. At the same time, they
show that those making those choices are big-time incompetent morons
wearing thick blinders! Hence the US embarrassment--all the more
stinging as it only took one low-level employee to have access to
millions of sensitive documents and to leak them! One sees the point
of the Aussie Foreign Minister: don't blame the beholder, blame the
person that moons! (Translated into Swahili proverb. This whole
WikiLeaks debacle shows the limits and the incompetence of the
Planetarchy incapable of securing the secrets it spawns).

I mean, who are the insensitive dupes, nitwits and assorted suckers
who wrote these lame WikiLeaks cables? Ambassador Johnny Carson among
others?

Decades before the diplomatic gossips released by WikiLeaks there were
other more damning cables powerfully narrated by Madeleine G. Kalb in
her stunning book titled "Congo Cables: The Cold War in Africa--From
Eisenhower to Kennedy." A rereading of that book is in order today
against the backdrop of the WikiLeaks cables.

The obnoxious content of the WikiLeaks cables shows that state roguery
continues unabated...

There's also the issue of TRANSPARENCY as a yardstick of good
governance. It is the shibboleth repeated to weak governments of
Africa who in turn rehash it to donors in a unison singsong--an
article of faith of the global religion and the prerequisite of the
sacrament of development monies.

But powerful states don't actually care about transparency. That's why
they are the biggest manufacturers of secrets (and lies). That's why
they have massive listening posts. That's why they do control the
world with strong-arm "immoral" methods... That's why classification
has gone haywire. That's why they classify gossipy tidbits by moronic
diplomats. Just for the heck of it!... And because they can.

And that's why Julian Assange is their enemy number one as he
undauntingly turned the projectors of transparency in the wrong
direction.

Élisabeth Roudinesco, a French historian, in an article published by
"Libération," has accused Julian Assange of being a conspiracy theory
buff committed to the DICTATORSHIP OF TRANSPARENCY. (Gorbachev used to
decry the "dictatorship of transparency" of glasnot and perestroika;
look where Russia is today)... A terrible system where denizens would
be apprised of all state secrets. A dictatorship worse than the
dictatorship of the proletariat...

Well, Élisabeth Roudinesco need not worry. Julian Assange's
dictatorship of transparency is unfortunately doomed to be
short-lived. The Planetarchy and its satellites aren't going to get
caught with their pants down again. And transparency will be confined
to its natural precinct: the backwater of developing countries...

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A US anti-terrorism training module for DRC spies in Kin

A source at the Agence Nationale de Renseignements (ANR), the DRC spy
agency, tells me that high- and mid-level security agents went through
a one-day anti-terrorism training module this past Friday, December 3,
in the plush Binza neighborhood of Kin.

The training module was given by American agents, though my source
couldn't tell which American agency was involved. The agent who gave
the PowerPoint presentation was one Julie.

The module topic was WMD identification and detection. The source
tells me that a suitcase detector device was given to the Congolese
by their American counterparts. My source also adds that the device is
worth $3,000--but I suspect that such a detector would cost ten times
more. (Is this a detector of dirty bomb or of radioactive materials,
Congo having vast quantities of uranium?)
Parts of Julie's PowerPoint presentation comprised gory pictures of
terrorist acts worldwide and statistical data evincing the fact that
though US interests and citizens are primarily targeted by terrorists,
the bulk of terror victims are however non-US citizens. Therefore,
anti-terrorism shouldn't be viewed as an American obsession but as
everyone's rational concern. This is no doubt a way of raising a sense
of local ownership of US anti-terrorism drive.

There seems to be a resumption of collaboration between Congolese and
US intelligence communities, which has cooled off since the waning
days of the Mobutu regime, with more and more high-level Congolese
intelligence officials going to the US on short training and
conference missions. And last week training would be a most welcome
trickling down of training to operatives on the ground.

During the Cold War, Kin was one of the hubs of US intelligence
activities in Africa. There was a huge NSA listening post a short
distance past N'Djili Airport, whose disused grid of
antennas is still visible from the road and still interdicted to the
public.

One hopes that this renewed intelligence cooperation with the US would
at least help: 1) in improving security at N'Djili Airport, highly
vulnerable due to its proverbial laxity and corruption; and 2) in
refocusing ANR, lately accused by opposition MPs of reverting to its
political police practices under Mobutu, on its proper intelligence
and counterintelligence purview.

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Erratum Redux

Well, this is the challenge one faces when writing a post on
BlackBerry Memo Pad, then copying and pasting it on the field of an
outgoing email as an automatic self-posting post.

The word "Erratum" was thus cut off in the previous post.

Apologies.

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ratum (Debray's quote in previous post not an "aphorism") and Festive Sunday in Kin

1) I mistakenly characterized Régis Debray's quote in the previous
quote as an aphorism, though I correctly defined the latter: "a terse
formulation of a sentiment."

Heraclitus, the master aphorist of all times, had coined some stinging
aphorisms--like this one: "Bigotry is the sacred disease."

***

2) Festive Sunday at the Martyrs' Stadium in Kinshasa

The first mass celebrated by the newly created Cardinal Laurent
Mosengwo Pasinya of Kinshasa is under way in the densely-packed Stade
des Martyrs of Kinshasa.

The Raïs, the Prime Minister, and many other political authorities are
in attendance.

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Côte d'Ivoire: A "State of Barbarism" or just "Illiberal Democracy"?

"Civilization might be defined as a slow effort destined to reduce the
costs of succession wherever possible, and the state of barbarism as
one in which the passing of the torch is effected amid bloodshed or
through a simple relation of forces" (Régis Debray).

***

With the exception of a handful of countries, in Sub-Saharan Africa,
contentions, violence and bloodletting always mar the electoral
process. It's a law of political "physics," as predictable as the
freezing of water at 0 degree centigrade.

One has still to see the dawn of the day when an African politico
who's lost a bid make a phone call to a rival and congratulate him
(or her) for a "hard-fought campaign," the oft repeated formula on
election nights in the US.

There are routine accusations of fraud and rigging, even when
impartial international observers vouch for the transparency of polls
(DRC in 2006, or, more recently, Guinea and Côte d'Ivoire)

At times, frauds and more or less insidious "confiscation of power" do
occur that obtain laughable landslides (Burkina Faso, Rwanda). Or
outright bloody inter-ethnic strife (Kenya). And the nullification of
electoral outcomes is also attempted when polls go counter the
anticipation of the powers that be (Kenya, Côte d'Ivoire).

Where democratic alternation seems to take hold, sooner or later the
"new" leaders transmogrify into banana-republic autocrats clinging to
power even by the skin of their teeth (Senegal). And vestigial
opposition leaders transform their political parties into family-run
organizations, complete with monarchical successions (UDPS party in
the DRC).

There are "political leaders" but no "political sensibilities" as one
would encounter them in modern democracies (left, center and right of
the political spectrum) but in their stead you have tribal or regional
or, as witnessed in the DRC during the 2006 elections, linguistic
affinities (or cleavages) and allegiances.

In other words: clientelism, patrimonialism (or a tribe's hope of
sharing the loot of the plundered state) or just sheer "tribal-ness"
as the closed horizon of electoral platforms and expectations.

Small wonder then that politics is a dangerous game in Africa. The
powers that be would certainly kill and maim their political
opponents-- the "Others" or the "Sorcerers" as the soukous singer
Franco Luambo once treated anti-Mobutu politicos in a campaign song
titled "Candidat na biso Mobutu" (Our candidate is Mobutu). Angry and
vicious mobs of the opposition kill too--in the name of the tribal
party. Monetary or tribal gains and interests are pegged into slots
that modern democracies usually allot to patriotism and political
partisanship.

Instead of being staffed by independent experts, national electoral
commissions are dangerous dens where political (or tribal) appointees
squabble and question the motives of their colleagues every step of
the way.

While the "state of law" prevails in modern states, a chronic "state
of barbarism" afflicts Africa. But make no mistake: though African
regimes function as if they were staffed by outlaws, scofflaws, and
cutthroats, they use proficient and meticulous legalese to usurp power
or visit judicial atrocities upon political opponents (Côte d'Ivoire,
Rwanda).

More often than not, African elections are funded by the international
community. That's maybe why Africans don't respect the democratic
electoral process. They don't feel the pinch of the prohibitive "costs
of succession" (Debray). In the DRC, despite millions of dollars
invested in the electoral process and the sacrifice of men and women
working in the peacekeeping force(some of them coming from as far as
Pakistan, India or Guatemala), Congolese opposition parties had the
gall to call the first democratic elections to be held since
independence a "farce" orchestrated by the international community to
keep the incumbent at the helm of the state. In Rwanda donors' monies
are simply "embezzled" with total impunity for the incumbent's
reelection.

This international funding of elections and peacekeeping operations in
turn make short shrift of the much trumpeted sovereignty of African
states...

It seems that the only option the UN has in its intervention toolkit
when confronted anywhere with an internal armed conflict is "dialogue"
at all costs--and this form of intervention is often necessary given
the heavy civilian "collateral damage" that inaction might cause.
Africa therefore becomes the only place on earth where armed rebels
are recycled into the legitimate established national armies (DRC,
Côte d'Ivoire).

And this UN dialogue fixation transforms parts of some countries into
very dangerous inhabitable non-state territories: eastern DRC; or the
"Mason-Dixon Line" of sorts splitting Côte d'Ivoire in half: the south
of the country vs the rebel-held part in the north where armed rebels
who still control that side of the country's territory actually
terrorized pro-Ggagbo voters and observers at polling stations.

Has the UN ever suggested to Colombia and Peru to integrate into their
national armies and political class the FARC or the Sentero Luminoso
rebels and their leaders? Has the UN ever pressed China to integrate
the Dalai Lama and the millions of dollar disenfranchised Tibetans
into its political game? Côte d'Ivoire is in Africa, after all, where
anything goes...

We are now witnessing in Côte d'Ivoire the surreal situation where the
head of the UN peacekeeping mission single-handedly assumes the right
to "certify" electoral results, thereby contradicting and
de-legitimizing not only the earlier finding of the Constitutional
Council--which is supposed to be the final authority in these
matters--but the whole Ivorian state as well (arguably a situation
worse than power vacuum).

Then again, as Marshall Sahlins had it, "usurpation itself is the
principle of legitimacy." In Côte d'Ivoire, we have at this moment two
ongoing competing usurpations (and legitimacies): by Laurent Gbagbo
and by the UN (or the coterie of superpowers constituting the Security
Council within the UN--a highly undemocratic club). And only time
would tell whichever of both legitimacies would prevail.

At the same time, foreign countries (like the US, France, etc) take
upon themselves to congratulate and anoint one of the candidates in a
contested election. As one Ivoirian official remarked, this could have
amounted to an African government declaring Al Gore or George Bush the
winner in 2000!

The international community is setting up in Côte d'Ivoire a
dangerous precedent that might further undermine the legitimacy of
African states, a situation where political legitimacy would stem not
from within but from without--the "government in exile" being the
extreme consequence of this kind of reasoning.

Are Congolese supposed to take seriously the US outrage at the
situation in Côte d'Ivoire when they still remember that the first
democratically elected Prime Minister of independent Congo was hounded
and assassinated by the US and its Cold War allies as Mobutu was being
propped up by them? Realpolitik amnesia?

Fifty years after their nominal independence, African countries are
therefore pathetically weak and continue to wallow in a state of
barbarity with apparently no end in sight.

Let's change gear and talk about China which I mentioned above...

Am I going to take Debray's aphorism at face value and claim that
China lives in a "state of barbarism" just because succession is done
"through a simple relation of forces" within the Communist Party?

In point of fact, Debray's aphorism is just what an aphorism is, "a
terse formulation of a sentiment." An undemonstrative quip.

To explain the African (or Ivorian) electoral oddity, where every 4 or
5 years there's ritual bloodletting over elections, I'd rather rely on
the well-documented thesis of Fareed Zakaria in "The Future of
Freedom: Illiberal democracy at Home and Abroad": You don't first
build democracies, then expect economic growth and sustainable
institutions to follow suit. It's the other way around. In fact, it
was under the "illiberal" regime of President Houphouët Boigny that
Côte d'Ivoire saw a steady economic growth unparalleled in the region.

After independence, African elites, propped up by narrow Western
interests, wasted precious time instead of building their countries'
economies. Democracy is a luxury "residents of the republic" can
afford only when they've forgotten the lexicon, reflexes, and behavior
of basic needs.

The French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard once quipped that Africa always
apes Europe (or the West) too little too late. African democratic
fever is definitely one of those nonsensical imitations Godard had in
mind.

Maybe what Africa needs right now is to see the emergence of more
leaders of the likes of Kagame and Museveni, then worry about
political democracy afterwards... though this would be music in the
ears of aphorists and essentialists: "See? Africans are barbarians who
aren't yet ready for democracy!"

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