For many in Goma, Zaire, the arrival of Rwandan rebels means a better life than before, reports Chris McGreal
THE first rebel recruiting table was set up outside Goma post office, a building which ceased to serve its original function several years ago when the Zairean government stopped delivering the mail.
There were no volunteers in sight to join the insurgents who have seized Goma and swathes of eastern Zaire in recent weeks. Perhaps it was all too public. No one can be sure who will be in charge of the city next week. The recruiting table disappeared.
Most of Goma’s residents are in two minds about their new masters. So far as much of the city’s population is concerned Goma has been invaded by Rwandan Tutsis in pursuit of Rwandan Hutu extremists. They know a foreigner when they see one, and strange looks and languages are everywhere. But foreign or not, the insurgents are still generally preferred to what went before.
It is a sad reflection on how low President Mobutu Sese Seko has dragged Zaire that most of Goma’s residents fear the rebel occupiers less than the army which was supposed to defend the city.
“The rebels are not as bad as the Zairean soldiers. Zaireans were terrible. The Zaireans took everything. Radios, televisions, everything. The Rwandans just steal money from us,” said one young man among a crowd only too keen to be able to finally deride Mobutu in public.
Dr Jules Kubuya Songe, administrator of Goma hospital which has been mortared by both sides and looted by its own patients, is sanguine about the rebels.
“So long as they don’t kill us, so long as they don’t steal from us, so long as there is security, then it’s OK,” he said.
Goma residents have learned to live with upheaval. Nineteen years ago the giant Nyiragongo volcano blew, gushing a stream of molten lava to just short of the heart of the city. In Goma they talk of hundreds of deaths as entire villages disappeared under the lava. Pictures of the eruption still adorn the city’s bars and restaurants.
The 1990s brought a blight of army-led looting which hit almost every Zairean town and city. Unpaid soldiers tore through Goma four years ago. A few months later the troops were hungry again. This time they were good enough to approach Goma’s administrators and warn them that its residents faced a choice – raise enough cash to pay the military or face another bout of looting.
As most of the shops had already been plundered, people knew their homes would be the next target. A frantic scramble to gather cash culminated with people carrying cardboard boxes full of money into a local bank. Only half the money the army demanded was raised, but it was enough. The military took the cash and left.
The calm was short lived. In July 1994, one million people walked across the border from Rwanda. They died in their tens of thousands of cholera and dysentery on the hard volcanic lava spilled 17 years earlier. Goma’s residents died too, but it was little noticed by an outside world more concerned with the refugees who have haunted the city ever since.
This year came the war. Goma has been mortared, besieged and plundered. Food supplies have been cut off since the rebels seized the town. A trickle of aid which rolled in this week has still to be distributed. It was, in any case, something of a Trojan horse. Aid agencies brought food to Goma in the hope it would open access to the vast numbers of Rwandan refugees the other side of rebel lines.
Kubuya Songe – who is among those who take the view their city has been invaded by Rwanda – says that if it were not for the Rwandan refugees no one would have taken any notice of the hardships inflicted on the city. And he believes that as soon as the refugees have gone, Goma’s people will be forgotten again.
“All these organisations come. All these journalists come. All they say is `refugees, refugees, refugees’. Everything comes with the refugees and everything leaves with them. What does anyone do for Goma?” the doctor said.
His own hospital could do with some help. Two weeks ago it was packed with wounded Zairean soldiers but as the rebels approached a mortar landed on the hospital. Troops and civilian patients alike fled. People recovering from operations, with broken limbs and women close to labour, bolted. They took with them everything they could carry. The hospital was looted by its patients. In place of the stolen sheets and medicines, soldiers left their guns and uniforms. They had no intention of fighting. Kubuya Songe has appealed for stolen drugs to be returned. There has been little response.