Growing Democracy

The People of DRCongo are Shedding Light on the “Heart of Darkness"

For most Canadians, when we think of Africa - if we think of it at all - we picture a continent struggling to overcome its colonial past. Tragically for the people who live there, this image is not entirely wrong; Africa has seen nine military coups since 2020. But there is cause for hope.

Despite a history of outside exploitation and ongoing inner turmoil, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is making positive strides. Its people offer a valuable lesson to much of the western world. Where several well-established democracies are seeing the internal rot of populism, hyper partisanship and movements toward autocracy, DRC and its people are working to overcome potentially devastating handicaps to create a government that is, to borrow a phrase, by the people and for the people.

When we read mainstream media, we see that DRC rarely gets mentioned, and when it does make the news it’s because of either disease or warfare. Regular consumers of media know the experience can be fraught. This is largely due to the nature of the beast; both what it is and what it isn’t. The media consists of profit-seeking businesses, and like any business it provides us with what it knows we want. What it’s not is a pacifier ready to soothe our jangled nerves. Simply put, bad news sells.

​The news we get out of DRC is very much a case in point. There are positive developments, but we won’t read about this in mainstream media, not because of any sort of cover-up but rather out of rational business decisions. But there is good news.

​Growing Democracy (continued)

But before we can get to those positives we need to illustrate the circumstances out of which they have grown. This is really the only way we can appreciate what the people of DRC have endured and continue to endure in order to get to where they are today and where they want to be tomorrow. DRC lies at the very centre of the African continent.

With an area of 2.3 million square kilometres, it’s the second largest African nation after Algeria. It became a Belgian colony in 1908 but Europeans had ‘discovered’ the country well before that; in 1890 Joseph Conrad spent time there and later used it as the setting for Heart of Darkness. The book is a critique both of Belgian exploitation and an attitude toward Congo, and by extension all of Africa, that persists to this day. Many of us continue to think of Africa as if it were one big country when in fact it contains 54 fully independent nations. Ethnically and culturally it’s at least as diverse as any other continent. In terms of its natural resources, DRC is amongst the wealthiest nations on Earth but its people are amongst the poorest.

The Belgian colonizers exploited the country’s rubber reserves and more recently many nations, including Canada, have taken advantage of DRC’s vast quantities of copper, cobalt, zinc, silver, gold, bauxite, uranium and coltan. In all, minerals account for 90 per cent of DRC’s exports. Eighty per cent of the world’s supply of coltan comes from DRC and that mineral is in all the cell phones and laptops you and I use every day. Much of the mining in DRC is referred-to as ‘artisanal’, a euphemism which when put into plain English, means men and children, typically boys, working as miners with no safety gear and little or no equipment of any kind beyond pickaxes.

The coltan in our phones and computers has very likely come from one of these ‘artisanal’ mining operations. This is in no way meant to suggest we shouldn’t own these things, only that we should be aware; that we should be ready to take positive steps to give back in some way. DRC officially gained its independence from Belgium on June 30th 1960. But the country was utterly unprepared to run its own affairs since the Belgians had taken no steps to prepare their former colonials for the challenges of self-rule. A republican government was established, with both a President and Prime Minister. Patrice Lumumba,, a leader of the independence movement, and the country’s first Prime Minister, was both an African nationalist and a member of the pan-African movement. This meant he supported national self-determination and believed in strengthening bonds between all indigenous Africans and the global African diaspora.

He played a major role in taking the nation from a colony to independence. But his left-of-centre political views, in the midst of the Cold War, made him dangerous in the eyes of several western nations, particularly the United States. The independence celebrations were short-lived; only a few days passed before the new nation was faced by what came to be known as the Congo Crisis. With Belgian support the provinces of Katanga and South Kasai seceded and there was a revolt by members of the military as Black soldiers were no longer willing to accept orders from white officers. The United Nations was preparing to send troops to aid the government against the secessionists but the secretary-general, Dag Hammarskjold, made a last minute decision not to do so. In response, Lumumba called for assistance from the Soviet Union, which sent ‘military advisors’.

The Soviet presence caused a split in the government between Lumumba and the President, Joseph Kasa-Vubu. It was at this point that Joseph-Désiré Mobutu Sese-Seko, a lieutenant-colonel and Lumumba’s chief military advisor, stepped in to break the deadlock by leading a coup-d’etat. Supported by both Belgium and the United States, he expelled the Soviets and established a government that supported his view of Lumumba as a danger to the country. He led a second coup in 1965 and made himself President. About 100,000 people died during this period of political conflict, including Lumumba, who was assassinated on January 17, 1961. Mobutu ruled from 1965 to 1997. In 1971 he changed the country’s name to Zaire.

His thirty-year rule also saw European investors expelled and the nationalizing of their companies. He looted the nation’s treasury. In 1990 he agreed to end the ban he had imposed on a multi-party state and formed a transitional government while retaining considerable political power. In 1994 he agreed to the appointment of Kengo Wa Dondo, an advocate for free-market reforms, as Prime Minister. That same year in neighbouring Rwanda, between April and July, armed groups consisting of Hutu fighters committed genocide against the Tutsi people.

Over 800,000 victims, mostly Tutsis, were killed and the violence spread into DRC as small groups of Hutu extremists formed militia groups. Such militias continue to operate in DRC to this day, funded largely by the Rwandan government under the leadership of Paul Kagame. Kagame, who is Tutsi, was a commander of a militia that sought, successfully, to put an end to the genocide. However he later initiated two rebel wars in DRC, the First Congo War, from 1996 to 1997, immediately followed by the Second Congo War (1998 to 2003). Among horrific atrocities committed was the serial rape and murder of Congolese women.

Canada’s Trudeau government, usually so ready to condemn others, has remained entirely silent about the continuing actions of the militia groups in DRC. Mineral wealth provides the incentive for the ongoing violence. Recent reports indicate that Rwanda’s national army, the Rwandan Defence Force, has deployed as many as four thousand soldiers to DRC. Their mission appears to be aiding the militia groups and facilitating the smuggling of minerals into Rwanda. The Rwandan army now has more soldiers in DRC than one of the largest militia groups, which calls itself March 23 but is generally known as M23. This and other Rwandan-backed militias have taken control of coltan and other mineral-mining operations.

The Congolese government estimates that it loses $1 billion (U.S.) each year because of these illegal activities. The Congolese army is fighting to halt these operations but finds itself facing an enemy that is very well armed with modern weapons such as so-called mortar drones. People continue to be forced to flee their homes, a harsh reality in eastern DRC for almost thirty years. This violence has also resulted in severe food shortages as farms are abandoned in areas controlled by militia groups. There has been a good deal of hand-wringing in the west on those occasions when we take any notice but nothing has been done.

The only realistic way to put an end to all this would be to confront the Rwandan government directly, with military force if necessary. DRC has also been plagued by outbreaks of disease. In 1976 the country made headlines due to the outbreak of ebola, a disease named after a tributary of the Congo River located in the north of DRC.

The ebola virus was first detected in a village about 110 kilometres away but it was decided to name the disease after the river in order to avoid having the village become forever known as the starting point of this often - though not always - fatal pathogen. There have been subsequent outbreaks that have killed thousands of people. Work to create vaccines began to make progress in 2014. The World Health Organization did much to speed the process and an effective vaccine began to be used in 2016. Recent outbreaks have been quickly brought under control.

Freedom House, a Washington D.C.- based non-profit that measures how democratic various nations are, continues to list DRC as “not free”. However, a review of current trends suggests that the Freedom House ranking should be reviewed. In January 2019, when Felix Tshisekedi became President, it marked the first time since independence that the presidency was peacefully transferred from one political party to another. Tshisekedi freed seven hundred political prisoners jailed by his predecessor. Understanding that education is vital to building a free and democratic state, he also invested heavily in schools for DRC’s next generation.

In December 2023 he faced another election, as the country’s constitution requires. Western media tended to focus on claims of voting irregularities that originated mostly with defeated candidates. Voter turnout was 48.8 per cent despite three provinces being unable to safely participate due to ongoing militia violence. That figure marks a small but important increase from the prior election in 2018 when 45.5 per cent of eligible voters cast a ballot. Tshisekedi was re-elected by a comfortable margin and reports from well-informed sources within DRC state that the majority of Congolais believe the election was run fairly, the results are credible and that the re-elected President had achieved some positive change that ordinary citizens could see for themselves. The really crucial point is this: if the majority of people in DRC see themselves as living in a democracy, how legitimate can it be for outsiders like Freedom House to claim otherwise?

​DRC is just one of many countries that has had a long, hard struggle to achieve democracy, and the hard work of maintaining what has been won never stops. The people of that nation have overcome crushing obstacles, and the progress they’ve made continues to be under siege by those both in Africa and abroad who have very different interests. We in the west could learn valuable lessons from DRC, if only we would pay attention.