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October
2007
Need for A New Leadership
by
George Bakaly Sembe
bsembe@yahoo.com
Last November, Joseph Kabila was elected President of the Democratic
Republic of Congo (DRC), the election was hailed as the “most
positive event in Sub-Saharan Africa since Mandela’s electoral
victory in 1994” by the UN. In fact the “international
community” pulled all the stops spending half a billion
dollars to organize elections in a country as large as Western
Europe with no infrastructure to speak off.
The head of the UN mission in the DRC (MONUC), William Swing
and EU commissioner Louis Michel the architects of “Congo’s
transition” claimed that elections would be the panacea
to all of Congo’s tribulations, less than a year later
everyone can see what a mess Congo is in. Westerners reading
this will say “here is another Black man trying to lay
blame on somebody else” but I beg to differ. First because
I do believe we (Congolese) are to blame for this is ultimately
our country, but that does not take away from the fact that
the management of post-Mobutu’s Congo has been botched
mostly because of foreign intervention be it Rwanda, Angola,
the EU or the UN, everybody has come into Congo to protect interests
that had nothing to do with the Congoles In 1996, Rwanda
came in under the pretense that they were pursuing perpetrators
of “the genocide” President Kagamé has
openly admitted that the bulk of Laurent Kabila’s troops
came from Rwanda, in fact, Laurent Kabila’s first Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs, James Kabarebe happens to hold the same
position in Rwanda today. Today after 11 years of occupation,
Rwanda continues to pretend that it needs to be in DRC in
order to protect itself from the Interahamwe and other Hutu
extremists, it supports Laurent Nkundabatware a Congolese
Tutsi, who many human rights groups have accused of various
crimes against humanity, just like the Gareton report did
about Laurent Kabila/James Kabarebe forces in 1998, and the
international community does nothing about that, it accepts
Kagamé’s claims of self defense, it accepts that
a minority holds power in Rwanda for more than a decade, and
it accepts that to “protect” the mass murder of
more than 4 million Congolese is acceptable.
The peoples of both Kivus voted for Joseph Kabila, believing
that the Swahili speaking candidate will be more inclined
to help them than Lingala speaking Jean Pierre Bemba, today
they realize that the man does nothing to help, while they
are getting slaughtered one tribe after the other, their brethren
Joseph is indulging in Kinshasa’s politics, he could
not accept that Bemba kept a few hundred men and launched
a two day war that killed at least a thousand man, women,
and children but he can accept that Laurent Nkunda who is
wanted by the International Tribunal for war crimes keeps
more than 3,000 men.
The same goes for MONUC and the EU, where are “masters”
Swing and Michel when it comes to the Kivu, where are they
when it comes to the tens of thousands of Hunde tribesmen
massacred by Kigali’s henchman Nkunda. The people who
swore that the best way to reform Congo’s armed forces
was to bring into a single army former foes who had massacred
people across this paradise lost in the Heart of Darkness
are now saying “Congo does not have an army” the
very same people who swore that the elections were fair and
democratic, even though one candidate launched a tank attack
on the other and canceled a constitutionally binding debate,
are now “waking up” to Kabila’s despotic
trait and clamoring for the villain of yesterday Uganda’s
instrument Jean Pierre Bemba to return to Kinshasa.
Leopold’s Free State of the Congo, was meant to be a
region of international commerce, an “open door”
policy would be enforced, everyone, except the natives, could
profit from the riches of the Congo; they were so bountiful
that they belonged to the entire (White-Capitalist) World.
In the days of Leopold, Hausa tribesmen from Ghana and local
collaborators were used to oppress the Congolese, make them
slaves, and steal their wealth. Today Kagamé and his
gang have replaced the Hausa and Kabila, and the entire Congolese
Government are the new collaborators as they casually witness
Nkunda butcher their brothers and sisters. As Congolese, it
is our responsibility to seek a leadership that will take
our country back and make it clear to the Louis Michel and
Kagamés of this World that they will not profit from
the Congo until we do.
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