By Luwezi Kinshasa
The latest outbreak of pneumonic plague began early in February around the diamond town of Zobia, in Oriental province, north of the regional economic center of Kisangani. It is part of the on-going biological warfare unleashed by U.S. and European imperialism against our people in the Congo.
According to a February 23, 2005 BBC News story, an imperialist non-governmental organization (NGO) called Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) “believes it has found a case in a second area in the Northeast. Thousands have fled the remote diamond mining town of Zobia since the disease first emerged at the end of last year. At least 60 people have died so far.”
This plague, which affects the lungs, is fatal if left untreated, and the African masses in Congo who are its victims have been abandoned by the petty bourgeois government and left in the hands of white mercenary doctors. These doctors, such as those of MSF and other so-called NGOs are motivated by the furthering of their own medical careers and programs rather than by unity with the necessity for African workers and peasants to be free from hunger and diseases created by white imperialist rulers. These doctors are information collectors, imperialist scientist, and they use Africa to test all kinds of new pharmaceutical products.
These are suitable conditions for unchecked medicine practices. Many of them go to Africa to learn medicinal practice by experimenting with our lives. Under the cover of fighting infectious diseases like the measles and tuberculosis, imperialist medical relief agencies are busy with accelerated vaccination campaigns on children and pregnant women.
The sectors of the visionless, sell-out, African petty bourgeoisie in Congo are fighting each other for their selfish share of the crumbs left by imperialism in Congo, while giving free reign to the genocidal policies of the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) dominated by the U.S. government.
“The incidence of AIDS infections in Africa coincides exactly with the locations of the massive W.H.O. smallpox vaccination program in the mid-1970’s. Some 14,000 Haitians there on UN secondment to Central Africa were also vaccinated in this campaign…” — London Times, May 11, 1987
African petty bourgeoisie facilitates imperialist biological warfare and theft of resources
The irresponsible and treacherous African petty bourgeoisie rulers are concerned with what money goes into their own pockets. They do not want to expose the fact that Congo is a target of U.S. government-led, high intensity biological warfare and has been so since the emergence of the powerful anti-colonialist movement led by Patrice Lumumba over 40 years ago.
In a country where the life expectancy, which has fallen to between 36 and 45 years, continues to decline year by year, African workers in mining towns bear the brunt of intense biological warfare. AIDS, ebola, malaria, pneumonic plague and other diseases have besieged the masses of workers and peasants in the most vicious and unimaginable ways. The total absence of revolutionary, African internationalist organizations and institutions has left the African masses in Congo at the mercy of neo-colonialist thugs, and genocidal white imperialist forces.
Meanwhile, imperialists continue to suck the diamonds, gold, timber, coltan and other resources from the Congo. The fact is, to them, the people do not count. Africa only counts for the material; the imperialists are seeking to steal for their industries, as shown by the Canadian company, SouthernEra.
”In mid-October 2004, SouthernEra completed over 43,000 line-kilometers of airborne magnetic and radiometric geophysical surveys under contract with Fugro Airborne Surveys (Pty) Ltd. The surveys covered 21 of SouthernEra’s 41 exclusive diamond exploration permits. These 21 permits collectively comprise three separate primary kimberlite project areas. The three project areas are focused in the diamond-rich Kasai-Oriental Province which has produced two of the ‘top-ten’ largest gem quality diamonds in the world and in the mid-1980’s was producing up to 20 million carats of diamonds per year.” — congokin.com/news
African workers are trapped between all kinds of petty bourgeois militia whose function is to kill and terrorize the defenseless masses of our people. Women who escape military brutality run to refugee camps, which are nothing but concentration camps where UN officers rape our young women and treat them as prostitutes.
Over 80 percent of the population is unemployed, and those who work are rarely paid. When they do get paid, the money is so little that they can’t even afford basic meals necessary to survive. With this reality, and in the absence of any revolutionary political education, many people have concluded that it is a miracle just to be alive in Congo.
The workers who dig the gold and diamonds are deprived of minimal resources to maintain good health and basic hygiene at work and at home. Things like soap, clean water and staple foods have become luxury products for most of them.
Many of the qualified staff, most of the times unpaid, have been demoralized by this state of chaos. Those who have not been victims of war and contagious diseases themselves, have gone to Europe for a dream of a better life, and as a result today, France has more Congolese medical doctors than Congo itself.
During colonial times and the early years of neo-colonialism, the capitalist State assumed the responsibility of building and maintaining basic medical structures and services. Conditions have gotten so bad that the masses have become nostalgic of these times wherein these structures created the basis of the illusion of any progressive character of the colonial system. This is because the African petty bourgeoisie has failed and betrayed the fundamental interests of the people, and for this they must go.
Today, hospitals in Congo are known as places where people go to die not to get cured, because of the collapse of the black petty bourgeoisie state and industrial domestic production. Hospitals, biological and pharmaceutical laboratories and local clinics have been respectively looted by Mobutu Sese Seko, Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni’s soldiers and their allied forces or have been reclaimed by dust and vegetation.
The future of the Congo is in the hands of the African working class
Despite the enormous nightmare that Africans in Congo are living under, we believe that the masses will never fail to rise up in the face of the challenges history has put in front of us. All the chaos and the failures of the African petty bourgeoisie in Congo are implacable proof that it is an outdated, completely decayed social force in the service of a parasitic world economy that only exists for the benefit of white colonial societies and ruling classes.
The forces of African Internationalism must, without delay, begin to put into practice: 1) programs of political education in every corner of the Congo that identify and expose the U.S.-led counterinsurgent warfare in the Congo; 2) the creation of community health programs throughout all of Congo; 3) the creation of training centers of African internationalist health staff that could be sent anywhere in the African world in cases of emergency; and 4) the launch of an international financial drive to fund all of our own health programs.
Most importantly, it is the creation of an African Internationalist party inside Congo and every Congolese community around the world that is the number one priority of our times, because it is such a party that will be capable of carrying out an anti-imperialist health program to its full logical conclusion.
Build the African Socialist International!
Uhuru!
The Democratic Republic of Congo’s petty bourgeois leaders have turned the masses over to imperialism for biological warfare and gross exploitation.
“The workers who dig the gold and diamonds are deprived of minimal resources to maintain good health and basic hygiene at work and at home. Things like soap, clean water and staple foods have become luxury products for most of them.”