IMMIGRATION CLANDESTINE, ESCLAVAGE, TRAITE NEGRIERE ET DEVOIR DE MEMOIRE

Chères toutes et tous,

Malgré les patrouilles qui sillonnent les frontières maritimes et terrestres. Malgré le dispositif électronique qui scrute les horizons pour détecter les mouvements des personnes. Rien n'y fait. Rien ne casse la dynamique de l'immigration clandestine (voir mon article. Immigration clandestine : hypocrisie européenne et responsabilité africaine). Les candidats à l'immigration clandestine s'adaptent à la nouvelle donne et peaufinent des stratégies en conséquence. A cela s'ajoute les sans-papiers qui sont à l'intérieur de l'Europe, devenue une forteresse prétendument imprenable. Les Etats-Unis ne sont pas non plus épargnés par les affres de l'immigration clandestine et les sans-papiers (voir ci bas).

L'immigration clandestine et les sans papiers empoisonnent la vie des gouvernements et des partis politiques en Europe. Parce qu'ils font le lit de l'extrême-droite. Partout en Europe, l'extrême-droite monte dans les sondages d'opinion. L'immigration clandestine et les sans-papiers deviennent des enjeux capables de défaire des gouvernements. Ils investissent les plateaux de télévision, les stations de radio, alimentent la presse écrite avec une iconoclaste frénésie et suscitent des débats contradictoires souvent virulents et vifs.

Ici et la, les sans-papiers s'organisent, se réfugient dans des églises, mobilisent les opinions nationales et demandent l'obtention des papiers de séjour. Parallèlement, des groupuscules d'inspiration néo-nazie, -essentiellement nourri par le racisme, xénophobie et l'antisémitisme- font la croix gammée, profanent les tombes, brûlent les synagogues, harcèlent et souvent tuent des personnes innocentes dont le tort est d'avoir, soit une couleur de la peau différente, soit une confession différente ou les deux a la fois. Le triple meurtre d'Anvers en Belgique, en est une parfaite illustration. Triple meurtre parce que la jeune femme africaine abattue était en grossesse (la troisième victime est la fille qu'elle gardait).

Même la Russie –ancienne gardienne de l'international socialiste est atteinte de plein fouet par ce fâcheux phénomène. Les meurtres des africains et d'autres étrangers défrayent régulièrement la chronique. Karl Max, Lénine, Trotski et Che Guevara –qui rêvaient d'un monde fraternel, convivial, ou les inégalités, le racisme, l'antisémitisme et l'oppression- disparaîtront avec la mort du capitalisme doivent se retourner dans leurs tombes. Il est vrai que la perestroïka, le glanost et la chute du mur de Berlin (1989), ont reformaté sociologiquement, géographiquement et idéologiquement l'URSS et ses anciens pays satellites.

Partout en Europe, pour contrer l'extrême-droite, la droite classique s'invente une idéologie hybride faite du néo-libéralisme matinée du social-populisme, voire du poujadisme larvée. Partout en Europe, mais en France plus qu'ailleurs, la droite sort sous des oripeaux retailles, une stratégie de lutte contre l'immigration clandestine et qui par ricochet, l'aidera à freiner la montée de l'extrême droite. La droite redoute le remake du cataclysme du 21 Avril 2002, mais cette fois-ci, avec l'élimination du candidat de la droite des le premier tour en 2007. Ce spectre hante les esprits des leaders de la droite française et ne relève pas de l'autoflagellation schizophrénique, encore moins du masochisme morbide.

Déjà en campagne pré-électorale, la droite française passe à l'offensive et investit le terrain de prédilection de l'extrême-droite. Immigration Choisie et non subie, Carte de Compétence Universelle est la nouvelle mouture proposée par la droite française. Elle annonce une série des mesures draconiennes. Attaque tout azimuts contre les mariages en blancs, durcissement des conditions de regroupement familial, expulsion –menottes aux poings- des clandestins, refus de régulariser les sans-papiers et encouragement des retours volontaires aux pays d'origine, moyennant compensation financière. Le tout dans un décor surmédiatisé. Spectacle burlesque et ludique. Spectacle sulfureux aussi.

Les leaders de l'extrême-droite comprennent le danger de la récupération de leur cheval de bataille. Ils préviennent : « Les français ne sont pas dupes. Ils choisiront –le moment venu- l'original et non la copie ».

L'Amérique a aussi ses immigres clandestins et ses sans-papiers. Dans cette Amérique, riche, puissante et plus impériale que jamais, les sans-papiers en ont ras-le-bol, des emplois au rabais, des salaires de misère et du manque total de protection sociale : ils n'ont ni assurance-maladie, ni assurance-chômage.

Comme en Europe, les sans-papiers –environ 12 millions- demandent la régulation de leurs statuts. Ils choisissent la rue et le spectaculaire pour exprimer leurs revendications. Les sans-papiers –majoritairement « Hispanic »- soutenus par la grande majorité des « Hispanic » résidents et naturalisés américains, organisent des marches de protestation et appellent pour une « ville morte ». Ils savent qu'ils sont en train de gagner la bataille démographique. Ils constituent –désormais- la plus large communauté parmi les minorités. Les « Hispanic » naturalisés américains ou ceux d'entre eux qui ont acquis la nationalité américaine a la naissance (le fameux droit du sol et non le droit du sang comme dans beaucoup des pays européens) peuvent voter. Et par solidarité avec leurs sans-papiers, ils peuvent nuire au parti Républicain lors des élections de « Mid-Term » pour le Congres au mois de novembre. Très mauvaise nouvelle pour la Maison Blanche, fragilisée par Katrina (voir mon article ; Etats-Unis : Katrina, racisme, pauvrete et moralité), la guerre de l'Irak, les démissions en cascades, les affaires qui défrayent la chronique. La dernière est cette affaire d'écoute téléphonique par la NSA (ressentie comme une intrusion du pouvoir dans la vie privée des américains).

Les « Hispanic » manifestent dans les grandes villes américaines. Ils bombent les torses, roulent les muscles et donnent de la voix, portant le ton aussi dans le paroxysme. Ils hissent le drapeau mexicain et d'autres pays de l'Amérique du Sud. Ils chantent l'hymne américain en ….espagnol. Ce geste est perçus comme une dangereuse dérive communautaire et identitaire qui peur menacer la cohésion nationale, chèrement acquise. Les oreilles de la Maison Blanche sifflent et quelques faucons du Parti Republicain sortent du bois, s'indignent : « They don't have a right to translate our national anthem in spanish. This is America , they have to respect the rules and regulations ». (Ils n'ont pas le droit de traduire l'hymne national en espagnol. Nous sommes en Amérique, ils doivent obéir aux lois et règles).

Esclavage et Traite Négrière et devoir de mémoire. Beaucoup des mémoires. Mémoire africaine blessée, mémoire trahie, mémoire assassinée,

Mémoire blessée. On stigmatise la collaboration des royaumes et empires africains lors de l'esclavage et la traite négrière mais on passe sous silence les virulentes résistances contre l'innommable. Tel Mpanzu a Nzinga dont la farouche opposition a la traite négrière mais aussi a la main mise des occidentaux sur les ressources du royaume du Kongo causa sa perte. Les puissances européennes esclavagistes se coalisèrent et décidèrent de son élimination physique. Il fut abattu le jour de son accession au trône par un soldat portugais. Telle, la reine Nzinga qui avec son armée, se battra pendante près de 30 ans contre les armées de coalitions portugaise, néerlandaise et anglaise. Les exemples de résistances dans d'autres royaumes et empires africains sont légions.

Mémoire trahie. Les anciennes puissances européennes esclavagistes traînent les pieds pour reconnaître leurs crimes et responsabilité dans la traite négrière et esclavage. La France a fait le premier pas. Le 10 mai, en France, sera désormais, la journée officielle de commémoration de l'abolition de l'esclavage. Initiative doublement tardive : cinq ans après la loi « Taubira » et près de 160 ans après l'abolition de l'esclavage en 1848. Frileuse, la France s'arrête a mi-chemin et rechigne a franchir le rubicon : celui de réparation et compensation. Les gouvernants ne veulent pas ouvrir la boite de pandore donnant ainsi du grain a moudre a l'extreme-droite et a tous les cassandre de la ‘Justice, Ici et Maintenant' qui exigent des réparations pour l'Afrique. Ce 10 Mai, une partie de la presse française montre des photos sur les horreurs de Leopold II. Elle plonge et remue le couteau dans les plaies des RDCongolais qui ne se cicatriseront pas de si tôt.

Mémoire assassinée. Le racisme qui fit à la base de la déshumanisation de l'homme Noir qui s'est poursuivit au cœur de l'Europe des Lumières, n'a pas pris de ride. Aujourd'hui encore le Noir est considéré comme un sous-être, incapable de s'assumer, de définir son devenir et d'apporter sa contribution a l'essor scientifique et technologique. Cet afro-pessimisme trouve écho auprès de certains occidentaux paternalistes, qui prétendent –avec un lyrisme un peu pataud- que la technique est étrangère à l'Afrique, et même à son génie et que c'est même contraire à sa chaleur humaine.

Mémoire ressuscitée. Comment le monde s'est transformé et surtout comment les premiers hommes sont partis de l'Afrique pour gagner les autres continents. Comment l'Afrique a produit d'autres races, d'autres morphologies. The « National Geographic » apporte sa contribution, utilisant une arme redoutable : ADN. 100.000 échantillons de salive vont être prélevées sur les populations de tous les continents. Une première a l'échelle de la planète Il s'agit d'établir le patrimoine génétique de toutes les premières tribus de la planète et d'étudier leur migration. Les chercheurs vont prélever des goûtes de salive, car chaque salive est une page de l'histoire de l'humanité. La génétique au secours de l'histoire, de la géographie, de l'anthropologie, de la sociologie…..

Abdoulaye est furax et dépité. Toute amertume n'a pas encore quitté son cœur. Il regarde au ciel et ne comprends pas. Il vient d'être refoulée à la frontière espagnol pour la quatrième fois. Avec un groupe d'amis, il s'était passé des passeurs. Question de réduire sensible les frais.

A la question du journaliste qui lui demande s'il recommencerait, il fulmine : « Je recommencerai jusqu'à ce que la chance me sourit. J'ai une licence en bio-chimie. Je suis au chômage depuis six ans. Je n'ai pas des pistons pour trouver du boulot dans mon pays. Je suis marie et père de trois enfants. J'ai aussi des sœurs. J'ai quitté mon pays, parce que je ne supportais plus de voir mes enfants crever de faim. Je ne supportais plus d'être inutile. Je préfère mourir dans l'océan que mourir de misère et de honte. Je recommencerai jusqu'à mort s'en suive… ».

Frustré par l'impuissance du gouvernement fédéral américain, d'enrayer l'immigration clandestine, les comites d'auto-défense de la nation, sillonnent les frontières et traquent les immigrants clandestins. Ce jour la, le chef de la milice est aux anges. La « prise » est bonne. Il montre fièrement un groupe des « hispanic ». Enrico est du groupe. Il craque et confesse. Il a payé très cher son « voyage » : quatre mille dollars. Il a bravé les morsures de serpent, le vent aveuglant du désert, la chaleur déshydratante et suffocant du désert.

Comme Abdoulaye, Enrico est prêt à recommencer. Il tentera de nouveau sa chance. Un jour –peut être- il y arrivera. Il rejoindra les autres clandestins, travaillera au noir et enverra l'argent à sa famille. Il se débrouillera pour faire venir d'autres, à commencer par sa femme qu'il a laissé dans son pays.

Il y aura de plus en plus d'Enrico et d'Abdoulaye. L'Occident refuse de se rendre à l'évidence simple : L'immigration clandestine est le résultat des inégalités de bien être et de richesse entre les pays riches et les pays pauvres et du manque d'opportunités et perspectives dans les pays pauvres.

Aussi tant que ce déséquilibre durera, les pays riches –Etats-Unis en tête- fascineront et attirerons toujours les immigres clandestins. Et, ce n'est pas les mesures de coercition, d'intimidation qui résoudront le problème. L'Occident doit aider les pays pauvres à mettre de l'ordre chez eux. Les années 60 et 70, on parlait des « boat people » chinois. Qui en parle encore aujourd'hui ? Mêmement pour les Vietnamiens. Pourquoi les chinois et les vietnamiens ne tentent plus ces expériences périlleuses ? Parce qu'ils vivent bien chez eux.

Le 10 Mai 2001, le parlement français vote la loi « Taubira » qui reconnaît la traite négrière et l'esclavage comme des crimes contre l'humanité. Mais il faut attendre cinq ans pour que la France célèbre pour la première fois la commémoration de l'abolition de l'esclavage.

Ce 10 Mai 06, Françoise Verges, prof en Sciences Po et vice-présidente du Comité est invitée par TV5Monde, pour commenter sur son dernier livre  : MEMOIRE ENCHAINEE, questions sur l'esclavage, Edition Albain Michel . A la question du journaliste qui lui demandait : pourquoi se réveille-t-on si tard ? Pourquoi cette commémoration si tardive ?

Pour Françoise Verges, « des 1848, il y a eu un silence en France, un silence total sur la traite négrière et l'esclavage. Il n'y aura aucune ligne dans les grands livres d'histoire, dans les grands récits qui vont fonder le registre national Français, aucune trace dans les manuels scolaires. Des générations des français vont aller à l'école sans savoir, qu'il y a eu la traite négrière et l'esclavage. On le cache en France. Simplement parce que la France ne veut pas s'associer a cette histoire, veut la mettre derrière elle, ne veut pas la reconnaître. Mais de ce fait, en ne reconnaissant pas cette histoire, la France produit des trous de mémoire, des troubles aussi. Le silence va s'accumuler et produire dans les années 60 et 70, dans les départements d'outre-mer –anciennes sociétés esclavagistes- un besoin, une nécessité de dire l'histoire ».

Pour couvrir la commémoration de l'abolition de l'esclavage, la presse française ; audio-visuelle et écrite a été très friande. Dans la revue Intelligence du Monde du 10 mai 06 , on découvre des photos répugnants, de l'atrocité et l'horreur en grande nature, haut en couleur. On voit un congolais tétanisé et meurtri en train de regarder le corps mutilé d'une jeune fille gisant à même le sol. Le bras et la jambe gauche de la fille sont coupés. Un panier de caoutchouc a moitié vide, une chicote (fouet) a cote de la fille. Le congolais reconnaît sa fille. On vient de la punir, parce que, lui, le père n'a pas assez produit du caoutchouc, son rendement est en dessous de la moyenne, sa productivité insignifiante. Plus loin, les congolaises sont enfermées dans des enclos pour dissuader et décourager toute velléité de fuite de leurs époux et fils.

A l'époque, le Congo utile était à l'Equateur. L'Etat Indépendant du Congo (propriété de Léopold II, excusez du peu) et le Liberia étaient les deux pays au monde capable de produire du caoutchouc à grande échelle. La naissance de l'industrie automobile avait besoin de caoutchouc. Le malheur de nos grands parents de l'Equateur, était de se trouver au mauvais endroit et d'être propriétaire d'une terre qui avait une ressource naturelle convoitée par les occidentaux. Pendant qu'on mutilait, foutait nos grands parents, qu'on violait nos grandes- mères, les occidentaux, eux, roulaient en voiture, limousine, carrosses et pédalaient la bicyclette. Avaient-ils conscience que les congolais et les libériens qui produisaient ce caoutchouc étaient soumis à des régimes des travaux forcés où ils étaient battus, mutilés, humiliés ?

Ironie du sort, la RDCongo se retrouve dans la même situation que le Congo de Léopold II. Seul la province a changé. La ressource naturelle aussi. Le grand Kivu –le nouveau Congo utile- possède parmi tant d'autres ressources : le coltan. Seuls deux pays au monde possèdent cette ressource en abondance : La RDCongo et l'Australie. Le coltan sert a La fabrication du téléphone portable, certaines particules des avions et de l' electro-ménager. Les occidentaux et même les africains, ont-ils conscience que les téléphones portables (qu'ils exhibent fièrement, qui leur confèrent un statut social) portent la détresse et les multiples souffrances des RDCongolais ?

La quête du devoir de mémoire peut-elle conduire à une dynamique communautaire susceptible de déboucher sur un repli communautariste et a des réactions genre racisme a rebours? Pas du tout. Le devoir de mémoire doit se nourrir de la double volonté de connaître la Vérité et de se Réconcilier. Les sociétés civiles de tous les pays doivent s'investir pour que toutes les mémoires s'entrelacent, se moulent, se rencontrent pour écrire une seule Histoire . Pour ce faire, il faut que la vraie Histoire de l'esclavage soit dans les manuels scolaires, beaucoup plus d'enseignements, plus des centres de documentation, des librairies, plus des bibliothèques, des archives, des films de fictions, des documentaires, des pièces de théâtre.

Au Sénégal par exemple, tous les instruments de la pédagogie active sont réunis (théâtre, jeu de rôle, poésie, manuels scolaires) pour enseigner l'histoire de la traite Trans-Atlantique. Avec l'aide de l'UNESCO, ces matériels didactiques visent un seul objectif : briser le silence et dire ce qui n'a jamais été dis.

Les cameras de TV5 Afrique se sont promenées sur l'Etablissement Mariama Ba, une école « select » située sur l'île de Gorée. Trois lycéennes de moins de 15 ans témoignent.

Fatoumata Dia : « Nous sommes des jeunes et je crois que notre histoire ne doit pas nous échapper. On doit tout savoir sur la traite négrière pour raconter ça aux générations futures pour qu'elles sachent ce que leurs ancêtres ont vécu ».

Ramatoulaye Mbacke : « Même si je ne l'ai pas vécu, je l'ai appris et je ne l'oublierai jamais ».

Ndeye Mossane Mabate : « Il y a l'Europe qui s'en sort, qui a la grande victoire, qui devient puissante. Et après on nous demande de pardonner. On a pardonné. Mais il faut pas, après qu'on nous dise que vous etes pauvres. Parce qu'en fait, notre pauvreté découle un peu de ça ».

Joseph Ndiaye -82 ans- Conservateur de la Maison des Esclaves de Gorée, depuis 40 ans nous interpelle : « Entre 1536 et 1858, 15 a 20 millions des noirs de l'Afrique de l'Ouest ont été envoyés aux Amériques. Six millions d'entres eux sont morts de faim, de privation et de mauvais traitement. Il faut noter que c'est la force vive qu'on déportait. On prenait les plus robustes, les plus jeunes, les plus forts. L'esclavage et la colonisation ont une seule origine : le racisme. L'exploitation d'une race par une autre –prétendument supérieure-. Le retard de l'Afrique sur le développement, trouve aussi ses origines dans ces deux crimes ».

La nouvelle histoire passe par la confrontation entre celle écrite par les colons et les puissances européennes esclavagistes et celle écrite par les colonisés, les victimes . A l'époque coloniale, les belges commémoraient la fin de l'esclavage. Mais a leur manière et avantage. Ils offraient a nos parents et a nos aînés des pièces de théâtre, souvent au stade et a travers des formats, qu'ils appelaient pompeusement : Spectacle Populaire. On voyait des congolais parqués dans l'esclaverie (pièces étroites où on confinait des centaines d'esclaves) comme des bêtes de somme, par les Arabes et prêts a être expédier vers les Amériques et ailleurs. Puis arrivait les belges et autres européens. Ils livraient un combat féroce, subissaient des pertes, mais plus fort, ils chassaient les arabes et libéraient les congolais. Ils libéraient les congolais au prix de leur sang. Ce formidable entreprise de décervelage produisit l'effet escompté dans l'imaginaire collectif des congolais. Pour beaucoup de nos parents, arabe rimait avec esclavage et belge s'accommodait avec libération et civilisation . Les puissances coloniales avaient habilement instrumentaliser la lutte contre les marchands d'esclaves arabes pour justifier leur présence dans les differents empires et royaumes africains.

Les puissances européennes esclavagistes, ont aussi stigmatisé la collaboration et la responsabilité des empires et royaumes africains pendant la traite négrière et l'esclavage. Les résistances africaines contre l'innommable sont délibérément passées sous silence. Tel Mpanzu a Nzinga du royaume du Kongo. Il était contre la traite négrière mais surtout voulait écourter les relations bilatérales entre le royaume et les puissances européennes. C'était son thème de campagne. Contrairement aux idées reçues, la monarchie Kongo n'était pas héréditaire (la succession se faisait par élection et il n'était pas systématique qu'un fils succède à son père). Bien que prince et prétendant favori a la succession de son père, Mpanzu a Nzinga a du battre campagne et convaincre les représentants des clans et des corps de métiers Kongo (le corporatisme : initiation et apprentissage des corps de métiers. Pratique qui était en vogue dans la féodalité européenne. Les ne-Kongo et les autres empires africains le pratiquaient avant leur contact avec des blancs), du bien-fondé de son programme.

Elu triomphalement, il fut assassiné le jour de son accession au trône. Car le prince élu menaçait les intérêts occidentaux. Avant l'arrivée des européens, le royaume Kongo était à son apogée. Grâce à sa dotation en ressources naturelles mais aussi en ressources humaines, formées dans les meilleurs écoles (les plus connues sont les quatre prestigieuses écoles –Kimpasi, Kinkimba, Buelo et Lemba- ou étaient formées l'élite Kongo), le royaume disposait d'un vaste réseau commercial et échangeait avec les autres empires et royaumes africains. Les produits les plus prisés furent le cuivre, l'or, les vêtements des raffia et la poterie. On y battait la monnaie et les finances publiques étaient saines. Les pays européens bénéficièrent de ces échanges, comme les autres royaumes de la région. Ils voulurent y ajouter la lucrative traite négrière. Le programme électoral de Mpanzu a Nzinga, la radicalité de ses propos (rompre toute forme de relation avec les pays européens) et son refus de verser dans la traite négrière poussèrent les puissances européennes esclavagistes (Portugal, Hollande et Angleterre) d'organiser la riposte et programmer son élimination physique. Il fut abattu par un soldat portugais. Ana Nzinga reprendra le flambeau et a la tête d'une armée se battra pendant près de 30 ans contre les armées de coalitions portugaise, néerlandaise et anglaises. Les exemples de résistances dans d'autres royaumes et empires africains sont légions.

Pour faire « parler » notre mémoire, deux écrivains, ont écrit. L'un est Soudanais, l'autre Angolais. Retransmettre l'histoire, les événements, des souvenirs, pour ne pas les voir se perdre dans la mémoire défaillante ou pour ne pas laissez a d'autres de les falsifier au gré des intérêts du moment.

Deux écrivains nous livrent leurs réflexions sur ces thèmes entre la littérature et la sauvegarde de la mémoire. Mais est-il possible que des pays perdent leur mémoire ? Répondre a cette lancinante question –oh combien récurrente- a nourrit la démarche de deux écrivains africains, bien de chez nous.

Commençons d'abord par la Nubie, entre l'Egypte et le Soudan ou la construction du barrage d'Assouan a permis l'irrigation -mais a noyé au passage- des villages entiers. Jamal Mahjoub garde en mémoire les paroles de sa grande mère nubienne : « Ne laisse pas aux autres falsifier l'histoire glorieuse de ton pays, de ton Afrique, ton histoire ». A toute occasion la mémoire du majestueux fleuve l'interpellait. L'histoire du fleuve est tellement ancienne et dépasse de loin, tous les récits et paraboles concoctés par ceux qui sont venus d'ailleurs. Pour essayer de ressusciter la mémoire enfouie, Jamal Mahjoub vient de publier son dernier roman : MEMOIRE NOYEE DANS NUBIA INDIGE, qu'il vient de présenter a Paris.

Il confie au journaliste de TV5 Afrique : « Pour moi, je vis en Espagne, j'écrits en Anglais, je viens du Soudan. La seule chose qui reste comme centre de gravite pour moi, c'est l'écriture ». Il a choisit de se battre pour réhabiliter la mémoire africaine. La quête du devoir de mémoire , encore et toujours.

Mémoire noyée pour Jamal Mahjoub, mémoire falsifiée pour l'écrivain angolais José Eduardo Agualusa qui vient de publier : LE MARCHAND DU PASSE . Une fable politique très réussie sur la mémoire réinventée.

Lors de la présentation de son livre, Agulusa –avec un brin de dépit- confie : « En Angola, la mémoire est quelque chose de très fragile, parce qu'on n'a pas les outils de la mémoire comme en Europe. Il y a très peu de bibliothèque ou pas du tout. Très peu des librairies voir pas du tout ».

Parmi les outils pour reconstruire la mémoire, le musée de l'esclavage de Luanda fait ce qu'il peut avec les reliques de l'histoire ou les esclavagistes régnaient en maîtres et les maisons du littoral témoignent difficilement d'une période coloniale qui a renforcé les clivages entre les ethnies.

Ecoutons Agualusa : « Il y a eu d'abord l'effacement de cette mémoire par le système colonial au 19eme Siècle. Par exemple, le système effaçait la mémoire africaine ou en tout cas, ne la mettait pas en valeur. Ce faisant, il effaçait en quelque sorte la mémoire proprement africaine ».

Agualusa est né dans la ville de Huambo (ex-Nova Lisboa). Ici, les enfants rêvent d'un pays imaginaire nommé ALASKA. On espère qu'ils pourront un jour, lire ces romans nécessaires pour soigner une mémoire blessée.

Comme tous les chercheurs avant eux, les deux écrivains regrettent amèrement une chose : L'Afrique –berceau de l'humanité, mère des peuples et des continents- n'offre pas les conditions optimales pour des travaux qui visent a réhabiliter sa mémoire falsifiée et blessée, sinon assassinée.

Comme pour répondre à ce cri de détresse et à faire justice, la génétique vient au secours , non seulement de l'Afrique mais de toute l'humanité. Le monde a connut des mutations, et transformations inégalées. Du premier homme, aux tribus, puis aux royaumes, empires et nations. D'une population insignifiante a près de 6 milliards d'habitants aujourd'hui. The « National Geographic » lance un projet ambitieux. Comment le monde s'est transformé et surtout comment les premiers hommes sont partis de l'Afrique pour gagner les autres continents. Comment l'Afrique a produit d'autres races, d'autres morphologies.

Devoir de mémoire. Mémoire enfouie, mémoire souillée, mémoire assassinée, les scientifiques de « National Géographique » apportent leur contribution et recourent a une arme redoutable : ADN. Ce Projet qui vient d'être lancé, couvrira le monde entier et durera cinq ans. Une première a l'échelle de la planète Il s'agit d'établir le patrimoine génétique de toutes les premières tribus de la planète et d'étudier leur migration. Les chercheurs vont prélever des goûtes de salive, car chaque salive est une page de l'histoire de l'humanité. Une partie de l'équipe des chercheurs est déjà au Tchad. Une tribu - qui ne s'est jamais mélangée aux autres, qui n'a jamais quitté la terre de ses ancêtres- vient d'être identifiée. D'autres populations les plus reculées de la planète sont aussi ciblées, y compris celles de la Sibérie. . Les scientifiques vont comparer les patrimoines génétiques sur tous les continents. 100 000 échantillons d'ADN vont être prélevés en cinq ans. Lors d'un point de presse, pour donner le contours et les objectifs de la recherche, Dr. Spencer Wells –responsable do projet- déclare : « Certains de nos ancêtres ont quitté l'Afrique pour l'Australie il y a 50 000 ans. D'autres émigreront vers l'Europe et la Sibérie, puis vers les Amériques. Avons-nous dans nos veines du sang africain, esquimaux et indien ? La génétique permettra de percer un peu plus les mystères de nos origines ».

Patriotiquement,

Mme Mulegwa Kinja
mulkinja@ip-worldcom.ch

14  Mai 2006

A journey into the most savage war in the world, My travels in the
Democratic Vacuum of Congo.

The Independent - 06/05/2006

This is the story of the deadliest war since Adolf Hitler's armies marched
across Europe. It is a war that has not ended. But is also the story of a
trail of blood that leads directly to you: to your remote control, to your
mobile phone, to your laptop and to your diamond necklace. In the TV series
'Lost', a group of plane crash survivors believe they are stranded alone on
a desert island, until one day they discover a dense metal cable leading out
into the ocean and the world beyond. The Democratic Republic of Congo is
full of those cables, mysterious connections that show how a seemingly
isolated tribal war is in reality something very different.

This war has been waved aside as an internal African implosion. In reality
it a battle for coltan and diamonds and cassiterite and gold, destined for
sale in London and New York and Paris. It is a battle for the metals that
make our technological society vibrate and ring and bling, and it has
already claimed four million lives in five years and broken a population the
size of Britain's. No, this is not only a story about them. This - the tale
of a short journey into the long Congolese war we in the West have fostered,
fuelled and funded - is a story about you.

I - Rapes within rapes.

It starts with a ward full of women who have been gang-raped and then shot
in the vagina. I am standing in a makeshift ward in the Panzi Hospital in
Bukavu, the only hospital that is trying to deal with the bushfire of sexual
violence in Eastern Congo. Most have wrapped themselves deep in their
blankets so I can only see their eyes, staring blankly at me. Dr Denis
Mukwege is speaking. "Around ten percent of the gang-rape victims have had
this happen to them," he says softly, his big hands tucked into his white
coat. "We are trying to reconstruct their vaginas, their anuses, their
intestines. It is a long process."

We walk out into the courtyard and he begins to explain - in the national
language, French - the secret history of this hospital. "We started with a
catastrophe we just couldn't understand," he says softly. One day early in
the war, the UNICEF medical van he was using was looted. Coincidentally, a
few days later, a woman was carried here on her grandmother's back after an
eight-hour trek. "I had never seen anything like it. She had been gang-raped
and then her legs had been shot to pieces. I operated on her on a table with
no equipment, no medicine."

She was only the first. "We suddenly had so many women coming in with
post-rape lesions and injuries I could never have imagined. Our minds just
couldn't take in what these women had suffered." The competing armies had
discovered that rape was an efficient weapon in this war. Even in this small
province, South Kivu, the UN estimates 45,000 women were raped last year
alone. "It destroys the morale of the men to rape their women. Crippling
their women cripples their society," he explains, shaking his head gently.
There were so many militias around that Dr Mukwege had to keep his
treatments secret - the women were terrified of being kidnapped again and
killed. So he became an Oscar Schindler of the Congolese mass rapes,
treating women undercover for years, taking the risk he would trigger the
fickle rage of the drugged-up and freaked-out teenager soldiers marauding
across the country.

He describes the cases that made him go public in a fast get-it-over-with
voice. One morning he was brought a raped three year-old by her broken
father. "Everything had been shot away. There was nothing I could do for
her," he says. "The father started smashing his own head against the wall,
screaming that he had not been able to protect his baby daughter. We heard
later he committed suicide." That same day, he saw a seventy-two year old
who had been raped in front of her sons-in-law, the relations considered
sacred in Congolese culture. She said, "Don't cure me. Don't feed me. I can
never go back and look my sons-in-law in the face." Dr Mukwege adds, "So she
died here. She just didn't eat. And I realised I had to speak out."

Yet his public pleas have made little difference. There is barely a
government to appeal to, never mind a police force. There are only the
rapists with AK-47s, and they do not hear his pleas over the screaming. As
we walk down to watch 200 rape victims being taught to sew under a large,
dark bridge, he tells me what they can expect now. "When the rapes begin,
the husbands and fathers often just scarper and never come back. The women
never hear anything from them again. Other times, the men blame the women
and shun them. Rape victims are almost never integrated back into their
previous lives. It's very hard for us to persuade the women to leave the
hospital, because where are they going to go?"

He introduces me to Aileen, who is eighteen but - like every child in this
country - looks much younger. She holds her hands tightly in her lap. Her
story is stark, the details sparse. Her village was raided by a militia on
the 10th October, and "they beheaded people in the central square." Her
voice is high-pitched; she is almost squeaking. She was seized and taken
back out into the forest by the militia where they kept her for six months,
and "I was raped every night. The first night my body really ached and hurt
because I was a virgin." She would be passed on from one man to the next. It
is only as she speaks that I notice the large protruding bump sagging into
her lap. The baby is going to be born next month. She says she has spoken to
her family, but Dr Mukwege tells me later this is a dreamy fantasy. "What,"
she asks me with wide eyes as we leave, "do you think I should do? Where can
I go?"

It is coldly appropriate to start here. The rape of Aileen and the rape of
the thousands of women who stagger into the Panzi Hospital are, I soon
discover, merely part of a larger rape - the rape of Congo.

II - The last of the Belgian colonialists

Bukavu is a cratered, shattered shack-city in Eastern Congo lying on the
edge of Lake Kivu. In the street-markets, people trade scraps of food for
Congolese notes worth a few pence. On the dirt-tracks they call roads,
hunched-over women carry heavy objects - wood, coal, even a table - on their
backs. In the houses, they stagger along without water or electricity. And
wandering through this cacophony, I find a lone white woman, a lingering
remnant of the origins of all this. She can tell me - in ways she does not
understand - how all this began.

As we sit over lunch, Tina Van Malderen says, skimming the menu, "I don't
drink water - only wine." Her hair is greying but her smile is warm. "I
first came to Bukavu as a little girl in 1951 when my father came to work
for the Belgian administration," she explains. "It was Paradise. There were
only European then. No Africans. Black people lived in the surrounding
areas. It wasn't like South Africa, they weren't forced. They didn't want to
live with us, they wanted to be with their own. They came into the town to
work. They didn't use our shops, they had their own market." She speaks of
the days of Belgian empire with a soft-focus sepia longing. "I have four
sisters, and we would swim in the lake all day. It was like a non-stop
holiday."

Her family owned a chain of shops, and the only castle in Congo. She is
incredulous when I ask if there was any cruelty towards black people back
then. "Absolutely not. We loved our blacks. When they had children, we gave
them gifts." Perhaps sensing my scepticism, she adds, "Maybe on the
plantations they were a little bit rude to them." The Belgians unified Congo
in the first great holocaust of the twentieth century, a programme of
slavery and tyranny that killed 13 million people. King Leopold II -
bragging about his humanitarian goals, of course - seized Congo and turned
it into a slave-colony geared to extracting rubber, the coltan and
cassiterite of its day. The 'natives' who failed to gather enough rubber
would have their hands chopped off, with the Belgian administrators
receiving and carefully counting hundreds of baskets of hands a day.

As Tina tells me that when she arrived in the country the people were
"savages, walking about in rags", I think of the Congolese song a Swedish
missionary wrote down in 1894. "We are tired of living under this tyranny,"
the 'savages' sang. "We cannot endure that our women and children are taken
away/ And dealt with by the white savages./ We shall make war./ We know that
we shall die, but we want to die./ We want to die." The concept of Crimes
against Humanity was invented by a journalist who witnessed Leopold's rule
first-hand. His system of forced cultivation continued until the Belgian
withdrew in 1960, when Patrice Lumumba became the first and only elected
leader of Congo. "He was a stupid man," Tina says swiftly. "On the first day
of independence, he said we had beaten and humiliated the blacks. He signed
his death warrant by doing that."

She's right - he did. Lumumba claimed to be a democratic socialist who
wanted to overcome Congo's ethnic divisions. We will never know if he could
have fulfilled this dream, because the CIA decided he was a "mad dog" who
had to be put down. Before long, one of their agents was driving around
Kinshasa with the elected leader's tortured corpse in the boot looking for a
place to dump him, and the CIA's man - Mobutu Sese Seko - was in power and
in the money. Tina's family sold their castle to the dictator as he renamed
the country Zaire. "People always ask if he paid. Of course he paid!" she
laughs. Mobutu became another Leopold, using the state to rob and murder the
Congolese people with a fat CIA grant. He thought nothing of chartering
Concorde to take his family to Disneyworld, and stole more than the entire
gross national debt. "Go ahead and steal, but don't steal too much," he
counselled the Congolese people, starting a locust-storm of kleoptocracy
across the country.

Tina's family started to worry in the early 1970s when Mobutu announced a
programme of "Zaireanisation" - a Mugabe-style transfer of the resources of
foreigners to his cronies. "My mother arrived at work one day and there was
a black man come to take possession of everything, including her car. She
had to walk home," Tina says, glugging red wine. "Everything began to fail
after that. The food became disgusting. Even our dog didn't want to eat it."
Her father "died of sadness. He knew he would never get back the Congo he
loved," and the Van Malderens packed up and headed back to Europe. This is
her first visit home - she still calls it that - in more than twenty years,
and looking out towards the Lake, she says proudly, "I made it."

"I saw the house we lived in. From outside it still looked nice but when I
went inside." she shakes her head. "The black people cannot live properly."
She is becoming philosophical now. "If I had to compare Congo, I must say it
hasn't changed at all. They are not naked any more, but they are still
savages." Tina's countrymen established the nation-state in the Congo, and
they designed it to be a vampire-state. The only change over the decades has
been the particular resource snatched for Western consumption - rubber under
the Belgians, diamonds under Mobutu, coltan and cassiterite today. "Cheers,"
Tina says, downing her wine.

III The Playstation war.

If you want to glimpse what all this death has been for, you drive four
hours out of the town of Goma, on pocked and broken roller-coaster roads
that melt into mud with the rain, until you reach a place called Kalehe.
Scarring the lush green hills, there are what seem to be large red scabs
that glisten in the sun. The technical term for these open wounds in the
earth is 'artisinal mines', but this dry terminology conjures up images of
technical digs with machines and lights and helmets. In reality, they are
immense holes in the ground, in which men, women and children - lots of
children - pick desperately with makeshift hammers or their bare hands at
the red earth, hoping to find some coltan or cassiterite to set on the long
conveyor belt to your house or mine. Coltan is a metal that conducts heat
unusually brilliantly. It is contained in your mobile, your lap-top, your
son's Playstation - and 80 percent of the world's supplies sit beneath the
Democratic Republic of Congo.

As I crawl down into the mine - its cool, damp darkness is a strange
contrast to the raging Congolese sun - the miners laugh. The idea of a
Muzungu - a white man - in their mine seems to them almost impossibly comic.
But they soon get back to picking away at a roof that looks like it could
collapse at any moment. Ingo Mbale, 51, explains how the West's hunger for
coltan is fed. "We were enslaved three years ago," he says. "An RCD captain
[from one of the militias] arrived and forced us to mine for them at
gun-point. They gave us no money, it was slave labour. There is nothing left
in many of these shafts now, they exhausted them. They killed many people.
Our gold and coltan and cassiterite went out to the world via Rwanda." The
militia that seized Kalehe could only continue fighting and killing and
raping because somebody out there in the wider world was prepared to buy
this slave-mined coltan, and somebody else was prepared to sell them guns
and artillery with their freshly-minted cash.

Watching these men, the shape of Congo's recent history becomes clear. There
is an official story about the war in Congo, and then there is the reality,
uncovered by a trilogy of bomb-blast reports from the UN Panel of Experts on
the DRC. The official story is convoluted and hard to follow, because it
does not ultimately make sense. But its first chapter is true enough, and
goes something like this. In 1996, a Maoist with an eye for money called
Laurent-Desire Kabila grew tired of simply running his little fiefdom in
eastern Zaire, where he peddled ivory and gold with a nice sideline in
kidnapping Westerners. Kabila decided to depose Mobutu, the omnipresent and
omni-incompetent tyrant, and seize power for himself. So he cobbled together
a rag-tag army of child soldiers known as the Kadogo and - with the support
of neighbouring countries Rwanda and Uganda - the edifice of Mobutuism
collapsed even before their tinny, tiny advance. Kabila installed himself as
another Lepopold-alike, banning political parties and bathing in corruption.

But then in 1998 Kabila asked the Rwandans and Ugandans to withdraw their
troops from Congo - so long, and thanks for the armies - and the official
story begins to drift away from reality. The Rwandans pulled back for a
fortnight, but then mounted a massive invasion of Congo, seizing a third of
the country. The public reason for this assault sounds reasonable. After the
1994 genocide in Rwanda - a slaughter than made even Auschwitz look
slow-paced - tens of thousands of the Hutu Power machete-wielders fled
across the border to Congo and set up long-term bases. How could any country
rest with its murderers armed and crazed on its borders? "We must prevent
the genocidaires from regrouping," said Paul Kgame, the Rwandan President,
with the supportive Ugandan military following in tow behind his boys.

From his palace in Kinshasa, Kabila appealed to his friends for help
resisting this Rwandan-Ugandan attack. The dictators of Zimbabwe, Namibia
and Angola obligingly sent armies marching into Congo to fight back, and
Africa's First World War began. The armies and militias marauding across
Congo then became rebels without a cause, fighting each other because they
were there and because pulling out would be a humiliating concession of
defeat. In this version, the war in Congo is a mess, started with the best
of intentions - the Rwandans' desire to track down genocidaires - only to
spiral out of control. It presents the mass slaughter as a giant cock-up, a
cosmic mistake. This is strangely reassuring. It is also a lie.

Once the Congo was drenched in death, the UN commissioned a panel of
international statesmen to travel the country and uncover the reasons behind
the war. They found that the Rwandan government's story hid a much darker
truth. The Rwandans had one motive, right from the beginning: to seize
Congo's massive mineral wealth, to grab the coltan mine I am standing in now
and thousands like it, and to sell it on to us, the waiting world, as we
quickly flicked the channel away from the news of this war with our
coltan-filled remote control. The other countries came in not because they
believed in repelling aggression, but because they wanted a piece of the
Congolese cake. The country was ravaged by "armies of business", commanded
by men who "carefully planned the redrawing of the regional map to
redistribute wealth," the UN declared.

The UN experts knew this because the Rwandan troops did not head for the
areas where the genocidaires were hiding out. They headed straight for the
mines like this one in Kalehe, and they swiftly enslaved the populations to
dig for them. They did not clear out the genocidaires - they teamed up with
them to rape Congo. Jean-Pierre Ondekane, the Chief of the Rwandan forces in
Goma, urged his units to maintain good relations "with our Interhamwe
[genocidaire] brothers." They set up a Congo Desk that whisked billions out
of the country and into Rwandan bank accounts - and they fought to stay and
pillage some more. The UN found that a Who's Who of British, American and
Belgian companies collaborated with this crime. The ones they recommended
for further investigation included Anglo American PLC, Barclay's Bank,
Standard Chartered Bank and De Beers. The British government barely followed
up the report, publicly acquitting a few corporations like Anglo-American
who Human Rights Watch have shown to be "in league with some of the worst
killers in the region", and leaving others like De Beers in an "unresolved"
and unpunished category.

Oh, and the reason why this invasion was so profitable? Global demand for
coltan was soaring throughout the war because of the massive popularity of
coltan-filled Sony Playstations. As Oona King, one of the few British
politicians to notice Congo, explains as we travel together for a few days,
"Kids in Congo were being sent down mines to die so that kids in Europe and
America could kill imaginary aliens in their living rooms."

As I climb back out into the hard sunshine, the miners turn to me. "Could
you send us a hammer? We really need a hammer. The militias took all our
equipment."


IV The tyrant's jeer

On the long journey in an armoured UN vehicle, the questions seem so
obvious, so trite. How could a government led by genocide victims suddenly
commit their own epic crime against humanity, for nothing more than money?
The answer lie across the border, through the rainforest, towards Kigali. I
meet Charles Muligande, the Rwandan foreign minister, on the top floor of
the Hotel Des Milles Collines, the real Hotel Rwanda. This is where hundreds
of Tutsis hid out the holocaust while their brothers and sons were hacked to
pieces on the streets outside. The café at its top looks out on Kigali in
the drizzle.

Muligande has a strange combination of a youthful unlined face and graying
hair (with matching moustache), and he carries with him the unimpeachable
moral status of the victim. The sadness around the eyes, the haltingly
recounted story of being driven across the border to Burundi as a child
refugee, the relatives macheted in the genocide - they are all cruelly
present. How can I challenge him? He speaks softly about the trauma
counselling that is happening in Rwanda, and the fragile attempts at
reconciliation. And then it comes - the chuckle.

I ask him about Congo's future, and he lets out a strange, hard-to-place
laugh. "The DRC is a country that for the last forty-five years has had
pockets outside the control of central government," he says. "Even on the
eve of the election, there will by places that are beyond the control of
central government. This shouldn't be a cause for concern." And again with
the chuckle.

What about the people who pay the price of the instability he waves away so
casually? How does he sleep at night, knowing Rwanda has inflicted on its
neighbours suffering akin to the horrors he and his family endured? He
chuckles harder now, almost coughing. "This is rubbish. If we do a balance
sheet, we incurred a lot of losses in fighting that war."

He says it with such airy conviction I have to grope in my mind for the
right response. Why then does the UN's report say that Rwanda's pillage was
"systematic" and "deliberate"? "That is an invention," he snaps. By the UN,
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch? "Yes. It doesn't become true just
because it is repeated. If you have such a blind faith in Amnesty
International" - he spits the words - "and the UN and Human Rights Watch,
there is nothing I can tell you. It is like you are asking me to believe
Jesus Christ is not my saviour come to change my soul. It is a faith-based
position." No amount of probing will shift him. When he talks about the
genocide, he is compassionate, honest, brave. When he talks about his own
crimes against Congo, he sneers. Their trauma, it seems, is worth nothing.
As he speaks, I wonder - does he believe this, or does he, in midnight
sweats, think about the children driven from their homes just like a baby
Muligande was all those years ago?

The more I probe, the more his face contorts into the tyrant's jeer. I have
seen this before, in Iraq and the Occupied Territories - the furrowed brow
and the rote claim that the evil UN and Amnesty have it in for us. They have
fabricated the hundreds of pages of documents they offer in their reports,
it is all lies. Blood? What blood?

V A call from London Electricity

The victims of the war - of that laugh - are scattered everywhere in Eastern
Congo. By the roadside the next morning, I find the living remnants of Ramba
village, a home to 15,000 people. They make up a clump of four hundred
starving people, building a makeshift camp by the roadside. Maneno Mutagemba
Justin, their chief - a young man with sore, reddish eyes - explains what
happened. "The Interahamwe [the Rwandan genocidaires] came into our village.
They killed and they raped our women. Now they have stolen our houses and
told us never to come back." People fled in all directions, losing their
husbands or children. Nobody is quite sure how many relatives they have lost
forever. "We have no food here, and we left everything behind. We have no
pots, no pans, no water."

These people live a long drawn-out postscript to Thomas Hobbes, the
seventeenth century philosopher who warned that in the absence of a state,
life will be "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." I cannot stop at
every chaotic scene like this; I have an appointment with some pygmies.
Besides, my UN escort says cheerfully, "This is a warzone, so we shouldn't
stop like this. Oh, don't worry. They won't shoot you. Just make you carry
their things and rape you a bit." After another interminable journey passing
along dirt-roads and wrecked villages, we arrive at a long, lush field of
tea-bushes that marks the entrance to the pygmies. The immense forest
surrounding us shows me why Joseph Conrad said Congo reminded him of a time
"when vegetation rioted on the earth and big trees were kings." The pygmy
women are performing an elaborate, joyful dance of greeting.

And here, in their worn village square, are the classic, clichéd images of
Africa. The village children toddle around with distended bellies that feel
like drums filled to bursting, and some of the gurgling babies covered in
mosquito bites will sicken and die from malaria. They do not seem so clichéd
in the flesh. Yet in Congo, these horrors seem secondary. These pygmies are
terrified first, second and third of dying not of starvation or disease but
from a blade to the neck or a bullet to the chest. Kalereda Dunganga, the
village elder, explains that a nice man called Chad was beheaded here "the
day before yesterday". He had no money or livestock to hand over to the
militiamen, so they killed him. Sometimes it is worse - some militiamen
believe that eating pygmies gives them supernatural powers.

The villagers are so terrified they don't sleep in their houses. They take
their children and sleep in the tea-bushes. As this is explained to me, my
mobile rings. The coltan has come home. It has full reception here, so close
to the Rwandan border. The call is from London Electricity. As I sit on the
floor with people who have never had electricity, running water or a single
tablet of modern medicine, they remind me I am two weeks late paying my
bill. These villagers live a few seconds and few centuries away from us.

Yet the most piercing image of pain I see in Congo is not here, in the
all-consuming terror of families sleeping in bushes. It is not even in the
eyes of the man Oona and I see being casually, pointlessly beaten to death
by a mob on the road one moody afternoon, another unrecorded Congolese
write-off that we swiftly speed away from. No, it is the women carrying more
than their own body-weight in wood or coal or sand, all day, every day. By
every Congolese roadside, there are women with ropes tearing into their
foreheads as they bind a massive load onto their backs. With so few horses,
so few cars and so few roads, starving women are used here as pack-horses,
transporting anything that needs to be moved on their backs for fifty pence
a day. They are given the quaint title of 'porters'.

Francine Chacopawa is 30 years old but she looks much older, her faced lined
and cratered in a complex topography of grief and pain. Her spine is curved,
her skin is rough and broken, her hands are calloused. When she laboriously,
painfully puts down the wood she is carrying, she has a red canyon in her
forehead where the rope was, rimmed with sores that weep from the rubbing.
"This is the rope that keeps my household alive," she says. It is the war
that has reduced her to this state. "Since the war started in Congo, you
can't farm in peace, you can't raise animals, and the children are starving,
so I prefer to die in this work. My husband cannot get a job since the
fighting began, so this is what I have to do. I leave at five o'clock in the
morning and get back at seven o'clock at night. I am worried my children are
running away to look for food, because we only get to eat once a day and
they are so hungry. When I get home, my husband gets angry and asks why I
have been away so long. We have suffered so much. The children we bring into
the world are forced to be porters as well. We are the most unhappy people
in the world."

She tells me the pack she is carrying weighs two hundred pounds, and I write
this off as understandable hyperbole. Then my translator and the UN driver
load her pack onto my back (with great difficulty). I immediately fall to my
knees. I stagger up and manage to stumble a few feet before falling over
again. I am almost crying in pain; my back aches for weeks. This is
Francine's life. She does not even stop on Sundays. "How can I? We must
eat," she says. Portering has made her miscarry twice, and Francine says she
has seen women die by the side of the road, buckled under their loads. I ask
her when she will stop portering. She shrugs, and says nothing. Her eyes
say, 'When I die.' The wood is heaved back onto her back, and she staggers
away, the rope rubbing again against her sores.

VI The head of state without a state.

Joseph Kabile is surrounded by crocodiles. Literally. We are standing by the
back wall of the White House, the slimline Presidential Palace in Kinshasa,
looking out on the rippling, reptile-infested Congo River. His home behind
us looks like a well-kept municipal library in an American town, a world
away from the psycho-kitsch of the Mobutu era. The President's eyes have
narrowed. "How long have you been here, to think you can write about Congo?"
he asks, unsmiling. I say I have been here a fortnight. He nods slightly.
"Then that's okay."

Kabile does not like talking to journalists. Indeed, he does not like
talking to anyone - he has conspicuously failed to turn up at his own
election rallies over the past few months. I have been smuggled in at the
end of his meeting with the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Great Lakes
Region, a collection of decent British politicians who have come to try to
erode the worst humanitarian crisis in the world by inches. "I want to see
some quick wins [for the Congolese people] from the Presidential election,"
he says, assuming he will win the looming polls - the first in Congo since
1960. He then rattles off a list of improvements he hopes to implement to
prove that democracy works - better water supplies, better schooling.

As he offers up these platitudes in absent English, his handsome face is
covered with a light sprinkling of stubble that seems to be greying in the
sun. He became President at the age of 29 when his father was pinned down
and executed in a failed coup attempt in 2001. At that moment the reluctant
son of the Big Man was thrust from a life of army drills and watching
martial arts and war movies to being in a charge of the world's biggest
war-zone. Neckless and nervous, he says his two minutes' worth of stump
speech now and then closes up. He signals to his Versace-suited security
guards that it is time for him to leave. My five minutes of questions - more
than any other journalist gets - have been greeted with a polite stonewall
of banality.

The White House has an odd feel of unreality. It is a hologram of power, the
simulacra of a functioning country. Kabila is in the surreal position of
being head of state without a state, President of the Democratic Vacuum of
Congo. He has no levers of power to pull. As I discovered later in my
journey, he has no army worthy of the name, he has no police force, he
cannot guard his own borders or build his own schools. From the sealed calm
of the Palace, I look over a wall and see the real Congo walking past -
people slumped against walls or busy doing nothing or frantically fending
off hunger any way they can. The fantasy of a functioning country dies with
his own brickwork.

Since his father died, Kabila has been trying to glue together a nation from
the shattered fragments. In 2002, he negotiated the Lusaka Accords, in which
the invading countries promised to remove their armies. The global price of
coltan had collapsed, so Rwanda's interest was waning anyway. Besides, the
withdrawing countries realised they could suck the mineral marrow from Congo
without the costly business of occupation, simply by setting up Congolese
militias as their proxies on their way out the door. Kabila tried to
out-bribe them by offering these Congolese militia leaders by offering them
a place at the heart of government. That's why, of his four Vice Presidents,
three have their own private armies, even though they continue to funnel
minerals out to us. To watch over this 'peace process', the UN sent in
17,000 peace-keepers for a country the size of Western Europe.

At the core of Kabila's project to make Congo into one nation with one
government is brassage - the integration of the militias. At squalid camps
across the country, the militiamen who have been raping and murdering are
invited to hand in their weapons and join the new national army. I head for
Camp Saio, the camp outside Bukavu, where men with Samuel L Jackson
sunglasses and cheekbones that could cut butter are milling and mulling as
they wait for 'reintegration'. Places like this are the key to Congo's
future. It success stands or falls on whether the militiamen can be coaxed
to come here and slowly begin to build a state. Dr Adolphe Tumba, the head
of the camp, takes me trudging through the mud on a tour. It doesn't look
like an army camp. Chickens are pecking about, cabbages are growing on the
side, and children are waddling around with their starved little stomachs
jutting out. "In Congo, the militias take their family with them when they
go out to war," Dr Tumba says, "so they end up here too."

In the first room I see, there are nine stinking beds. Men are sitting,
rotting plaster covering their wounds. In the corner, there is a soldier
shivering in his bed, his face covered with the lesions that come with
advanced AIDS. He opens his eyes - they recoil, clearly wounded by the
light. They close again as he curls wearily into a tight ball. I ask the men
what life was like on the front-line. "We ate. We had food there," they snap
back. I ask again, not quite understanding the answer. "We had food at the
front-line. It was batter. Why didn't you bring us food? Why did you come
here without something for us to eat?" I ask when they last ate. It was two
days ago. They have not received their $5-a-month wages for forty days, and
they are starving.

A UN source warned me, "The people in that camp are going out and rampaging
into the nearby villages. They do it for survival. They steal to get by.
Yesterday they killed a man, the day before they killed a woman and some
kids. It's all done by men in uniform coming out of that camp." The pygmies
I met live dangerously near here. Did one of these men behead Chad? Joseph,
a 22 year old, tells me he joined up when he was a teenager because his
village was attacked by the Rwandans. "They killed my father, my grandfather
and my little sister. So I decided to join Mai-Mai [a Congolese militia]. I
can't count how many people I killed. I did it for six years."

His friends gather round, and some of them are more eager to brag about
their kill-rates. They remind me of kids on some estates I have visited,
bragging about their ASBOs. Are they telling the truth, or is this teenage
display? As they become more and more animated describing their
killing-sprees, as their eyes become wider and their stories more vivid, our
UN escort begins to panic and tells us we must leave. "Quickly!" he calls.

As we drive away, I realise it is not enough that our greed for resources
started this war - it is vandalising any chance of bringing it to an end.
While these state-building camps can offer only starvation and a
sometimes-never $5 wage, UNICEF says the militias can are offering the same
men $60-a-month to carry on seizing and raping and killing. They can afford
it because they still control most of the coltan, gold and diamond mines,
and Western and Chinese companies are still snapping up the sparklers they
offer. So long as the militias can continue to use our money to outbid the
national government in haggling for troops, there will never be a unified
state in Congo, and life will continue to be a live-action replay of Thomas
Hobbes' bleakest descriptions.

And yet, even the best case scenario - effective brassage, a unified army, a
coherent state - carries with it blood-drenched risks. What if once Kabila
gets control of the country, he morphs a Mobutu or a Mugabe? Then all this
nation-building will turn out to have been an exercise in capacity-building
for murderers. Who is this man with a anxious gaze? A rogue source at the
British Embassy who has high-level dealings with the regime ponders over
dinner, "There are essential two theories about Kabila," he says. "The first
is that he is a good man surrounded by shits. The second is that he is one
of the shits. Let's assume the first is true - what difference does it make?
He is surrounded by Rumsfelds and Cheneys, friends of the father who would
kill him if he stepped out of line. There is a large group around him whose
financial life and even their impunity from charges in the Hague depends on
him staying in power. Would they allow him to lose power, or even to share
it too much? Really?"

At times, it seems Congo is lost in a fog of moral ambiguity. Everybody
agrees the state needs to be unified, and there seems to be only one state
on offer - Kabila's - given the near-certainty he will win the election. But
how savoury is that prospect? Is he personally corrupt? I decide to seek out
one of the few men who might know definitively - Christophe Lutundula. He is
a member of one of the rarest species on earth, the heroic accountant. Three
years ago he was commissioned by the Congolese parliament to investigate the
theft of the country's resources, and he decided to do something unheard of
- a genuine investigation, running to the very top. He enters the room in a
baggy blue t-shirt, conspicuously free of the bling beloved by Congolese
politicians, with a price on his head. He has received a string of death
threats, but insists "I am not afraid because I have done my work as I
should - honestly."

Yet on the most difficult questions, he is - understandably - cagey. Is
Kabila corrupt? "It's a very sensitive question, obviously." He pauses.
"During the past few years, nobody in the government has convinced me of
their willingness to co-operate. The report was carried out with great
difficulty, because there was very little co-operation and we didn't have
access to all the documents. Not just here in Congo - even in the UN and in
Belgium we were denied access to many documents." He will say that "the
contracts signed by the state are mostly to the disadvantage of the
Congolese people." Perhaps this is the most he can tell me and live - mouthy
critics like the human rights activist Pascal Kabungulu often end up
peppered with bullets in this city.

I head for Mbuji-Mayi, the diamond capital of the world, to see where the
money is going. The town is a fetid slum, with miners working all day for
companies they know nothing about for a few dollars a week. Mamady Kouyate,
the Guinean head of the UN mission here, says starkly, "The mines are
operated solely in foreign interests. Miba [the government diamond company]
is working exclusively in the interests of President Kabila and his foreign
friends, the Western multinationals. I cannot name names but whoever is
promoted in Miba has to do well with people in power. When the war started,
diamond revenues fuelled and funded the war. But since the provisional
government, I have no idea where the money goes. It does not stay here."

Later, an aid agency head chastises the naivety of my questioning about
Kabila. "In this country, all you can ask about a politician is - is this
person corrupt and self-seeking and doesn't give a damn about Congo, or is
this person corrupt and self-seeking but wants what's best for Congo too? Of
course Kabila and his circle are corrupt. If they weren't corrupt and
self-seeking, they would have fallen at the first hurdle. To have power in
this country you must be corrupt. It's a corrupt system." The best hope, it
seems, is to drag Congo up from being a broken stateless warzone where
millions die to being a bog-standard corrupt state. To the starving soldiers
of Camp Saio, even this sunken ambition seems optimistic.

VII Spiritual warfare.

The coven of witches is dancing and cackling in the water. They have a
hose-pipe and they are spraying each other's naked bodies, squealing and
laughing. One of them comes up to me, wearing a worn-out Barney the dinosaur
t-shirt, and splashes some water at my face. I am in a children's home, Chez
Mama Coco, an hour's drive from Kinshasa, and the place is filled with
starved witch-children who have been thrown out by their parents for
displaying signs of being under the influence of Satan. Some have been
burned and slashed, and some have been mutilated. One of the workers
introduces me to a child - they do not know his name because he has not
spoken since he arrived, but they call him Fidel - and tugs down his
trousers. Where his penis once was, there is nothing but an angry red scab.
"His mother cut it off during the exorcism," he says.

This is another consequence of our war. Herve Cheuzeville, the outgoing Head
of Mission for Warchild, explains: "The idea of withcraft has always existed
in Congo, but it is very new to accuse children of it. It never happened
before the war. It is a result of the terrible traumas of the past six
years." In the past, Congolese families would cope with starvation-level
poverty by looking to their extended families and wider communities. People
would take in orphans or surplus kids, and share scanty resources. But since
the war, all this has broken down, millions have been disoriented by a
sudden shift from the countryside to the relative safety of the cities, and
people can barely feed their own children. "All these factors have combined
to provide fertile ground for religious movements that say all your problems
are due to Satan possessing a child. People desperately want a simple
explanation, so they project all their stresses onto the child," he says.

The Combat Spirituel church in Bukavu consists of an immense veranda filled
with benches, with a neat white building attached. These churches have been
pioneers of Congo's twenty-first century witch-hunts, and when I arrive at
their Sunday service, they greet me with whoops and hallelujahs. The
evangelical preacher at the podium has a kind of Christian Pan's People
dancing behind him, and he exclaims, "We salute God by dancing!" The
congregation contains over a thousand people, and they look more like the
crowd at a football match than at a dreary Church of England ceremony. They
blow whistles, jump up and down, and dance wildly. The pastor insists I come
up to tell the crowd who I am, while the crowd sings and forms an immense
Conga-line. "Glory to Jesus! Jesus is great!" they cry in ecstasy as I
approach the podium. I awkwardly explain I am a journalist. "Praise be!"
they cry.

As I shuffle away from the platform, I am replaced by a man with a
miraculous story about how he was cured of AIDS through the power of prayer
- news that is greeted with more whistles and cheers. I am told that if I
want to talk witchcraft, however, I need to return late on Thursday, when
the purgings and exorcisms happen. On my return, a woman is letting out
hoarse yells about how Satan tried to hijack her body, and I am taken by the
"spiritual warfare co-ordinator", Papa Enoch Boonga, into the little house
to meet a 14 year-old witch.

The lights are switched off, and Papa Enoch produces a lantern that lights
his face and casts a long shadow. In his slow, rhythmic French, he begins to
tell me how "Satan is waging war on the Congolese people. He comes to kill
and hate. The answer to Satan's campaign against us is spiritual combat." He
quotes from the Book of Revelation - chapter 12, verse 7: "And there was war
in heaven.. And that old serpent called the devil was cast out, and Satan,
which deceiveth the whole world, he was cast out into the earth, and his
angels were cast out with him."

"The devil fights differently in different places," he says. "In the West,
he uses nudism and pornography. Here he uses sorcery. Here, if there's a
divorce or people fall out of love, that's because Satan is working through
their child. Let me give you personal testimony from my own family. My
little sister married an American from the peace corps and went to live over
there. She had a child, but when the child was six my sister got blood
poisoning and died. I went to fetch the girl and took her back to Kinshasa.
God showed me in a dream that this girl had been taken over and destroyed by
Satan. So the next day I went to her and said, 'God has shown me who you
are. You are in the shadows.'"

It is impossible to interrupt him. This is a theatrical performance. "She
denied it at first, but after we all prayed for her she admitted she had
been given human flesh to eat by witches. That is how they make you into one
of them. She had travelled using peanut shells as a plane and killed her
mother. She even killed her grandmother back her in Kinshasa, after flying
here secretly, by giving her an invisible injection that caused angina. So
we took the child and said, 'It is not you but Satan who committed these
crimes.' We told her to renounce Satan and his network of witches. She
vomited out the human flesh and now she is not a witch any more."

That is his cue to drag out Clarice, a 14-year-old witch. She is a small
girl wrapped in a big woollen cardigan. In a low, blank rote, her eyes cast
down, she says. "I was taught sorcery when I was twelve years old. My
grandmother turned me into a witch by giving me a donut to eat." Enoch looks
at me triumphantly. "This is how it works! They give evil food!" He takes
over from Clarice's halting speech. "Then the grandmother came at night in
spiritual form and said, 'I gave you the donut to eat, now you must give me
your little sister to eat.' She was so frightened she said, 'Okay, okay',
and the next day her little sister fell ill and died. Then her grandmother
demanded she break the leg of her mother, so when he mother was out
gathering wood, she fell and broke her leg. Now the girl started to feel the
power of sorcery and began to transform herself into a dog or a cat."

I keep looking at Clarice in disbelief, but then I realise she thinks I am
glaring in condemnation and I look away. As Enoch speaks, the chanting
behind us from the main service is getting louder and louder - "Out Satan,
out!" hundreds of people cry, clawing at invisible demons in the air. He
continues, "Her father is an artisinal miner and he stopped being able to
find anything because of her sorcery. They fell into poverty." I have to
interrupt. I ask Clarice, softly, do you really think it is your fault your
little sister died? "Yes," she says. Her eyes remain fixed on the floor. "It
was actually her parents who realised she was a witch," Enoch says. "They
were very worried about their lives going bad, and they went to church and
prayed and God told them what the problem was. People come to us with all
sorts of problems and we help them to understand what is causing them
through days of prayer." He says they conducted an exorcism of Clarice, and,
yes, it was tough. "When you cast Satan out, you almost destroy the person,
but they come back with Jesus Christ in their heart."

It is not only the physical landscape of Congo that lies in ruins. The
psychological landscape has been trashed, its people left half-crazed. It is
not only in the eyes of Clarice and Enoch that I see this. In a hotel by
Lake Kivu, I meet up with Colonel Chimanuka Tchikas, 42, the former
commander of the Mai-Mai. He is a short man with a puckered face and an
outsized military jacket that exaggerates his shortness. At first glance,
his Mai-Mai seem like the most defensible of the Congolese militias. They
rose up from among the Congolese people spontaneously during the invasions
to act as an impromptu defence force to repel the foreign armies. "We had no
army, so we became the army", Tchikas says. But the Mai-Mai quickly
descended into a hoarde of rapists and civilian-killers, just as guilty of
war crimes and resource-theft as the other sides.

But Tchikas waves this complaint away. "Most people don't know who the
Mai-Mai really are. Our problem is that have had nobody doing our PR. You
will never hear that the Mai-Mai attacked another region. It does not
happen. We are a defence force, not an attack force." Then he begins to
casually confesses to war crimes. "When we captured soldiers, sometimes we
would force them to join our army," he says, sipping beer. "First we would
torture them, then we would put them in wooden cells." He then notes that
"the best soldiers are children. They have a lot of energy, a lot of
courage, and they have faith. They have not been distracted by life. We
never looked at the ages [of recruits]. We looked at their motivation to
join the Mai Mai. If a child could run, then we would not reject him." A ten
year old? "Yes, if he could run." Younger? "There was no age barrier."

Tchikas explains he is immortal. "Once you join the Mai-Mai and go through
the secret Mai-Mai initiation rituals, then you have special powers. The
enemy cannot kill me. If you shoot a gun at me, even at point blank range,
the bullets will turn into water, or I will turn into a tree." Literally
into a tree? "Yes," he says, as if it is obvious. But what about all the
Mai-Mai who died in the war? "Wherever people died, it was because they did
not follow the Mai-Mai rules. Don't steal, don't rape, don't kill an
innocent, don't go into the field of battle with malevolent feelings for a
comrade. If you do any of those things you lose your Mai-Mai powers and they
can kill you. It is your own fault. Somebody who was faithful to the rules
would never, never fall. If I raped this woman here -" he jabs a finger at
my translator - "I would lose my powers."

The invasion did not only encourage the Mai-Mai to turn to these
antediluvian ideas. It bred in them a near-genocidal racism against the
"enemies within" - the Congolese tribes who they declare are not "really"
Congolese. Tchikas spits and stutters with rage at the Congolese minorities
who he declares to be secretly, essentially Rwandan, particularly the
Banya-Mlenenge who live near the border. "Those people who came [to Congo
since 1960] must accept they are strangers in this country." Even if they
were born here? "Yes. The Mai-Mai cannot accept foreigners stealing Congo.
The Banya-Mlenge do not accept Congolese culture. They only accept Rwanda.
They collaborated with the Rwandans when they came." There are real fears
that this renewed and toxic tribalism will spiral into ethnic cleansing
after the elections, or whenever the UN peacekeeping mission begins to be
scaled down.

But Tchikas is through with me. He strides away, jabbering into his mobile,
back to a world where men turn into trees, bullets into water, and children
into witches.

VII - Packing out the Albert Hall.

The last time there was a holocaust in Congo, British and American people
reacted with a great national revulsion. Books like Arthur Conan Doyle's
'The Crime of the Congo' topped the best-seller lists, millions petitioned
parliament to act, and the Royal Albert Hall was packed out with mass
meetings detailing the Congo's long nightmare. A century on, the words and
analyses of that great campaign still ring true. Joseph Conrad called it
"the vilest scramble for loot that has ever disfigured the human conscience"
- words that would make a perfect introduction to the reports of the UN
Panel of Experts now.

But today, these four million people have died in the dark, unnoticed and
unmourned. The generations living in the West today have said nothing while
the country has been reduced to near-Leopoldian levels of desperation by the
scramble for loot, conducted on our behalf and for our benefit. Average life
expectancy in Congo is now 43 and falling. I did not see any elderly people
on my journey; they do not exist. In a country where the war is laughably
referred to as "winding down", a World Trade Centre-full of people is
butchered every two days, and in the lost rural areas I could not reach,
bubonic plague has made a triumphant come-back. A health minister says in
despair, "I have been told by the UN to prepare a plan for avian flu. I had
to write back and say I am powerless to deal with the plague, so what am I
supposed to do about chickens?"

This war was launched by nations that sensed - rightly - that our desire for
coltan and diamonds and gold far outweighed our concern for the lives of
black people. They knew that we would keep on buying, long after the UN had
told us time and again that people were dying to provide our mobiles and
games consoles and a girl's best friend. Today, we still buy, and the
British government - along with the rest of the democratic world - obstructs
any attempt to introduce legally enforceable regulations to stop
corporations trading in Congolese blood. They ignore the UN's warnings that
"without the wealth generated by the illegal exploitation of natural
resources arms cannot be bought, hence the conflict cannot be perpetuated"
and insist that voluntary regulations - and asking corporations to be nice
to Africans - is "the most effective route." Conrad warned that "the
conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who
have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not
a pretty thing when you look into it too much." So we have chosen not to
see.

It is only on my last day in Kinshasa, walking among the burned-out shells
of buildings, that I realise what Congo reminds me of. In the movies from my
1980s childhood imagining what the world would be like after a nuclear
winter, people were left to wander across a burned landscape, scavenging for
the bare necessities of life. Water was contaminated. Food was sparse. Death
was everywhere and inexplicable. Children suffered from brain damage en
masse because of the malnutrition. Order was a memory, and the men with the
biggest AK-47s ruled and raped. This is Congo, 2006.

In Bukavu, a 29-year-old human rights campaigner called Bertrand Bisimwa
summarised his country's situation for me with cruel concision. "Since the
nineteenth century, when the world looks at Congo it sees a pile of riches
with some black people inconveniently sitting on top of them. They eradicate
the Congolese people so they can possess the mines and resources. They
destroy us because we are an inconvenience." As he speaks, I picture the
raped women with bullets burying through their intestines and try to weigh
them against the piles of blood-soaked electronic goods sitting beneath my
Christmas tree with their little chunks of Congolese metal whirring inside.
Bertrand smiles and says, "Tell me - who are the savages? Us, or you?"

POSTSCRIPT: Comments on this article can be sent for publication in the
Independent to letters@independent.co.uk

You can write to me at johann@johannhari.com

Sent by Women For the Dev of DRC
wddrc@hotmail.com

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