A Glittering Demon: Mining, Poverty and Politics in the Democratic Republic of Congo

A Glittering Demon: Mining, Poverty and Politics in the Democratic Republic of Congo

by Michael Deibert, Special to CorpWatch

June 26th, 2008

In the heart of the war-scarred Ituri region in northeastern Congo, some 200 mud-covered men pan for traces of gold in the muddy brown waters.

Working for the Congolese owners of Manyida camp, the miners are following a map of the site made by the Belgians, the country's former colonial rulers.

"It's very difficult, punishing work," says Adamo Bedijo, a 32 year-old university graduate from the central city of Kisangani. "We are not paid, we work until we hit the vein of gold and hope that will pay us…The government has abandoned us, so I am forced to endure all this suffering."

Bedijo is one of Ituri's estimated 70,000 artisanal miners, some of whom are former employees of state mining concerns that collapsed during the country's long-running civil war. Two years after the first democratic elections in 40 years, informal arrangements such as Manyida are operating alongside the many foreign multinationals rushing in to tap the Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) extensive mineral resources.

The way foreign multinationals have gained entry into Congo, and the business methods they use, raise significant questions for a nation at historic crossroads. Will the DRC move forward to become more responsive to its nearly 67 million people scattered across an area as large as Western Europe, or will the tradition of rape-as-governance continue?

Read the full article here.

POLITICS: Is Democracy Dangerous in Multi-ethnic Societies?

POLITICS: Is Democracy Dangerous in Multi-ethnic Societies?

An interview with Frances Stewart, Oxford University Professor of Development Economics

Inter Press Service

OXFORD, Jun 26, 2008 (IPS) - The Centre for Research on Inequality, Human Security and Ethnicity (CRISE) would seem to have its work cut out for it in a world racked by brutal and enduring conflict. The centre's goal is to explore the links between ethnicity, inequality and conflict in order to identify policies that could lead to more inclusive multi-ethnic societies.

A first book-length publication 'Horizontal Inequalities and Conflict: Understanding Group Violence in Multi-Ethnic Societies' from CRISE is slated for a July release, the fruit of the institution’s recent years of research into conflict and its causes.

To find out more about that research, IPS correspondent Michael Deibert spoke to CRISE Director Frances Stewart.

Read the full article here.

Why I am not running by Morgan Tsvangirai

(Note: Today I am doing something that I rarely do on this blog: Reposting verbatim text that first appeared elsewhere. Given the current situation in Zimbabwe, though, the results of which I saw for myself on a recent visit to South Africa, and the conditions of which I have blogged about here before, I feel compelled to share with readers the following declaration of Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change political party in Zimbabwe. Mr. Tsvangirai’s statement was printed this evening in the Guardian newspaper. MD)

Why I am not running

My people are at breaking point. World leaders' bold rhetoric must be backed with military force

By Morgan Tsvangirai

The Guardian

Wednesday June 25, 2008

(Read the original article here)

In the course of the last few tumultuous months, I have often had cause to consider what it is that makes a country. I believe a country is the sum of its many parts, and that this is embodied in one thing: its people. The people of my country, Zimbabwe, have borne more than any people should bear. They have been burdened by the world's highest inflation rates, denied the basics of democracy, and are now suffering the worst form of intimidation and violence at the hand of a government purporting to be of and for the people. Zimbabwe will break if the world does not come to our aid.

Africa has seen this all before, of course. The scenario in Zimbabwe is numbingly familiar. A power-crazed despot holding his people hostage to his delusions, crushing the spirit of his country and casting the international community as fools. As we enter the final days of what has been a taxing period for all Zimbabweans, it is likely that Robert Mugabe will claim the presidency of our country and will seek to further deny its people a space to breath and feel the breeze of freedom.

I can no longer allow Zimbabwe's people to suffer this torture, for I believe they can bear no more crushing force. This is why I decided not to run in the presidential run-off. This is not a political decision. The vote need not occur at all of course, as the Movement for Democratic Change won a majority in the previous election, held in March. This is undisputed even by the pro-Mugabe Zimbabwe electoral commission.

Our call now for intervention seeks to challenge standard procedure in international diplomacy. The quiet diplomacy of South African President Thabo Mbeki has been characteristic of this worn approach, as it sought to massage a defeated dictator rather than show him the door and prod him towards it.

We envision a more energetic and, indeed, activist strategy. Our proposal is one that aims to remove the often debilitating barriers of state sovereignty, which rests on a centuries-old foundation of the sanctity of governments, even those which have proven themselves illegitimate and decrepit. We ask for the UN to go further than its recent resolution, condemning the violence in Zimbabwe, to encompass an active isolation of the dictator Mugabe.

For this we need a force to protect the people. We do not want armed conflict, but the people of Zimbabwe need the words of indignation from global leaders to be backed by the moral rectitude of military force. Such a force would be in the role of peacekeepers, not trouble-makers. They would separate the people from their oppressors and cast the protective shield around the democratic process for which Zimbabwe yearns.

The next stage should be a new presidential election. This does indeed burden Zimbabwe and create an atmosphere of limbo. Yet there is hardly a scenario that does not carry an element of pain. The reality is that a new election, devoid of violence and intimidation, is the only way to put Zimbabwe right.

Part of this process would be the introduction of election monitors, from the African Union and the UN. This would also require a recognition of myself as a legitimate candidate. It would be the best chance the people of Zimbabwe would get to see their views recorded fairly and justly.

Intervention is a loaded concept in today's world, of course. Yet, despite the difficulties inherent in certain high-profile interventions, decisions not to intervene have created similarly dire consequences. The battle in Zimbabwe today is a battle between democracy and dictatorship, justice and injustice, right and wrong. It is one in which the international community must become more than a moral participant. It must become mobilised.

· Morgan Tsvangirai is leader of the Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe

********************************

(An interesting addendum, all things consdered. MD)

Tsvangirai reverses peacekeeper plea

26 June 2008

LONDON, England (CNN) -- The British newspaper The Guardian printed a letter Thursday from Zimbabwe's opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai in which he denied writing a commentary printed in the paper a day earlier.

Tsvangirai said the commentary did not reflect his position or opinions regarding solutions to the violence and political crisis in Zimbabwe, and he emphasized that he does not advocate military intervention in his country -- a call made in Wednesday's article.

"Although The Guardian was given assurances from credible sources that I had approved the article this was not the case," he wrote in Thursday's letter.

A spokeswoman for The Guardian said the letter had been authorized by a Tsvangirai representative with whom the paper had dealt in the past, as well as Tsvangirai's representative in the Zimbabwean capital.

"The article was supplied to us and we had no reason to doubt the authenticity," said the spokeswoman, who asked not to be named.

The Wednesday editorial in The Guardian, which the paper said was penned by Tsvangirai, called for U.N. peacekeepers.

"We do not want armed conflict, but the people of Zimbabwe need the words of indignation from global leaders to be backed by the moral rectitude of military force," the editorial read.

Tsvangirai made the same call in an interview Wednesday with CNN, by phone from Harare. Asked whether he had requested peacekeepers from the United Nations, he indicated that he had.

"It's a proposal we are requesting," Tsvangirai told CNN. "It's because the violence is continuing, and it's violence that is being committed by armed forces against unarmed civilians. And all we are doing is to try to call for these peacekeepers so that normalcy can return and people can feel safe."

Asked then whether he had received any response from the United Nations to his call for peacekeepers, Tsvangirai said no, but he hoped the United Nations would urgently consider the move.

Thursday's letter from Tsvangirai was an apparent reversal of his call for U.N. peacekeepers.

"By way of clarification I would like to state the following: I am not advocating military intervention in Zimbabwe by the U.N. or any other organization," Tsvangirai wrote.

Tsvangirai said his party, the Movement for Democratic Change, wants an African solution to the crisis, specifically one from the 14-member Southern African Development Community (SADC).

He said he is asking the SADC and the larger African Union to lead an initiative, supported by the United Nations, to manage the transition of power.

"We are proposing that the AU facilitation team sets up a transitional period that takes into account the will of the people of Zimbabwe," he wrote.

Tsvangirai withdrew earlier this week from a presidential runoff election, scheduled for Friday, against President Robert Mugabe, citing pre-election violence that the MDC said has targeted its supporters. The U.N. Security Council unanimously condemned Zimbabwe's government for the violence.

Mugabe says the violence has targeted his own ZANU-PF party.

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission ruled that Friday's vote would go on as scheduled despite Tsvangirai's withdrawal, although U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the SADC had urged a postponement.

POLITICS-ETHIOPIA : A Tangled Political Landscape Raises Questions About African Ally of the U.S.

POLITICS-ETHIOPIA : A Tangled Political Landscape Raises Questions About African Ally of the U.S.

By Michael Deibert

Inter Press Service

ADDIS ABABA, Jun 21, 2008 (IPS) - When it was announced last month that the ruling party of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi had swept local polls in this vast Horn of Africa nation, few expressed surprise.

Zenawi's Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) coalition was declared by the country's national electoral board to have won 559 districts in the kebele and woreda divisions of local government and all but one of 39 parliament seats contested in the by-election. Out of a total of 26 million registered voters, the electoral board claimed that 24.5 million, or 93 percent, voted.

April's ballot was the first chance for the EPRDF to flex the muscles of its electoral machinery since general elections in May 2005. Though early returns that year suggested an electoral triumph for the country's two main opposition parties, the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) and the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces (UEDF). Prime Minister Zenawi declared a state of emergency before final results were announced. In the unrest that followed, hundreds of people were arrested and at least 200 killed by Ethiopian security forces. Official results -- not released until September -- gave 59 percent of the total vote to the EPRDF.

Cries of fraud stained the reputation of one of Washington's closest African allies. to whom, according to U.S. defense department figures, the Bush administration sold $6 million worth of weapons to in 2006, more armaments than went to any other African country. The weapons are used in part to aid Ethiopia in its war against Islamic militants based in neighboring Somalia, which Ethiopia invaded in late 2006 and where it remains involved in active combat to this day.

Read the full article here.

Q&A: Ethiopia's Urban Poor Cannot Afford To Eat

Q&A: Ethiopia's Urban Poor Cannot Afford To Eat

Interview with Abera Tola, Director of Oxfam's Horn of Africa regional office

Inter Press Service

ADDIS ABABA, Jun 21, 2008 (IPS) - Ethiopia, a nation of 80 million people, has been the site of famine and drought throughout its tumultuous history. Arising from a myriad of causes and often shepherded along by political instability, the country's 1984-85 famine, for example, left over a million dead and served as the impetus for the fund-raising concerts of Live Aid in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Today, Ethiopia once again stands at the brink of a substantial food crisis, with the Word Food Program currently estimating that, of Ethiopia's 80 million citizens, 3.4 million will need emergency food relief from July to September. This is in addition to the 8 million currently receiving assistance. UNICEF has asserted that the country's food shortage this year is the most severe since 2003, when droughts forced 13.2 million people to seek emergency food aid.

IPS correspondent Michael Deibert sat down in Addis Ababa with Abera Tola, Director of the Horn of Africa Regional Office of Oxfam America, to hear his insights as to Ethiopia's latest food crisis.

Read the full article here.

EU Seeks to Subdue Competitive China

TRADE-AFRICA: EU Seeks to Subdue Competitive China

By Michael Deibert

Inter Press Service

JOHANNESBURG, May 15, 2008 (IPS) - With the ascendance of China as a robust force on Africa's economic and political scene, plans are afoot in the European Union (EU) to pre-empt the Asian nation's dominance on the continent by forming a trilateral partnership that places Europe squarely in the centre.

The idea of a multilateral triumvirate was conceived by Louis Michel, the EU's commissioner for development and humanitarian aid, and seeks to lay out common ground in what has occasionally been a contentious relationship between these three actors.

''There are three fields where the partners can work together: peace and security, infrastructure and natural resources,'' says Veronika Tywuschik, a research assistant at the European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM) in Brussels. The ECDPM is a non-governmental organisation that assists African, Caribbean and Pacific countries with policy processes.

With Michel set to step down as commissioner in 2009, pressure is building for him to come up with a workable platform in the next few months.

A public consultation period which started on April 16 and will end on July 13 this year is seeking to gather a wide variety of views on how the proposed relations should be constructed.

A public consultation document has been released in the form of a questionnaire asking European citizens which sectors the cooperation should focus on and why.

Read the full article here.

A few photos from the Democratic Republic of Congo

Extraction from chaos?

Extraction from chaos?

By Michael Deibert

Foreign Direct Investment

April 10, 2008

Embattled by war and corruption but laden with large deposits of diamonds and copper, DR Congo is largely avoided by investors. Might that change? Michael Deibert reports.

Blessed with natural resources and occupying a vast swath of central Africa as large as the US east of the Mississippi River, the Democratic Republic of Congo is home to some of the word’s largest deposits of diamonds, copper, cobalt and coltan. Despite a fecund climate encompassing everything from dense, nearly impenetrable rainforests to fertile plains, the country has remained one of Africa’s most tragic. Held in the grip of a predatory state culture of corruption and the often nefarious designs of its neighbours and unscrupulous business dealers with little long-term interest in developing its infrastructure, DR Congo has struggled to attract investors.

The country’s president, Joseph Kabila, first assumed office in 2001 following the assassination of his father, Laurent, who led a rebel movement that toppled the 32-year dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko.

Elected for the first time during a violent ballot in 2006, President Kabila is an often mute presence on the Congolese political scene, going for weeks at a time without appearing in public. Nevertheless, the government has begun to take small steps to regularise the often anarchic foreign investment climate in the country, and in February completed a review of all international mining contracts, many of which were signed by President Kabila’s father under circumstances of questionable transparency during DR Congo’s 1998-2002 civil war.

Read the full article here.

Back from South Africa

I returned to Kinshasa from Johannesburg the other days, after what was, for me, a highly instructive and enjoyable two weeks in South Africa.

Initially hoping to have a short break from pretty much three-months non-stop reporting here in Congo, I was yet again reminded of how interconnected our word is when I was presented with the heart-wrenching story of the plight of hundreds of Zimbabwean refugees sleeping rough Joburg’s downtown, and was heartened by the wit and insight of their advocate. Busman’s holiday, as usual.

I ranged not only through the thoroughly salubrious Melville area (where I met up with my old friend and fellow journalist Gretchen Wilson, who has been in South Africa since 2004) but also the heavily-immigrant districts of Hillbrow and Yeoville, where South African tongues such as Zulu and Xhosa mingle with French and Lingala. A visit to Soweto offered the opportunity me see the house where Nelson Mandela, one of the handful of politicians I still have any respect for at all, lived at one time, as well as the Hector Pieterson Museum.

Perhaps no other icon better illustrates the stupid, banal brutality of the apartheid system that governed South Africa from 1948 until 1994 than the image of the lifeless body of schoolboy Hector Pieterson carried by another young boy, Mbuyisa Makhubo, as Pieterson’s sister, Antoinette, wails beside them. Pieterson was killed on June 16, 1976, when thousands of Soweto students were protesting the imposition of the Afrikaans language - the language of South Africa’s apartheid government - as the medium of instruction (along with English) in the country’s predominantly black schools. The killing sparked the Soweto uprising of 1976, an interesting account of which by Harry Mashabela I am currently reading.

While idly browsing through the bookstore at Oliver Tambo airport, I also picked up a copy of the The Bang-Bango Club, the account by the photojournalists Greg Marinovich and Joao Silva of their years, along with fellow photogs Kevin Carter and Ken Oosterbroek, of chronicling the violent era between Nelson Mandela’s release from prison in 1990 and South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994. It was a time during which, Marinovich and Silva, write, the forces within the country’s white power structure implacably opposed to a genuine democracy used members and affiliates of the Zulu-centered Inkatha Freedom Party as a bludgeon against the multiracial African National Congress in an effort to disrupt or even derail negations and the 1994 ballot that brought Nelson Mandela to power. The book is tough going - the photographers witnessed some truly ghastly violence, Ken Oosterbroek was fatally shot on the job and Kevin Carter later committed suicide - but it is an edifying read as the layers as the deception and collusion of that era’s violence are stripped away before the reader to reveal the naked power-play that was in fact at work. Reading about the constant money struggles of these, some of South Africa’s most well-regarded and courageous photographers, is also heartening for those of us who still do journalism for the love and mission of the craft and, as such, end up sacrificing a great deal in terms of comfort and financial security.

Walked through Kin La Belle again today, which swirls on to its own rhythm, as usual.

Portrait

My friend Eve Sibley painted a portrait of me when I was still living in New York which I just happened upon online. Not a bad likeness, all things told.

RIGHTS: In South Africa, Zimbabwean Refugees Find Sanctuary and Contempt

RIGHTS: In South Africa, Zimbabwean Refugees Find Sanctuary and Contempt

By Michael Deibert

Inter Press Service

JOHANNESBURG, May 4, 2008 (IPS) - As the autumn sun sets over South Africa's most populous city, the halls of downtown Johannesburg's Central Methodist Mission fill with weary figures, many far from home, seeking solace within its walls.

On every spare inch of space on the floors and narrow staircase of the mission -- and on the pavement outside -- the destitute curl up to find shelter as best they can from the chill wind that moves between the tall buildings in this city. Mixed in among them every night are hundreds of refugees from South Africa's northern neighbour, Zimbabwe, who have fled their country's slow-motion economic and political implosion.

"We sleep outside in the streets. Sometimes we spend days without eating anything; we spend weeks without working," says Owen Muchanyo, a 23-year-old secondary school teacher of mathematics and science from Chitungwiza, a town south of Zimbabwe's capital, Harare.

He has been in South Africa for three months. "It's better to sleep on the streets, where my life is somewhat safe, than to sleep in a house when my life is in danger."

Read the full article here.

"We Mustn't Think as South Africans That We Have Won the Day": An interview with Paul Verryn

"We Mustn't Think as South Africans That We Have Won the Day": An interview with Paul Verryn

Inter Press Service

JOHANNESBURG, May 4, 2008 (IPS) - Bishop Paul Verryn, who directs the Central Methodist Mission in Johannesburg, South Africa, has long been on the frontlines of the country's political struggles.

Born in 1952 in the capital city of Pretoria, Verryn came of age during the most contentious days of the fight against apartheid. After completing military training, he entered the ministry, working in the Eastern Cape Province for 11 years.

Verryn's experiences there as the chairman of the Detainees Parents' Support Committee -- which sought to aid the thousands of South Africans detained without trial at the time -- and the murder of anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko while in police custody in August 1977 served as something of a political awakening for the young cleric.

Transferred to the sprawling black settlement of Soweto in Johannesburg in 1987, Verryn has continued to live there until this day.

His criticism of the powerful continued with the advent of democracy in South Africa; many recall his tearful testimony before South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 1997 regarding the involvement of Winnie Mandela, former wife of anti-apartheid hero and then South African president Nelson Mandela, in the kidnapping and murder of Stompie Moeketsi.

The 14-year-old anti-apartheid activist was seized from Verryn's Soweto mission by Mrs Mandela's bodyguards in 1988, and his battered body later found in a ditch. Winnie Mandela was eventually convicted of involvement in Moeketsi's kidnapping.

Today, as director of the Central Methodist Mission, Verryn has taken up another cause: the plight of immigrants to South Africa from Zimbabwe, a country that has been blighted by political violence and economic degeneration in recent years. Having thrown open the doors of his mission to these new arrivals, he saw the building raided in a controversial police action earlier this year, but has refused stop providing shelter and assistance to the Zimbabweans as they stream southward.

IPS correspondent Michael Deibert sat down with Verryn to hear his thoughts on how the mission was meeting this and other challenges.

Read the full article here.

DRC: With Rebel Leader's Indictment, a Tentative Step to Accountability

DRC: With Rebel Leader's Indictment, a Tentative Step to Accountability

By Michael Deibert

Inter Press Service

JOHANNESBURG, May 1, 2008 (IPS) - The indictment against a militia leader whose alleged abuses span the Democratic Republic of Congo's war-ravaged east was finally made public at the end of April, almost two years after being delivered under seal to war crimes prosecutors.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) alleges that Bosco Ntaganda "committed war crimes of enlistment and conscription of children under the age of 15", using the children "to participate actively in hostilities in Ituri, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, from July 2002 until December 2003."

Formerly the chief of military operations for the Union des Patriotes Congolais (Union of Congolese Patriots, UPC), Ntaganda now serves as military chief of staff of the Congrès National pour la Défense du Peuple (National Congress for the Defence of the People, CNDP).

The warrant was made being made public now because it would "not endanger the witnesses of the DRC cases" at the present moment, the ICC said in a statement.

Read the full article here.

Hillbrow Vibes

Having arrived in Johannesburg on Monday, I have thus far found the city, despite its significant social ills, to be a vibrant, dynamic face of the mosaic that is modern day South Africa, and, as such, much to my liking. Glorious, crisp clear fall weather has complimented exploring nicely. After the ceaseless grind of Kinshasa, the restaurants, bookstores, good roads and ability to speak English are also welcomed breaks. Yesterday was an opportunity to dine with a colleague from the Inter Press Service and discuss international coverage of Africa and other issues, and today I will begin to wade into the situation of Zimbabwean exile politics and the treatment of Zimbabwean refugees by the government here. And hopefully a visit to House of Nsako will find it's way into the mix, as well.

Author's note: The title of this post is a naked steal from the opening song to the album Rhythm in Blue by the great T.K. Blue, referring as it does to the Jozi neighborhood of the same name. I first saw T.K. play with Randy Weston in New York a few years back, and later became friendly with him after seeing him play at a Darfur benefit concert. The album in question is a bracing tour of African and Caribbean rhythms in a modern jazz setting, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the genre.

HEALTH-DRC: Water Everywhere, But Is It Safe To Drink?

HEALTH-DRC: Water Everywhere, But Is It Safe To Drink?

By Michael Deibert

Inter Press Service

KINSHASA, Apr 24, 2008 (IPS) - The rain falls in battering sheets, rolling eastward along the Congo River through Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It is midday, but the sky turns black and soon the potholed streets of this decrepit yet vibrant metropolis are filled with pond-sized puddles, many of them larger than the cars that traverse them.

April is the beginning of the rainy season for the DRC's eastern provinces, a time when perpetually more water gets dumped on an already drenched region.

But despite an abundant rain supply and churning rivers, access to clean water has been a persistent problem for this Central African nation. As large as Western Europe, the DRC is still attempting to pick up the pieces after a decade of war and attendant upheaval that claimed the lives of over five million people, according to recent figures from the International Rescue Committee (IRC) relief organisation

Read the full article here.

The Fruits of Reform

The Fruits of Reform

Foreign Direct Investment

Mozambique, whose history has been blighted by a long liberation struggle and years of civil war, is starting to reap the benefits of recent macroeconomic reforms with a new wave of projects in its virtually untouched biofuel and tourism sectors, writes Michael Deibert.

For a country once so tumultuous that its leaders opted to adorn the national flag with the image of an AK-47, and so economically recalcitrant that widespread nationalisation of private industries was the order of the day, Mozambique has made great strides in liberalising its markets and attracting foreign investment in recent years.

Read the full article here.

On the passing of Aimé Césaire

Aimé Césaire, the Martiniquen writer who represented the best tradition of the author as public intellectual, passed away yesterday in Fort-de-France.

Though not hugely well-know in the English-speaking world, and though defying easily categorization, Césaire's intellectual leanings can be looked upon in some ways as an outgrowth of the Négritude movement in the French Caribbean, which sought to look back to African traditions for cultural legitimacy rather than to those of the region’s colonial powers, and which was arguably first started by the Haitian educator and ethnologist Jean Price-Mars, whose book Ainsi parla l’Oncle (Thus Spoke Uncle), was one of the current's earliest key texts. Ironically, perhaps, Césaire was deeply immersed in the politics of Martinique, a French department, and of France itself. As a student in Paris, he helped found L'Étudiant Noir, an important literary review and a precursor to the later literary journal, Tropiques.

Césaire, who served in France's Assemblée nationale from 1946 to 1956 and from 1958 to 1993, also served a nearly uninterrupted stint as mayor of Fort-de-France from 1945 until 2001. A one-time Communist, Césaire broke with the Communist Party following the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, an example of moral principle trumping political expediency that many progressives would do well to consider today.

His most famous work was arguably the long poem Cahier d'un retour au pays natal.

He also managed to have an airport named after him.

POLITICS-DRC: Cautious Calm Settles Over War-scarred Ituri Region

POLITICS-DRC: Cautious Calm Settles Over War-scarred Ituri Region

By Michael Deibert

Inter Press Service

BOGORO, April 17, 2008 (IPS) - Wading through the chest-high grass outside of this hamlet in north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Mathieu Nyakufa gestures to the bones -- still bleaching in the sun -- of those who have been lost to the country's wars.

"I was living just down here in the valley," the 52-year-old farmer says of one terrible morning in February 2003. "They were killing people with guns, with machetes, with spears and arrows. I escaped because I saw people running in my direction. Three of my children were killed in my own house."

An estimated 200 civilians were killed in Bogoro, located in the heart of the Ituri region, when combatants of the Forces de Résistance Patriotique d'Ituri (Patriotic Resistance Forces of Ituri, or FRPI), a militia dominated by the Ngiti and Lendu ethnic groups, attacked this scattered collection of thatched-roof huts and mud dwellings. At the time, Bogoro was a stronghold of the Union des Patriotes Congolais (Union of Congolese Patriots, UPC), an armed group loyal to the Gegere and Hema tribes.

"The UPC told me, 'Papa, run away, don't wait, because the Lendu are killing your people'," says Nyakufa.

The Bogoro massacre was one of many such slaughters that occurred in Ituri, which contains some of the world's most valuable deposits of gold and reserves of timber. A brutal extension of the civil war which engulfed this vast African nation from 1998 until 2003, the conflict in Ituri saw neighbouring Uganda and Rwanda arm militias in an ever-shifting web of alliances, as much for their own designs on Congo's natural resources as for any political solidarity with the Congolese.

Read the full article here.

Two photojournalist websites of note

Though the trend in the news business these days is to an ever-more streamlined (i.e. mercilessly gutted) approach to news gathering, particularly from developing countries, I, for one, have always maintained the belief that countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, where I now find myself, should be covered with every bit the dedication and seriousness afforded to Europe and North America.

During my years in the field reporting, I have often been fortunate enough to come across some talented photographers whom I was able to work with or, if not to directly collaborate with, whose work I was able to appreciate for its documentary and aesthetic appeal as it chronicled situations that I myself was witnessing. Photographers such as Rodrigo Abd from the Associated Press, whom I met at the exhumation of a massacre site in Guatemala, or Noelle Théard, whom I met on the front lawn of Haiti’s National Palace on January 1, 2004, reminded me, despite the desire of some editors for journalists and photographers to wear the same hat, that expertise in the written word and the visual image rarely run together, and that there are many photographers out there whose expertise far outstrips my own meager efforts in the field. The two disciplines, writing and photography, in my view run on two different engines, so it is always good to find competent, like-minded souls to produce a photographic record while I am busy recording the history of a place.

To that end, I would like to direct readers to a pair of newish websites by photographers whose acquaintance I’ve made over the years.

I first sat down to dinner with Thos Robinson at a little café in Astoria, Queens in New York City some years ago, just before Thos made his first of what would become many trips to Haiti and the Dominican Republic, empathetically documenting the lives of Haitians living on both sides of the border. Coming after a sojourn in Palestine, Thos’ time in Haiti, during some of which we worked together, has seen him producing a very impressive catalogue of black and white images that chronicle a country’s tentative moves toward peace and stability in the early days of the second presidency of René Préval. Thos’ website can be viewed here.

Andrew McConnell and I ran into one another earlier this year in Goma, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and from there ranged far and wide across North Kivu province for several days, covering the conflict and the displacement of the population there. Andrew’s chronicle of his travels in Europe, Asia and Africa can be viewed on his website, while a special feature on the continuing crisis in eastern DRC that Andrew composed, containing some haungting images of the the Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda at one of their base camps, can be viewed at the World Picture News website.

Michael Deibert responds to Peter Hallward

Michael Deibert responds to Peter Hallward

On my blog last month, I posted a lengthy review of the book Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide and the Politics of Containment, written by Middlesex University Professor Peter Hallward [1].

As I noted at the time, the work - composed chiefly of interviews with supporters of former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and often unreliably-referenced secondary source material - appeared to represent an attempt by Hallward, who had visited Haiti only twice during its writing and never bothered to learn to speak its poetic native Kreyol language, to excuse the excesses of Aristide’s 2001-2004 second mandate and argue that the president, far from being an exacerbating force in Haiti’s multitude of problems, was instead the hapless victim of a vast plot by local and foreign adversaries. Having first visited Haiti in 1997, and reported on the country for a variety of media outlets from 2000 until 2006, I knew Hallward’s thesis to be an incorrect one, and set about outlining what I found to be some of the more pernicious falsehoods with which he attempted to back it up.

This month, Peter Hallward, writing on the website Haiti Analysis [2], itself a veritable font of fanatical pro-Aristide propaganda, chose to respond to my critique of his book in an article that was subsequently reprinted on the website of MRZine.

Preoccupied as I am with reporting on the struggles of disenfranchised and disadvantaged peoples from often remote and violent locations (Democratic Republic of Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, India-administered Kashmir, Haiti itself), I confess that I haven’t had the time or inclination to keep up with every self-justifying bit of moral and intellectual acrobatics performed by the affluent foreign commentators that have comprised the bulk of support for Haiti’s disgraced former president since his ouster in February 2004. Given the array of very serious problems that confront Haiti these days - a dysfunctional parliament, spiraling food costs and attendant demonstrations, rampant deforestation and environmental degradation - the attention of those concerned with the country’s fate may indeed also be better focused elsewhere rather than on a protracted back-and-forth between two foreign intellectuals over a book of negligible interest or value to alleviating those ills.

However, briefly, in the interest of correcting the historical record which he seems content to muddy, I will respond to Peter Hallward’s response of my review of his book here.

Though Hallward writes that my 2005 book, Notes from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti (Seven Stories Press) was “applauding the overthrow” of the second Aristide government, a more accurate characterization might be that it was mourning the fraying of the broad social-democratic coalition that ousted the Duvalier dictatorship for power in 1986 and first brought Aristide to office in 1990, along with criticizing Aristide’s own role in that collapse. Having seen first hand the hopes that Haiti’s poor majority had invested in Aristide, and the way those hopes were cynically betrayed, far from glee and joy at the events of the president’s second mandate, to me the only appropriate response seemed to be sadness and regret at the waste of opportunity and human potential. Writers like Peter Hallward don’t seem to give much credence to emotions such as those when strident sloganeering will do, but I have found in my years in Haiti that political life there exists, not in black and white, but in varying shades of grey, where today’s democrat can be tomorrow’s despot and yesterday’s oppressor can be viewed as today’s unlikely liberator.

Hallward states in his response that I suggested that he deliberately misquoted Anne Hastings, the director of Haiti's lauded micro-credit institution Fonkoze, as coming out in full-throated defense of the Aristide government in his interview with her. Though Hallward may be bothered by a guilty conscience at this point, I said nothing of the sort. Writing to Hasting, who I have known for the better part of the decade as someone who stayed above the fray of Haitian politics to better continue Fonkoze‘s work of aiding Haiti‘s poor, I simply asked whether or not Hallward’s quotation of her was accurate. She responded in a 27 January 2008 email as follows [3]:

I don't think I have ever said or ever would say that. I am always very careful to say I don't know whether there is substance or not. It is up to the Haitian people to make their decision.

In his response to my review, Peter Hallward confirms that his quotation of Anne Hastings was erroneous. Whether it was intentional or not, I have no idea, but it does point to what, in my view, is a troubling pattern in Hallward’s work. Though I can’t claim omniscience in decoding Peter Hallward’s intentions when it comes to presenting such a curiously selected litany of false information as objective history, I do find, given his stated sympathies to the Aristide government and the Fanmi Lavalas party before starting his book or even visiting Haiti, that all of his “errors” should conveniently support his erroneous thesis rather suggestive. Nearly every one of the main claims in Damming the Flood - that the 2000 elections that returned Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power were free and fair, that the Aristide government was not actively involved in arming and organizing street gangs to crush its political opposition, that the government still retained a great deal of popular support in late 2003/early 2004 - are false, and demonstrably so, by the historical record as I laid out in my original review.

When Hallward, writes, for instance, that the Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains (RNDDH) Haitian human rights organization was part of "a very partial list of the recipients of USAID, IFES and/or IRI support" during the years leading up to the 2004 overthrow of Aristide, that is false. In his response to my review, Hallward tries to wriggle out of being caught in this obvious inaccuracy by writing that “NCHR’s receipt of USAID money… (is) a matter of the US Congressional record.” In my reviews of the sources of funding for NCHR Haiti (which later became RNDDH), I have found no evidence of money distributed to the group’s Port-au-Prince office by USAID. Seeking further confirmation, I wrote to Pierre Esperance, the group’s director, and he responded on 10 April 2008 with the following email [4]:

RNDDH has never and will not accepted funds from US government.

Though RNDDH/NCHR did receive funding from organziations such as Christian Aid, the Mennonite Central Committee, the Lutheran World Federation and a one-time grant from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), I still have found no eveidence of the group receiving funding from the United States government.

As to the Hallward’s characterization the massacre of anti-government militants in the northern city of Saint-Marc in February 2004 (along with innocent civilians), as always with Peter Hallward, any vile attack carried out by forces loyal to Jean-Bertrand Aristide was a “clash,” much as the vicious attack on protesting university students on 5 December 2003 (one of the defining moments in the end of Aristide’s second government) was “a brawl.” If Hallward doesn’t view the massacre at least 27 human beings and attendant atrocities such as gang rape which, given the presence of Unite de Securite de la Garde du Palais National d’Haiti personnel and gang members from the capital dressed in police uniforms, was certainly carried out with government knowledge, as a “crime against humanity,” it is hard to know what would qualify as such.

Peter Hallward could have written a perfectly reasonable, factual book outlining why he thought the second Aristide government as it existed deserved to be allowed to finish its mandate, however appalling its excesses, and why the convergence of forces against the president and his political party (many of them thrown together by Aristide’s own actions) would, in the long run, cause even greater harm to Haiti’s poor majority than the violent, corrupt and despotic actors who ruled Haiti from 2001 until 2004.

That is not, however, what Hallward did.

Based on a review of his secondary source material and discussions with some of his primary sources, I have concluded that Hallward, either through intention or through a series of extraordinarily ideologically fortuitous mistakes, time and again printed false information that flies in the face of the documented record and, indeed, the transcripts of his own interviews.

As for Peter Hallward’s statement that I view his book as being written by “an ignorant outsider,” I will simply say this: We are all, those of us of foreign birth who write on Haiti, outsiders to one degree or another. The question is whether or not, that being the case, we operate in good faith when chronicling events in this small, impoverished country. Over the better part of a decade, encouraged by the example of many brave Haitian journalists, I did my best to act in good faith while reporting from a vast array of locales around Haiti about the desire of the Haitian people for a responsive and responsible government to address their legitimate grievances and historic disenfranchisement. I did so often at considerable personal risk and for little or no financial reward. It was the least I owed the long-suffering people there who entrust outsiders such as myself with trying to help the world understand their story.

Finishing Damming the Flood, I believe knowing whether or not Peter Hallward operated in similar good faith is open to debate, but the evidence is not encouraging.


Michael Deibert is the author of Notes from the Last Testament: The Struggle for Haiti (Seven Stories Press).


1. A Review of Peter Hallward’s Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide and the Politics of Containment , March 16, 2008.

2. One of the “editors” of Haiti Analysis, a seemingly-eternal graduate student named Jeb Sprague, first announced his presence to me by emailing me (unsolicited) a graphic photo of the bullet-riddled, blood-soaked bodies of a Haitian mother and her children along with a smiley-face emoticon. I was left shrugging that perhaps Sprague suffered from some sort of mental illness, as he viewed the dead mother and her toddlers appropriate material for some sort of cheap joke.

3. Email from Anne Hastings, 27 Janaury 2008

4. Email from Pierre Esperance, 10 April 2008.

(Author's note: This response was submitted to MRZine editor Yoshie Furuhashi who, apparently in the interest of stifling and obscuring discussion on the subject of Haiti, refused to print it. So much for free debate.)