I
am not sure who wrote this article, but it is brilliant, raw, and speaks the truth
for so many parts of the world, especially for Congo. Just read it, you will be
amazed.
Dr
Flavius A B Akerele III
The
ETeam
The Case for Female Political
Empowerment and Leadership in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
A brief discussion
By Gianmarco Piccolo Re
North
and south Kivu, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), 2013
At 4 am in a dismal and dirty pit, seven
thousand miles away from the golden lights, the glitz, the glitter, and the
black tarred highways of the developed world a ten year old boy is digging dark
red earth out of an open pit mine, a massive sore on the once green landscape
of this beautiful country.
He
is hungry, thirsty, tired and terrified yet he keeps on digging out the
valuable red earth and shovels it into the waiting wheelbarrows of the other
adolescent miners waiting nearby. He knows that if he were to stop working,
despite his bone deep exhaustion, the consequences for not only himself but his
entire family would be dire.
The
hard eyes of the foreign soldiers guarding them, full of the promise of pain
and degradation, these men who look like him and speak the same language as him
and his fellow workers seem to possess a hatred of them which borders on
insanity. So he keeps on digging out the
valuable red earth, he keeps on digging not for the meager scraps of food that
they are provided to keep them energized enough to continue working, nor out of
any sense of work ethic or pride that this work inspires.
No,
he keeps on digging in the hope that as long as the hard eyes of these savage
soldiers from a neighboring land are upon him and his fellow workers there is a
chance that they will not stray to the village where their mothers, aunts and
sisters are held hostage to their good behavior. But these foreign soldiers are like animals
and despite all his hard work and all his best efforts he knows that tonight
when he returns to his village he will once again have to comfort some female
member of his family, who has become another victim of rape perpetrated by
these soldiers and perhaps he will have to wipe the tears of someone else’s
mother as she laments the abduction of her young son to swell the ranks of
these barbaric conquerors.
And
as he shovels the valuable red earth into the wheelbarrow he cannot help but
wonder what his people did to merit such torment? When his shift ends several hours after
sunset and he is being escorted home through the forest by the foreign soldiers
who salute the blue helmeted U.N. soldiers lounging in their white armored
vehicles, he wonders where were the U.N. soldiers and the stalwart nations of
the developed world when his nine year old sister was raped last week?
It seems incredulous that in this globally
interconnected world, where information is free and easily accessible thanks to
the Internet that such atrocities as this, so reminiscent of the rubber slavery
of the colonial era still continue to occur every day in a nation that by
virtue of its mineral unlimited mineral wealth should be one of the richest on
this planet. Yet the developed nations
who normally act as global law enforcers have chosen to turn a blind eye to the
suffering of an entire nation the size of Western Europe. And these atrocities are not secret; they
have been well-documented and exposed and are not hidden by a well-oiled and
efficient state machinery such as the Nazi regime, which managed for almost two
decades to hide their own hideous atrocities.
The
world at large is well aware of what is going in the DRC but simply chooses to
do nothing about it. U.N. Peacekeepers
have been deployed here in order to protect the population from the
deprivations of these foreign soldiers yet at the same time they are given
conflicting orders which instruct them to under no circumstances engage these
soldiers in battle, despite their continued acts of violence against the
population.
The
global hunger for the minerals of DRC and the technological growth that they
feed continues unabated and as long as the raw materials for progress keep
flowing, it seems that the technocrats of the developed world are willing to
ignore the fact that since 1998 over five million civilians have died, most of
them women and children, in a conflict that rages on in the name of
unparalleled greed and moral turpitude.
What difference does it make to them that every day in North and South
Kivu over forty women are raped?
History
The
history of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of darkness, despair,
brutality, hope and determination. From
its inception as a the personal territory of King Leopold of Belgium, a
shocking real estate deal brokered by the famous explorer Henry Morton Stanley
in which the entire contents of this territory became the personal property of
the King of the Belgians, including the inhabitants.
The
king quickly demonstrated his belief in his divine right of ownership over the
“savages” of this nation by instituting the now infamous rubber slavery
policies, which entire villages were held hostage while their able bodied
family members were forced to go into the forest and tap the milky sap from the
wild rubber vines growing there. If they
did not meet the quota assigned to their village, then villagers would be
scourged, burned and the hands and feet of young children were cut off in an
effort to “inspire” the villages to greater efforts.
But
just as now, technology drove these policies as the global need for rubber
increased exponentially with the burgeoning automobile industry and it was not
until many decades later that enough of an outcry was raised against Leopold’s
policies for other developed nations to finally put a stop to it. So where are
those outraged voices now in 2013?
Foreign
rule
At present, the government of the DRC is at
best a travesty, a bait and switch operation designed to keep the population
ignorant of the fact that this huge nation is in reality a proxy for the
Rwandan leadership and all decisions regarding its government are being decided
in Kigali and not in Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC and the seat of Congolese
government.
The
Rwandan leadership in Kigali has implemented a deliberate policy to foment
continued conflict in the region in order to bleed the natural resources of the
DRC and funnel them toward the development of a Greater Rwandan Nation. The construction boom and robust economy of
the tiny neighboring nation are fuel by the rape of the DRC and when one
considers this fact:Rwanda has no Coltan deposits. How is it that all Congolese
Coltan must be transported to Kigali to be certified, the only way that this
valuable mineral of which 80% of the world’s deposits reside in the DRC, a
mineral which is needed for everything from transistors, chips, cell phones and
missile system, can actually be sold?
When
one looks at the well-financed black-uniformed soldiers of the presidential
guard (GSSP), the majority of which are imported Rwanda soldiers, and how they
are given broad police and military powers beyond their mandate to protect the
president, the fact that they have a carte blanche to do as they please while
the Congolese national army remains ill-trained, ill-equipped, and seldom
paid. It is a recipe for disaster that
the leadership in Kigali and their allies are well aware of.
Congolese
women
When
one strolls through the market places of the DRC or if one pays attention to
the ratio between the sexes with regards to those trading in the market places
which are the lifeblood of the DRC, it becomes evident that the majority of the
people who are selling in the marketplace are actually women.
They
are not selling things for their husbands, or simply acting as shopkeepers for
the men who bring in the products for sale, instead it is the women themselves
who completely dominate the economics of everyday Congolese life through their
strength, intelligence, skill, business acumen, and determination. Congolese families are fed, educated and
nurtured through their remarkable work and despite the deplorable conditions
that many families find themselves in, somehow Congolese women manage to keep
them afloat. It is they who make sure the
over-worked and under-paid soldiers of the national army are fed and it is they
who pay for the sometimes outrageous school fees for their children and
purchase medication for family members when they fall ill.
Without
the bedrock of their efforts the DRC would have long imploded. So why is it so difficult for the men in
Congolese leadership to see the strength of Congolese women and harness it on
the national level for the good of the entire nation? Traditionally speaking
Congolese
society is not paternalistic; that is a Western import a consequence of
colonialization, and traditionally speaking Congolese women have been equally
responsible as queens and chiefs for guiding and leading the many tribes which
make up this nation. Such colonial ideas
have no place in Africa and they have damaged the whole continent in ways that
will be very difficult to overcome.
In
Yoruba cosmology the Goddess Nana Buukun introduces the concept of Thought into
Ashe, the formless matter that existed before creation and it is this
introduction which transforms Ashe into Oludumare, the Creator and One
God. Judging from the mythology of the
Yoruba people, clearly the feminine has as much potency as the male in African
traditional culture.
Solutions
There are of course no ready solutions for a
problem that has become so ingrained through a century of brutal conquest by
colonial powers and their cultural indoctrination of the African continent, but
this does not mean there is no hope.
There is a generation of Congolese who are crying for change and are reexamining
their cultural roots in an effort to find a solution that is in harmony with
their traditional culture, without sacrificing the benefits of technological
advancement and integrating some of the more positive ideas of the developed
world, including the idea that female politicians can and indeed have proven
effective elsewhere in Africa and that they can and do make a positive and
dramatic change.
The
first female president of an African nation, President Helen Sirleaf Johnson of
Liberia has demonstrated this with great success. She inherited a war-torn nation in its death
throes, racked by ethnic divisions, rape, child abductions and corruption all
driven much like the DRC by a desire to control its mineral wealth and in her
decade of power she has transformed it into a stable, peaceful, nation with a
booming economy, a beacon of hope for all of Africa and a chastisement for
those of the old guard who say women cannot lead in Africa.
Similarly
in Malawi President Joyce Banda is proving her leadership skills with great
success and in the DRC despite what the leadership in Kinshasa would have the
world believe, there is a dearth of talented women politicians in the DRC who
not only have the talent, the skill and the drive to lead but have already paid
their political dues.
Female
leaders such as Justine Mpoyo Kasavubu, the daughter of the first Congolese
president who has negotiated the rough political seas of the DRC for many
years, Catherine Nzuzi wa Mbombo, whose political party MPR posted excellent
results at the last presidential elections, the politically savvy Madame Landu,
and finally the formidable and indomitable Iyombe Botumbe Akerele, president of
the Congres Lokole party which was created in 1992 to oppose Mobutu Seseseko in
the 1996 elections before the civil war began and who is the granddaughter of
the king of the Basengle people from the central of the Congo. And though none of these women hold political
office in the DRC at present, they continue to use their considerable skills to
aid the people of the nation.
Justine
Mpoyo Kasavubu provides free clothing for the many orphans and destitute caused
by the war, while Catherine Nzuzi wa Mbombo provides free food for families
which would otherwise starve. Madame
Landu provides a free legal services for those who could not otherwise afford
it and Iyombe Botumbe Akerele, by implementing the old adage “give a man a
fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a
lifetime,” has used her own personal wealth to finance not only microloans to
small local businesses all over the DRC
but by also building industries that create sustainable employment using
indigenous foods and materials, such as corn and cassava which are ground in
locally run mills, fish farming and transportation.
None
of these women need to take the grave risks they undertake by challenging the
status quo; they could live comfortable lives both overseas and in the DRC
because of the considerable personal fortunes that they have amassed
using their extraordinary business skills and intelligence, but instead have
chosen to take those talents and place them at the service of their fellow
Congolese in order to do their part in fulfilling a grand vision of what the
DRC should be and not what it has unfortunately become.
If
both Houses of the Congolese Congress were even marginally representative of
the power and potential of Congolese women then the DRC would now be an
economically and fiscally sound nation and a regional powerhouse.
Conclusion
The
cycle of kleptocracy, pillage and marginalization in the DRC will continue as
long as the population continues to allow themselves to be ruled by tin can
dictators and their greedy cabinets of old men who do not want the status quo
to change, even if it means progress for all Congolese people.
If
the DRC is to move forward and take its rightful place as one of Africa’s
leading nations, the women of the DRC must become empowered and much more
politically involved if this nation will ever be able to pull itself out of
this fifty year vortex of chaos. In
African families, traditionally men women have distinct roles to play but that
by no means is indicative of a sexist division of labor. Instead, it involves a deep commitment and
understanding of the fact that each sex has a different approach to life’s many
challenges and that sometimes the methods of one parent are more effective than
the other with respect to these different challenges.
It
is the duty of the parents to acknowledge this and make the necessary
adjustments so that there exists a peace and harmony within the household as
all these challenges are met and overcome using the perspective of both
parents. In the case of the DRC, which
throughout its turbulent history has been ruled by a succession of
paternalistic leaders calling themselves “the Fathers of the Nation,” this
delicate balance has come apart with the disastrous effects that we continue to
see every day there. It is time us males
put aside our egos and the colonial mantle of paternalistic views and once
again turn to our other parent for a solution, for despite what these foolish
leaders would have the world believe it is the women of the DRC who for all
these years have managed to keep the nation solvent.
