Geno-Cost: DRC's new plot to justify insecurity crisis. Will it help Tshisekedi stay in power?

Author: Josephine Kalembe

• 2023-08-05 05:30:00

In a highly publicized event, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) held a commemoration ceremony dubbed Geno-Cost, the ‘Congolese genocide’, on August 4. Presided over by President Felix Tshisekedi, it was explained as an event paying tribute to all the Congolese who have died for economic gains.

As noted, Geno-Cost is a combination of Genocide and Cost. For Kinshasa, the implication or grand scheme is: genocide for economical gains. They chose the term to explain the economic root or aspect of what they want to make believe is the genocide in DRC, to remove what they claim is a misleading discourse that tribal or ethnic conflicts are the root cause of the Genocide and instability in the country.

According to Kinshasa, the so-called commemoration’s aim was to raise awareness nationally and internationally on the many crimes perpetrated, with impunity, for nearly 30 years, in DRC.

“This event is in memory of the millions of Congolese, who were victims of barbaric acts, and cruelty, orchestrated by foreign powers and their allies with the intention of illegally exploiting, and against our interest, our natural resources,” declared Tshisekedi.

The so-called commemoration event’s timeliness is no accident either.

Kinshasa chose August 2, as commemoration day of the so-called Genocide in DRC, in reference to the beginning of the second Congo war, also referred to as the African World War, of which DRC accuses its neighbors, to have triggered in order to exploit Congolese minerals.

“On that day in 1998, the Banyamulenge rebellion known as the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Democratie (RCD) attacked the town of Goma with the backing of Rwanda and Uganda. It was the beginning of the deadliest conflict since World War 2,” claimed the Tshisekedi-backed Congolese Action Youth Platform (CAYP).

The CAYP deliberately fails to mention that it is the Banyamulenge people of DRC’s South Kivu province and other Congolese Tutsi communities in North Kivu province that are being targeted for extermination.

They prefer to cause confusion by stating that the “the systematic rape of Congolese women and children, the ongoing mass killing of civilians, and other atrocity committed against the population in eastern Congo for the exploitation of natural resources constitute a crime of genocide.”

Genocide, as happened in Rwanda in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, is a crime against humanity. Clarity is very important so as to leave no room for genocide denial, the last stage of genocide.

According to Tshisekedi and the CAYP, the international community turned a blind eye to the plight of the Congolese people.

“The Congolese must therefore take matters in their own hands. Through this 2nd August initiative, CAYP empowers the Congolese community in the diaspora and in the Congo to recognise the Congolese genocide, commemorate the lives we’ve lost, and actively work on solutions to bring a lasting peace in Congo.”

But there is a hitch.

In June 2022, King Philippe of Belgium and his wife, Queen Mathilde, visited DRC, handed back a wooden five-foot-tall Kakungu mask -  which had been used in ceremonies by the Suku people in DRC’s southwest - stolen by Belgium during the colonial period, and expressed his “deepest regrets” for abuses committed during the colonial era but did not offer a formal apology.

Nearly 20 million Congolese died from violence, famine and disease under Leopold’s direct rule.

Gruesome accounts emerged of the dismemberment of children in villages that did not produce enough rubber to satisfy their colonial overlords.

Leopold’s rule was so bloody that it drew condemnation from other European leaders. Even though some Congolese politicians and citizens called for Belgium to atone for the atrocities and discrimination their ancestors suffered, Tshisekedi greeted the monarchs on a red carpet rolled out at the airport.

“This [colonial] regime was one of unequal relations, unjustifiable in itself, marked by paternalism, discrimination and racism,” Philippe later told the DRC’s parliament in Kinshasa.

“On the occasion of my first trip to Congo, right here, in front of the Congolese people and those who still suffer today, I wish to reaffirm my deepest regrets for those wounds of the past.”

Supporters of the ruling party waved Belgian flags. A banner hanging from parliament celebrated a “common history."

At a news conference alongside Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, who traveled with the king and queen, Tshisekedi said: “We have not dwelled on the past, which is the past and which is not to be reconsidered, but we need to look to the future."

De Croo hailed the six-day trip as a “historic moment.”

The big question now is: if DRC is commemorating the Congolese who perished for economic gains, why did they leave out the nearly 20 million Congolese that died between 1885 and 1908, when they were killed, mutilated, and exploited by Belgium’s King Leopold II?

The answer is simple. The ‘Geno-Cost ’ is one of Tshisekedi’s political cards.

By showing Congolese that they have been victims of ‘foreign powers’, he gains their empathy, which, he hopes, will get him votes in the upcoming presidential elections.

The Congolese government will do anything to play victim, avoid accountability for its own economic and security failures, and go as far as making up a genocide.

For starters, the UN definition of a Genocide is a ‘crime committed with the intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part. It does not include political groups or so called cultural genocide’.

Close to three decades, eastern DRC has been a safe haven to more than 260 foreign and local armed groups. These groups were all created in the presence of the incompetent national army, FARDC, and the UN Mission, MONUSCO, who idly watch as various Congolese militias kidnap, loot, and massacre their compatriots.

Since gaining independence, no Congolese leader has been competent enough to contain, and fight armed groups wreaking havoc in their country. Some leaders instead armed these negative groups such as the FDLR, a UN sanctioned genocidal group responsible for the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.

Despite continously scapegoating neighboring countries for its internal security failures, Kinshasa is running out of excuses and now, for Tshisekedi to avoid any accountability, he shifts the blame to ‘foreign powers and their allies’, and calls the needless murder and plunder in his country a genocide.

Ever since Tshisekedi took office, nearly five years ago, in a murky power-sharing deal crafted between him and former president Joseph Kabila, real effort to address DRC's complicated conflicts and craft a more democratic, inclusive, and accountable political system remains elusive.

Lies, denial and blame games will not help Tshisekedi stay in power, peacefully, and democratically. And he knows that. That's how, and why, sinister plots like, lately, Geno-Cost appeal to him.