DR Congo: No elections here!

Squealing mice and rats ran around the room, as well as squeaking bats that sounded like Punch laughing, as I tried to get a few hours’ sleep in a remote parish house during my 25 hour river journey to Mbandaka on the River Congo. At least I had a mosquito net to keep them out of my bed – but sleep was slow in coming. We watched a distant tropical storm, but because of reports of bandits on the river’s approach to Mbandaka, and subsequent military patrols, we were advised to take a break for a few hours and continue at one o’clock in the morning.

I arrived in Mbandaka and heard that a small boat carrying money for the people working to register voters, in the interior, for the elections, had been attacked, robbed and all six people on board had been killed.

From Mbandaka I took a plane to Congo’s capital, Kinshasa ... and followed the preparations for this year’s supposed general election. The president’s mandate ended last year.

“The latest technology will provide each citizen with a biometric voting card ...” said the man on the television, in Kinshasa. They then showed a woman giving her details as someone slowly typed them into a laptop. That done, he was able to push out the printed card from a large square of plastic. The woman was ready for the election!

However, Lilianna, a friend’s daughter in Kinshasa, found the reality quite different. She set off with a friend at five in the morning to the local church hall. She was given a number, 67, waited all day, outside in the scorching sun ... and then told to come back the following day. I asked her if she would try again the following day. “Yes,” she said, “It’s important to register to vote, but today there was only one person with one computer processing applications. Only twenty people managed to get their cards all day.” Lilianna returned early the next day and was given a new number, this time 177! She went home to wait and returned to the hall at 3 pm; there was nobody there! She, like many others, is still not registered.

Lillianna, ready to register as a voter in the General Election

Since the brutal repression of street protests in Kinshasa, and elsewhere in the Congo, last September and December, another phenomenon has further aggravated the population. The value of the local currency, the Congolese Franc, has lost half of its value. Prices have doubled. Rents and imported goods are set in US dollars; a lot of people are going hungry and unable to pay the rent for their houses.

I met Lilianna again a few days later. “We are more than seven months on from the President’s promise of elections,” she sighed. “People assume they’ll take place this December. What is clear to me is that there’ll be no elections this year.” 

There may be trouble ahead ...

[Since writing this, in July 2017, the electorate has been advised that elections will take place in 2019 ...]

Kinshasa: a very special school

I visited Kinshasa during July and August; I’d only been there for a few days when I was invited to visit Sister Marie-Therese Banamea, a sister in the Daughters of Jesus community. “Francis, come and see our school. It’s for all the children of those people who came to Kinshasa on René Ikeka’s boat and didn’t go back. They don’t have a penny to their name – and so the children never normally get to go to school.” 

Francis Hannaway MHM

René Ikeka is a Basankusu man who made it big in the time of the late President Mobutu. He has a riverboat for carrying goods. Many Basankusu people take advantage of it to transport them and their goods to Kinshasa, for free. Most go back and forth several times a year. Others see the bright city lights and decide to stay.

I arrived at the school and saw very polite and well behave children in their classrooms. “The children are all behind with their studies,” she explained. “The youngest in this classroom is nine – but is still learning to read simple words.”

In another room the students were around 16 years old. They each sat behind a sewing machine and treadled it with their feet. An array of dresses was displayed along one wall. “They learn to make clothes,” she continued, “but the main purpose of the school is to teach literacy and arithmetic.”

Francis Hannaway chatting to pupils

After visiting the school, we visited a new development, nearby. Built on reclaimed land on the River Congo, at Stanley Pool, it’s called The River City. It’s a secure island of luxury apartments. To get into it we passed through an area of very poor dwellings, tiny cement brick sheds, huts made from salvaged metal sheets, each housing large families – a real shanty-town. “This is where our children live,” Sr. Marie-Therese said as we passed through. “It’s a real ghetto. There are no facilities, they mostly just sit at home.”

To see the luxury of the The River City, made such an impact on me because of the contrast. At least when these people were back in Basankusu they could grow vegetables and keep a few chickens, but here they were surrounded dirt and pollution. We watched as children collected water for cooking from an open drain.

“Sadly, the girls grow up and turn to prostitution ,” sighed Sr. Marie-Therese. “The boys often become bandits. Education is the only way to save them. That’s why we started the school.”

As I said my goodbyes, Sr. Marie-Therese called to me, “Don’t forget to tell the people in Middlesbrough Diocese about our work to save these children.”

I turned back to wave. “I won’t!” I said.

Outside the school