Fidele Lumeya: Understanding the Congo-DR War in the Dialectic of State formation
Sunday, January 14th, 2007
*** Photo Mvemba Phezo Dizolele - Kadutu Market in Bukavu
Contributed by Fidele Lumeya
After 4 years of an intermittent civil war that started in 1996 and 5 years of a transitional government, the enduring tribulations of the war to peace transition and political process seems to forecast a less than positive socio-political future for the Congo and the entire Great Lakes Region. As it has been said, there cannot be peace in one of the Great Lakes countries without peace in the entire region. One can explain this phenomenon by pointing out that the Great Lakes countries such as Burundi, the DRC, Rwanda, and Uganda present symptoms of failing states in Post-independence Africa and the non-achievement of the complete Nation-State process.
Burundi, the DRC, and Rwanda were ruled by the same master: Belgium. What was referred to by Patrice E. Lumumba as the “Africanization” or “indigenization” of Post-Independent African political institutions turned out to be a superficial, rather than radical, transformation. The armies, called “national,” were such only because the top elite were African. Yet all the structures remained a carbon copy of the Belgian army- even its philosophy, as a repressive machine, remained the same.