Well, I've sort of let blogging drop down my list of priorities since I've arrived in this new city, but I've been feeling particularly pensive over the past week or so and thought it best to get it out.
Today is election day in the DRC. As I sit and write with a cup of coffee in my kitchen there are only a couple of hours until polls will close. Al Jazeera has already informed the world of the violence in the southeast of the country - in the city of Lubumbashi - where frustrations over what has been expressed as a lack of organization (names missing from voter rolls, poll stations not opening on time) has led to stations being burned down and riot-type street violence erupting in various locations throughout the country, including in Kinshasa. From what I've managed to gather over the past six months, through the limited and subjective media sources available who are actually reporting anything about election developments in the DRC, there has been a fair amount of such violence occurring, caused by allegations of fraud and corruption; government attempts to control (and often shut down successfully, albeit temporarily) media; and, among other things, various supporters of certain political parties losing their shit towards supporters of certain other political parties. In addition, I've learned from Facebook status updates that my family members are currently, and have been numerous other times recently, relegated behind the safety of their high compound walls due to the high tension and violence in the capital and because it would be unsafe for them to be out and about.
So, why? Why so much violence and unrest over a process and event that, theoretically, carries with it so much potential for progress and stability? Well, I certainly don't have any definitive answers to these questions. These are matters far too complex to have definitive answers. But I've been doing a fair amount of pondering from this very safe place in which I am situated (both physically, and in a broader, global sense). Let's take, for one, the Occupy movements that have sprung up and been quelled in various parts of North America recently. I've heard a lot of people asking - and have had a few conversations/debates over - just what the Occupy movement is about and has achieved. If we break it down to its most basic purpose, we can say that at its root it is a protest against the disparity of wealth in North America and the world over. Well, what a different form this takes in this hemisphere. With exceptions, it has been a fairly peaceful movement. Here in Toronto, Occupiers took over St. James Park successfully for a full five weeks before having been evicted last week. The damage: the ground in the park turned into a swamp. No one was seriously injured or killed; there were no violent stand-offs with the police; in fact, although in my opinion ultimately its demise, it was an incredibly inclusive environment and, to its credit, run as democratically as could have been in the grassroots sense of the concept. But - and this is not to diminish the validity of concerns about the ways in which disparity is manifested in this part of the world - the very peaceful and democratic nature of the movement speaks to the privilege of those involved. This disparity of wealth in the DRC manifests itself much differently. It breeds desperation. I can speak to this in having felt a thick tension in the air in Kinshasa, as though people were always on the edge of erupting. Agh, I feel like I'm not explaining this accurately. A story to illustrate:
When I was staying in Maluku, Mama Yvete took me to a huge outdoor market on the shore of the Congo River. Not being the type of place that white people frequent, my presence was something of an event. We had already been there nearly 45 minutes when, for just a brief moment, Yvete left my side to speak with a friend and about five women surrounded me and began asking me why I was there. They were for the most part just curious and friendly, but it only took about a minute for five people to turn into 25, and for the curiosity of a few to turn into hostility on the part of others. I overheard people around me making nasty comments about the rich white girl taking a trip down to the river to observe (i.e. exploit) the poor locals, and others commenting that the market was no place for me to be. I was quite thickly surrounded and the crowd was not only growing but starting to converge on me, all in a matter of just a few minutes, when Yvete pushed through and grabbed me and then led me to sit under a canopy that friends of hers were selling fish from while the balloon of tension sort of deflated and the one man who had followed us, showing me his foot so swollen and infected that it looked gangrenous and asking me for money, finally gave up and left.
It all happened so quickly that it wasn't until later that evening that I realized that for the first - and only - time, I had been afraid. I remember being acutely aware of feeling the tension building around me. I remember hearing some of the people around me trying to calm others down, clarifying my purpose there as I had explained it (I'm just a student, doing my practicum here, in Conflict Resolution studies). I remember questioning whether I did have any right being there at all (I'm still not sure).
I think that this experience that I had speaks well to the ways in which these different parts of the world experience a similar phenomenon. Imagine what an issue as contentious and highly charged as national elections might do to transform the environment in a society living in abject poverty?
Now, on the other hand, nowhere in the world will you find such resilience and hope as you will in places like the DRC, which have been plagued by oppression and injustice for about a century and a half by colonialism, bureaucratic kleptocracy, war, corruption, and poverty. People are passionate about the potential their country has for positive change. But is democracy really the answer? And what form should it take if it is? Democracy is an imposed political structure with imposed ideologies in this country. The territory was, before it was colonized, comprised of a series of kingdoms - slavery not only existed but was well ingrained in societies. And they functioned well. And then, after 75 years of colonialism, post-independent Congo's first democratically elected Prime Minister was assassinated and the country was taken over by a military dictator. 32 years of brutality and theft later, another militarized coup changed the scene (ever so slightly). It was not until 2003 that a peace accord was signed that commenced the adoption of democratic processes. However, now in 2011, during only the third democratic elections the country has seen in 51 years of independence, many Congolese have little faith in the type of democracy that exists in the country's institutions and little faith in the majority of its elected leaders. I've stated this before, but I'll state it again: when I was there and asked people what type of leadership they thought best for their country, many people responded by telling me that democracy is not 'natural' in Congo, and that they thought it best to have the country run by a benevolent dictator. I don't purport to speak for Congolese people, and also met a significant number of people who believed that democracy was the only way to go. I'm just saying... that I really, really hope that whover are the elected leaders this time around are elected fairly, and that this election has positive results for Congolese people, whereby the disparity is lessened and people's hopes are realized. What else can I say? This is the point at which all of my ranting about this wonderful place in the world has always hit a brick wall. Nothing I have ever been able to think or say has ever been conclusive. I don't know that I have a right to be conclusive. But I do have a right to hope, and hope I do for good things for my Congolese family and friends.
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