Congo and Angola Agree to End Expulsions

Published 10/14/09 New York Times

By BARRY BEARAK

JOHANNESBURG — Tens of thousands of people — some of them wrenched from their homes with only the clothes on their backs — have been expelled recently from both Angola and Congo in what has been a tit-for-tat immigration dispute between two of Africa’s behemoth neighbors.

But after weeks of acrimony, with inflammatory statements a staple in the local news media, both countries on Tuesday finally agreed to suspend the expulsions, said Congo’s information minister, Lambert Mende.

“The two heads of state have reached an understanding, and something formal will be signed based on what has been agreed,” Mr. Mende said.

The expulsions began in Angola, where the government has been annoyed by the number of impoverished Congolese who cross the border. Some are fleeing the continuing war in their homeland, which has claimed millions of lives. Others cross in search of an economic lift, including those who hope to pluck a fortune from diamond fields.

Angola has often relied on mass expulsions to discourage the migrants, sending home waves of Congolese from 2003 onward, according to the United Nations. But this year’s expulsions were particularly upsetting.

“We never challenged the expulsions themselves; we challenged the way they were being conducted — all the beating of people and looting their goods, even sometimes their clothes,” Mr. Mende said. “We began our own expulsions as a kind of retaliation.”

During 27 years of civil war, thousands of Angolans poured across the long, porous border into Congo. Many acquired refugee status, though this apparently failed to keep some from being ousted in recent sweeps.

“Most of those Angolans had been there for years, working in factories, doing small business, even teachers who were teaching in the schools,” said Maurizio Giuliano, a spokesman in Kinshasa, Congo’s capital, for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The largest share of the Angolans came from the western Congo province of Bas-Congo. Most of the Congolese expelled from Angola were taken from an area around the northwestern city of Soyo or the enclave of Cabinda.

Humanitarian agencies are concerned about the living conditions of about 40,000 uprooted people. Many have made it safely back to their original homes. But others are congregated near border checkpoints.

“The situation is very worrying,” Mr. Giuliano said. “There are potential risks, among them the lack of drinking water, the lack of sanitation.”

Relations between Angola and Congo have largely been cordial of late. Angola’s emergence from decades of war has allowed the government to exploit the country’s natural wealth in oil and diamonds. So far, the revenues have largely benefited a small elite. Two-thirds of the people get by on less than $2 a day, according to the World Bank. Yet Angola is a lodestone for migrants.

Congo, too, has vast mineral wealth, unrealized as yet, which has been misallocated to war.