THE GREATEST SILENCE: RAPE IN THE CONGO - by Lisa Jackson

by - Hinsley Njila

HBO television channel in the US (hbo.com), in the month of April 2008 has been airing a documentary - Lisa Jackson entitled ‘the greatest silence: rape in the Congo’. I watched the entire program with disgust of course, and I’ll recommend that everyone get a chance to watch the program and witness the damaging effects of poverty and bad governance in action. Because I watched the entire program, and have lived long enough and know a lot about Africa, I have gathered a few lessons that reflect what is happening all over the continent at this moment.

Read at your own risk.

For as long as I live, I will never get over images of Africans chopping each other’s heads off (especially helpless women and children) in Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, Cameroon, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Congo, Zaire etc especially for some of the most asinine reasons imaginable to even a fly that’s left to digest a lot of these corpses.

I can understand a lot of discrimination, even though to me ALL discrimination should be criminal, but that which occurs in Africa which is often between people who cannot even tear each other apart if not for the languages they speak makes you think there’s some truth in what many think about Africans as being less of REAL human beings. I have a hard time telling the difference between Ivorians, Cameroonians, Nigerians, Gabonese etc, and I was born in Africa.

As much evil as I have seen and witnessed in Africa, I doubt I’ll ever be surprised in my life as to how far Africans will go to inflict pain on each other. Parliamentarians would take bribes and completely disregard the future of their country. But I'm not surprised because history tells us Africans for money sold their own children as slaves to white people.

In the HBO documentary, the translator makes a point to say that if a society cannot protect its women and children, then it’s a jungle. In my assessment, 90% of African countries are currently worse than jungles. You look at countries like Cameroon and Sudan where investment in women and youth is not only non existent but criminal if anyone attempts, and you find it hard to be hopeful about a system that is actively destroying its very own future. Paul Biya would much rather see the youth die a slow painful death, than do anything to help them for 25+ years. Bashir in Sudan would rather buy Chinese weapons, and bribe overseas bankers to hide his money while ordering his soldriers to rape and kill women and children in Darfur than help them out.

All the problems in the documentary would NEVER happen in such grand scale if Africa boosted leaders who thought more like humans than animals. I look at the likes of Biya, Mungabe, Mumbutu, Abacha, and you can go on until you hit 92% of them and realize exactly why the future for Africa is dangerously hopeless. Paul Biya would rather stay around and embezzle billions and destroy generations of Cameroonians while exerting his military powers than give them hope by building schools and allowing for free enterprise that generates wealth and end poverty. He would rather there be violence and for thousands to die and be psychologically scarred for life by pursuing selfish, asinine goals than leave and inspire the youth to take responsibility for solving problems that he created over the years.

The only way any of the problems in Africa would make sense to me is if somehow someday, someone successfully proves that Africans have less than a normal human size brain. In so many ways, I’m really hoping for that outcome…because when I saw 4, 11 etc years old girls raped in that documentary, I knew it couldn’t have been by monkeys. I saw a woman with elephantitis raped and killed, another about 60 years old and so on. Even some wild animals that live in the jungle like Lions, Tigers etc have been known to protect abandoned young children; human or order wise. The only way you wouldn’t care as a leader of a country in the face of all these is if your brain is not able to comprehend that these things cannot be ignored, and justified. If we cannot give the youth hope, and build a society that teaches them to give back and be better human beings then we'll fail without a doubt.

On my worse day, i'll be a better president that 99% of ALL current and 98% of former African leaders, especially since I'm confident I have a normal human sized brain that is capable of rational and critical thinking.

I hope this is proof that most African countries are ruled by Apes, at least they exhibit the cognitive abilities of Apes or lesser developed animals. We have have a responsibility to leave a better society than that which we inherited, unless you're the likes of Paul Biya, their militaries and the likes. God bless us all.