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Anguish of a beautiful people

An African tragedy

The Democratic Republic of Congo has been celebrating its fiftieth anniversary of independence. But the end of colonialism has been marred by poor governance and bloodshed. Only the work of missionaries in education and health care has prevented total chaos

Only days before the arrival of the official guests for the nation’s fiftieth-anniversary celebrations, 47-year-old Floribert Chebeya was buried in Kinshasa, capital of the DRC, as the Democratic Republic of Congo is usually known. Chebeya was an internationally known human-rights activist, the president of La Voix des Sans Voix, or Voice of the Voiceless. In recent years he had become an outspoken critic of President Joseph Kabila.

On 2 June his body was found on the back seat of his car at the outskirts of Kinshasa. His nearly naked body, a condom and some female garments were meant to suggest a badly ended affair with a prostitute. It was a grotesque and disgusting cover-up. But what really happened?

A few hours before his disappearance, Chebeya was invited to meet the national police chief, John Numbi, a meeting that did not take place, according to Chebeya’s final text message. After the murder, Numbi and other senior staff of the national police and the army were suspended. Yet many questions remain. Why should one make an official appointment if it is one’s intention to murder the guest? A post-mortem examination concluded he had suffered a heart attack though there were signs of violence on his body.

Chebeya’s death sent shockwaves through the Congolese human-rights community. “What I appreciated about him was the fact that he remained. Many other human-rights pioneers have sought shelter in France or Belgium,” says Jesuit priest Fr Rigobert Minani, a prominent figure in Congolese civil society. In 2000, Fr Minani, together with Chebeya, founded Renadhoc, a national network of non-governmental human rights organisations in the Congo.

The murder casts a grim light on the festivities for Congo’s “Cinquentenaire”. Like many African nations, Congo gained its independence in 1960. There were two sides to Belgian colonisation of the Congo. From 1885 until 1908, the Congo Free State was the private property of King Leopold II of Belgium: the human-rights abuses that accompanied the reckless exploitation of the Congo’s resources, especially rubber, are well known in the Anglo-Saxon world and beyond.

From 1908 until 1960, the Kingdom of Belgium took dominion over the Congo, a territory 80 times its size. Even if Belgian colonial rule was overtly paternalistic, infrastructure, industry, education, and health care were well developed, thanks also to a massive effort of the Catholic Church in Belgium, which sent an impressive number of missionaries to the Congo. In 1927, Belgium even happened to be the country that, after France, had the most Catholic missionaries in the world in absolute numbers. Many missionaries gave their life in Congo, for instance during the bloody insurrection of the anti-government “Simba” rebels in the 1960s.

It is often rightly said that the decolonisation of the Congo started too late, but its independence in 1960 came too soon. Too late in the sense that, after the Second World War, when many countries got their independence and the newly created United Nations considered colonialism an outdated system, Belgian colonial authorities failed to enhance the preparation of a Congolese elite. When Jef van Bilsen, a Belgian professor of the Koloniale Hogeschool, published a plan in 1955 to prepare Congo for its independence, he foresaw the date of 1985. It is therefore unsurprising that when Congo eventually received its independence in 1960, it was not prepared at all.

“On the day of its independence the country counted 16 people with a university degree… There was not one native medical doctor, not one engineer, not one legal practitioner, agronomist, or economist,” states Flemish writer David Van Reybrouck in his recent history of Congo (Congo, een geschiedenis). “The Catholic Church had done a lot to establish decent primary and secondary schools,” remembers Bishop Jan Van Cauwelaert, today 96, who between 1954 and 1967 was Bishop of Inongo, near Kinshasa. “But we failed to create a future leadership and intelligentsia as, for instance, the French did in their colonies.”

The 50-year history of independent Congo reads like a series of disasters and plagues: the troubled first years following independence, with the clashes between rival ethnic groups and the bloodshed of white civilians, the secession of the commodity-rich Katanga, the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, Congo’s first Prime Minister, and the tragic death of United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld, both in 1961, brought an end to the illusion that independence would lead Congo to a flourishing future.

Joseph-Désiré Mobutu was the man that heavy-handedly succeeded in preserving the integrity of Congo’s territory, promoting a sense of a national identity – the country was known between 1971 and 1997 as Zaire – and making his country an important part of the Western block during the Cold War. But the price for his dictatorship was unacceptably high: when Mobutu finally had to leave office and flee in 1997, his potentially very rich country had become one of the poorest nations on earth, with an endemic poverty and corruption that had made it a failed state.

It is no wonder that, from then on, Congo, especially its large eastern provinces, has been constantly destabilised by its small but militarily stronger neighbour, Rwanda. In what has mistakenly been called the “First African World War” (better, the “Great African War”) from 1998 to 2003, at least six African nations were involved. It cost the lives, directly or indirectly, of probably four million people. Though the initial reason given was the Rwandan claim that it was aiming to assure its security in eastern Congo, it quickly became clear that control over the resources of commodity-rich eastern Congo was the main reason for war.

Even after the war was formally over, and after the first democratic elections in Congo, in 2006, the region has remained torn by violence perpetrated by the different militias but also by the regular army – sexual abuse, rape and bloodshed. A massive UN operation (Monuc, now transformed into Monusco) has reduced some aspects of the violence, but it has not brought long-term stabilisation. Even recent military cooperation between Rwanda and Congo has not produced any long-lasting solutions.

According to Fr Minani, who has committed himself to a peaceful solution for eastern Congo, there is no military solution to the conflict. “Laurent Nkunda’s CNDP – the ‘Tutsi-power’ in eastern Congo – has been dismantled and integrated into the Congolese army, but it remains a potentially destabilising factor. The FDLR – the ‘Hutu-forces’ in eastern Congo – are hit but not beaten.” Only a political agreement can stabilise the region, says Fr Minani, adding: “The only solution is an inter-Rwandan dialogue and an accompanied return of the Rwandan Hutu to their country.” It is a proposal elaborated by the Sant’Egidio Community in Rome in 2005, to which Fr Minani had contributed, but it has never been implemented. “The international community never wanted to put pressure on Kigali,” he explains, “but it is the only path that can lead to a long-lasting solution.”

The Catholic Church, though challenged by the many neo-Protestant Churches, remains one of the strongholds in a country where the state fails to fulfil its basic duties. What still works in Congo, in the fields of education and health care, is often the fruit of the work of missionaries or the vibrant Congolese Church.

Even on a political level, the Church in Congo was and is influential. It was Laurent Monsengwo, today Archbishop of Kinshasa, who in 1992 presided over the National Sovereign Conference, the largest democratic exercise under the rule of Mobutu, until the old fox took over again. In the 2006 election, the Church did much to prepare the people for democratic rule. This is the challenge for 2011, when new elections are expected to take place. People had hoped for sudden change but are now disappointed by the lack of change in their daily life.

Meanwhile the celebrations for the fiftieth anniversary go on, because the Congolese, despite their misery, have an incredible capacity for joy, hope and optimism. If there still is a reason to hope for a better future for Congo, it is in the dynamics of a beautiful people. Hopefully one day they will have the leadership they deserve.

*Rape victim Feza M’Nyampunda’s face is one of 50 pictured at an Cafod exhibition marking 50 years of sexual violence in DRC (www.cafod.org.uk/news/drc)

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