wfn.org | Fighting in Nearby Brazzaville Spills Over into Kinshasa

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

2-October-1997 
97381 
 
    Fighting in Nearby Brazzaville Spills Over into Kinshasa 
 
    by Alexa Smith 
 
KINSHASA, Congo-- Mortars are continuing to slam into central Kinshasa's 
business and residential neighborhoods in a surprise seige that has shut 
down the city's normal operations and disrupted the Sept. 30 day of 
mourning for the dead. 
 
    At least 17 civilians were reportedly killed in random mortar attacks 
September 28-29.  The shells were lobbed into the city's center from just 
across the river in Brazzaville, the capital of the neighboring Republic of 
Congo. Brazzaville began disintegrating in June when a full-scale civil war 
broke out between forces led by the nation's president and those led by the 
opposition's most powerful presidential candidate. 
 
    Rounds of retaliatory fire were returned across the 300-meter river 
from Kinshasa, accelerating as the day wore to a close.  The shelling 
resumed Oct. 1, though the city continued its daily routine. 
 
    For the city's five million residents -- who've spent the past two days 
scurrying for cover from artillery fire and then returning to the streets 
to inspect the damage as soon as the noise stopped -- there is only one 
thing less clear than when this might end: Why is it happening at all? 
 
    "This stuff is just falling out of the air and we don't know why," said 
Mennonite Central Committee member Ann Campbell-Janz in her downtown office 
as the windows and walls shook from retaliatory artillery fire. "You feel 
completely helpless. ... We've been hearing this stuff across the river and 
thinking, `Oh, Brazzaville.'" 
 
    "And now," said her husband and colleague Bruce, "we're thinking: 
`What's going on?'" 
 
    There are more rumors than clear answers in a city that was already 
spared what could have been a major bloodbath last May when strongman 
Mobutu Sese Seko's army abandoned Kinshasa to Laurent Kabila's Alliance of 
Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (ADFL).  Kabila's troops -- 
with vast public support -- swept across what was then called Zaire to 
depose one of the world's most despised dictators in a mere seven months. 
 
    "This city came so close to destruction in May, back when Kabila was 
coming.  People felt the [Mobute-backed] soldiers who were already here 
would completely destroy the place," said Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) 
mission co-worker Judith Brown, who is based in Kinshasa.  The Zairean army 
had earned themselves a well-established reputation for everything from 
bribery and murder to random pillage. 
 
    If Mobutu's troops had chosen to stay in Kinshasa and fight Kabila's 
advance, "it could have been a total disaster," Brown said.  "Everyone 
breathed a sign of relief.  Then it actually happened in Brazzaville just a 
couple months later!  And now we suddenly feel like we're in it somehow." 
 
    Ironically, many Kinshasans had fled to Brazzaville -- including Brown 
and several other PC(USA) mission personnel -- to avoid the anticipated 
military clash when Kabila arrived here. 
 
    Though Kinshasans could easily see the smoke and hear the explosions as 
Brazzaville repeatedly erupted during the past four months, only an 
occasional shell got lobbed over the river.  But 
Kinshasa took several hard hits during Sept. 28-29, largely to the Ngaliema 
district,  where Mobutu once kept a residence and where one of the city's 
major military bases still sits.  Also hard hit was Gombe, the embassy 
district. 
 
    "Before these rockets, we never had as much damage as yesterday," the 
Rev. Wa Kasonga of the Presbyterian Community of Kinshasa told the 
Presbyterian News Service, as artillery fire punctured the morning quiet. 
"So there is anxiety and anger. And there is fear ... that this might lead 
us into a war." 
 
    One  theory here is that ex-Mobutu soldiers have joined Denis Sassou 
Ngwesso's troops in rebel-held north Brazzaville and are trying to drag 
Kabila's administration into a destablizing war that would weaken whatever 
stability is left in post-Mobutu Congo -- a country with a collapsing 
educational system, rampant unemployment and staggering poverty. 
 
    A second proposition is that Hutu soldiers who fled Rwanda after 
committing its bloody 1994 Tutsi massacres are in Brazzaville trying to 
further provoke the Tutsis -- both Rwandan and Zairean -- who joined the 
anti-Mobutu struggle and who are thought to be influential within Kabila's 
army and new administration. 
 
    The United Nations is currently pressing the pro-Tutsi Kabila 
government for permission to investigate alleged retaliatory massacres in 
eastern Zaire against Hutu refugees -- some, clearly armed Hutu soldiers; 
others, civilians -- by Kabila's army as it gained momentum and by 
civilians angered by the refugees' access to international assistance. 
Rwandan Hutus lived in U.N.- sponsored camps on the Zaire-Rwanda border 
and, with the backing of Mobutu, launched a campaign to rid Zaire of 
Tutsis, who had lived in its North and South Kivu provinces for 
generations. 
 
    But for the weapons that are pounding the city, virtually everyone on 
the street here assumes -- fairly or not -- that the government of France 
is somehow culpable, aiding and abetting whatever remnants of its former 
colonial empire still exist in central Africa. As one man on Kinshasa's 
Avenue Ecuries matter-of-factly put it:  "It's France.  France is not happy 
to see us free." 
 
    France has, in fact, been criticized within the international community 
for allegedly arming Rwanda's rampaging Hutus and for giving unswerving 
loyalty and financial support to Mobutu. 
 
    "This is really baffling," said Brown in an interview just after the 
sun set on the second day of mortar and rocket fire, talking about not only 
the political situation, but the endurance of ordinary Congolese, who have 
lived through more than 32 years of chaos. 
 
    "They reassure each other and they reassure me that somehow God is in 
all of this," she said.  "That's what they say -- `God is there.' And 
somehow that makes all this bearable." 
 
    A Congolese student poignantly told the Presbyterian News Service of 
the struggle of ordinary Congolese. "They are used to it," he said softly. 
"Somehow muddling through." 
 
    There are currently six Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) mission personnel 
here in Kinshasa, with three children.  They are Judith and Richard Brown 
of Norfolk, Va.; Bill and Willie Simmons of Shelbyville, Tenn.; and Jeff 
and Christi Boyd of Hanford, Calif., and their three children, Matthias, 
Salome and Naomi. 

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