Omekongo Dibinga: “Don’t Ignore Your Calling.”

BY LARRY SAXTON - WI STAFF WRITER for The Washington Informer
THURSDAY, 26 MARCH 2009 08:56
(photo taken from www.omekongo.com)


Omekongo Dibinga, a first generation Congolese-American is an Urban Music Award Winner, spoken word artist, rapper, actor and motivational speaker. He is the founder and CEO of Free Your Mind Publishing, and has released five CD’s, three books, and one DVD. His first CD, “A Young Black Man’s Anthem: Love, Afrika and Revolution Revisited,” won the 2003 Cambridge Poetry Award for “Best CD.” Omekongo has a BSFS and MA from Georgetown University, and is currently a PhD student at the University of Maryland. He writes and performs in English, French, and Swahili, and has performed in Africa, Europe, Canada, and the Caribbean.
WI: What inspired you to start writing poetry?

Omekongo: I was born in Cambridge, MA, and my parents are from the Congo; that’s where my name came from. Growing up in Boston, I and my siblings were tormented because our name was different. We were beaten up, we had rocks thrown at us, we were shot at, primarily by African Americans, but from people of all backgrounds. I, like everybody, had a choice: I could either pick up the rocks and throw them back, take the bat and swing back, or get the gun and shoot back -- all the things that would have led me to an early grave or early incarceration. I decided my tool of retaliation would be the pen. I picked up the pen to write about my experiences and the writing saved my life. Through the writing I wanted to show people that we were all the same, we cry in the same language, we laugh in the same language. The writing became my escape.

WI: From what other sources do you get your material?

Omekongo: I’ve lived and worked in 16 different countries, and I’ve come back to write about those experiences. The more I travel the more I realize that the message I bring is universal, not just for Black people or people in poor communities like the one I grew up in. I also get inspired by our young people, seeing their minds open and the light bulbs going on in their heads while telling them how they can be positive and be successful as an artist. I’m doing this for the Love. Showing kids they can be successful, be smart and have fun.

WI: Of all the places or countries you have performed, which on do you feel shows you the most “Love?”

Omekongo: Easily, South Africa. I’ve performed in South Africa five times, and the appreciation for artistry there is like no place I’ve ever been. I feel like I’m home, like I’m one of their sons. When I go home there it’s like performing in no other place.
WI: As an artist, is there anything you would like to say?
Omekongo: You have to make sure you are in your profession for the right reasons. Dr. Farrah Gray, the guy who made himself a millionaire at the age of fourteen said, “You should find what you would do for free and make that your career, because when times are tough you will be still doing what you love.” Life is short and you have to make sure that you are pursuing what you love, because if you don’t, you can’t be happy, and if you are not happy, than life is truly not worth living. If you can find a profession that allows you to inspire people, change lives, even save lives, and you can make a living off of it, then you can find no better profession, so don’t ignore your calling.

For more information on Omekongo Dibinga visit www.omekongo.com

Slowdown Blights DR Congo Economy

As the G20 summit in London draws closer, African leaders have warned of an economic "tsunami" poised to hit their continent. Our Africa correspondent, Andrew Harding, has been to the mining centre of Likasi, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the global slowdown is already causing havoc.

In the gentle green hills around Likasi, the global economic meltdown makes a pleasant, twittering sound.

Thousands of excited birds have begun nesting in the abandoned mines and factories that now litter the region - their songs abruptly replacing the throb and roar of machinery.

"All gone. Factory is closed. No jobs," says Mr Radju, guarding an empty Indian-owned copper processing plant on the edge of Likasi. He shrugs and wanders away past a giant pile of dark, broken rocks.

G20 LONDON SUMMIT

World leaders will meet next week in London to discuss measures to tackle the downturn. See to the G20 summit.
The G20 countries are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the US and the EU.

Since December, more than 60 enterprises in this one town alone have shut. Many Chinese businessmen simply locked their gates and fled the country, as the price and demand for copper collapsed spectacularly.

In Katanga province as a whole, the authorities estimate that 300,000 people have lost their jobs virtually overnight.

"It's a shock - a brutal shock," admitted Denis Kalundgi, the urbane mayor of Likasi, surveying the town's deeply potholed streets, now crowded with unemployed and frustrated men. Mr Kalundgi said he was concerned that social tensions could quickly boil over.

"We're suffering. Fifty per cent of the economy has gone. For now, we are managing [to pay salaries]. But only just."

Vulnerable families

The world's economic storm has hit DR Congo just as this vast, dilapidated, conflict-ridden country was beginning to shrug off decades of turmoil and decline.

Largely thanks to soaring mineral prices, the DRC's economy was projected to grow by up to 12% last year. Around the continent as a whole, it was a similar story. Despite some glaring exceptions, Africa has enjoyed a decade of impressive growth.

But today, Adelard Kihoho is discovering just how vulnerable the continent remains to a sudden downturn. The 37-year-old mine worker lost his foundry job in December last year.

"The foreign owners just told us to leave one day," he said. "I don't know how long this will last. Before, I was earning about $250 a month, but now I am just trying to sell a few things on the street to survive."

Adelard has seven of his own children and two of his brother's children to support. They sleep together in a small, dark room on the outskirts of Likasi.

With no welfare state to fall back on, Adelard has been forced to make some painful choices since he lost his job. Since he can no longer afford to send all the children to school, seven-year-old Naomi and three of her brothers now spend their days at home, waiting for the mines to reopen.

"They say the great powers are to blame for this," said Adelard. "But it is we who are suffering." He wondered out loud whether "President Obama can fix this".

Like many African countries, the DRC is looking to the IMF for urgent new loans to help it weather the current storm. The G20 summit is expected to hear calls for at least $30bn in outside help for Africa. But grim as things are, it's still possible to find optimists here.

Defiantly upbeat

It is a 20-minute helicopter ride from Likasi to Boss Mining's giant new copper and cobalt mine. From the air, you can see where huge hills have been peeled and sliced apart by armies of mechanical diggers.

"It's been really tough," concedes Gordon Thompson, the chief operating officer of Boss Mining's parent company, the British-registered Central Africa Mining and Exploration Company. Work has come to a virtual standstill, but none of the workforce has been laid off.

"This is a very challenging environment. But Congo has to [bounce back]. It doesn't have an option, does it? We're seeing it as an opportunity," he says.

"We expect to be operating again in the next few weeks.

"Our business will recover and grow, and it's going to get stronger."

He acknowledges Congo's need for a "leg-up" from the IMF, but warns against "handouts", saying: "The money will just be spent and we'll be knocking at the door again for more in no time."

Back in Likasi, Mayor Kalundgi is racing between meetings, trying to end a strike by unpaid railway workers. But he, too, is defiantly upbeat.

"We didn't want this, but now it's happened, we can't just fold our arms. This crisis can have a positive effect," he says. "There is a need for foreign help, but there's also the mobilisation of internal resources.

"We have learned a lesson from this - it's made us realise that we can't just rely on copper and cobalt exports. We need to diversify." Warming to his theme, he speaks of persuading mining companies to start plant corn.

"The real problem we have right now is that we produce what we don't consume and we don't produce what we do consume. We need to change this state of affairs throughout the country."


Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/business/7965221.stm

Published: 2009/03/27 08:57:01 GMT

© BBC MMIX

Sarkozy Outlines Congo Peace Plan

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has suggested using the mineral wealth of the Democratic Republic of Congo to help bring peace to central Africa.

Addressing parliament in Kinshasa, he also praised Congolese President Joseph Kabila's joint operation with Rwanda against rebels earlier this year.

The region has been plagued by rival militias for more than a decade.

He said the region's people could become rich by working together or continue to fight and remain poor.

French nuclear giant Areva's chief executive has taken advantage of the visit to sign a deal to exploit uranium in DR Congo.

No further details were released but DR Congo has major uranium reserves and was the source of some of the raw material for the atomic bombs the US dropped on Japan in World War II.

Mr Sarkozy has continued his two-day African tour by visiting the neighbouring Republic of Congo, previously a French colony.

He is expected in uranium-rich Niger on Friday.

Mr Sarkozy is joined by ministers and other executives from French firms - including France Telecom, cement maker Lafarge and construction group Vinci - chasing contracts in various sectors.

Addressing Kinshasa's national assembly in the first visit by a French president to the former Belgian colony in a quarter of a century, Mr Sarkozy suggested Kinshasa and its Great Lakes neighbours work together for their mutual benefit.

"The peoples of central Africa will not be changing their address.

"If they can develop good neighbourly relations, the peoples of central Africa will have a rich and peaceful life. If it's a case of might is right, the peoples of central Africa will stay poor and unhappy," he said.

He gained a round of applause from MPs for saying that Congolese sovereignty would not be violated.

Uproar

Preparations for the visit were overshadowed by comments Mr Sarkozy made in January when he suggested DR Congo share its mineral wealth with Rwanda as a way to end violence around the main eastern city of Goma.

The idea triggered uproar with the Congolese media accusing Paris of seeking a "Balkanisation" of the country and trying to use DR Congo's mineral wealth to help mend its ties with Rwanda.

Paris and Kigali have been at loggerheads for years over who is to blame for Rwanda's 1994 genocide, in which some 800,000 people were slaughtered.

Kinshasa resident Jean Pierre Mafuta told the BBC News website:

"What Mr Sarkozy is forgetting, is that DR Congo had been sharing its wealth, its people and its land with the world for such a long time - what has the Congo got in return?"

Ahead of the visit, aides in Mr Sarkozy's office said: "There is no French peace plan, no plan to share riches, it is not the right moment," reported AFP.

On Thursday Mr Sarkozy also praised as "brave" the Congolese leader's decision to invite Rwandan troops into his country in January for a five-week joint operation against rebel militias plaguing the neighbours' border.

The move was politically sensitive as Rwanda has twice invaded the country in recent years and many Congolese distrusted the Kigali forces' presence.

The aim of the military campaign was to flush out rebel forces each government has accused the other of backing and which have been at the heart of the region's conflicts since Rwanda's genocide.

The DR Congo parliament's speaker was forced to quit on Wednesday after criticising Mr Kabila's decision to let in the Rwandan troops.



Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/7965089.stm

Published: 2009/03/26 17:11:13 GMT

© BBC MMIX

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Lessons from Rwanda in the Destructive Language of Hate

written by
Melissa Steyn

AS WE go into the emotionally charged period of election campaigning, political leadership urgently needs to take responsibility for the social effects of the language it uses.

African National Congress (ANC) leaders’ references to their political enemies as “snakes” and “cockroaches” are of considerable concern, as are “warnings” of violence should ANC president Jacob Zuma be prosecuted. Such utterances fit into well-known patterns that have extremely destructive effects on intergroup relations and pave the way for violence.

We learnt an instructive, and deeply tragic, lesson in the xenophobic violence last year, recurring in recent incidents in KwaZulu-Natal. When the xenophobic attacks happened, many of us who study social identities and the “politics of belonging” were not surprised. The warning signs had been there — even before the murders started in the late 1990s, name-calling with words such as “amakwerekwerere”, which serve to manufacture a consensus of rejection of those being constructed as “other,” was already happening.

At the time, alarm bells were not sounded, and we have seen how things escalated into shameful group-based behaviour. It would be reckless now not to confront the gravity of the use of hate speech at this particular political juncture. It does the everyday work of creating enabling conditions for group-based aggression — beliefs that legitimate, and emotions that facilitate, hostile actions along the fault lines of inclusions and exclusions.

In the case of the xenophobic attacks, competition for resources has been the most commonly proffered explanation for the outbreak of violence. But competition in itself does not explain violence.

The xenophobic attacks in SA should be understood in the context of the construction of a new nation. Processes of drawing boundaries between those who belong and those who do not were infused with feelings of anger and resentment. Discourses constructed competition by the “other” for the available opportunities within the nation as illegitimate. The sense of the unfairness of competition rested, in turn, on the perpetrators themselves feeling that they were, or had been, victims, and therefore that their expectations of exclusive rights were legitimate.

Neil Kressel, who has written on mass hate, points out that no group anywhere in the world that has committed acts of mass hostility has done so without feeling that they themselves have been victimised. But they do not always attack the group that victimised them. Indeed, they are unlikely to attack a group with more social, political and economic power than them. Rather, they attack groups that are more vulnerable.

In SA’s case, our nation is deeply damaged, the sense of citizenship is wounded — after all, it is only about 15 years ago that black people could not walk down public streets freely. There are expectations, fears and neediness that make the question of entitlement to the nation’s resources much more fraught, and susceptible to manipulation.

One can see how it would be easy to promote the persuasion that aggrieved nationals have the right, given the opportunity, to get rid of those they scapegoat for their own lack of advancement. Xenophobic violence is the exercise of power of those who feel entitled to do so.

The hate speech in which ANC president Jacob Zuma called his political enemies “snakes” and a North West ANC Youth League leader used the word “cockroaches” is a recognised discursive link in creating the preconditions for violence based on group identities.

In an extreme form of dehumanisation, the “other” is constructed in a way that identifies them with creatures that people not only fear and hate but also feel entitled or compelled to exterminate. These are creatures we feel comfortable with despising — creatures deemed vermin, such as rats, insects, and snakes (which carry particularly hateful cultural connotations in some communities). We know how Rwandans were mobilised with the use of the word “cockroaches” to describe those targeted for extermination. Jews were referred to as rats in Nazi Germany.

One can look at hateful behaviour as a kind of pyramid, with acts of subtle bias such as stereotyping, name calling and ethnic jokes at the bottom, moving to acts of overt prejudice and bigotry and discrimination, leading to acts of violence and extreme violence to individuals, culminating in genocide at the top of the pyramid.

The Rwandan example points to another important factor in conditioning society for violence — people look to authority figures for “permission” to do that which they would not normally do. This is why hate speech coming from leaders is irresponsible leadership squared, especially in a young democracy where we are still finding the appropriate ways to interact with each other.

Obedience is a strong and related factor. People do what they understand is required of them. This is pertinent in a country such as ours where we have a particularly authoritarian and patriarchal history coupled with levels of militarisation. The cultures of, for example, the Zulus and the Afrikaners, historically show a high level of deference to male authority. This places great responsibility on the shoulders of male leaders, and also indicates why we should reject the singing of macho songs such as Awulethu mshini wam .

Other enabling conditions include a high level of intolerance to difference. With Zuma, we are seeing how people are encouraged to identify in singular ways, and boundaries are policed through fear of being similarly typecast and dehumanised if you don’t conform.

This kind of talk discourages others who may be considering breaking from the dominant mode of identifying from doing so. For example, homophobic jokes are not just aimed at disciplining lesbians and gays but aimed at policing heterosexual men and women’s sexualities. These are all group-forming and group-preserving dynamics.

And these dynamics are well known to us. Apartheid tried to create homogenous groups with clear-cut others and clear-cut boundaries where resources were allocated on the basis of whether you are “like me” or not.

We even saw this when a third of those killed in the xenophobic attacks were South Africans. Colour is often a convenient marker, as in the targeting of darker Africans and those darker black South Africans being constructed as “others” by stronger in-groups.

The way out of this is to create openness for people to belong to different, cross-cutting groups and to identify in more complex ways — whether it be political parties or other differences — and to allow for more porous boundaries.

Leaders have a responsibility to educate themselves in this regard. Responsible leaders would recognise the potential for violence and consciously guide South Africans in a different direction. Otherwise we run the risk of perpetuating cycles of victimisation and acting-out in search of compensation.

Do we want to find out whether we are the kind of society that commits genocide? Political leaders should exercise extreme caution — they may end up getting more than just votes.
---------------
# Steyn is director of intercultural and diversity studies and an associate professor in sociology at the University of Cape Town.

DR Congo beat Ghana in CHAN final: African Nations Championship

news source:http://www.cafonline.com/competition/african-nations-championship_2009/news/2388-dr-congo-beat-ghana-in-chan-final.html

pics from: AFP-http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jy8hrLOSvV64ufjAFM2mE0D_fCYg

DR Congo’s Leopards made history by becoming the first team to win the African Nations Championship (CHAN) after Ghana 2-0 in the final played on Sunday at the Felix Houphouet Boigny Stadium, Abidjan.

Second half strikes from Kaluyituka Dioko and Mbenza Bedi ensured the Congolese became the first winners of the competition restricted to footballers pl;aying in their country of birth.

The result was also a perfect revenge for the Leopards, who had suffered a 0-3 loss at the hands of their West African counterparts in their earlier meeting at the group phase.

It was a well deserved victory for the Congolese as they completely outplayed the Ghanaians to claim their first major championship since the 1974 African Cup of Nations feat in Cairo, Egypt.

The Congolese started brightly and made clear their intentions from the very beginning with deadly striker Tresor Mputu Mabi coming close twice in the first and fourth minutes.

The Congolese appeared more organized and confirmed that with dominance in possession as the Ghanaians laboured in search of the rhythm.

On the 12th minute mark, Black Stars goalie Philemon MacCarthy scored full marks as he parried away Mputu’s goalbound shot from a goalmouth action.

For Ghana, Asampong Taylor’s drive with the outside of right foot and Ibrahim Ayew near misses was all they could boast of as an attempt at goal in the early stages.

The Congolese were very swift on the counter and anytime they moved the Ghanaian defence was found wanting.

Ghana’s Black Stars were unlucky to have gone up after Edmund Owusu-Ansah header from Taylor’s cross missed narrowly after the latter had headed past onrushing Leopards goalie Kidiaba Muteba.



The Congolese resumed the second half strongly and took the lead under a minute into the half through Kaluyituka who headed home from Lofo Bongeli cross, which beat the Ghanaian defence.

The Leopards maintained their dominance and succeeded in authenticating their lead on 74 minutes through Mbenza Bedi who blasted past MacCarthy from Lofo again from the left.

The remainder of the game belonged to the Congolese as they taught their Ghanaian counterparts some football lessons, characterized by circuit passes as the packed crowd jeered on.

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BBC NEWS REPORT: Rwanda Leaves DR Congo

Courtesy of BBC News:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7911026.stm
Page last updated at 07:51 GMT, Friday, 27 February 2009




Thousands of Rwandan troops are leaving the Democratic Republic of Congo, five weeks after they crossed the border to attack Hutu rebels, who are behind years of conflict in the region.


Rwanda has twice invaded its larger neighbour and attacked the FDLR militia, but this time the two countries took joint action against the rebel group whose leaders have been linked to the 1994 genocide.


Hundreds of people turned out to watch a joint military parade by the two armies in eastern DR Congo’s North Kivu province, where much of the conflict has been focused.


Officials say the Rwandan pull-out will be complete by the end of this week.


As Rwandan women welcomed the soldiers home, the foreign ministry in Kigali said the joint operation had "seriously weakened" the FDLR rebels. But a BBC correspondent says civilians paid a heavy price.


Despite Rwandans’ pride in their armed forces, UN peacekeepers warned that the FDLR had not been neutralised, raising fears of revenge attacks by the militia.


Orphanages are already filled with the victims of on-and-off fighting between the FDLR, other militias and the Congolese army, which has forced more than one million people to flee since late 2006.