CONTENTS | ANB-BIA HOMEPAGE | WEEKLY NEWS
by Didier de Failly S.J. Congo RDC, January 2000
THEME = YOUTH
Fighting is still taking place in Africa's Great Lakes region.
But something even more serious is happening which seems to go on unperceived:
thousands of young people are destroying their own society
The same thing is happening almost everywhere: Young people have organised themselves into gangs, bent on stealing, raiding, killing, fighting. There's the "hooligans" in Russia, young thugs in the suburbs of Lyon and Paris (France), armed factions in Somalia, Liberia, Sierra Leone...In the 1960s, Congo's home-grown variety were called "Young Mulelists". Today they're the "Katuku", the "BaTiri", the "Ngilima", the "Civic Guards", the "Volunteers" (distinguished by a red band across their foreheads), the "Mai-mai", the "Jechi". Neighbouring countries have them as well: In Rwanda - the "Interahamwe" (the Rwandan Hutu militia, guilty of the massacres in 1994 and still continuing their "work"; in Burundi - the "Sans-Echec" (gangs of young Tutsi killers); in Congo RDC - most of the soldiers serving with the Alliance of Democratic Forces (AFDL) and the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) rebels, are young people with no beliefs and accepting no law. They're also sometimes to be found in the various armies around the Great Lakes, serving as mercenaries: city gangs join up together and remain under their own leaders' authority.
It's no easy matter because frequently the usual resources are no longer available. At one time, in European countries, young delinquents were rehabilitated back into society by getting them a job. Such is no longer the case, because people are living longer and are no longer prepared to accept these young people back, by dangling work prospects in front of them. In Africa, society knits together, not by what people do, but by the fact of belonging to a family, a clan. A person has a right to return to his/her origins. But African society is now growing younger; 50% of the population is less than 20 years old and there's no room for young people, especially those who've walked out of the family or tribal unit. It's now extremely difficult for young people to enter into a customary marriage (in any case the dowry is always far too high for them), so they look elsewhere.
Parents have lost touch with and can no longer control young people. During the first war in the east of Congo, you could see groups of children who'd always moved around together in the same neighbourhood with no parental supervision, making their way to other areas - even as far as Kinshasa. Sometimes the youngsters would be "shepherded" by a young girl, 12 or 13 years old, with no adult in sight, and against their parents' will, who, in any case, couldn't do anything to stop them!
One of the greatest wrongs commited by the Second Republic was to close down the youth movements in 1972. Since 1975, the country's been getting ever-poorer. Why? Because of bad "housekeeping". Parents have been increasingly concerned with making ends meet and have lost touch with their children as they've been growing up. And statistically speaking, the number of young men (17-30) out of work, could be anything between 15%-29% of the total population.
These young people, in order to get their own back on a society which seems to have rejected them, form themselves into gangs against their own society. It's extremely easy to "mobilize" these young people. Just give them a gun and a cause to follow, and you've got them. But that can rebound on those responsible, because the young people are quite prepared to take part in any armed struggle, even against their own people. It's easy to knock down what you've never built up. It costs nothing!
They've not had much by way of a normal family education; maybe the family was divided (divorce, absences of the father, unmarried mothers, both parents too much taken up with the business of daily living); probably they've not received a good basic education; they couldn't knuckle down to a career, prefering rather to take on temporary odd jobs which in any case, never brought job satisfaction with it; they haven't got the opportunity to do any market gardening or farming; they don't have much in the way of resources - all of which means they're handicapped when it comes to setting themslves up for life or starting a family. Consequently, they're hell-bent on taking anything that comes their way.
Anthropological: Rejected by society, these young people have nothing to lose and everything to gain by violence. Life, death, the future, means nothing to them. The military chiefs who take them on as child soldiers, say the younger they are, the better soldiers they make because they're not aware of the dangers involved. However, these kids die in their hundreds, and their contemporaries know it, but once they're caught in the war machine, it's too late for them. They're trigger-happy, prepared to kill for nothing, or at the very least for a packet of cigarettes, without even being drugged. For them, all excesses are possible: violence, sadism, rape, murder, extortion, destruction, etc.
Psychological: Why does one of Charles Taylor's child soldiers strip himself naked (but still carrying his weapon, of course), so he can be filmed by a cameraman from an international TV company? Why does Ngilima de Goma go into battle completely naked, encouraged by the "blessings" of young women, also completely naked? Why do a group of Mai-Mai force women pound and cook cassava for these child soldiers in middle of the night?
Isn't it because the child soldiers want to show they have the capacity to turn society's standards upside down? Just holding a weapon gives a feeling of power. For those who are rejected by a society even to the point of refusing to recognize their manhood, the Kalashnikov is a formidable prolongation of the phallus.
The whole situation is like a time-bomb, ready to explode at a moment's notice, if something isn't done to defuse it.
What's to be done for these young people? How to rehabilitate them? Maybe a solution would be to find them something useful and positive to do, once there's a minimum of peace in the region. For example, setting up youth work camps for: Repairing the roads; protecting the land against erosion; undertaking massive afforestation work; improving river and lakeside facilities, (constructing landing stages, etc) - all this in the well-tried pattern of "food for work". Also, to imbue them with a true community spirit of "pulling together". This can be done by reorganising appropriate youth movements such as the Scouts; also by sporting and cultural activities.
It's still possible to call upon former scout leaders and leaders from other movements. Gather together groups of young people into camps where they can be offered work in the public interest, let's say 100-200 in each camp - house them in tents - provide them with a firm discipline - give them plain but substantial food - after work, organise suitable leisure programmes - and they'll feel themselves imbued with a new dignity.
Then there's something else which must be done: Education for responsible procreation! The words of the Bible: "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth" must be read in their entirety, because the text continues: "...and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth". (Genesis 1.28). In other words, "responsibility" can't be ignored. Quite frankly, when we talk about responsibilty, we're far from it - it's rather the reverse. Instead of being able to control what's on this earth, we're overtaken by such evils as hunger, ignorance, environmental disasters. Obviously something must be done so that the things of this world can be used correctly. For example: There must be fewer children per family because it's only then can they be given a chance in life; parents must be shown how to provide an atmsphere and living conditions whereby our children are no longer left to fend for themselves.
It's clear that if nothing is done, tragedy will succeed tragedy. It costs less to do something positive for our young people now, than having to rehabilitate them at a later stage in their lives.
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