When will we have social justice in the DRC?

The DRC in general, and the East in particular, are seeing the emergence of anti-values on a huge scale as a result of the structural impunity at the top of the State. People do not know whose authority to believe in. If a child is not punished or reproached within the family he may not realize that he has done something wrong. And at that very moment, each time, he risks confusing right with wrong, and vice versa. Let us be clear, they say, that what is evil is always evil, even if everyone is doing it, and good will remain good even if no-one does it.

Let’s take a good look at the social justice system in our country, the DRC. Today the whole world aspires to peace, to stability. But how can this peace become a reality unless everyone feels the same way? Marginalization, exclusion, discrimination will never result in lasting peace in a country.

It is with tears in my eyes that I wish to tell you about the injustice frequently suffered by the Banyamulenge community in general and the women of this community in particular. The Banyamulenge are a Nile people and an ethnic minority in South Kivu. They are originally from Rwanda and the majority of them arrived in the DRC in 1959 as a result of the fighting in Rwanda between the Hutu and the Tutsi. For a long time they were wrongly regarded by the various communities in South Kivu as being the cause of the troubles which affected the East in particular and the DRC as a whole. An example of the unjust practices to which they are submitted can be seen in what happens at the border control at Kavimvira (the passage which connects the town of Uvira /South Kivu with the capital of Burundi). At this border checkpoint, the Banyamulenge, and particularly their women, are frequently searched in a degrading manner. Under the pretext that the women may be carrying weapons in their clothing they are examined right down to their intimate parts. Sometimes they are forced to undress to prove that they do not have weapons hidden in their clothing. And the strange thing in all this is that they are searched by men. This is not always the case with women from other communities such as the Fuliru, the Bembe or the Vira who also cross the border at this checkpoint. The Banyamulenge women remain traumatized and many of them have stopped traveling because they fear such humiliation.

I have chosen not to remain silent nor to bow my head in the face of this unjust situation which brings shame to the women in my country. It is not possible to aspire to lasting peace in this country when there is still a group of the population which is so marginalized. Social justice must become a reality immediately, with no more delay, because the DRC needs social justice for its sons and daughters.