On 29 June 2017, the Congolese Solidarity Campaign (CSC), a grassroots human rights based social movement will once again hold its Un-Independence Day event in a form of panel discussion. It will take place at the Diakonia Centre — 20 Diakonia venue, Durban, South Africa.
While the rest of the country celebrates 57 years of “Independence,” we the impoverished, the marginalized and the oppressed will be mourning the absence of this independence that our mothers and fathers fought for so hard. We will say as long as the history of our country is still characterized by civil wars, political instability, insecurity, conflict, gross human rights violation, corruption, democracy deficit and economic mismanagement.
On June 30, 1960 the Democratic Republic of Congo was granted independence from the Belgian government. This Independence came with little struggle between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Belgium. Each year on June 30, the Democratic Republic of Congo celebrates its Independence Day. Yet the people still struggle for full Independence today in an environment full of armed conflict. The Democratic Republic of Congo is endowed with many natural resources. It has a large reserves of water, fertile land and a large quantity of natural resources including diamonds, salt, gold, iron, cobalt, uranium, copper, bauxite, silver, petroleum.… Many of its natural resources remain undiscovered or barely harnessed.
The country has become the killing fields of capitalism, where behind every slaughter, bloodshed, rape, massacre and looting stand imperialist interests. Imperialist looting and barbarism have led hundreds of thousands of ordinary people to have the country and become asylum seekers in many parts of the world and also in South Africa. The local looters (Rwanda and Uganda) are puppets and stooges for larger imperialist powers who are happy to support them as long as they can get the hands on share of the spoils. These imperialist bosses are operating from the City of London (UK) and Wall Street (Washington). They continue to arm and sponsor different rebel groups through their agents in the regions ensuring a continuous political instability.
The United Nations peacekeeping force was deployed in 1998 with a mandate to maintain peace and stability. However, it has dismally failed to maintain peace and stability. The blood of innocent Congolese people continue to be shed for imperialist interests.
We call on all progressive movements, organizations, which are fighting to build peace, established justice, unity and all those who are concerned about the political and economic crisis in the country and out of country, to join us when we mourn our lack of Independence.
Oppression is oppression and we will name it as such. We call on all responsible media to join with us we say that are not Independent, when we remain without peace, justice, democracy and freedom of expression.
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