ANB-BIA SUPPLEMENT

ISSUE/EDITION Nr 462 - 15/09/2003

CONTENTS | ANB-BIA HOMEPAGE | WEEKLY NEWS

ECOLOGY

Lake Mweru covers an area of some 5,200 sq. km. But refugees’ needs and the absence of any state control have taken a heavy toll on the fish. The local people are not at all happy and the Zambian businessmen are no longer exporting any of the lake’s large fish. Stephen Mwansa is one of the Zambian fishermen coming from Nchelenge. He’s been reduced to unemployment by the refugees and the Congolese displaced persons who, for nearly four years, have been living around the shore of Lake Mweru, which shares a common border with Congo RDC and Zambia. He’s furious about what’s happening. «See here. This lake is our “bank”, but it doesn’t supply us with as much fish as before. Why? Because the Congolese have been fishing in the prohibited areas of the spawning grounds. So, we’ve become very poor».

Fifty to sixty thousand people, mostly coming from the north of Katanga and from Congo RDC‘s eastern provinces, have taken refuge in the south of Congo or in Zambia, around Lake Mweru (130 km in length, 45km wide).

Ever since 1999, when the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) «rebels» seized their areas, namely Nyunzu, Kabalo, Kalemie, Kongolo, Fizi, etc., these refugees and displaced persons have been arriving in waves. They outnumber the locals in a number of villages and wherever they’re present in large numbers, they’re having an adverse effect on the local economy and resources. The new arrivals are very good fishermen, and they’ve brought with them new fishing techniques which means the fish stocks in the lake are fast decreasing. They use large nets with narrow meshes which means small fish which should be put back in the water are also caught.

To increase their catches, some are even using mosquito nets impregnated with insecticide. Abdallah Kazimoto Kilolo is one such refugee. Emerging from a shop in Mansa where he’d bought a number of mosquito nets, he was challenged as to why he’d bought the nets. Kilolo replied: «I didn’t know these mosquito nets are to be used to prevent malaria and not for fishing».

A Zambian journalist, Charles Mubambe, wrote in an article dated 30 October 2002: «It’s regrettable that fishermen have begun to use as fishing nets, mosquito nets supplied by UNICEF for the use of Zambia’s citizens in order to prevent malaria. Some fish species which local people like very much and which in the past have been exported to Europe as well, have thus disappeared. Other catches are becoming increasingly thin».

A matter of survival

Here, as in several other areas of Congo RDC, war and massive population movements have caused major ecological damage, and it’s the local people who suffer. On the other hand, the refugees have lost everything and don’t receive much help, so they’re forced to make use of local resources — indeed, it’s a matter of life and death for them.

People living around the lake also complain that the papyrus used to manufacture beds and doors for their houses is also being destroyed by the refugees. The refugees use the papyrus to make fish baskets for sale in Lubumbashi, Katanga’s capital. In Nkole village, one such local fisherman is bitter: «The refugees have cut down practically all the trees for smoking fish, for heating and cooking. They’ve even destroyed all the plants used in local medicine». The grassland and the forests in the area have gone up in smoke, while the lake’s water has been polluted by the new arrivals. Also, there used to be a bird in the area which acted as an alarm clock for the locals with its dawn song. It’s also disappeared — eaten by the refugees».

Overpopulation in some areas is now rife and this has had a disastrous effect on the environment, because nobody can enforce environmental regulations. Every year, Katanga’s governor signs a decree prohibiting fishing during the spawning season, but nobody respects it — not even the soldiers waiting for their pay in Mpweto, still occupied by the rebels. These days you hear this kind of complaint everywhere: «You can’t reason with some refugees. They tell us that because they belong to the same tribe as President L.D. Kabila who rescued the country from Mobutu’s dictatorship in 1997, nobody’s going to stop them fishing where they want to».

Pastor Didier Mwewa is in charge of the electoral district of Kasenga in an honourary capacity. He says that this environmental disaster is largely due to the fact that both the local and the international press are saying nothing about what’s happening. «Don’t blame the fish! They don’t know that there’s a frontier between Zambia and Congo RDC. And fish don’t need visas to travel from one country another! So, it’s difficult to protect them, especially on our side of the border where all the attention is focused on war crimes being committed in Ituri. Those crimes have hit the headlines in the national and international press».

• B. Kasamwa Tuseko, Congo RDC, August 2003 — © Reproduction authorised, with usual acknowledgment