A few days ago, a Congolese Professor at the University of Liège, Mr Bob Kabamba, dismantled the state lie that Rwanda plunder the minerals of the DRC. On the contrary, he spoke of commercial routes, like so many regional others in Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and Dubai. He said “these are informal routes used by the Congolese citizens themselves to sell their minerals in order to escape the tax harassment of the DRC and other seizures by the military and civil authorities of Congo.
Despite this denial, at the top of the Congolese government, they are not budging and are locking themselves in their lies with the hope of sullying Rwanda.
How can we explain this blindness or even collective madness in Kinshasa? We have to go back half a century to find the causes of this disease that the DRC and its leaders are suffering from. Lying, indiscipline, and theft have been erected as principles of governance.
Lies: Mobutu himself was the champion of them. In one of his interviews on Belgian TV, he instructed his Minister of Information, Sakombi, in Lingala, to lie to journalists. (He literally said: “bwaka bango lokuta”). Thus, lying was publicly erected as a principle of governance. Between the leaders themselves, between the latter and the population, and also between Congolese leaders and their counterparts in the rest of the world.
Embezzlement: Theft is in the tradition of the Bangalas and Gbandis, Congolese people from the Equateur province, Mobutu’s home region. There, “they don’t steal, they move”, they say proudly. During colonial times, the Belgians had written instructions “to never appoint a Mungala as a cashier”.
Since 1965, theft has become a virtue and the only mode of governance. So the successive Congolese presidents have all become billionaires, without working but rather by drawing on the state coffers.
In Congolese music, check thieves in Belgium and France (“nicknamed checouleurs”) are even considered heroes.
Indiscipline: the recent rout of the FARDC in Goma illustrates our point well. That is to say, lies and thefts at the top of the State have deprived their troops of means of defense. But the disease from which these men in the field suffer is even more serious. The indiscipline that flows in the veins of most of the “Kinois”, inhabitants of Kinshasa. A population of 20 million, abandoned to itself and forced to fend for itself to live, as Marshal Mobutu told them (“Article 15: Debrouillez-vous pour vivre”).
The survival instinct can therefore only lead to a primary reaction as in the jungle where there is neither faith nor law. The regular looting in Kinshasa is proof of this.
And Congolese political leaders have made it a weapon and allow the Kinshasa people to plunder in order to relieve the pressure of poverty. It is clear that given the inability to resolve their internal problems, due to a lack of sufficient knowledge in governance, Congolese leaders, quick to find a scapegoat for their sad fate, are spreading a litany of insanities and lies in all the media about the alleged plundering of the DRC.
They know full well that all the copper, cobalt, diamond and gold mines have been transferred to foreign powers who are lining their pockets and, in the process, are watering the presidential entourage.
Rwanda is just a road axis like so many others in the region, but in no way a player in the systematic plundering of the Congo. Why would someone condemn Rwanda instead of pointing fingers at China, Europe, UAE or USA?
RADIOTV10
