Howard W French
In a cavernous hall that once served as the VIP bar of an overthrown dictator’s ruling party, several dozen shabbily dressed children shout out the refrain “Jesus Christ lives!” as they are led through prayers by an evangelist preacher.
Just five months ago, nearly all these children lived on the filthy streets of Kinshasa, begging, prostituting themselves or both selling and taking drugs. Now, in a remarkable twist of fate, they occupy one of this country’s most prestigious addresses, a countryside resort, an hour outside of the capital, between a loping mountain range and the Congo River.
With its expensively lit gardens, once well-stocked zoo and glistening Olympic pool, the resort known as Nsele was something akin to a political theme park for the late despot, Mobutu Sese Seko.
Today’s tenants have a far different purpose. Rather than running a fancy watering hole for ruling party fat cats, their task is nothing less than the transformation of several hundred youths who only recently were considered the scourge of Kinshasa into the choirboys and perhaps foot-soldiers of Africa’s latest revolution.
The Congolese House of Solidarity, as the youth camp is known, ranks as one of the very first initiatives of Congo’s new president, Laurent Kabila. And as such, many people here say that it is as good an example as any of the eclectic brew of ideologies and influences competing for predominance in a new system that remains very much a work in progress.
Kinshasa’s ruling circles include old-style central planners, erstwhile Marxists, proponents of an “African socialism” redolent of the 1960s, as well as Christian evangelists, diploma-bearing returnees from exile in the West and sure-footed holdovers from the discredited Mobutu years.
At the helm stands Kabila (66), a lifelong revolutionary who until only recently described himself as a Maoist, and who has taken to having himself publicly referred to as M’zee (“the elder” in Swahili).
In his government’s short life, nearly all of these disparate strands have brought their influence to bear on the new Congo, formerly called Zaire. And many of them, in fact, are in evidence at the House of Solidarity.
Congolese officials say that one of Kabila’s first acts after his takeover of Kinshasa last May was to order his aides to find some way to assist the tens of thousands of indigent people who haunt the streets of the capital. At the same time, the president began advocating the creation of re-education centres around the country where youths could undergo both agricultural and paramilitary training.
So within days, people eager to please the new president conferred the task of caring for street children upon Jeannine Muleka, the Belgian wife of a senior Congolese security official.
With the help of the local Red Cross, Muleka, who describes herself as a born- again Christian, said she rounded up nearly 500 street kids and trucked them off to Nsele to begin new lives.
This initial success, however, has been followed by innumerable hardships, and an increasingly open controversy. No sooner had she brought together her collection of wards than the cash-hungry new government let it be known that there was no money available to pay for the project.
“They said they have no money for salaries, they have to build roads, the state has huge debts,” Muleka said. “They basically told me `fend for yourself’. And since I believe that God has given me this mission, I have persevered, even if it has not been easy.”
Other than high security and touchiness about which parts of the sprawling center are off-limits to foreign visitors, there is little outward sign of trouble at the center.
“If someone else wants the old life, that’s fine by me,” said Pitchu Omedwu, a prematurely wizened 13-year-old who used to cadge money from foreigners outside a Kinshasa hotel.
“I was stealing in the street and sleeping in the gutter before. Now I am getting an education and learning how to be a moral person.”
International aid agencies acknowledge that the need for institutions for abandoned children, as well as ordinary schools, in the Congo is immense. According to United Nations statistics, there are 14 million school-age children in the country, only half of whom are enrolled.
But if they are wary of offending the new government, several aid experts expressed grave reservations about Nsele’s uncertain official status, troubling practices and what appeared to be its multiple missions.
These included strict religious instruction given several times a day, frequent corporal punishment, hints of martial training for a future role in the military, and a constant emphasis on a form of “re- education” that critics say resembles political and theological indoctrination. – New York Times
Although officials at Nsele deny them, there were widespread reports last month that as many as eight children were severely beaten by their keepers, and subsequently denied medical care. Many other children have reportedly fled the centre.
“I don’t wish to attack these people for the sake of attacking,” said the Reverend Frank Roeleants (63), a Roman Catholic missionary and pioneer in work with street children here who said he withdrew his collaboration from Nsele after reports of the beatings and hints of military training.
“The best that can be said is that someone decided to clean up a shameful side of life in Kinshasa,” the missionary said. “But there is no unified sense of vision about what the centre’s mission is, and the people running it know nothing about teaching or psychology.”
The government provides no direct financial support to Nsele, and officials say, therefore, that they need not answer to the centre’s growing number of critics.
“It fits a pattern of many things here,” said one international aid official. “People get something going by whispering that it’s the Great Man who is behind it. But if you ask the president’s people, they will tell you, `It’s not us.’ ”
With funds chronically running short and criticisms mounting, Muleka spends much of her time visiting local businesses seeking contributions that will help keep Nsele running, and, she says hopefully, eventually expand it to a capacity of 5 000.
First, however, even she recognizes that a few things need to be put straight.
“Everyone seems to want to know if this is going to be something private, or public, and if so, what will be the role of the government,” Muleka said. “As for me, I want to see the president to see what he thinks.”