Understanding the intricacies of the melee in DRC

Jan 09, 2017

One of the arguments against Congolese independence was that it would lead to inter-tribal strife.

By Samuel Baligidde

Unifying politically a country where unity never existed right from the beginning is fallacious.

By the same token, pacifying a country where violence resulting from political discordance became and is still a culture is an uphill task which even Saddam Hussein's infamous propagandist ‘Chemical' Ali might have acknowledged as the ‘mother-of-all' missions!

But after all previous attempts by the international community have seemingly failed mediation by Catholic Prelates [the Voice of God] in DRC is welcome and should be embraced.

However, in a country where entertainment and animism compete with established religion, one way of understanding the intricacies of the melee is tearing the theory out of its historical context and figuring out how the situation came about in order to craft a sustainable solution is the first step. A historic-theoretical analysis could lend a new depth to understanding the problem.

The Berlin Conference aka Kongokonferenz [the Congo Conference] or Westafrika-Konferenz [West Africa Conference] of 1884-85 regulated European colonization and trade in Africa during the so called New Imperialism period, and coincided with Germany's emergence as an imperial power. Called for by Portugal and organized by Otto von Bismarck, first Chancellor of Germany, its outcome, the General Act of the Berlin Conference, was in effect the formalization of the Scramble for Africa.

One of the arguments against Congolese independence was that it would lead to inter-tribal strife; a prophecy that came to pass because the Congolese were transformed into a people artificially united by a ‘common agreement' that suited the European powers scrambling for its vast resources at the Berlin Conference.

DRC has since suffered the consequences of the illogicality of that ‘common agreement' which sought to document Belgium's share in an exclusive agreement between Europeans. The country would not be in such a mess if the consequences of the externally-contrived agreement had been reversed on withdrawal of Belgian rule but among the most ardent converts to the fictitious geo-political creation were the African nationalists who advocated for the irreversibility of colonial borders and inserted a clause to that effect in the OAU Charter!

Congolese independence which was followed by Belgian withdrawal was of a type political Philosopher Edmund Burke would have regarded as ‘equivocal' because its genuineness and advantage to the Congolese as well as moral rectitude were doubtful. It was a liberty which did not have wisdom and justice for the various ethnicities.

Trouble is: ‘common agreement' was not accompanied by creation of the necessary conditions for a complementary agreement by the Congolese People themselves. The country's post-independence leaders upheld an unrealistic constitution bequeathed to them by the departing imperialists who ‘voted with their feet' when a revolution in which mercenaries representing foreign and local interests were involved ensued.

Belgian refugees arrived at the former Engineering School [present site of MUBS at Nakawa] in 1960.

The result of European contrivance has been the kind of ‘Chaos Theory' problem that not even mathematics could solve; leading to the patronizing view that the Congolese were unfit to govern themselves.

Small differences in initial conditions such as those due to rounding errors in numerical computation yield widely diverging outcomes for dynamical systems rendering long-term prediction of their behavior impossible. Even though the systems are deterministic meaning that their future behavior is fully determined by their initial conditions, with no random elements involved.

Fortunately, the Religious Mediators are Congolese and know about their country better than anyone else. The civil-military tensions in DRC are historically linked to the social psychology of political violence.

Unlike other revolutions which were passionate outbursts of idealism the Congolese unending revolutions were initially reactions to colonialism. Political competition has since the 60s been and continues to be a violent enterprise even though a noble attempt at alleviating injustice and remoulding democracy in a country that was never united right from the beginning but a conglomerate of discordant ethnic entities.

The simplicity of European contrivance whose consequences the DRC is still reeling from, demonstrates that the artificers of imperialism were grossly ignorant of their trade and totally negligent of their humanitarian responsibility of preparing the country for self-rule as the British grudgingly did in their former colonies.

The writer is a former diplomat

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