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Memoirs It’s warm in Johannesburg in December and so is Kinshasa. Somewhere at a plush estate in Midrand, Johannesburg a deal of millions of dollars of armaments is being made. The gun sellers fuel the civil wars in Africa by selling modern weaponry made in the former USSR to all the factions. In turn lucrative deals in mining and contracts are given by the respective parties. The Zimbabwean army’s involvement in the civil war in Congo was done after such contracts were given to the generals and close relatives of the presidency. But then this is Africa. The 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which 500,000 ethnic Tutsis were massacred, left the world without any remorse. It was just another group of Africans being killed. The Hutus who took part in the genocide found refuge in the neighbouring Congo. They formed their organisation, calling themselves the Democratic forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). The rag tag Congolese warlords who don’t believe in any politics except money rally behind a group known from the colonial era, as the Mai Mai tribal fighters and now a part of a loose group with the Government Congolese army, calling themselves as Congolese Resistance Patriots Group. The presence in DR Congo of the FDLR, which has been accused by the UN of taking a leading role in the Rwanda killings, has led to the formation of opposition forces such as General Nkunda's National Committee for the Defence of the People (CNDP). The Tutsis a minority living in Congo are being systematically slaughtered by the Government forces and the Hutu rebels. CNDP was formed by General Laurent Nkunda who is a Congolese himself and allegedly being assisted by neighbouring Rwanda. Meanwhile at a small private airfield close to the Johannesburg International Airport, an aircraft takes off for Kinshasa. It’s nothing unusual but this aircraft was flown by a white South African, which took off without any permission and above all without paying for the craft for which a deal was being made. The craft loaded with the most modern weaponry landed safely in Kinshasa. The Russian mafia in Johannesburg to whom the craft belonged were informed too late after the bird had flown the coop. DR Congo government forces and CNDP fighters have been battling each other in the east of the country since August. More than 250,000 people have fled their homes to escape the fighting. 100000 have died to malnutrition, disease and the bullet. Government soldiers and Nkunda's men have both been accused of atrocities against civilians. UN peacekeepers have had little impact in putting a stop to the violence. It’s the same way the United Nations Peace Keepers acted in Rawanda when the Tutsis were being massacred. General Nkunda knows about it and doesn’t worry about the MONUC, the UN Peace Keeping Force in Congo. The MONUC in turn have also been blamed for atrocities and sexual assaults in Eastern Congo. Under the garb of United Nations it is a documented fact that they plundered and resorted to rapes in Liberia.
His novel starts with these lines
Roger Casement The story narrated in the words of James Charles Russel Frasier is a Map maker and a Technical overseer with the ‘Company’ which is the arm of the Belgian Government in Congo. It revolves around his friend Nicholas Frere who has killed a native girl and continues on Frere’s time in the prison. It is about the robbing of the country and the manipulation of its people by outsiders…and the manipulation of those outsiders by its people. And above all the conflicts between the varying tribes of outsiders who all have their own agenda. The world around them is changing rapidly. The horrors of the Belgian Congo are becoming known and the flow of its once-fabulous wealth is drying up. Its turn of the century and the Belgian Congo is on the cusp of independence... scapegoats must be found for the evils colonialism has inflicted. There is mention about the apparent barbarity of the local tribes - the days of cannibalism and witchcraft - against the merciless missionary and heartless trader. The colonial administrators and surveyors are portrayed as well-meaning but ineffectual, hearts in the right place…but with no real concept of the country they have taken to or what or how to deal with it. Meanwhile the war in Congo continues abated. I remember the rotund rebel General Laurent Kabila in safari suits who had visited South Africa a number of times in failed peace talks, ousted Mobutu in May 20 1997. Che Guevara assisted Kabila for a short time in 1965. He planned to bring a Cuban Style revolution which unfortunately never succeeded. Kabila used the Tutsis from South Kivu to fight against the Hutu soldiers of Mobutu. What followed was mayhem and murder till Kabila reached Kinshasa. Laurent Kabila was assassinated by one of his own soldiers on the afternoon of January 16 2001. His son Joseph Kabila became the President and found allies in Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola. Everything seems to point at controlling the mineral rich resources in Congo. Paul Pumphrey, the founding member of Friends of the Congo says –
This militia raised millions of dollars to fund their war through the illegal trade in minerals, says the BBC's Thomas Fessy in Kinshasa General Laurent Nkunda’s rebel soldiers have reached outside the regional capital of Goma. Kinshasa is not far to be conquered. References December 21 , 2008 |
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But
let me go back again to the Belgian Congo. Robert Edric is a Britisher
from Sheffield, a prolific writer, his book titled ‘The Book of
Heathen’ published in 2000 by Black Swan is a gripping story based
on the Belgian Congo.