CONTENTS | ANB-BIA HOMEPAGE | WEEKLY NEWS
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Congo (RDC) |
SOCIAL CONDITIONS
The town of Lubumbashi is presently the only town in Congo RDC, to hold precise, up-to-date information about its population. It has achieved this with cooperation from Belgium
A report published at the beginning of April by the American NGO, International Rescue Committee (IRC) based in New York, describes the war raging in Congo RDC as the most murderous to occur anywhere in the world since the end of the Second World War. According to IRC, this war has caused 3.3 million deaths between 1998 and 2002, to almost complete indifference on the part of the international press.
How many Congolese are left after this human tragedy? Asked this question, a Congolese minister would not reply. Congo RDC is one of those rare countries where the authorities do not know the precise number of people living there. Most Congolese citizens have lived and died in anonymity for decades. This is the result of the disorganisation of the state’s population services since independence in 1960 and the civil wars with which the country’s history is punctuated.
The problem of undeclared births and lack of identity cards is worsening all the time. Since the fall of the dictator Mobutu’s regime in May 1997, until now, April 2003, identity cards for Congolese citizens have never been renewed. There are only the old cards, known as «Citizen’s identity card», carrying the former green flag with the torch, of Mobutu’s single party, with the words «République du Zaïre». With the idea of obstructing rebel infiltration, Mobutu’s regime supplied no official «Citizen’s identity cards» from the beginning of the 1990s.
The governments of Kabila Snr. (1997-2001), and then Kabila Jnr. (from 26 January 2001) seem to have followed the same policy. According to the latest information, in Kinshasa, the Congolese Interior Minister, Théophile Mbemba Nfundu, has just announced that new identity cards are being printed bearing the words «République Démocratique du Congo» for an estimated number of Congolese citizens anywhere between 50 and 60 million. Some independent sources even suggest the figure for Congo RDC, the third largest country in Africa after the Sudan and Algeria, could be around 45 million people.
According to a pamphlet published by the Family Division in Katanga province in 2000, 90% of the children under five living in the province have not been declared to the civil authorities.
After the peace agreement in Sun City, South Africa, signed on 1 April 2003, one of the greatest challenges for the new government of national unity, in its task of leading Congo RDC forward to its first free elections, is to establish the figures for the Congolese population, in order to send them their official documents. Identity documents are required, after all, in order to be able to vote in the election. The population’s ignorance is also an obstacle to development, and promotes human rights violations. For example, young women raped by outlaws in war zones cannot bring charges against their assailants, since the women themselves do not officially exist, without an identity card. In all democratic countries throughout the world, it is essential to identify individual citizens so that they can receive health-care, obtain justice in the courts, enter school, obtain a driving licence or passport, marry, enlist in the armed forces, prove identity for a police check, etc.
Lubumbashi, an island in the ocean
While waiting for the country to come up-to-date in this strategic area, it should be noted that the city of Lubumbashi, provincial capital of Katanga, is the exception in Congo RDC. This is the result of its collaboration with the city of Liège (Belgium) with which it was twinned in 1961. Lubumbashi, nicknamed the «Copper capital», is Congo’s second city, subdivided into seven districts. Mrs Carmen Fernandez, of Liège’s foreign affairs department, describes Lubumbashi as being at present «the only city in Congo RDC holding precise, up-to-date information about its population».
According to this Belgian official who took part in the second mission from Liège to Lubumbashi, 16-31 January 2003, the authorities in Lubumbashi requested Liège to approve the reorganisation of the Copper capital’s civil government.
In October 2001, Liège sent four officials to spend two weeks working tirelessly with the mayor, Floribert Kaseba Makunko, and his councillors to carry out a population census, and provide birth certificates free-of-charge to all children under five. Around 1,700 census officers were mobilised, who spent 15 days travelling around the city, collecting information door-to-door in order to reach all the Lubumbashi population, and alert them to the importance of registering births, marriages and deaths.
Perusal of the data, resulted in a population figure of 1,180,387 inhabitants on 11 November 2001. This census has given the municipal authorities details of the surname, first name, date and place of birth, sex, occupation, etc., of every inhabitant in Lubumbashi, thus enabling them to plan their development programmes for fighting urban poverty.
After the 2001 census, a national population register must be created. With subsidies granted by the Belgian Secretary of State for Cooperative Development, the city of Liège agreed to the implementation of the project. Its completion was set for 2003 and it received a grant of 61,970 euros to cover all costs.
As in 2001, a mission was sent from Liège to work in Lubumbashi from 16-31 January 2003, helping civil servants in Lubumbashi to keep all the information collected from the census up-to-date. This processed, up-to-date information actually forms the population registers which so far exist nowhere else in the country. The Population bureaux in the seven districts of Lubumbashi are now operational, with basic equipment. It should be noted that this second step also includes the introduction of computerisation to keep statistics regarding the population up-to-date.
A city official has commented to Belgium, however: «It is good for us to have this equipment. But Belgium now needs to help our country achieve a government with a human face, that can pay us decent salaries. Without this, we risk having to sell the computer equipment surreptitiously to make ends meet. It is not easy for us underlings to be honest, when we are paid a monthly salary that is worth less than five dollars, in Congolese francs».