MuseumDESCRIPTION:
Freelance journalist and Congo native, Mvemba Dizolele talks with Jerry Fowler about the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, focusing on the meaning of the recent elections. He addresses many of the complications undermining the election such as it’s size, the various warring militia groups, its mineral riches, and the committment of the international community. To learn more, visit Mvemba’s blog.
TRANSCRIPT:
MVEMBA DIZOLELE: We have suffered enough, we have seen two wars or three wars, women are being raped, their health system is not working. Let’s finally move on...
JERRY FOWLER: This is Voices on Genocide Prevention; I am Jerry Fowler.
JERRY FOWLER: My guest today is Mvemba Dizolele. He is a native of Congo who is currently working as a freelance journalist. He recently returned from six weeks in his native country, where he traveled around to do reporting under the auspices of the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting. Mvemba, welcome to the program.
MVEMBA DIZOLELE: Thank you Jerry.
JERRY FOWLER: You have just spent six weeks in Congo. This was your first trip back in about five years. What was the situation like compared to the last time that you were there?
MVEMBA DIZOLELE: Last time I went to Congo was in 2001, and the country was still at war, at least officially. Congo had been invaded by Rwanda and Uganda, first in 1996, and then in 1998, after Laurent Kabila—the father who would replace Mobutu—fell out of grace with his backers in Rwanda and Uganda. They launched a rebellion—this was in 1998—which was mostly based in the East, and eventually the tribunal would split the country in half, with the government controlling part of the country and the rest of the country controlled by rebels. That rebellion created the proliferation of militias all over the Eastern part of Congo. The consequences are that today, more than 4.4 million Congolese have died. A lot of them have not died directly from the war, but have died as a result of the conditions that the war created—no good health system, no road infrastructure, malnutrition is on the rise. When I went back, just returned back a week ago, what I found was a different kind of country. I was in Kinshasa, I was in the East, I went to Ituri, and I went to the Kivus. The elections were underway, so the preparations for the elections, the sentiment was that finally we are moving forward to where we can decide what we want to do for our country. That was the general feeling across the country.
JERRY FOWLER: So in that sense, was it a sense of optimism?
MVEMBA DIZOLELE: Both, actually, both. It is hard to say, but it is both in the sense that some people see the elections as its privileges are something negative because they do not think the country is quite ready yet. The other side of the population feels like—especially from the East—“we have suffered enough, we have seen two wars or three wars, women are being raped, their health system is not working. Let us finally move on to get some legitimate system in place so at least we can get the country on the right track.” You get that dichotomy between the East and the West for instance.
JERRY FOWLER: One thing that is a little difficult, I think for a lot of people to imagine, is just the size of Congo. It is quite a large country, and when you talk about the West and the East, Kinshasa the capital, is basically in the far West, and then a lot of this conflict that you are talking about and most of these deaths, the four million people who have died, have been in the East. How hard or easy is it to go from one to the other?
MVEMBA DIZOLELE: That is a good point because the Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, is the size of Western Europe, so if put in the right context—about four times the size of France. It is one-third of the United States. That is the United States, east of the Mississippi River, from Florida, all the way to Maine. It is pretty big. All the way to Vermont. Within that context, the cultures and the feelings in the country are truly different from one region to the other. Kinshasa is about 2,000 kilometers from Bukavu, so it is quite big. The differences have been mostly because there are various experiences, pure experiences. People in the East, which borders Rwanda and Uganda, have felt the security threats directly. It has affected their life directly. They saw the troops, they saw the Rwandans, they saw the militia, so to them it is a different world. People in Kinshasa take the barometer from a different perspective. One, there is the war—they do feel close to their friends, their countrymen who are in the East, but at the same time in the 1990s, in the early 1990s when Mobutu opened the electoral process, he tried. When Etienne Tshisekedi’s, the leader of the UDPS today, one of the largest political parties that is boycotting the election by the way. When Tshisekedi started challenging Mobutu, there was a lot of excitement in the country, but more so in Kinshasa because that is where all the debate took place. The people in the West have always hung on to that process that is still unfinished; that was sixteen years ago, so to them, Laurent-Désiré Kabila, when he came with the Rwandans was actually a spoiler, someone they did not look upon favorably.
JERRY FOWLER: A spoiler because he disrupted the process of transition and democratization.
MVEMBA DIZOLELE: Exactly; he came in, suspended that process, suspended the Constitution, ruled by decree, and then he was killed in 2001 under very murky circumstances. His son was twenty-nine at the time, Joseph Kabila, took over, again very murky situation, very murky conditions, and then became president. Again, for the people in the West, that was a continuation of the suspension of the electoral, democratic process. They have never quite forgiven Kabila, the father, and they are not very favorable to Kabila, the son, because they feel like he is just a continuation of what his father started. They also feel that everybody—Kabila and everybody else—were just militia leaders, and so Kabila is no cleaner than everybody else who came through that process because he came in his father’s suitcase so to speak.
JERRY FOWLER: You mention, you made reference to Etienne Tshisekedi who was an opposition leader under Mobutu and led this pressure towards democratization and you mentioned that his party, the UPDS, and he boycotted the July 30th election. At the same time, there were about thirty—more than thirty candidates—running for President; there was a proliferation of parties. What is the significance of having such a major opposition leader not taking part in the process?
MVEMBA DIZOLELE: It actually undermines the electoral process. Tshisekedi is considered to be the father of the democratic movement of Congo—at least in modern days, we had the old days, but in modern days he is the one who was able to stand up to Mobutu, and he suffered for it with abuse by Mobutu quite a few times. Nevertheless he incarnates, to a certain extent, the movement, so for him to step outside of the movement was quite a blow to the electoral process. He is not only the incarnate, but he is also one of the architects of the system of where we are today, so it was Tshisekedi’s UDPS that pushed for what we call, Dialogue Inter-Congolese, so the dialogue between Congolese that led us to the Lusaka Accord, that led us to the Pretoria and Sun City Accord which were a transitional government, and then of course, he did not participate in the transitional government, and then when the transitional government starts failing because the Sun City in 2002 and 2003, when the signed the accords, the goal was to have the election within two years, so this was in 2003, the goal was to have election at least by 2005, June 2005, if not they give them an option of extending it six months twice. The transitional government, because it is made of former war lords who had no interest in seeing a democracy and seeing a democracy come to Congo, they did everything they could to stall the process. It was Tshisekedi who actually pushed, put more pressure on the international community to hold the transitional government accountable to the timetable that it agreed on in Sun City, and thanks to him we are back to at least holding the elections. It is outside the perimeter of time, it is outside of the three years the allotted, but nevertheless, we are getting to that.
JERRY FOWLER: It has been forty-six years since the last election, so in that sense, maybe not that big of a—
MVEMBA DIZOLELE: No, exactly, but it is also surprising that he pulled out. It has done a lot of damage to the process, and it has also done a lot of damage to Tshisekedi himself. He has suffered a lot; his credibility has suffered a lot. People used to look at him as the man, but what has happened over the last few years, every time he has pushed something and people have agreed on it, and then he pulls out. He pushed for the Dialogue, we had the Dialogue in Sun City, but then he did not join the transitional government himself which was a blow to the transitional government, but it also raised questions about his credibility. Now, he pushed for more transparency and for the transitional government to hold the election in due time. When they decide to do that, he pulled out to say, “No, we do not want to be a part of it,” so those kinds of things have been really detrimental to him as well. The process has suffered on both sides.
JERRY FOWLER: As we are speaking today, the results of the election are not yet known; the counting is still underway, although the reports are that it is looking like there may possibly be a runoff between Joseph Kabila, who is the President and Bemba who is previously one of the militia leaders and is Vice President in this transitional government. Whatever happens, it means that there are over thirty candidates who will not be in the runoffs, many of them who control armed groups, a number who control armed groups. What is going to happen in this period between the counting of these votes and a runoff election when it happens? What are the chances that the frustrated candidates will resort to arms?
MVEMBA DIZOLELE: Jerry, as you know, the international community has invested a lot in the process, at least money-wise. The process has cost them over 450 million dollars, so there is a certain seriousness in terms of seeing this process through. On the other level, the international community has done a sloppy job; they have not really put the safeguards, or ensured that safeguards were in place so that we do not have spoilers. The thirty-three candidates to be exact—including Kabila himself—some of those have run militias in the past. The United Nations has tried to beef up security now; you have the United Nations there, you have the European Mission—there is about 1,000 troops from European nations—and you also have about another 1,200 troops waiting on standby in Gabon, just in case.
JERRY FOWLER: Over the horizon?
MVEMBA DIZOLELE: Yes, but the challenge is what does that mean? In the past the United Nations has dragged its feet in implementing a Chapter 7 mandate which is the protection of civilians against armed groups. Will the United Nations be more forceful should August come, the end of August once the results are official and some guys want to start war, how much political will will there be to prosecute the war to protect the integrity of the process? That remains to be seen, and I feel like there will be one or two groups here and there who will try and push the limits and see what the international community does.
JERRY FOWLER: You traveled through the East, which as you said, has been the focal point of this conflict now since the late 1990’s, and I know you spent a little bit of time with the United Nations force there. What did you get in terms of a sense for the security situation and the likelihood that armed groups could resort to more violence?
MVEMBA DIZOLELE: I went to Kinshasa, and then I was in Ituri, on the border of Sudan and Uganda, and then I went to the Kivus, northeast, and then the Kivu on the border of Rwanda. Let us take Ituri, for instance. The United Nations has shown a lot of commitment in bringing peace in the region. The blue helmets have been fighting. While I was there they were fighting; there were fightings going on, not in Bunia, but further north.
JERRY FOWLER: The United Nations was fighting?
MVEMBA DIZOLELE: The United Nations was fighting in support. The FRDC—the Congolese army—was fighting the rebels and the United Nations was supporting them. They were joint operations because the United Nations is really, taking seriously trying to root out these militias. One of the big militias there—it is called the MRC and now, because they are trying to negotiate with the government, they want to get a position in the government and in the armed forces at least—the MRC is supported by Uganda. It is amazing because Uganda has been a big close ally of the United States, and the United States is a big role player in the United Nations that Uganda should be actually going along with the peace process. Instead they have been supporting—whether it is the government or not—the groups in Uganda that have been arming these people. Groups like that are motivated by what we do not understand. They do not have a political ideology. The do not have a political platform. We know that they control areas that are very rich in minerals, so that is one incentive that they have. If you go to the Kivus, you have a few groups still as well, groups like the Interhamwe, which is the old Rwandan militia. A lot of them dealt in the genocide.
JERRY FOWLER: In 1994.
MVEMBA DIZOLELE: In 1994; in Rwanda. Then you also have the FDLR, which is a lot of the remnants of the old Rwandan army. Some of them are not genocidaires, but nevertheless they have been in Congo for awhile now, about ten years, or almost twelve years now, perpetrators of the crimes against the civilian population there. These guys wield a lot of leverage. If you go to North Kivu, you have General Nkunda who is a Congolese Tutsi who has his own militia; there has been an international arrest warrant against him, but he is still there. The question mark is what will happen with all these people? Are we, the international community, ready to take them on, should they try to disrupt the process? The answer is not clear.
JERRY FOWLER: You mentioned that much of the East, much of Congo, is rich in minerals, and one of the things that has been driving conflict in the East has been the control of natural resources, both on the part of elements in Uganda and Rwanda, and then the local groups who have been sponsored by those governments. One of the minerals—actually very important to the Western economy—is called coltan, which I understand is used in mobile phones and other electronics. As part of your trip, you went to a coltan mine. Just describe that for us. When we say coltan mine, when you get there, what do you see?
MVEMBA DIZOLELE: I did go to a place called Zambiria which is about 90 kilometers from Bukavu. I had to hire guards; actually a friend lent me guards to go with me, armed guards—
JERRY FOWLER: Body guards?
MVEMBA DIZOLELE: Body guards because it is very insecure. The area is still—there is peace; it is in this area that the Chinese have tried to rebuild to rehabilitate an old road. Traffic is picking up, but the area is where you find the mines are very insecure still. We still had to rush, drive straight for two hours, and then stop, get there, do our reporting and get back and drive again.
JERRY FOWLER: Were there any checkpoints on the way?
MVEMBA DIZOLELE: There are some checkpoints; you see FRDC troops all the way along, and then once you arrive there, this is kind of in many ways a bit of a no-man’s-land. You have FRDC troops there, but they do not always fully control the region and some other people. In the old days you used to have Interhamwe there and other groups. Now it is cleared quite a bit, but it is not safe yet. Anything can happen. The mines themselves are very rudimentary, so it is not organized. I am talking about structures; you do not find structures, frames built so they can hold all of this, no.
JERRY FOWLER: Are they holes in the ground?
MVEMBA DIZOLELE: They are just holes in the ground, holes in the ground. A lot of them actually, kids, which was really baffling to me. I was excited to go there to see what happened with this process, but to find more kids there—I am talking about fifteen year olds and eighteen year olds—digging in this mine. It is very dangerous; the holes, so you dig in and you keep on digging. You have this trail that you dig underground that you are supposed to follow. If it collapses—and it does collapse—you are gone. There is no company; it is not like there is a company that is responsible for it. It is not like going to Arizona and seeing Phelps Dodge mining; no, it is not like that. It is very artisano, so really, almost like a craft, people doing it as they would have done in the Middle Ages.
JERRY FOWLER: So, people go and they dig, and then this coltan, they separate it from the mud somehow?
MVEMBA DIZOLELE: So, they go, they dig, they go with stones, it is kind of sand mixed with dirt, then they try to sift through it and they reach a certain clarity about it, so maybe some purity they take out, and then they put them in bags, and then they try to sell them to Bukavu, which is the main center down the street so to speak. Then in Bukavu, they bring them what they call, depot. We visited one such depot; it is called olive depot, and people bring these bags full of this dirt, and then this dirt will be separated. They will try to separate coltan and casidarate from the dirt. People put it in the ground, they use magnets to try to separate the ore and the tin that is in it. Eventually, you might bring twenty-two tons of dirt, and by the time they separate it, you might just get eight tons of coltan. That coltan is evacuated to Rwanda, and from there, of course, it goes overseas. It is still in demand, but the price of coltan has collapsed quite a bit. In the height on the conflict—I am talking about late 90’s and also the beginning of 2000—coltan was very, very much in high demand, and you know countries like Rwanda and Uganda were accused of fueling the conflict so they can exploit that because even though Rwanda does have substantial deposits of coltan, Congo has the largest reserves in the world. Congo became one of the largest exporters of coltan in the world. Again, that shows you the politics of the time. A lot of the officers of the Rwandan army, but also the militias, the proxies, benefit quite a bit from that. If you go in Bukavu, you see all these big homes, unfinished big homes. Some token homes like you find in Potomac, outside of Washington, D.C., but they are unfinished because all of sudden the price of coltan collapsed and people could not afford whatever they are doing anymore. In terms of coltan itself, the drive for coltan subsided quite a bit. It is no longer what it used to be. It is kind of the after-affect. I think that also explains why you see so many kids there, as opposed to the adults in the old days. The minerals, in general, the war I just mentioned in Ituri, the place in Kunda, they all are strategic places so they incentive, the mineral incentive, is still very much present today.
JERRY FOWLER: I wanted to shift gears in the time that we have left. You grew up in Congo, and you left in 1988 when you were in your early twenties, and then since then you went back in 2001, and then you went back this year. I wonder what it is like to encounter the place of your childhood, the place of your coming of age now as an older adult having only been there very briefly over the past twenty years.
MVEMBA DIZOLELE: It is shocking in the sense that when you arrive there is part of you that recognizes yourself in that environment, but there is a part of you that just does not connect with the place anymore. In my case, for instance, going as a journalist, I still have to have accreditation, go to the ministry for the information, get my press papers. Congo, when you travel, you get harassed quite a bit in the press. I had a crew with me who were filming, I could not take pictures, so I had to have somebody from the security office—I am talking about the intelligence office—to accompany me everywhere I went.
JERRY FOWLER: A minder.
MVEMBA DIZOLELE: A minder, as they call them. You realize that it is all this way of living, way of life that has become really strange to me, not only—I love the regions I went to. I was going for the first time. I had the advantage of speaking the language, or the language of the regions, so it helped me quite a bit to get the information I needed. On one level, I was just as much an outsider as anybody else, but being that I had not lived in the country, made it even more difficult in many ways because I had to adjust at every single turn to the reality that you had been reading about, and there is reality that you thought you knew because you grew up there, and then there is the reality that is really there that has nothing to do with what you have been reading about. It was an adjustment at all levels. I think I had the advantage of having my roots there. It always came true when it was difficult times, as with identifying myself with the people whenever that was possible.
JERRY FOWLER: How do people react to you? Do they react to you as a Congolese? Do they react to you as an American or as someone who has abandoned Congo?
MVEMBA DIZOLELE: I think for the most part, a little bit of everything that you mentioned. Sometimes they look at you like a foreigner, and they will say, “You are no longer one of us;” that kind of thing. But, overall, I think I had the privilege because when I present that Congo does not get much coverage in the international media—in the United States, it is about three minutes a year—so when you tell them, “Listen, overseas people do not really know what is happening here. I am here because I understand you; I also understand the Americans, so it is important that you tell me what is going on,” there is a level of openness, of instant trust that develops because they go, “Okay, you can be our spokesperson,” so I benefited from that advantage.
JERRY FOWLER: Do you have any plans to go back?
MVEMBA DIZOLELE: I would like to go back as soon as possible. I have a lot of engagements that I need to fulfill. I have to write a few pieces for some magazines and newspapers to get the story out, but as soon as I do that I would like to go back because there is so much, and it is different when you analyze it from an ivory tower. It is different to be on the spot. For instance, one of the realities, if you look from the outside, you find out that Kabila should be very unpopular in the East, but when you get on the field, when you get there in the field, you realize that he is actually more popular in the East which defies any logic. He should be unpopular in the East because there is war there, there is insecurity, we may not be in great, people cannot go in the fields to grow food, but you do not understand why this man is popular, but then you start realizing that there is some other logic that are local and only local people can understand them. Even if you do not believe them, at least you need to hear their perspective, otherwise you miss the point all of the way and that is what I am trying to find out.
JERRY FOWLER: In the meantime, people can find some of your writings on your blog. What is the address there?
MVEMBA DIZOLELE: Yes, I started a blog. It is still coming, since I got back I am behind since there are many other things I need to catch up on, but the blog is www.dizolele.com.
JERRY FOWLER: Very good. Mvemba Dizolele is a freelance journalist and a native of Congo.
MVEMBA DIZOLELE: Thank you Jerry for having me.
NARRATOR: You have been listening to Voices on Genocide Prevention, a podcasting service of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. To learn more about the Museum’s Committee on Conscience, visit our website at www.committeeonconscience.org.
