Gege Katana, a human rights defender for 25 years from the Democratic Republic of Congo has been awarded this year’s Front Line Defender Award in Dublin. Gégé Katana founded the “Solidarity Movement of Women Human Rights Activists based in Uvira in South Kivu province. She has been prevented from travelling, arrested and received death threats over the past 25 years of activism.

Gégé Katana, 42, is a leading human rights defender working in Uvira, eastern DRC. She is the president of SOFAD, an organisation that works through a grassroots network of 625 women to research and campaign against sexual violence, and provide counselling and help to rape survivors. SOFAD also educates local communities on women and children’s rights, and lobbies the government to deliver justice and reform discriminatory laws.

Gégé Katana has worked with several non-governmental organisations including; IDEA/Afrique - Institut pour le developpement et l’education des adultes. She is a network member of the Global Fund for Women and Coordinator for the Synergie des Femmes Defenseurs des Droits de le l’Homme du Sud-Kivu en RDC (SYFEDH).

The scale and horror of sexual violence against women and girls in Eastern DRC prompted Gégé Katana to work with SOFAD and the lack of existing structures for combating gross violations of human rights, especially perpetuated against women was a significant motivating factor in her fight for women’s rights and human rights. The principal violations of human rights in the region are, forced displacement, arbitrary arrests, torture, rape and pillage.

“For me, winning the award is a recognition of my work as a human rights defender and gives me the strength and encouragement to pursue my struggle in the area of human rights. I cannot fully express my joy in receiving this award, nor my gratitude towards Front Line for supporting and helping me in my work.”

Video: Her work with Women in the DRC

All the nominees for Human Rights Defenders at Risk: Akifa Aliyeva, Gégé Katana,Jackeline Rojas,Radhia Nasraoui,Riza Fanilag

Tags: Human Rights; DRC; Front Line; Gege Katana;

Ethan of My Heart’s in Accra has done an excellent job of “Unpacking the DRC Election Results” in which Joseph Kabila will run against former rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba. He also has a link to an excellent mapping of the election results by the BBC. The announcement has led to violence between supporters of the two election finalists. On the one hand this was not supposed to happen especially with the 17,000 plus MONUC forces present. On the other hand violence was expected to break out at some point in an election where the political and the financial rewards are so high. If either Kabila or Bemba had won outright there still would have been violence so it is a no win situation. Meanwhile alliances are being built on both sides ready for the run off in just over 2 months on the 29th October. It is unfortuante that the country has to wait two more months to vote and then a further couple of weeks for the final election result. It is hard to see how the country can get through this period without continued fractional fighting and further bloodshed in what is already seeming like a divided country.
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The long awaited DRC elections are on Sunday. There is some good news, quite a bit of scepticism and still much cause for concern. The good news is that more militias have come forward to surrender themselves and their arms. What percentage this 20,000 represents is not clear as no one really knows how many militias there are - it is doubtful the militias themselves know their numbers. Many of the militias are child soldiers who are traumatised and in desperate need rehabilitation without which they remain vulnerable to further kidnappings by armed militias, traffickers looking for child labour to export or work in the mines.

Considering the high stakes involved, the presence of thousands of militias and number of political parties (33) involved in the elections the level of violence has been relatively low. Whether the 17,000 MONUC presence has been a deterrent is not clear but certainly all the factors are there for the violence to have been much worse. However it is very worrying that supporters of the UDPS party, led by Étienne Tshisekedi have held demonstrations calling for the elections to be boycotted due to pre-election irregularities. The Catholic church has also called for a boycott on the same basis. If Tshisekedi and other opposition leaders have no trust in the outcome of the elections it is difficult to see how this will be resolved in the post-election period when Joseph Kabila, predicted to win, takes control of the country and it’s natural resources.
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Despite the pre-election violence that has begun in the DRC, the world’s mining companies are heading for the country like packs of hungry wolves. But they are not the only ones chasing cobalt and copper. Tension is forming in Katanga and Kivu provinces between local miners who have been working the mines themselves and who want to keep out the big companies that are want to return under Joseph Kabilia’s privatisation programme “encouraged by the World Bank. Of the 70,000 miners in Katanga alone many are children who crawl in the small tunnels dug by men to collect the copper.

An angry crowd of men and children surrounds each new delegation as it arrives at the Ruashi mine in the southeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The miners are thin and their faces white with dust, but their voices are strong as they sing: “This land belonged to our ancestors, its copper belongs to us”.

Colette Braeckman of Le Monde Diplomatique writes an excellent article detailing the long history of mining and the shady world of dubuously legal mining contracts that favour the international companies in the DRC.

American Mineral Fields, the Australian company Russel Resources and Zimbabwe’s Ridgepointe Overseas funded Laurent-Désiré Kabila’s military campaign, and later the DRC’s political and administrative reconstruction. In return they obtained agreements for three Gecamines sites, to mining resources at Mongbwalu (1) in the northeastern province of Ituri, and to the diamond concessions in Kisangani.

Some of the new mining multinationals that will be challenging local miners are BHP Billiton (copper), Anglo Gold which despite dirty dealings with local militia, insists it will remain in the country, and Rio Tinto has said it “is turning to Africa for new resources. Others are Tenke Mining Corporation, Adastra Minerals and its suitor, First Quantum Minerals, Banro Corporation, and Katanga Minerals. The stakes are high as the sums of money to be made by the multinationals are huge with the risk of corruption amongst the newly elected government also high. The presence of militias and indigenous miners alongside multiantionals and the liklihood of a corrupt tyrannical goverment under the leadership of Joseph Kabila, does not bode well for the people of the DRC.

Links: Looting of Congo

Pambazuka News has an interview with Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja on “the strategic importance of the DRC. He asks us to imagine an economic and politically independent DRC and what that would mean to Sub Saharan Africa.

The forthcoming election means more to the international community, which is spending heavily on it and even sending in European Union forces to supplement MONUC to ensure that it is being held, than to the Congolese people. The major powers of the world and the international organizations under their control would like to legitimize their current client regime in Kinshasa so they can continue unfettered to extract all the resources they need from the Congo.

What is evident is that France and its allies, African as well as non- African, do not wish to see the DRC become a regional power in Central Africa, and thus constitute a threat to French hegemony and Western interests in the sub-region. A strong state in the Congo will not only threaten French control over the resource-rich countries in the sub-region, namely, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Sao Tome and Principe. Moreover, the DRC has enough arable soil, rainfall, lakes and rivers to become the breadbasket of Africa, and enough hydroelectric power to light up the whole continent from the Cape to Cairo. “

The above quote could have been just as well written in 1906 as in 2006 - that much has not changed. I have just finished reading Patrice Lumumba (written as part of the PANAF Great Lives Series) It is worth reading, on the eve of the first DRC elections in 45 years providing us with a detailed historical analysis and explanation of the Congo from the time Leopold of Belgium took it as his personal property during the Berlin Conference in 1882 to the present day.

Leopold’s prize was a country rich in minerals copper, cobalt, silver, tungsten, diamonds, tin and uranium. Rubber, palm oil, coffee and cotton. The exploitation of these resources by King Leopold led to the dispossession of all land by the indigenous people of the Congo. Firstly land was given to the mining companies; secondly land was used for the creation of a system of national parks; thirdly huge tracks of farmland were given to white settlers. But ultimately it was the mining sector that took control of the country and remains in control today. Two regions, the Katanga and Kivu provinces most affected by the above distribution of land have also been the most affected by war and conflict throughout the history of Congo.
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