Chauncey Scisum and Kaloyan Danovski
History Of The Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo, which was before known as Zaire is located in Central Africa.DRC was granted its independence on June 30th 1960. It is the second largest country in Africa with a population of 80 million plus, putting it at the eighteenth most populated country in the world. The capital of the DRC is Kinshasa. In 1996, the Civil Wars of the Congo were the end of President Mobutu Sese Seko’s long term of 32 years. Mobutu left behind a unstable, corrupt government with many people in need. It was said that nine African nations, 20-30 armed groups, and peacekeepers from the UN all took part in a war that totaled out to around 5.4 million deaths caused by starvation, disease, and killing.
Although, the DRC is very rich in natural resources such as diamonds, gold, uranium, copper/cobalt and oil. In fact, in 2008 the majority of the GDP occupied by oil sells(65%), and also accounted for 85% of the government's revenue. The DRC provides many of these resources to the rest of the world. During the second Congo war, there was much looting occurring of the minerals by neighboring countries such as Rwanda, Uganda, and even by some of the Congolese.
The Congo War’s
For the past two decades the Congo has been plagued with war with neighboring countries and the Congolese militias. The first Congo War was from 1996-1997, it was led by Rwanda, and was an invasion of Zaire. Despite efforts to end the wars with peace treaties, the violence has once again increased back in August of 1998 when the Second Congo
War began. This war lasted until 2003 despite the treaty of 2002. Many of the armed groups in eastern Congo partnered with the national government, but after sometime these relations fell apart. They have all failed due to the unstable government and high number of armed militia within the country. Much of the blame went to a new group called M23, they took their name from the peace treaty that was signed on March 23rd, 2009. They used this name because they felt that the government did not respect the treaty and what it stood for. The DRC is a country filled with millions of displaced citizens, and numbers of armed groups fighting, killing and raping throughout the country. There have been outside sources who have tried to help bring an end to the turmoil and war going on in this country. One outstanding aid was the UN, they deployed one of its largest peacekeeping missions there, along with agreements, and other peace efforts but have repetitively failed to bring the fighting to a permanent halt.
Soldier's marching past the Congolese people .
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Former President Mobutu Sese Seko
Former President Mobutu Sese Seko’s presidency lasted for a total of 32 years. It began in November of 1965 and ended in May of 1997. At the beginning of Mobutu’s long term, he banned all political powers, and in turn formed his own called the ‘Popular Movement of the Revolution. All Congolese were required to join. Seko also made a request to have all of the trade unions form one combined union, and have it put under the control of the government. There was a lot of pushback against this from people but there were not any successful actions taken against it. Five years into his term, Sese Seko held a one party election for himself and required every Congolese citizen to vote. Mobutu was big on “cultural awareness”, so in 1971 he renamed the country the Republic of Zaire and also launched a program to spread this awareness of the Zaire ‘culture’. It was said that “He ordered all Congolese with Christian names to drop them and change to African ones, baptism of children was outlawed and Western-style clothing and ties were banned”(imdb.com). Mobutu was strongly opposed to Western culture views and ideas, and he made this very well know with how he wanted his country dictated. Mobutu is most well know for the problems that he caused his own country; with much fighting and struggle going on in Congo, Mobutu made sure that his personal wealth would never be effected. It is said that by 1984, Mobutu had no less than $5 billion saved up. Money that he was taking away from the government and putting in his back pocket. This resulted in the destruction, and failed repair of roads, bridges, buildings as well as other forms of infrastructure. Mobutu had the money to fix these problems, but was more concerned with his dictator mentality, and selfish desires. This also resulted in many unpaid government worker, which in turn caused substantial inflation, and caused a new level of corruption that Africa had never seen before. Mobutu was also responsible for currency devaluation, embezzlement of $4-$15 billion US dollars, and also severe debt to an entire nation. Because of all of the damage that Sese Seko had done to Congo, and its people, a new term was created for him called ‘Kleptocracy’, which “is a government with corrupt rulers (kleptocrats) that use their power to exploit the people and natural resources of their own territory in order to extend their personal wealth and political power. Typically this system involves the embezzlement of state funds at the expense of the wider population, sometimes without even the pretense of honest service” (wikipedia.com).
Much of what the DRC is still going through today is a result of the actions of this one man.
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Mobutu Sese Seko
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Foreign Aid in the DRC
Foreign Aid that is being given to the Congo is not the problem at all. It is the weak, shattered, and corrupt government that is causing it to continuously fail. Other nations are putting millions, and billions of dollars into the hands of political thieves who care nothing about the needs of the people. In fact, aid is hurting the people of the Congo, because it is giving them false hope about a better tomorrow. (thegaurdian.com) In order, to allow the aid to work, there must be a change in the political culture in the DRC. Until they are ridded of selfish, narrow minded dictators, aid will do nothing but hurt the people that it is suppose to be helping. This is all the doing of President Mobutu. He is the blame for the substantial hole that the DRC is still trying to recover from today. During his 32 year term he has done nothing but provide false hope, and lies to people who were in places of severe need.
Humanitarian aid, emergency aid, and ‘systemic aid’
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been subject to numerous aid packages in the past half-century, but an important distinction must be made between the types of aid that the country has received, mostly when talking about humanitarian aid and systemic (or systematic) aid.
Humanitarian and emergency aid in the DRC is undoubtedly necessary for the Congolese people, but in the past decades it has had mixed results. Congo has been plagued by armed conflicts, civil war, sexual abuse and violence, especially after the Rwandan genocide in 1994, after which many civilians and members of the Hutu fled to DRC (www.bbc.com). Since then, a sizeable amount of humanitarian aid funds have been directed towards relief from the unrest caused by the violent conflicts. Even with this aid, citizens from many provinces have been displaced, as much as 3 million according to the UN, who have been actively involved in the fighting that has been taking place in the Great Lakes country (www.un.org). Violence against civilians and sexual harassment towards women and young girls remain a common sight, especially in eastern Congo. One of the reasons why the process of ending these long and drawn out conflicts is so slow even with the help of the UN is because humanitarian aid missions are often ineffective at stopping the rebels and sometimes even cripple opposition efforts. An offensive carried out by the UN against the Rwandan Hutu rebels was not only unable to destroy them, but resulted in forced displacement, rape, and even the death of more than a thousand civilians, thus making the effects of the conflict even more severe (www.theguardian.com).
Some parts of the country are prone to natural disasters, such as floods and landslides, and epidemic due to the limited healthcare opportunities. Organizations like the Swedish-based SIDA are actively working towards improvement of crisis response and health intervention (www.sida.se). Overall, humanitarian aid in the DRC has helped relieve some of the consequences of the widespread military conflicts, but it still leaves much to be desired if the end goal is a state of peace under which the government can start building a strong economy and bureaucracy.
The other type of foreign aid, the so-called ‘systemic’ or ‘systematic’ aid, composes the majority of the funds that the DRC receives on a yearly basis, most of which comes from organizations such as The World Bank. In other words, this is money transferred from government to government or through specialized institutions with the intent of the social, political, cultural, economic, and infrastructural development of Congo. Unfortunately, this is not the primary way in which the money is being utilized, mainly due to deep-seated corruption in the government and its officials and a disregard for the well-being of the country and its people that stumps economic growth and investment. The rulers of the DRC, primarily President Mobutu, have, for a long time, been exploiting foreign aid funds for their own good. Even the small amount of money that does go towards the development of the country’s economy is oftentimes detrimental due to the system in place. As it stands, the poverty rate in the DRC, although improved in recent years, still remain one of the highest in the world and prior to 2010 Congo reported a below-average economic growth rate (www.worldbank.org). There are many issues with foreign aid, among which inflation, debt, and an extremely large amount of money spent on military rather than development, more than 40% of the total government spending (pdfs.semanticscholar.org). In an open discussion with Dambisa Moyo, a former consultant for The World Bank with a Ph.D. in economics, about her book Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa she explained one of the phenomena that influences the economy of many african countries - the notion of the “Dutch disease.” According to Moyo, huge influxes of money in the form of US dollars or other currencies through foreign aid packages cause the native currency of a given country, in our case - the Congolese franc (CDF), to increase in value to the point where neighbouring countries are incentivized not to import goods due to the high prices. This impedes development in the export sector, which, for many African nations, is what keeps, or should keep, the economy going because owners of exporting businesses are the only ones that have enough money available to spend domestically (pdfs.semanticscholar.org). This is only one of the factors behind the failing economy of the DRC and, along with the dire political and bureaucratic situation, there is little hope for the establishment of a working and stable government without drastic change in the country’s leadership.
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