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Let’s help Congo save its ‘lungs’ for the entire world to survive by Jenerali Ulimwengu

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How should the world take the news that processes are underway to carry out bidding and other activities leading to large-scale prospecting for oil and gas in the Democratic Republic of Congo? Much more importantly, how should the people of DR Congo take that news?

Reports of the bidding around oil and gas prospection in the Congo basin are important, to say the least, because of the huge interest that so many constituencies will have in matters such as this one.

My interest is no less than that of an average citizen of the world, tempered by history and humored by the many bitter experiences of our peoples and countries down the centuries, and the fact that our people do not seem to have the capacity to learn from what has passed and affected us so badly!

Congo. The mere mention of that name evokes memories of Leopold ll, the bandit king of Belgium who stole a country 80 times larger than his country and proceeded to pillage, rape, and massacre the luckless people of that unfortunate piece of geography that he treated as his personal property.

Leopold’s agents became the perpetrators of the first genocide known to the world, in which 10 million Africans were massacred through a systemic programme of killing, flogging, castration, mutilation, and starvation.

I have never been able to erase from my mind the horrifying pictures of severed hands displayed by the Congolese as punishment for not satisfying rubber collection quotas set by Leopold. These pictures are enough to make anyone’s blood boil with anger at the barbarity of the Europeans who enacted this behavior, which even animals are not capable of.

In 1960, Belgium gave Congo “independence” in the circumstances that we all know, and soon a black Leopold arrived on the scene in the person of Joseph Désiré Mobutu, and later by another Mobutu-like figure of Laurent Désiré Kabila. In the two people, it is the root word “desire” that is the evident denominator in the continuation of the plunder of the country’s resources.

It is this kind of history that makes one cringe every time one hears of another large-scale programme to exploit Congo’s resources.

One is more likely than not to have a lingering suspicion that we are about to be treated to another episode of monumental plunder and despoliation.

The fact that hardly anything of value has accrued to the people of Congo proceeding from the huge natural resources that the country boasts thus far and that its rulers have somehow managed to mirror Leopold at every turn.

It is not for nothing that every time the term “resource curse” comes up, the name Congo casts its silhouette on our consciences.

Several commentators around this development this month have hinged around the importance of Congo’s tropical forest and the role it plays on behalf of all humanity in preserving the world’s environment, and the possibility that any intensive mining may lead to the destruction of the good that Congo gives to the world.

It is estimated that the tropical forest helps to absorb about 1.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, making Congo effectively one of the important “lungs” of the world.

Doubts have been expressed as to whether intensive exploitation of hydrocarbons can take place without endangering this benefit the whole world is currently enjoying.

This is supported by speculation as to whether the economic benefits reaped by DR Congo will be necessarily sufficient to offset the environmental loss, and whether, indeed, all these projects will turn out to be profitable.

It becomes worrisome when reports suggest that impact assessment on the environment has not been carried out, and that is apart from the fact that illegal logging has always been going on apace in the basin.

The vast flora and fauna represented here are extremely important. The survival of these animals and plants, side by side with the well-being of millions of people and communities who live and work there, must concern all over the world.

But, at the same time, we must be thinking about the immediate economic needs of the people of Congo who, willy-nilly, have to act as keepers and protectors of the forest on which the whole of humanity depends for survival.

Keepers and protectors

This moves me to ask why the United Nations and other global bodies are not doing something to ensure that the keepers and protectors of these “lungs” — here one gets to think globally to include such places as the Amazon, the forests of Borneo, and Sumatra and the Australian Daintree Rainforests — are compensated in economic terms for the commercial gains they forgo by desisting from certain economic activities that are inimical to our common environmental health.

Such a global initiative would fall squarely within the purview of the concerns severally expressed in different corners and fora across the world regarding climate change.

The task is huge and grim, especially taking into consideration recent statements by Congolese authorities suggesting that the fate of the world’s environment may not be their priority.

The carcass lies prostrate, and in the sky, the vultures are circling!

Jenerali Ulimwengu is now on YouTube via jeneralionline tv. E-mail: jenerali@gmail.com

Strictly Personal

Off we go again with public shows, humbug and clowning, By Jenerali Uliwengu

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The potential contestants in the approaching elections are already sizing themselves up and assessing their chances of fooling their people enough for them to believe that they are truly going to “bring development” to them.

 

I mean, you have to be a true believer to believe that someone who says they have come to offer their services to you as your representative in the local council or in the national parliament and they tell you that they are going to build your roads to European standards, and your schools are going to be little Eatons; your hospitals are going to be better and more lavishly equipped than the Indian hospitals, where many of our high-placed people go for treatment, and your water supply will be so regular that you have to worry only about drowning!

 

I mean no exaggeration here, for the last time we had the occasion to listen to such clowns — five years ago — we heard one joker promise he would take all his voters to the United States for a visit.

 

He was actually voted to parliament, or at least the cabal acting as the electoral commission says he was. He has never revisited that promise as far as I can remember, but that must surely be because he is still negotiating with the American embassy for a few million visas for his voters!

 

Yes, really, these are always interesting times, when normally sober people turn out to be raving mad and university dons become illiterate.

 

Otherwise tell me how this can happen: Some smart young man or woman shows up in your neighbourhood and puts up posters and erects stands and platforms for the campaign and goes around the constituency declaring his or her ardent desire to “develop” your area by bringing in clean and safe water, excellent schools, competent teachers, the best agricultural experts as extension officers, etc, etc.

These goodies

At the time this clown is promising all these goodies, you realise he has been distributing money and items such as tee-shirts, kitenge prints, khangas, caps as well as organising feeding programmes, where everyone who cares can feed to satiation and drink whatever they want with practically no limitation.

Seriously, I have been asking myself this question: Would you employ a young man who shows up at your front porch and tells you he is seeking a job to develop your garden and tells you that, while you are thinking whether to employ him, “Here is money for you and your family to eat and drink for now!”

Now, if we think such a man should be reported to the police or taken to a mental institution, why are we behaving in exactly the same way?

Many a time we witness arguments among countrymen trying to solve the conundrum of our continued failure to move forward economically, despite our abundant resources, and it seems like we haven’t got a clue.

But is this not one of the cues, if not probably the most important clue, that we have not found a way to designate our leaders?

It ought to be clear to any person above childhood that this type of electoral system and practice can never deliver anything akin to development or progress.

Now, consider that we have being doing this same thing over and over — in many of our countries elections follow a certain periodicity like clockwork — but we have not discovered the truth.

Put simply, our politics is badly rigged against our people, and elections have become just devices to validate the political hooliganism of the various cabals running our countries like so many Mafia families.

Knee-jerk supporters

We have so demeaned our people, whom we have turned into knee-jerk supporters of whoever gives them food and drink around election time, that now they say that at least at election time it is their turn to eat, which means, naturally, that at all other times it is the turn of the ones who “bring development” to the people.

Clearly, this is not working, and it is no wonder that dissatisfaction and frustration are rife, as our people cannot put a finger to the thing that holds them back.

Apart from these sham elections, from time to time, the rulers organise shows designed to make the people believe that somebody is concerned about their problems.

We have one such masquerade happening in Tanzania right now, where public meetings are organised so people can vent their frustration. But these will never solve any problems; they are just shows.

If the elections we have been holding had any substance, there would not be any need for such public shows, except those organised by those people we elected.

Where are they? What is the use of spending so much money and other resources to erect and maintain a political system that has to be propped by public shows, where people come to vent their grievances over the hopelessness of the system in place?

I am just asking.

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Strictly Personal

Road deaths are symbolic of our national failure, By Tee Ngugi

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“Killer roads claim 25 lives,” screamed the headline of the Daily Nation on March 18. Among this number were 11 Kenyatta University students, who died in a grisly road accident on the Nairobi- Mombasa highway.

The report gave chilling statistics on the ever-worsening road carnage. The 25 died in a span of three days. Between January and February 20, a staggering 649 people lost their lives on our roads.

What these statistics show is that we are well on our way to breaking the annual record of deaths on our roads.

Roads are deadlier

In a column in 2022, Kenyan roads are deadlier than some of the battlefields, I gave some comparative statistics to illustrate just how deadly our roads are.

I stated: “In 2021, more than 4,000 people lost their lives (in Kenya). By contrast, the UK, with a population of 65 million people and 32 million cars, recorded 1,400 deaths on the roads in 2021.

“In Germany, within a comparable period, about 2,500 people died on the roads in a population of 85 million people and 48 million cars.
“Thus, Kenya, with a population of 50 million people and only two million cars, registered more deaths on the roads.”

I went on to show that the deaths on our roads in 2021 were twice the number of American soldiers killed in Afghanistan in a 20-year period.

If these statistics are not enough to wake up our somnolent officials, then nothing ever will.

Not the avoidable deaths during droughts. Not the deaths caused by collapsing buildings. Not the sky-high cases of femicide.

Not the cry of millions who sleep hungry every day as officials fly around in helicopters. Not the alarming numbers of street families.
Not the despair of millions of unemployed youth. Not the squalor in our unplanned towns and cities.

Nothing will wake these officials. In any case, as the Daily Nation of March 19 on globe-trotting officials showed, when awake, our officials are travelling to the next European destination or, as the countless cases of theft being reported almost daily in all media show, they are busy lining their already saturated pockets.

Now, Kenya wants to send its police to Haiti to rein in marauding gangs that control most of the capital. Do our officials, or citizens, ever ask themselves how Haiti became what it is?

Cursed by God

Haiti is not cursed by God. It got that way because of systematic plunder by officials over the years.

It became what it is because of officials not performing their duties to required standards, and not being sanctioned for it.

It became that way because its officials love nothing more than to cavort in Paris or Miami, rather than think about how to transform the lives of their people.

Every day in our papers, we read about the conduct of our officials that mirrors the behaviour that led to Haiti becoming the broken country it is today.

Tee Ngugi is a Nairobi-based political commentator

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