Africa
Lady Macleod breaks into print on the galling state of affairs in Africa:
“…the brutal war here in eastern Congo has not only lasted longer than the Holocaust but also appears to have claimed more lives. A peer- reviewed study put the Congo war’s death toll at 5.4 million as of April 2007 and rising at 45,000 a month. That would leave the total today, after a dozen years, at 6.9 million.”
I can’t even imagine those figures as real lives, as individuals. It’s so overwhelming in its horror and sheer numbers of the dead that my brain can’t envision it as real, but what may be even more difficult for us, in our protected lives to envision, is the rape, torture, and mutilation that is daily fare in this ravaged country.
This article in the New York Times Sunday edition gives details of one young woman’s heart-rending journey and struggle to survive. I have a daughter not much older than Jeanne Mukuninwa and I shudder to think of her being born into such circumstances.
What can we do? It’s not our country. I have no political power that would make a difference. It’s not our responsibility. Africa has always been a violent mess. I’m not a famous person who can command public attention, we say.
We can bear witness. We can put fingers to keyboard and blog our outrage. We can tell our friends. If enough of us shout out our dismay, our horror, our objection to a continuing war that is killing our fellow human beings on such a scale and causing lives to be mutilated beyond endurance, we will be heard by those to whom we have given power.
Some time back, on the other blog, I ran a post on Darfur, largely in reaction to blogger Kizzy:
The Arab coverage of Darfur is pathetic. Only recently did Al-Arabiya started doing some proper reporting on Darfur. Only recently did they add Darfur to the list of Arab countries we should pray for, donate money to. Only recently did people find out about a conflict which started nearly 4 years ago.
Brian Steidle went to the war zone and it was reported:
Steidle had never seen anything like it – schoolgirls, bound together with makeshift handcuffs and burned alive. He was shocked, then outraged, then intrigued. He wanted to see for himself.
In January, he predicted – based on Janjaweed movements – that the town of Hamada would be attacked within two weeks. The team found babies with their faces bashed in. When members returned, “they were like zombies”, Steidle recalls.
This was government encouraged and the group were Janjaweed. This is evil in its worst form – groups of people without conscience given leave by sickheaded people to find a final solution to a problem they perceive in their own minds. An excuse for atrocities, that’s all it is.
Filed under: Politics & economics, Society & human issues
What amazes me is that the Congo refugees I know, living in South Africa, are so much better educated than South Africans. How do they manage that in a country that has had 50 years of violence, turmoil and repression?
It’s a point, Steve. Possibly this is what it’s aimed to stop – educating the Africans.