D R Congo: The missing link
Aug 08, 2009
BY JOHN NAGENDA<br><br>If you had a box in which to file historic missing links, Uganda’s giant neighbour, the Democratic Republic of Congo, would hugely feature where the mass murderer Kony is concerned.
BY JOHN NAGENDA
If you had a box in which to file historic missing links, Uganda’s giant neighbour, the Democratic Republic of Congo, would hugely feature where the mass murderer Kony is concerned.
This column has already expressed its shocked outrage that there could be a nation on God’s earth giving succour to the so-called Lord’s Resistance Army’s leader and his deranged regiments. By accident or purpose, every time his number seemed up, and he was around the D R Congo, that country’s leadership, under its survivor-president Kabila, would answer his call. It is mainly for this, especially latterly, that Kony and his LRA owe their continued and deeply regrettable survival. To understand exactly why this has happened would necessitate entering Kabila’s head, which better brains than your columnist’s have tried and failed to do. But we can try again!
That Kabila exists is a quantifiable fact; in what way, and by whose providence, is more hazardous. As in Budd Schulberg’s 1941 novel, “What makes Sammy run?†the same can be asked (as of all of us) of Kabila, and what makes him run, and by whom he is made to run. D R Congo, so huge a physical presence on the African continent, cannot be overestimated in the potential to which it holds sway.
Who are the people, especially internationally, behind his throne; and who have kept him there, when most, including this column, thought it a thorough impossibility? They must exist, because, otherwise, how could he? What are their needs and desires? What, in this context, is their necessarily sinister longing for Kony to remain a pawn on the regional chess board? Answer accurately this question and you have the key to a horrendous can of worms, in wherein Kabila is reduced to near “insubstanceâ€.
Following on Kony’s Houdini-like latest escape, when the armies of Uganda, southern Sudan and (irony of ironies) D R Congo, had the terrorist cornered in Garamba National Park, in the Congolese corner where the three countries meet, Kabila blew the whistle on time, telling southern Sudan, but mostly Uganda, it was time to return to their own countries. It was precisely when they had a stranglehold around Kony’s neck. By then the LRA was in total disarray. Their food stores, fresh in the field and those preserved, had been destroyed. The LRA was starving on the run. Much of their weaponry, hidden in the area, had been destroyed; indeed they were leaking guns and ammunitions as they fled heedlessly.
Would anybody in favour of obliterating the Kony menace, once and for all, choose that moment to call time? Absolutely not! The more so when no national Congolese forces would be capable of holding the LRA in check, a beast now wounded within an inch of its life, and the more lethal for it! All this was widely expressed at the time from all quarters, including the usually somnambulant UN; and, not least, by this column. And thus it came to pass: our worst expectations were fully realised.
Kony set upon massacring the thousands left at his mercy, without any covering fire, save that of the under-manned and never fully enthusiastic UN. What had D R Congo, to say nothing of its constrained and constipated leader, reaped from this fiery harvest? Could it even be the case that Kabila, for strategic reasons, wanted his people in that far-flung region to be brought under the boot for him by the ever-willing Kony? Well, the outrages have re-started again (if they ever really stopped) the sufferers being, as before in Kony’s frenzied efforts to stay alive, D R Congo itself, as well as the CAR (Central African Republic) and southern Sudan. The only safe participant is Uganda, which, as it had promised its citizenry, had already well secured its territory against any Kony return. So much for the well-rehearsed homeland weepers foretelling his re-entry into Uganda!
As for President Kabila, comparatively safe in his Kinshasa, does he toss and turn in the small hours, as the ghosts of the Kony-massacred wail and scream in his ears? Poor, poor, “dear†Congo!
******************
Nearer home, in fact to one’s local municipality of Mengo. There by provenance of paternal grandfather Regent Festo Manyangenda, and then father William Nagenda, I own a house. Much heat has emanated from the nearby parliamentary buildings of the Buganda Kingdom, Bulange, regarding a story published by Sunday Vision. It alleged that title deeds to the Bulange had been mortgaged, by the Kabaka (King) himself. You sat back, appalled, awaiting the juicy bits.
Mengo went to court, and unexpectedly the next Sunday Vision came out with a craven apology. Where you expected Mengo to surely press for inevitably huge damages, the very next day they accepted Vision’s apology. Is a rat smelled? Let’s see next week!
You want to know about my Nebbian adventure. Reader, it happened, at City Secondary School, Nakawa, here in Kampala. The 600 women for the Guest of Honour, your humble columnist, did not materialise as eagerly hoped, and those present were watered down by youths and menfolk. But oh, the pelvic jigging of the little and not so little girls! I had to be restrained from joining in because, rightly, of the self-harm I might sustain.
I ultimately left with a smile on the face, and a new rendering of my name, (in Alur, I think): Oringi. I am Oringi, John Oringi! Finally, if you have read the so-called State House website, for now devour it with a pinch of salt. All is not what it seems.
If you had a box in which to file historic missing links, Uganda’s giant neighbour, the Democratic Republic of Congo, would hugely feature where the mass murderer Kony is concerned.
This column has already expressed its shocked outrage that there could be a nation on God’s earth giving succour to the so-called Lord’s Resistance Army’s leader and his deranged regiments. By accident or purpose, every time his number seemed up, and he was around the D R Congo, that country’s leadership, under its survivor-president Kabila, would answer his call. It is mainly for this, especially latterly, that Kony and his LRA owe their continued and deeply regrettable survival. To understand exactly why this has happened would necessitate entering Kabila’s head, which better brains than your columnist’s have tried and failed to do. But we can try again!
That Kabila exists is a quantifiable fact; in what way, and by whose providence, is more hazardous. As in Budd Schulberg’s 1941 novel, “What makes Sammy run?†the same can be asked (as of all of us) of Kabila, and what makes him run, and by whom he is made to run. D R Congo, so huge a physical presence on the African continent, cannot be overestimated in the potential to which it holds sway.
Who are the people, especially internationally, behind his throne; and who have kept him there, when most, including this column, thought it a thorough impossibility? They must exist, because, otherwise, how could he? What are their needs and desires? What, in this context, is their necessarily sinister longing for Kony to remain a pawn on the regional chess board? Answer accurately this question and you have the key to a horrendous can of worms, in wherein Kabila is reduced to near “insubstanceâ€.
Following on Kony’s Houdini-like latest escape, when the armies of Uganda, southern Sudan and (irony of ironies) D R Congo, had the terrorist cornered in Garamba National Park, in the Congolese corner where the three countries meet, Kabila blew the whistle on time, telling southern Sudan, but mostly Uganda, it was time to return to their own countries. It was precisely when they had a stranglehold around Kony’s neck. By then the LRA was in total disarray. Their food stores, fresh in the field and those preserved, had been destroyed. The LRA was starving on the run. Much of their weaponry, hidden in the area, had been destroyed; indeed they were leaking guns and ammunitions as they fled heedlessly.
Would anybody in favour of obliterating the Kony menace, once and for all, choose that moment to call time? Absolutely not! The more so when no national Congolese forces would be capable of holding the LRA in check, a beast now wounded within an inch of its life, and the more lethal for it! All this was widely expressed at the time from all quarters, including the usually somnambulant UN; and, not least, by this column. And thus it came to pass: our worst expectations were fully realised.
Kony set upon massacring the thousands left at his mercy, without any covering fire, save that of the under-manned and never fully enthusiastic UN. What had D R Congo, to say nothing of its constrained and constipated leader, reaped from this fiery harvest? Could it even be the case that Kabila, for strategic reasons, wanted his people in that far-flung region to be brought under the boot for him by the ever-willing Kony? Well, the outrages have re-started again (if they ever really stopped) the sufferers being, as before in Kony’s frenzied efforts to stay alive, D R Congo itself, as well as the CAR (Central African Republic) and southern Sudan. The only safe participant is Uganda, which, as it had promised its citizenry, had already well secured its territory against any Kony return. So much for the well-rehearsed homeland weepers foretelling his re-entry into Uganda!
As for President Kabila, comparatively safe in his Kinshasa, does he toss and turn in the small hours, as the ghosts of the Kony-massacred wail and scream in his ears? Poor, poor, “dear†Congo!
******************
Nearer home, in fact to one’s local municipality of Mengo. There by provenance of paternal grandfather Regent Festo Manyangenda, and then father William Nagenda, I own a house. Much heat has emanated from the nearby parliamentary buildings of the Buganda Kingdom, Bulange, regarding a story published by Sunday Vision. It alleged that title deeds to the Bulange had been mortgaged, by the Kabaka (King) himself. You sat back, appalled, awaiting the juicy bits.
Mengo went to court, and unexpectedly the next Sunday Vision came out with a craven apology. Where you expected Mengo to surely press for inevitably huge damages, the very next day they accepted Vision’s apology. Is a rat smelled? Let’s see next week!
You want to know about my Nebbian adventure. Reader, it happened, at City Secondary School, Nakawa, here in Kampala. The 600 women for the Guest of Honour, your humble columnist, did not materialise as eagerly hoped, and those present were watered down by youths and menfolk. But oh, the pelvic jigging of the little and not so little girls! I had to be restrained from joining in because, rightly, of the self-harm I might sustain.
I ultimately left with a smile on the face, and a new rendering of my name, (in Alur, I think): Oringi. I am Oringi, John Oringi! Finally, if you have read the so-called State House website, for now devour it with a pinch of salt. All is not what it seems.