This is the second post of a two-part series on humanitarian intervention and international involvement in the Democratic Republic of Congo written by Father Dr. Toussaint Kafarhire Murhula of the Hekima Institute in Nairobi. Read the first part here and let us know what you think in the comments section!
By: Toussaint Kafarhire Murhula, S.J., PhD
A fragmented social and political context
The Conference of Congolese Catholic Bishops issued a pastoral letter at the end of its 54th Plenary Session on June 23, 2017, in which Bishops underscored the existence of a humanitarian crisis situation in the country as a result of deteriorating political, economic, and security conditions. The sobering depiction they present of the Congolese situation is not new.[1] However, the current situation shows how lamentable the living conditions of the Congolese people are, and how these conditions have continued to decline in spite of all the nation’s wealth and natural resources. As has been the case since the days of colonialism, a single individual or small group has taken millions of Congolese hostage, misusing resources and abusing power through corruption, tax evasion, and the embezzlement of public funds.
As a matter of fact, the “Panama Papers” mentioned millions of U.S. dollars that go offshore to fatten the Congolese President’s family. For ordinary Congolese, meanwhile, meager salaries – when they can get them – have lost almost half their purchasing power due to the depreciation of the Congolese Franc discussed earlier. The consequence of this downturn is obvious: more poverty, hunger, incapacity to meet basic needs, and worst of all, the continued precariousness of life measured not only in material but also in moral and political terms. Human beings are treated as merely disposable.
The real problem is that the west – governments, multinational companies, humanitarian organizations — buys time by providing band aid solutions to maintain the status quo of systemic injustices. Humanitarian aid, as it was called in the Geneva fundraising conference last spring, has become yet another misnomer. Let’s be clear. Congolese political actors have siphoned more money than humanitarian aid can raise. Yet, the multinational companies involved in business in the DRC also prefer to operate in a lawless country because bribes are cheaper than taxes and regulations. Western and Chinese multinational corporations (and those from other emerging economies as well) are competing for access to lucrative deals with the Congolese government. In return, the Congolese people are getting more insecurity, more armed militias, and more warlords. Not to mention a fat government stigmatized as expert in corruption and tax evasion. Bloomberg reports, for instance, that president J. Kabila has built a business empire that runs through every sector of Congo’s economy for the benefit of his relatives and cronies.[2]
Besides, given that a big chunk of the government’s money comes from mining rents and other contracts rather than from direct taxation, it is easy for those profiting from the crisis to maintain it. In the meantime, the government spends millions of Congolese francs on lobbying in Washington DC, as reported by The Hill. President Joseph Kabila hired a consulting firm which he paid close to 6 million $US to create positive spin about his political motivations.[3] While he argued when addressing the Parliament in November 2016 that he “cannot allow the republic to be taken hostage by a fringe of the political class,” his brother was more frank, telling Jeune Afrique, “The Kabilas are not ready to give up power to anyone.” Referring to Laurent D. Kabila, he explained that their father repeated to them [his children] that it was “they” who were going to rebuild the DR Congo. As a result, president Kabila will remain in power, allegedly to complete the work.[4] Perhaps this fear is now relieved as Kabila has announced his heir apparent for succession in the upcoming elections. Nevertheless, even humanitarian agencies benefit — from the fact that this big country has remained a lucrative job market for the humanitarian industry. Another paradox of neoliberalism is the irony of donors’ charity making a mockery of global and structural justice.
These are among the signs that led some to observe that the financial empire president Kabila and his cronies have built is also the reason why he will continue ignoring the demand for democracy by the Congolese people after completing his two constitutional terms in office. May are still skeptical about the outcomes of the upcoming election in December 2018. The banality of existing nepotism (or cronyism) which is part of the global neoliberal individualism has sabotaged popular demands for institutional reforms and is turning our nation-states into some sort of private corporations, owned by strong men who the West consider to be the new breed of African leadership. We unfortunately barely analyze “the history of the present” as a cause of this continued humanitarian crisis in the DRC. It is not surprising, therefore, that the same humanitarian agencies are welcoming the “active engagement of the government of the DRC, without whom progress cannot be made” in the words of Dutch Minister Kaag. The same irony or paradox lurks in Lowcock’s statement that “The Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is providing the leadership on this crisis… [or] The Government and the humanitarian community have strong relationships which focus on solutions.” Really?
As far as security is concerned, either the Congolese state has lost its rightful monopoly on violence or the legitimate use of force is incapable of providing security to its citizens. Indeed, the DRC cannot protect the lives of its own people against arbitrary violence or death. It’s like falling back into the state of nature all over again, making the “life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” as Thomas Hobbes noted in his Leviathan. Any kind of social progress becomes impossible. The life of the mind is brutally stunted as people live in continual fear and danger of violent death. Worse, what to make of the possibility that the government could be killing its own people to delay elections? This is a hypothesis that many do not want to exclude, like in the case of the violence in the Kasai and the Ituri.
In Kinshasa, mass graves with more than 420 bodies were discovered. In its defense, the government argued that these were poor people whose families could not afford a proper burial.[5] There is a fundamental problem which isn’t being spelled out as it should. A good diagnosis matters a lot in the process of deciding how to cure a disease. If the doctor makes an incorrect diagnosis, the treatment can be fatal. That I believe is the biggest problem not only with the Congo but also with the neoliberal humanitarian format of the solutions being proposed. For NGO aid alone won’t and can’t fix the Congo’s humanitarian ills.
Not palliative relief alone but also strong institutions and structural justice
Humanitarian agencies operating in the DRC, willingly or unwittingly, are pitting emergency response against sustainable solutions. In the Congolese political and social quagmire, aid groups feel compelled to act here and now, to turn a blind eye to long-term demands for development and democracy, in order to accommodate to the tradeoffs of an emergency humanitarian intervention.
Let me skip for a moment the context of June 2017 which the Congolese Conference of Catholic Bishops depicted as going from bad to worse, claiming the country was in extremely bad shape. Fast forward. Almost one year later, on April 16-20, 2018 in London, the new President of Botswana, Mokgweetsi Masisi, gave an interview at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. He was asked about regional efforts that African heads of state put in place to address the tragedy of DRC.
The journalist interviewing Masisi also wanted to learn what could be the influence of leaders of Europe and North America should they be called on to contribute to a peaceful outcome about that tragic situation. I believe this is a great question. However, I wonder whether the journalist expected president Masisi simply to express his support for the Humanitarian Conference on the DRC or if he wanted him to highlight the west’s foreign policy hypocrisy. In his reply, Botswana’s new president emphasized, “We [world leaders] have failed the DRC in appreciating what true value we can get out of them and they for themselves. And part of what can be done is for leaders like me to share that with leaders outside the DRC and outside of Africa…”. Botswana is a country often seen as a successful model of democracy in Africa.
President Masisi had held a meeting with the new Angolan president who happens also to be the chair of the organ of politics, defense and security of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). They agreed to call for a summit to deal with the tragedy of the DRC. The president of Botswana then stated clearly what humanitarian agencies fail to stress, or do not emphasize strongly enough. Allow me to simply transcribe his own words here.
“The tragedy about the DRC is that the tension is mounting [because] the president stayed in power for longer than the time that was expected. There is a lot of agitation. Mindful of the need to respect the rule of law, my predecessor issued a statement condemning such… and in this meeting we hope that we will understand fully what’s going on. But I have caught it on record that president Kabila is committed not to stand for the upcoming election to be held in December. Which is very encouraging. But we also want as a group to get it directly from him – and hopefully we can get it from him – a real commitment to not attempt to come back to power by whatever means. If you are tired just retire and let things run themselves. But on a final note, part of the underlying causes of the instability in the DRC is that many of those who harvest the resources of the DRC still benefit from harvesting them outside the framework of the rule of law. And that in itself is a real threat. So we need to modernize, we need to bring to order all the operators in the DRC who seem to thrive where there is the absence of proper governance. And that you can help us take home by causing and forcing those who so do to abide by the rule of law.”[6]
In other words, the problem is not only “staying in power longer than expected” but also operating outside the institutional framework of the rule of law. It’s about profiteering from the predatory economy of war no matter the cost in human life. Yet, with regard to the Congo and the world system, this taking advantage of the misfortune of others is also not new. Thus, president Masisi began by affirming the evidence about the Congo’s case. That the paradox of the DRC is that it is “potentially” the richest country in Africa. Arguably, it is one of the richest countries in the world, yet of course it remains one of the poorest. These poverty indicators are also not publicized by the Congolese government, which the UN ranked 176th out of 187 countries in Human Development. I agree with President Masisi that the world is failing the DRC by not giving the support its people deserves for democracy.
The spotlight the DRC has been receiving, again, which last spring’s Humanitarian Conference on the Democratic Republic of the Congo epitomizes, has not been flattering. On the contrary, it shows how Congo has always been in the international news for all the wrong reasons. And that has been very damaging not only to the image of the nation but also to the construction of a national identity for its citizens. Since its inception, the Congolese state entered the international relations as a humanitarian case, so much so that the current depiction of the humanitarian situation sounds familiar. In spite of the official denial of the government, the plight of the Congolese people is not “fake news,” as Mr. Stylianides said. Instead, it resounds like a “déjà vu” to the extent of reinforcing the negative attitudes toward a place where it appears as though nothing has ever worked.
Why can’t these representatives of international humanitarian agencies also name the causes of these sufferings imposed on the people without looking to appease a regime that clings to power illegitimately? Would it be a breach of protocol and meddling in the domestic affairs of the Congo to recognize and support the cry for political and economic freedom of the Congolese people, and the yearning for real democracy as what Congolese really want? In conclusion, I would say, true help to and real friendship with the Congolese people necessitate a staunch position in favor of a just international system. It is time to end the clichéd rhetoric about man-made humanitarian urgencies, or the need for more aid to wait on the poor victims. Instead, it is a moral imperative that good leadership be measured by the provision of good governance, accountability, and democratic institutions. Otherwise, these palliative humanitarian measures are simply a way of perpetuating a system of exploitation and plunder that can only be part of the problem, never the solution.
[1] http://cjf.qc.ca/revue-relations/publication/article/silence-de-lhistoire-ou-histoire-des-silences/
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-12-15/with-his-family-fortune-at-stake-congo-president-kabila-digs-in “Kabila and his siblings have assembled an international business network stretching across at least 70 companies, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of thousands of company documents and court filings as well as dozens of interviews with bankers, businessmen, miners, farmers and former government officials.”
[3] http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/lobbying-hires/331385-congo-inks-56-million-lobbying-deal-amid-election-strife
[4] http://www.jeuneafrique.com/mag/348870/politique/rd-congo-zoe-kabila-de-lombre-a-lumiere/
[5] http://www.jeuneafrique.com/229166/politique/rdc-qui-sont-vraiment-les-424-morts-enterr-s-dans-la-fosse-commune-de-maluku/