The vast, under-reported Congo Wars – a catch-all term for a series of conflicts set off by the Rwandan genocide in 1994 – have claimed at least 3 million lives and left countless civilians displaced, wounded and abandoned. Four years ago there were 27,000 reports of sexual violence in a single province. In 2007 a gynaecologist who works in South Kivu told the New York Times that he was treating 10 new rape victims every day, many of them “sadistically attacked from the inside out, butchered by bayonets and assaulted with chunks of wood, [so] that their reproductive and digestive systems are beyond repair. We don’t know why these rapes are happening, but one thing is clear. They are done to destroy women.”
Today, in the peripheral vision of the international community, conflicts over the Democratic Republic of Congo’s mineral wealth are still raging. As various armies traverse the country – a landmass almost the size of Western Europe – the civilian population continues to suffer unimaginable violence. Two weeks ago human rights workers uncovered evidence of a massacre by the Lord’s Resistance Army in the northeast of the country. In December 2009, the LRA killed at least 300 people and captured several hundred more. Survivors of the massacre, many of them children, were tied together like livestock and forced to carry whatever the LRA had looted from their village.
During her travels, Judith receives firsthand accounts of these horrors. She meets a young woman who has been raped both by rebels and members of the Congolese national army. As we listen to this woman recounting her ordeals, a child conceived through one of these assaults stands nearby. Since rape victims are often stigmatized within their local communities, children born out of sexual violence rarely get the chance to grow in a stable environment. Many end up becoming child soldiers themselves, perpetrating further violence through involvement with groups like the LRA, prolonging the tragedy that has forced them to lead such marginal lives.
Somehow, despite terrible odds, many of these people have overcome their pasts and returned to lives with a semblance of normality. After we watch Judith playing soccer with a group of friendly teenagers, a few of them retell their stories for the camera. One young girl, now forced to make her living as a prostitute, describes what it was like to be part of a rebel group attacking villages. She remembers restraining women while they were raped and calmly recalls killing at least five people. Another teenager tells how he was blindfolded and made to shoot his best friend as part of his induction into military life.
These stories are everywhere in the Congo. After hearing them it is hard not to despair. But Judith also finds hope. All over the country, with little outside support, she finds ordinary people who have made heroic efforts to come to terms with the past. Community radio programmes discuss rape openly, to shift the culture away from blaming victims and to foster compassion for children conceived through sexual violence. Charities use dramatic re-enactments of earlier violence to get former child soldiers and their victims to confront their nightmares together.
Judith visits a project called City of Joy, where 100 rape victims will live in a community run solely by women. Its director, Christine, says they will not only build new lives here but learn that they can determine their own futures. “Congo is the heart of Africa,” she tells Judith, “and this heart [has bled] so much in the last decade that the revolution of women in Africa will start here, in City of Joy.” She tells Judith that everyone must help: “You, as young people, should see how you can change things, because you are the future. You just have to say, What can I do in my school? What can I do in my university? How can I bring brighter days to others?”
Judith returns to London, determined to raise awareness of what she has seen. This is harder to do than she realized. Finally, after a month, she gets a chance to speak at the Albert Hall, addressing a campaign to end the violence against women in the Congo. She ends her speech with these words. “When I tell my friends of my experiences their initial reaction is one of silence. That’s ironic, for that’s the one thing that we cannot be. These women are voiceless and they’re faceless and it’s up to us to speak on their behalf until they can be heard for themselves.”
Poverty, crime and sexual violence pose serious problems throughout the Caribbean. Every time there is a new report on gang violence in Trinidad or Jamaica, or an update on the spread of HIV/Aids in the region, it is easy to feel that our collective future is bleak. This attitude is understandable, but shortsighted. If hope can survive in Rwanda, the DRC, Sudan and Somalia – which face far more daunting challenges – it ought to flourish here. Ordinary people have made the difference in these countries, by tackling apparently hopeless problems and enduring in the face of terrible odds. Judith Wanga’s journey into the Congo ought to remind us that ordinary people, like ourselves, can make all the difference here too.
