The Pope in Africa: "An equally enslaving economic colonialism has been unleashed"
It was a public holiday in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Hundreds of thousands of people piled up on either side of the shoulder of the road leading from N'Dolo's secondary airport to the Palais de la Nation in Kinshasa, the presidential residence built on the banks of the Congo River. They wanted to witness first-hand the arrival of Pope Francis. It was the Pontiff's first contact with the country, but not with the continent. In almost a decade of papacy, Francis has visited Africa five times. In 2015 he was in the Central African Republic, and four years later he visited Madagascar, Mauritius and Mozambique. This time he will travel to DR Congo and South Sudan in a historic six-day trip.
Francis is the first Pope to visit the Democratic Republic of Congo in 38 years. John Paul II last did so in 1985, when the country was still known as Zaire. The pontiff has shown a great interest in Africa, in no way comparable to that of his late predecessor, Benedict XVI. This has led him to choose the continent as the destination for his first annual trips abroad, with the aim of highlighting the unsustainable situation that two countries with the lowest human development indexes on the planet have been experiencing for decades.
"Hands off the Democratic Republic of Congo, hands off Africa," Pope Francis demanded in a speech full of demands that barely lasted more than 20 minutes. "Stop suffocating Africa: it is not a mine to be exploited or a piece of land to be plundered. Let Africa be the protagonist of its own destiny", he insisted, aware of the importance for the Church of a country that is home to almost 50 million Catholics. The institution has played a crucial role in the country's recent history, intervening in those areas where state networks do not appear.
The Catholic Church has been active in national politics, especially since the 1990s. Its members have demanded accountability from a political class that has plundered the country's vast resources. In 2016, when then-President Joseph Kabila's mandate expired and he decided to postpone elections sine die, the Episcopal Conference of Congo did not bow to his interests and denounced his intentions, organising protests in various parts of the country and raising the issue at international level. Kabila eventually gave up his bid for a third term, which would have allowed him to remain in power for ever, thanks in part to the Church's action.
The Episcopal Conference of Congo deployed some 40,000 observers to monitor the polls in the 2018 elections, which were won by incumbent President Felix Tshisekedi. The candidate of the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS), a staunch opponent of the Kabila regime, defeated fellow opponent Martin Fayulu at the polls, although the vote was not without controversy. "The political system in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been paralysed in recent years by the manipulation of the electoral process by political elites," Freedom House said in its latest report. The results, however, ushered in the country's first peaceful - and ostensibly democratic - transfer of power since independence from Belgium in 1960.
Tshisekedi joined the Pope at the welcoming ceremony in the sprawling garden of the Palais de la Nation, which was filled with prominent members of civil society, the ecclesiastical establishment and the diplomatic corps. The two met when Tshisekedi visited the Holy See in early 2020, and Francis used the occasion to publicly call on him to "encourage the holding of free, transparent and credible elections". In December, the Congolese will return to the polls. The most likely scenario is that the current president and Fayulu will face each other again in an election that will determine the future of the country.
The situation in the DRC is critical. The east of the country has slipped out of state control and has virtually fallen into the hands of rebel groups. The region, which has been ravaged since 1994 by the effects of the Rwandan genocide in the form of millions of refugees, including Hutus involved in the massacre of Tutsis, is experiencing an escalation of violence as a result of the resurgence of the March 23 Movement, better known as the M23. The Tutsi-majority militia, linked to the interests of Rwandan autocrat Paul Kagame, and a hundred other armed groups are fighting for resources in the provinces of North and South Kivu, Ituri and Tanganyika to finance their war. Along the way, they loot villages, steal cattle, kill civilians and rape women.
The insecurity in the area prevented the Pope from visiting the city of Goma, the most important city in North Kivu. In February 2021, Italian Ambassador Luca Attanasio and the carabiniere accompanying him were killed there while the diplomat was leading a World Food Programme delegation. In mid-January, a Daesh-affiliated rebel group attacked a Pentecostal church in the town of Kasindi, not far from there. Twelve people were killed.
"We cannot get used to the bloodshed that has marked this country for decades, causing millions of deaths that remain mostly unknown elsewhere," the Pope stressed in his speech. "What is happening here needs to be known." There are indications that the Tshisekedi government has hired the services of the Wagner Group, something the president has persistently denied in order not to lose support in the West. Mercenaries from Eastern Europe are known to be deployed in the country, but most of them belong to the private military companies Potra and Agemira, of Romanian and Bulgarian origin respectively.
The Democratic Republic of Congo could not only be Africa's economic powerhouse, but also a world power because of its vast mineral reserves, fertile land, population and size. It is home to gold, copper, diamonds, coltan and two-thirds of the world's cobalt reserves. But a devastating colonial legacy, wars and a succession of repressive and dysfunctional regimes have stunted its growth. "Thus, this country, abundantly plundered, is not able to benefit sufficiently from its immense resources: it has come to the paradox that the fruits of its own land make it a 'foreigner' to its inhabitants," the Pope said.
"The poison of greed has bloodied its diamonds," Francis concluded, denouncing the emergence of "economic colonialism" on the heels of political colonialism that is "equally enslaving". The US and China are currently competing for control of the country's cobalt reserves. According to the US Treasury Department, most of the DRC's gold falls into the hands of Rwanda and Uganda, hostile neighbours who mine it illegally, refine it and export it to international markets.
The Pontiff then headed for Juba, the capital of South Sudan, where the Church is trying to gain influence in the peace talks and lead the country on the path to democratic openness. On this occasion he did not travel alone, but was accompanied by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, the head of the Anglican Church, which has an increasing number of faithful in sub-Saharan Africa. Iain Greenshields, the Church of Scotland minister, is also part of the delegation.
The world's youngest country, born via referendum in 2011 after more than two decades at war with Sudan, has been suffering since 2013 from a bloody civil war that nominally ended in 2020. A year before the official cessation of hostilities, Pope Francis invited President Salva Kiir and then rebel leader Riek Machar to a spiritual retreat at the Vatican that served, at least in part, to defuse the conflict. The Pope kissed their feet. However, the peace agreement that brought Kiir's Machar into the government has failed to end the violence. The country is in chaos.