Economic History/Development Studies, U. of Natal
        <Moored@nu.ac.za>

[In August 2000, Dr. David Moore (University of Natal)
interviewed Jacques Depelchin for Southern Africa Report
(Toronto)*. H-AFRICA is grateful to David and SAR for
permission to publish a modified version--editors]

  'Towards a People-Driven Peace Process in the Democratic
   Republic of the Congo?' An Interview with Jacques
   Depelchin,' by David Moore

Readers of the Canadian _National Post_'s August 21 online
"Congo in Crisis"  series have a better understanding of the
Democratic Republic of the Congo than most (aside from
thinking that Frantz Fanon may have changed his name to
Fritz posthumously). However, for many observers, diplomats
and purported peacemakers, the wars in the DRC are just too
hard to understand. Are the "rebels" genuine or Rwandan and
Ugandan proxies? Who are the "Mayi-Mayi"  anyway? What about
those rumours that Rwandans are actually releasing
interhamwe prisoners from their gaols into South Kivu: how
could so-called "Tutsis" from Rwanda, who are supposed to be
allied with their ethnic kin, the Banyamulengwe in Kivu, be
doing such a thing? How can Uganda support both the "second
generation Mobutuists" under Jean-Pierre Bemba in the north
and Professor Wamba dia Wamba's group of radical democrats
in the Rally for Congolese Democracy - who in any case one
would think would be more comfortable teaching history at
the University of Dar es Salaam than leading a revolutionary
movement in a corner of the north-eastern Ituri province?

What are the causes of the Ituri war between pastoralist
Hema and agriculturalist Lendu? How does it fit into the
dynamics between the academic revolutionaries and the
Ugandans said to be the "Hemas'" cousins (which means, in
many ethnically conditioned minds, that they are lumped in
with the "Tutsi" empire builders)? Why is the RCD split in
two, with the Rwandans supporting Emile Ilunga's militarist
faction - which has substantial control over Goma and Bukavu
and is at war in their hinterlands?  Can it be true that
Rwandan businessmen are actually trading arms for
interahamwe gathered minerals? Why have the Ugandans and
Rwandans gone their separate ways: what happened in
Kisangani to cause their divorce? What about the Ugandan,
Burundian, Angolan, and Sudanese rebels? Where do the Lord's
Army millenarians, UNITA's professional guerrillas, the two
(or more?)  "Hutu" rebel groups from the second "Hutu-Tutsi"
problem country, and an Islamic state-at-war fit in? Is it
true, as some analysts write, that the Great Lakes region is
embroiled in a post-modern/post-Cold War war that is leading
to an eternity called a "war mode of production" rather than
purging all the contradictions of colonialism and misled
independence?

In this post-colonial purgatory, who are the big foreign
powers involved?  What are their motivations? What is the
USA waiting for: does it really want the Congo carved into
peaces so it can be more easily exploited? Will it do
anything to spoil French aims? Remembering its sorry
Somalian story, its stains from the do-nothing days in
pre-genocide Rwanda, and its too-hasty support of Kabila's
early days, does it just want to avoid a big mistake and let
its (metaphorically) blue-eyed strong-men (ie Rwanda's
Kagame and Uganda's Museveni) who say all the right things
about neo-liberalism and democracy (sometime, sometime) do
what they want? What kind of societies at the bottom of its
empire does the USA want? Maybe it just does not know.

What does roly-poly, sad-eyed Laurent Desire Kabila desire?
Is he capable of knowing his needs? He was nearly a hero
when, with Uganda's and Rwanda's support, he appeared to
fill the expiring Mobutu's vacuum in 1997. Then, helped by
the Rwandans' crusade against the Interahamwe, and allied
with some eastern Banyamulenge (often called "Tutsis"
themselves, having come to the Congo from Rwanda in the late
19th century) he appeared to satisfy the needs of actors
ranging from Washington realpolitikers to radical Kinshasa
democrats and Kigali soldiers. Soon, though, he alienated
all three groups.

The Congolese democrats, struggling since Mobutu opened
democracy's doors a little in 1992, were shut out even more
than before. The Americans, their allies, and a host of big
mining corporations, were snubbed by Kabila's reneging on
billions of dollars worth of contracts signed as he marched
to Kinshasa. The Rwandan-Banyamalenge alliance fell out with
him because the interahamwe problem was not solved: indeed,
it looked as if Kabila was turning against them. By mid-1998
all three turned against him: there are suggestions that the
Rwandans planned a coup to coincide with "Tutsis"  rioting
in the east. Kabila's Rwandan backers changed their minds
about their erstwhile ally and mounted a fierce offensive
against him - from a military airport just to Kinshasa's
west. If Angola and Zimbabwe hadn't stepped in, he would
have been wiped out. Now he and they are allied with the
interahamwe and, in complex ways, with lots of other
fighting groups in the bush.

The Congolese don't know who to hate most: their latest
kleptocrat - who has just appointed all the members to his
new "parliament" - or the invaders?  The war works for
Kabila as long as that confusion reigns - and he can reign
as the biggest warlord in the war economy. Now, the latest
session of the Lusaka Accord talks has failed. Both SADC and
the UN are sitting on their petards, awaiting Kabila's whims
- or the fancies of Rwanda and/or Uganda.

The _National Post_'s recent series noted that Che Guevara's
Congolese diaries register disappointment with Kabila. In
other parts of his journals, he wrote disparagingly of the
fighting capabilities of Congolese soldiers.  (Before
putting him on a pedestal it should be noted that he had no
great success in Bolivia!). Rather than hoping for better
soldiers, though, perhaps one should think that the peaceful
proclivities of Guevara's would-be guerrillas are positive.
Aside from the minority of people involved in fighting, most
Congolese want peace. In that sense, the scene is not
complicated at all. Fifty million people want peace. A few
want war.

If a leader of the Wamba dia Wamba group within the Rally
for Congolese Democracy is right, a new people's logic of
peace negotiations must be allowed to take root if that
desire for peace is to be realised. Jacques Depelchin - an
economic historian, university professor and pedagogical
innovator who was working to revamp the DR Congo's public
education system before joining the RCD - thinks a
destructive state logic has led to the disastrous outcomes
of the Lusaka Accord. That trajectory must be replaced by a
people-to-people dialogue building both peace and democracy
from the ground up. If that new logic could be boosted to a
good start, a substantive transformation might finally take
hold in the DR Congo. Towards the end of August David Moore
interviewed Depelchin for the _Southern Africa Report_ about
some of his attempts to get a new democratic logic under
way.

DM: Why you think the Lusaka Accord talks have failed?

Depelchin: The primary factor is President Kabila himself.
He has refused to go along with the agreement. Ever since he
signed, he has been complaining about one thing or the other
while at the same time violating the Lusaka Agreement.

Of course, the agreement has faults. Some go back to what we
would call the state of the rebellion against the state.
After all, the people in the Congo were rebelling because
Kabila was turning his back against the process of
democratisation, so the peace everybody was expecting did
not occur.

The Accord's timetable is another example of why these
things don't work.  Given the Congolese situation it was
clear that it couldn't. The concept of the timetable itself
is flawed: unless this or that happens nothing can be done.
So the UN says it cannot deploy troops unless the treaty
conditions are acceptable. With that kind of situation
Kabila has room to create the kind of problems allowing him
to prevent deployment.

Yet we have always said that the issue is not one of
peacekeeping troops.  You can't have peacekeeping troops on
the ground when the conditions for actually building and
making the peace aren't there. The framing of the Lusaka
agreement has not taken this into account.

DM: What might be some conditions to reinvigorate
discussions at a different level and towards building peace?
You have been involved in negotiating a peace process
between the pastoralists and the agriculturalists - the Hema
and the Lendu - in Ituri province near Bunia.  Perhaps some
of the experience you've gained there could be expanded more
broadly.

Depelchin: This is not just from my own experience, but from
others. But when we went to Bunia we had to bring down a
conflict fundamentally involving the Hema and the Lendu.
(Although it's an oversimplification to reduce it to those
two ethnic groups, they were the two main protagonists.)  We
simply went to those who were most interested in seeing that
peace should return. We discovered that the majority of the
people wanted the war to end.  We felt that the question of
who was responsible for the war and where the blame should
be put should be handled later, because you will never reach
an agreement if you get bogged down on figuring out who is
to blame. We combated that. Also, the emphasis was on going
toward the people most likely to gain from the process.

During the conflict's height there was a great deal of news
coverage, but nobody talked about that process. Sure, there
are still people being killed, unnecessarily, here and there
- there are sellouts - but in the end we can say that the
conflict has died down.

In Angola there is a process involving initiatives from
religious groups.  The notion is anchored in the idea that
people really wanting peace should get together. All
protagonists - including UNITA and government
representatives - would come on board eventually. It is
interesting that the process takes place under the logic of
the population, or of the people, as opposed to a logic
rooted in state to state negotiation and then down to the
bottom.

To look beyond the UN - not to put down all the efforts
involved in bringing about the Lusaka agreement! - over the
last few years, whether it is the Lusaka Agreement or the
DRC or Angola, and compare those stumbling failures to the
Mozambican case, one can distinguish between processes with
a logic rooted in the state and another rooted in ensuring
that the people most likely to benefit from the agreement
are put in the process. It even affects how the
representatives organise the discussions. I think this is
really what is going to happen. Sure, in Mozambique
government representatives were essential in the process,
but what was central was that the government's concern was
to make sure it responded to the majority of the
population's desires.

DM: A state logic involves Rwanda, Uganda and other states
seen by many Congolese as the war's perpetrators. There is
an internal logic of rebellion but many Congolese see the
rebels as other states' proxies. Can one get beyond that
dichotomy? Can armed opposition groups talk to unarmed
groups, as the Accord proposes?

Depelchin: True: in this case regional states involved make
that process more difficult. But if you really look -
whether in Rwanda, whether in Uganda, in Kampala, in Angola,
whether in Zimbabwe, in Congo - you find that everyone wants
to see an end to this war. The majority is very, very, very
tired of war. People just want to see it end. If these were
peoples' governments they would follow Mugabe's route at the
end of the Mozambican civil war. That is to say, "let's make
sure that you really respond to the wishes of the majority
of the population." So while that inter-state logic is true,
that difficulty is only one of appearance. Those state
signatories should really make an effort to make satisfy the
wishes of the majority.

In that sense, today's Angolan internal process is leading
to a national dialogue. It's a new initiative based simply
on people saying, "listen, let's get all the protagonists
together to discuss fundamental issues keeping us at war and
let's put an end to that war."

It's what we have tried to do. During social reconstruction
and reconstructing peace, we are working for processes, not
individuals. The processes are fundamentally Congolese. We
turn to peace, the rebuilding of society, of the state, on
the basis of democratic prescriptions on the state. These
are fundamental.

The state logic continuing to wreak havoc on the people is a
colonial inheritance: this is often overlooked. Regardless
of the accommodations we have made, these are conquest
states. Colonial and conquest states are organised to divide
and rule people. They create the very conditions we see
today. The Great Lakes Region crisis is an exacerbation of
that kind of rule. It's not a question of saying so and so
is at fault. The leaders in the region must take stock and
decide that conducting low-intensity warfare against their
own population must end. For whom? For the benefit of their
own population.

DM: There's much talk about a "global civil society"
alternative to an international state logic. What
initiatives could global actors other than the United
Nations and states play in facilitating a process like you
advocate? Clearly, there are many Congolese desiring to get
together at a level other than states, but lack the means.
What international organisation of people could facilitate a
dialogue?

Depelchin: One has to be very, very careful. In Mozambique
or the inter-ethnic conflict in Ituri, the key to a
successful exercise is that it's rooted within the area and
the population with most to gain from peace.  That is
fundamental. Unless that view is taken then we will continue
turning around peace conferences here and there, with
nothing happening. Back to Mozambique, the initial objective
was to have the whole negotiation process occur in
Mozambique or another African country. It didn't happen but
that was the objective. In Angola, people on the ground are
taking hold of the whole process. Those who have resources
and their organisation's mandate must push for those things
and help those Angolans. In the DRC there are lots of
initiatives. The conditions must be created so all the local
population within their own areas can come together at the
centre of the whole process, bringing about what everyone
really wants to see happening.  That can happen in a global
way, but only if it's anchored and rooted in people in the
areas most needing these things.

DM: Che Guevara's Congo diaries say that the Congolese
aren't good fighters. That can be a very positive thing:
many Congolese say, "we are a peace-loving people." You seem
to be leaving the military or armed option, going toward
something re-instigating a peace process. Why have you
changed your thinking about these things?

Depelchin: Our August 1998 political declaration says we
took up arms as a last resort to make Kabila understand the
Congolese crisis could only be resolved politically. In our
statements regarding Kisangani [where in mid-1999 a group in
the RCD split from Wamba dia Wamba and joined the Rwandans,
instigating a war between the two groups] we said this is
the eleventh war in the Congo since 1959. These wars have
never resolved the question of getting a sustainable
democratic regime in place. This is the crisis of the Congo.

There are two camps or lines regarding the question of
militarisation. One says the crisis is political. It must be
resolved politically. We must not resort to military means
to resolve the contradiction. It also says that we do not
have to get into Kinshasa to bring about transformation. The
process of democratisation takes place as the rebellion goes
on. That is one reason why many people did not like
Professor Wamba's leadership in Goma. People said
democratisation can not take place during war. That view can
be traced to Mobutu and Kabila. It leads to rule by coup
d'etat following coup d'etat.  That process has to be
transformed.

The Congolese people have learned one thing over these last
few years: they know very well what they no longer want. Yet
it is much more difficult to begin building what they want.
That is what we are trying to do in the area we control. We
involve the population in dialogue. After all, how can one
say you are going into the National Dialogue without
allowing people to exercise that very method? We are making
the public treasury function, transforming the public
administration into something of the population, for the
population, by the population. This requires a series of
dialogues day in day out so that people can internalise what
we understand by dialogue.  Then people can resort to
dialogue to resolve any kind of issue - including those
solved by life and death in other situations.

DM: The outside world only sees the logic of armed force.
It's obvious various movements have different dynamics
across the country. One has to get underneath to see some of
these processes.

Depelchin: I repeat and emphasise: the central issue is
which group responds to peoples' needs, not just simply in
speeches and declarations? Concretely on the ground, which
one makes things the population wants to see? That is the
only way people are mobilised. Sooner or later it is not how
many troops you have that counts, but whether the population
supports the position and the processes in which your group
is engaged.

We have seen precisely this at work, although propaganda is
going on - people trying to push Professor Wamba aside
allege all kinds of things. But people will eventually ask
why the group without military force comparable to the
others has withstood those trying to eliminate it. We were
supposed to be eliminated in Kisangani last year. Over the
last few weeks in Bunia all kinds of efforts have been made
by the people against the process of democratisation - who
say "first of all let's get to Kinshasa." That is the
mentality of the coup d'etat. We feel that's over, it's
something of the past. We must get out of that mentality. As
long as you stick with what the population wants, you are
likely to emerge as the leader it wants.

DM: Small groups from all sides benefit from the political
economy of war.  Who benefits in this one? What process
makes people aware of who benefits?  What can break the
cycle?

Depelchin: I can respond generally. It would require an
international investigation to specify the pillaging of the
Congo's resources - the names and so on. The UN has proposed
that. It would be a welcome exercise.  However, remember
that this is not the first time our resources have been
pillaged. It was underway during colonial occupation. Adam
Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost states that 10 million
Congolese disappeared simply because the process of
pillaging the country took precedence over their welfare.
That can only be genocide, although Hochschild refuses to
use the term. Any war situation benefits a mafia - people
organised to take advantage of the resources of Angola,
Congo etc.

It is not a policy of our ally, Uganda, to engage in that
kind of pillaging.  They have always been very, very
unambiguous: they state they are in Congo in solidarity. The
Congolese cannot organise their resources now, so Uganda
says they are helping organise the exploitation of resources
so that Congolese can begin to take care of themselves.

DM: Are you making progress?

Depelchin: I think that if everybody tried to go in the
direction of which I have spoken, we would move, however
slowly, but we would move forward.

Copyright (c) The Author, 2000
------------------------------

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