Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was asked a very central question about the US economic interests in Central Africa at a forum in Kinshasa, DR Congo. Unfortunately, an inquiry most Congolese called insightful in regards to the US-Congo relations got quickly “lost in translation”. Not only, had it lost its significance in the media coverage, but worst, given their slacking pleasure not to look into news tips and details, US media networks condensed it into another Clinton’s “saut d’humeur” sound bite.A “key” question lost into another “sound bite”
This was, indeed, a very momentous question ever asked to a top US official in public by a citizen of Congo about the US-Congo relationship. It refered to China’s economic engagement in the DR Congo in the light of the state of the US-Congo cooperation. The question was put out of context by a US staffer who (apparently) did not understand the Congo’s accent the student articulated in the French language, therefore provided a bad translation to Madam Secretary.
First, it is a shame for the State Department to recruit a language poorly-skilled staffer to the highest US diplomatic affairs’ cabinet, regretfully. Than the media coverage of the forum was curtailed in the frenzy that always worships and longs for the Clinton buzz. Newscasters focused more on what they think Madam Secretary wanted to convey to Africans on her abilities vs. the ones of former president Clinton to bring about a new era in US-Congo relationships.
Result: The “I’m the Secretary of State, not my husband” line was highlighted on front pages of newspapers and in 30 seconds “sound bites” played all day long on every American TV network. The Daily News and the New York Post and others quickly “xeroxed” the AP breaking news for their morning (August 11th) cover page.
American listeners and viewers were unfairly fed with a sound bite, played on almost every network even though US journalists recognized the incident turns out to be a wrong translation of what the student’s question really meant. Interesting enough, business TV channels such as CNN-Money, CNBC and others Bloomberg News that should have had interest in covering the story all seemed to have missed the ball… They simply did not elaborate on another China’s gain over the US in the business competition we have been losing at every inch of the way in Africa.
The release of the recorded-translation clearly casts a (female) voice, translating a question by University of Kinshasa’s student (a young man), and it reads: (About the China and Congo’s relationships…) "What does Mr. Clinton think through the mouth of Mrs. Clinton, and what does Mutombo think about? ", instead of translating: “What does Mr. President think through the mouth of Mrs. Clinton, and what does Mutombo think about?”
The real argument one can make sense out of is to just think the following: What if the incident played good for the US diplomat who happened to just be lucky not even looking to dodge the question? Students from all over the world like President Obama, and students in Congo understand their expectations in regard to the current US Administration. Any reference to Bill Clinton to reflect on China-Congo relationships won’t even cross their minds a beat, given the former president’s background on the Great Lakes conflict since the 90s.
What strikes me, as I write this opinion piece, is that the media did not extensively comment on Madam Secretary’s response, even after a clarification was made about the true meaning of the question. Just as many Americans have not learned any consistent news on the Congo’s fate in past decades. Meanwhile, China gained significant economic interests in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan, as reported several informed-organizations. The United States government has been on the side lines, had timidly and sometimes just rhetorically referred to their will to “work with” these war-torn nations' leaders in order to help them recover, while they did not effectively engage them economically.
The US government failed, to a large extent, to support DR Congo and Sudan with the needed conflict resolution process after the invasion of the Eastern Congo region by Ugandan and Rwandan troops and the horrific mass killings in both Sudan’s Darfur region and Congo while still the US complains, for more than a decade, about the violence borne out of sequences of civil unrests.
America talks “human rights” when it comes to consequences of the war (rape on women, young girls and violence on civilians) but did too little when it comes to put pressure on the governments of Congo and Sudan. Meanwhile, China did none of these things and would never even refer to the observance of human rights when they strike business deals. In facts, it’s not a secret to anyone that China, still a totalitarian regime, has made huge progress in economic development and diplomacy although a “red” regime. China seats on the UN Security Council without being questioned too much on its plans to protecting and respecting the rights of its own citizens.
A call to US Media to factually and objectively report on African Affairs
A Huffington Post website's writer critiqued the lack of depth in facts by US media coverage of the Congo’s conflict that required the intervention of 17,000 UN peacekeepers, and yet unsuccessfully resolved. Ms. Georgianne Nienaber wrote that we (reporters) “owe Africa the same kind of attention to detail and accuracy in reporting. There is a certain sloppiness that happens in reports from Africa, and we can all do better”, she said.
Often, just a few newspapers reported on the DR Congo. The NYT usually reports on DR Congo every other 6 weeks, sometimes with just a few short articles lost in pages 6 or 10. Reporters negligently write without really attracting US scholars and citizens’ curiosity on the Congo’s crisis when, ironically, this war has been called the “worst armed conflict involving many countries since the World War II”.
Radio, TV commentators and producers turn away from citizens’ calls and emails when contacted to speak out and to contribute with news analysis about the Congo during their show casts. I personally was a guest-contributor on US-African Affairs with Voice of America (VOA) in Washington DC, and I sat down on a radio/web-TV panel that debated on the post-Congo’s 2006 presidential elections. My opinions on the topic, as always, so pointed and my account of facts very challenging versus scripted talking points did not attract fans among these felows from the public government-run radio. It’s safe to say that most of my analysis did not align with the producers’ talking points on the DRC crisis, and (reason why) I never got invited again; despite my calls, emails and offers to contribute in months that followed.
CNN anchor Anderson Cooper and reporter Lisa Ling who reported for the Oprah Show made a well praised on TV but risky report of the stories of rape, violence and genocide in the Eastern Congo during the Bush Administration's era. Anderson went with President Obama to Ghana to report on the history at slave trade site, but the CNN war anchor remained silent on Hillary Clinton’s trip to the eastern Congo… No special report, not even a press correspondent from major networks was present on Clinton’s plane… Why?
MSNBC only played that sound bite over the “lost in translation” question, without reporting or calling for a news analysis on the question it self and the Kinshasa town hall’s highlights. MSNBC Chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell invited on three shows in two days following Monday’s forum, and just elaborated on what may have gone wrong with the secretary of state as a person.
What a shame to reap a worst news spotlight with such unfairness in journalism, after so many human rights advocates, bloggers, Congolese and American scholars in US, activists like Kambale Musavuli of Friends of the Congo, Jean Kamba, Abraham Luakabuanga, John Pendergast or my-self; What a deception after book writers, freelance photographers and even lawmakers like former GA Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney worked hard and took risks of their careers to calling for an exclusive spotlight on Congo since the war started?
Recent developments on the ground
The bigger Congo’s picture here is that investigative journalists in US still ignore the magnitude of the civil unrest and violence that is taking place every week between militias, and more the American public is not aware of the whole controversy about the use of Coltan to build cellphone components, the US corporations which are behind the deals and their illicit exploitation of minerals in Congo’s conflict zones.
A recent government “launch of the operation Kimia II in the DR Congo has seen a spike in the number of sexual assaults against the women of the Kivu’s”, wrote in an editorial, Scott Morgan, web-editor of the “Confused Eagle.” One key problem, he wrote, is that the “FARDC (Government of the Democratic Congo’s Armed Forces) is not able to sustain combat operations against the Rwanda’s FDLR. As part of the Peace Accord, the Government in Kinshasa has instructed its army (FARDC) to integrate some of the former Militia Groups into the Regular Armed Forces. The FDLR have had bases in the region since they were driven out of Rwanda, after the horrific genocide of 1994.” The FDLR (Hutu Rwandans) “have a tactical advantage of knowing the terrain” in the Kivu provinces compared to the Congolese government forces, argues Morgan.
A columnist in LA Times, Helen Winternitz, said that the "Eastern region of Congo has been set by civil wars for a decade, a horrifying symptom of breakdowns through the entire government. The undisciplined Congolese army and the various militias combating the FDLR use rape as a weapon of war. As many as 200,000 women and girls have been raped, some men mutilated to the point of death in what is described as the world's worst episode in mass killing and sexual violence."
Meanwhile, on an unprecedented twist since August 1998, Rwanda and Congo’s heads of state orchestrated a quick meeting in Goma, Kivu to normalize their diplomatic relations (under US’ recommendations?) … What did the two leaders discuss when they met in Goma, days before Clinton’s trip in Congo? Not much consistent is known about. The Tutsi General Laurent Nkunda (a Rwandan-born rebel), who terrorized the Kivu’s civilian population under a Congo’s “laid up” President Kabila, was arrested a few days before the inauguration of Barack Obama, even after he benefited from an impressive military and logistic support from Rwandan President Paul Kagame (his mastermind). So many unreported happenings, news stories are still left out there… without newscasters doing their job.
Congolese Bloggers and Web-news critiqued some of Hillary Clinton sayings
Although Mrs. Clinton was overwhelmingly welcomed in Kinshasa, Congo’s capital city, the Agence France Press (AFP) reports that she faced some "hard questions" from students. Questions from that forum in Kinshasa were worth being reported in western media, and of course only a few European and Congolese local newspapers commented on.
The American public and even some high government officials don’t know the history and more the recent happenings in the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), and if the conventional media won’t help with the matter, perhaps “citizen journalism” has taken over with social networking tools like i-report, twitter, you tube, facebook, hundreds of Congolese news websites and many other independent blogs are beginning to help build networks of African news sharing in US.
I’m not sure these citizen journalists can fight the opinion and the news framing from the coalition of decades-long and powerful press agencies like the well-known AP, Reuters, AFP, Belga, Xinhua… But it’s been making a whole difference in shaping the public opinion. Signs of progress in social networking being noticed in Congo; residents of Kinshasa by-passed some of these traditional media who either report for either side of the story and just missed the point.
One web-twitter present at the forum (August 10th at 8:39 AM our time) wrote: “Town Hall ended a short while ago, that was pretty exciting, seeing HRC, Fox News, Secret Service and Mutombo in one room.” Another person twitted on Clinton’s address to Congolese students, reporting what she said at that very moment: “I came here to talk to you students before anyone in your government; I expect more transparency from your government”
US News media would not broadcast even on a 30 seconds sound bite that: “A student told Clinton, to applause from the crowd, that underdevelopment (of DR Congo) stemmed from a long history of Western exploitation in the resource-rich nation,once notoriously the private fiefdom of Belgium's King Leopold II…”, as reported the AFP here.
Digging deep on the forum’s aftermath, one of the US top diplomat’s answers to Congolese created an outrage in many circles in Kinshasa; when Mrs. Clinton refused to “look back to the past”, saying she (the US) wants to “work with people who are seeking for a good future, not those who refer to the past.”
An Congolese online blogger for the Hinterland network wrote an open-letter back to Clinton saying: “This one sentence from your answers to the forum in Kinshasa is very saddening, and brings wordiness among the Congolese people, which is still traumatized by a 13 years-long war. Your country, the US, wrote Roger Puati, wants to work with the Congolese people while suggesting that we live by your way of thinking: Never refer to the past… Meaning forget the humiliation we have endured for 10 years and even more for the past 50 years?”
An expert on Central African Affairs and author of “East along the Equator”, Helen Winternitz writes in an Op-ed that “when Congo emerged from the vicious colonial rule of Belgium; the United States empowered and, as a Cold War tactic, supported Mobutu Sese Seko. Utilizing the dictator was considered a legitimate tool by American policymakers who did not worry about the long-term consequences. Mobutu fathered the corrupt and dysfunctional mode of governing that now plagues the country.”
Another Congolese appalled by Clinton’s remarks, Jean-Pierre Mbelu writes on a French/Flemish language website; A Brussels-based network Congoforum.be: “In our faces, Mrs. Clinton asks us (Congolese) to turn the page on a past that holds more than 5 millions of lost lives ! “What about this? Secretary Clinton calls for trials on soldiers who raped in war zones without referring to their foreign chief-allies, past US administration’s officials and multinationals involved in secretly supporting or carrying out the invasion in the DR Congo to be tried as well or called on for their wrong deeds… Is that how the US will work with us?”
What if anything the Department of State should learn from this?
“Obama, who took an interest in the DR Congo's fate when he was in the Senate, has inherited the moral responsibility to make amends and to help the Congolese (people to elect) to build a government that actually works on their behalf”, says in an Op-Ed, Winternitz. The Senate bill S. 2125 from the 109th US Congress on the Democratic Republic of Congo happened to be the only foreign policy, Mr. Barack Obama (then US Senator) initiated with a bi-partisan support from twelve other US Democrat and Republican Senators.
In the light of that 2006 congressional law, signed by George Bush, the Obama administration cannot afford lose its “own” message. Madame Secretary Clinton should be commended for meeting with students for a forum “before” meeting Congo’s officials (good move!). She is to be saluted for clearly “voicing up” (to government officials including President Joseph Kabila) on the resolutions that borne from the last spring US Senate hearing on the DR Congo.
A key message was to stop and to prosecute actors involved in the rape of civilians, used as weapon in conflict zones. This is the 111th congress senate hearing on Congo/Sudan where (as I reported earlier in Spring) California Senator Barbara Boxer (D) and the audience could not resist the heart breaking when they listened to the horrific account of scenes of rape and violence by panelists; one of them being Mrs. Chouchou Namegabe, a Kivu-based Journalist and Activist.
In an open letter to Secretary Clinton, another Congolese US-based website’s owner urges, on the post- Congo’s trip, the US to be practical if “work with” Congo is what they want, and get all rapists to be tried in criminal courts. He proposes to the Clinton’s cabinet to “… send DNA technical experts to DR Congo to help collect DNA samples from former militias and soldiers who fought in the east of Congo and from children born out of rapes. By matching the DNA samples of children and militias in a DNA data center, wrote the web-writer, the paternity of these fatherless children will clearly be established.”
Editor Sylvester Ngoma (Congovisiondotcom) believes that “… The criminals will then be excluded from the national army and brought to justice. Even new victims will be able to report to these data centers for DNA collection to help catch rape criminals. This approach will have several positive effects. Some soldiers will leave the national army on their own just by knowing that their DNA will be collected and kept in a data center. The parliament will need to pass a law mandating all soldiers who fought in the east of the country to comply to the "DNA as a Rape Deterrence Plan."
At the end of the day
Having say all that, Secretary Hillary Clinton still needs to carefully do an unscripted "facts check" on the DR Congo since the Rwanda genocide of 1994, and to attentively review the history about the after 1997 invasion of the DR Congo by Rwandan and Ugandan militias (under Bill Clinton watch). The State Department’s African Affairs division must sincerely determine the US responsibility in the conflict, and assess the public opinion before they apply President Obama’s own policy.
The Congo Senate Bill (as they call it) will empower Secretary Clinton to pressure on President Joseph Kabila’s governance style. Only the S2125 bill would help them to measure up the progress in security and the observance of human rights towards the people of Congo, and then she can finally masterfully avoid alienate, frustrate the Congolese people, but would preach the message of “Hope”, accompanied with an engaging economic and bi-lateral cooperation the US failed in the past 8 years.
It has to be known that above and beyond the differences of cultures, languages and the issue of proximity, Congo shares a common history with the US, citing the past “Cold War” as an illustration; Congo (ex-Zaire) has gone out of the way to contribute through the generosity of its people, the use of its territory militarily, its strategic resources, minerals and intelligence to strengthen US national security and preserve its interests not only in the Continental Africa, but here at home and around the world.
Fifty years since the DR Congo’s independence, and considering the potential level of cooperation both countries can still develop, our commitment at Congobostondotcom remains to write (read: to accurately translate) the opinion of the Congolese people from their French heritage into the English language.
We will continue to help channel their local news, by every means, into the American mainstream media, and than I strongly hope that the message of “Hope” from the US to the DR Congo will never be lost in translation again.
An Opinion Editorial by Web-Editor Franklin Katunda in Washington DC
Former grassroots field orgnizer and web-coordinator for the Obama Campaign.
Op-Ed published for the first time on, © August 18th 2009, Congoboston.com
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