Erasing Congo at the stroke of a pen

Jacques Depelchin

Pambazuka

This has been written in response to There is no Congo, written by Jeffrey Herbst (provost of University in Ohio) and Greg Mills (director of the Johannesburg-based Brenthurst Foundation). [2]

With a stroke of the pen, two academics, Greg Mills and Jeffrey Herbst (MH) have offered their solution to the problems affecting the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC): Just pretend that it does not exist. In the process they offer us a short cut version of what they describe as lying at the origins of its troubles, but they go further than the 1885 Berlin Conference did. Their exercise is the crowning touch of a long history of predation they claim to be denouncing. In the end one should understand their solution to serve more the interests of those they associate with than the average Congolese person. MH illustrate how the history of the victors gets to be written. But, one does have to ask, which kind of victory is this, which seeks to maim, torture or kill every victim while training – consciously and/or unconsciously – every one to become a vulture?

PREDATION OR SEARCH FOR SECURITY?

As one reads the essay, one is not sure what is worse: Their contempt for an area which is home for more than 60 million people, or their way of shortcutting history to serve their objective. Their objective is clearly in line with the earlier piece written by Herman Cohen[3]. In both cases, history mattered little except for twisting it so as to serve their central motive: Change the borders of the DRC, split it among its surrounding countries and in the process promote market predatory economics as the solution to everything. In both cases, the central idea is to promote the interests of Rwanda, which has been anointed as the best manager/protector of global corporate mining/predatory ventures in Central Africa.

"THIS WAR MUST END" : JACQUES DEPELCHIN ON THE CONGO

by Jacques Depelchin

Africa Files

Jacques Depelchin, a [former] leader of the Rally for Congolese Democracy, was interviewed by SAR's Congo correspondent David Moore in August [2000], just as the Democratic Republic of the Congo's latest round of peace negotiations under the rubric of the Lusaka Accord was, once again, being pronounced a failure. Readers will recall that, in August 1998, the RCD was the first rebel group to mount a challenge to Laurent Desire Kabila, at much the same point as Rwanda and Uganda also turned against their ally of 1996 and 1997. Led by University of Dar es Salaam History professor Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, the RCD articulated the most progressive and democratic policies of all the Congolese rebel groups that mushroomed up during this period. More recently, however, the RCD has been plagued by a major split: a more militarist faction led by Emile Ilunga and backed by Rwanda has forced the Wamba dia Wamba group into the Bunia region of north-east DRC and away from the more newsworthy centres such as Kisangani where the Ilunga forces are currently in a situation of stalemate vis-a-vis Kabila's forces.

While such a situation might seem at first to suggest a weakening of Wamba dia Wamba's group, this repositioning may also be having positive effects. Certainly, it appears to have influenced Jacques Depelchin's own thinking about peace and reconstruction, encouraging him to shift away from the state (and rebel-group) centred approach of the Lusaka Accords and towards a more "people-oriented" stance. This position is articulated clearly in the course of the following interview. The positive aspects of this shift are clear to see. At the same time, when one also takes into account the entrenched state-centredness of international relations and of peace-keeping discourse what can it mean in practice to say that "global civil society" has to work with the popular forces for peace? Needless to say, there are some tough issues for SAR readers to consider here.

For their part, Jacques Depelchin and his group continue to negotiate the conflicts that emerge over such issues as land tenure relations and the like - even as, in doing so, they brush up against the complexities of the interface of "tribe" and class and the difficulties offered up by colonially imposed boundaries and by the various state-driven armies and bureaucracies that swirl around them. Yet they have seen enough and done enough to eschew any notion of the "end of history" that the post-Cold War "world order' was supposed to have delivered. In their corner of Congo, Depelchin seems to suggest, it's more like history is restarting.

Before assuming a leadership role in the Rally for Congolese Democracy Jacques Depelchin worked as a professor of economic history at the Universities of Dar es Salaam, of California-Berkeley, and of Eduardo