Campaign 2005
Inaccessible rural regions
We’re on our way to Bongo, about fifty km to the west of Mweka. This is the place where Uopcm, the association of maize farmers of Mweka, has its seat.
We’re driving on Route Nationale n°1, which was once the main road between the mining district of the province of Katanga and distant Kinshasa. What I see however, is not a main road, but sometimes a cart track, at other times a modest trail or an enormous erosion trench. Mario, the driver, uses all his dexterity to get the Land cruiser across safely. The ‘bonne chance’ (good luck) that we heard from those who waved us off in the city of Kananga sounded serious and now I realise why.
It has been a while since lorry drivers dared to take this route. Yesterday it took us an entire day to drive the 250 km from Kananga to Mweka. We only saw two land rovers then, but there were many people on foot and with bikes. Trade products are transported between the city and the country side on people’s heads – or by young men, “pedaleurs” (cyclists), who use all their strength to push heavily loaded bikes. No wonder the quality of the roads is a much-discussed subject.
Self-development
When we arrive in Bongo, dozens of children swarm round the car. They escort us to the ‘paillot’, an open wooden meeting place with thatched roof, where the delegates of the Uopcm farmer groups are awaiting us. Uopcm groups fifteen farmer groups from villages in the region: they have 450 members in all. We get a most warm welcome and soon we hear the whole maize farmers’ story.
Maize is a basic product in Kasai. Farmers do not only produce for personal use but they also supply the cities, especially Kananga. The fact that lorries can no longer drive along the roads, was a serious problem for the maize farmers. Now they had to sell their produce little by little to buyers who engage ‘pedaleurs’. But the farmers searched for a solution and they found one themselves, for the villages around Bongo are near the railroad to Katanga.
The person in charge explains:
Our first problem had to do with commercialisation. To solve it, our farmer group united with other groups from other villages. Next to the railroad we built storage rooms, where we now collect our maize yield. Together we rent a wagon, and we go to Kananga ourselves to sell. That way we create a supplement. The solution seams simple, but it is not. First of all it is only since the end of the war that there has been a regular rail connection. Also the cost price is a bottleneck: renting a wagon costs 1000 dollar, but we don’t have that much money now. Up to now we’ve had to borrow the money. Broederlijk Delen gives us that loan, and after every delivery we repay part of it. But this is only a temporary solution. Broederlijk Delen does not want us to depend on them, so after a while we will need our own 1000 dollars to be able to rent a wagon. We have to build that up, so every month we have to put aside part of our profit.
Investment in the local community
The farmer group from Bongo shows us around in the village. During our walk, we learn how the group made its own plans here and how they gradually realise them. The group members each have their own fields, but there are also common fields. With the profits of those fields they set up projects for community development. The next few days we will take part in many similar tours.
First we visit the village schoolhouse, which was built by the group. It was their first project, already a few years ago now. After that, we go to the maize storage room which is being built and finally to the self-built health post. A nurse explains and shows us the bamboo labour bed, the scales for weighing young children, the posters at the walls and a little room where a few mothers sit with their newly born children. We feel like intruders, but the young mothers give us a friendly nod.
When we are in Kananga to buy maize, we also buy medicines, the person in charge says. That way we always have a supply in the village. The patients pay a contribution at each visit to the medical post. That is how we get the invested money back step by step.
Sustainable agriculture
After visiting their projects in the village, the farmer group wants to show us its common field. The profits of that field allow them to invest in the future of the village. It takes half an hour on foot to get there. We alternately walk by half and high overgrown woods. In this area farmers use an ancient system of forest agriculture, clearing part of the forest every year and tilling the available land during a few years. Afterwards the forest sprouts again and the land regains its fertility. If they wait a few years before clearing the same part of the forest again, the method is quite sustainable. When we arrive at the field, the person in charge tells about the crop rotation. That way they prevent the land from getting depleted too soon during the years it is in use: After the maize yield we sow beans, then peanuts, and finally cassava. Beans, peanuts and some green manure crops coexist with bacteria that can take in nitrogen from the air. The nitrogen gets in the soil. Crop rotation thus ensures natural nitrogen manuring. We also try to protect the ground against the rain, because rain causes erosion. The subterranean network of tree roots keeps the ground together. We also want a permanent crop. Therefore, we sow rice between the sprouted maize. When the maize has been yielded, the rice can keep growing.
Yield bikes
On our walk back to the village, a weird wooden construction catches the eye: a triangle of three poles straight in the ground, connected by horizontal beams. One of the farmers notices the questions in our eyes. This is for the women who carry heavy packs on their heads, he says. If they want to rest for a while, they step into the triangle and lower the pack on the beams. When they want to go on, they stand under the pack and lift it again. That way they don’t have to lift anything from the ground. That statement set us thinking. Not only do women here walk between half an hour and an hour to their fields every day, they also walk back the same distance with a heavy pack on their heads. They carry the maize on their heads to the storage rooms near the railway. A time-consuming and physically demanding task. No wonder people dream about bikes, the most important vehicle in an area unsuitable for other means of transport.
Broederlijk Delen also helps to realise these plans, but again with the concern not to make the people depend on external help. A few weeks after our visit the farmer groups from Uopcm in different villages will receive ten bikes, a loan in kind. They gradually pay it back. By means of depreciations they gather enough capital to buy new bikes later on.
Transparent development
Later that day, while enjoying a glass of sparkling fresh palm wine, we talk with the group about the ten bikes. They represent serious capital. Good agreements are necessary, otherwise the bikes will become the divisive element in the community. How to prevent group members from using the bikes for private purposes instead of for the community? The farmers also have to put aside money for, among other things, the future maintenance of the bikes.
We realise that such conversations were necessary for all the steps these groups have already taken. People invest their scarce money in these initiatives. As a result, they want their material and common capital to be controlled well and transparently. They learn how to calculate the cost price, what a depreciation is, etc. Self-development is an exercise in good governance and democratic decision-making.
Training, training, training!
Sitting in a poverty-stricken village under a thatched roof and talking to people about the road they’ve taken up to now and about the dreams they cherish, you start to realise what a titanic job they’re doing here. An enormous training process has already taken place. Knowledge is very important to realise one’s own plans. Fortunately these farmers – like tens of other farmer groups in Congo – can count on monitoring and training by Inades. This Broederlijk Delen partner specialised in self-development. Inades intensively guides farmer groups during several years. Afterwards, they stay in touch for follow-up. Its aim is a well-organised countryside that produces enough and a society in which farmers and farmer’s wives get a respected position, allowing them to defend their interests. Inades also organises training sessions for other people involved in rural development, such NGO workers, employees from government services, etc.
To one’s own account
A few days later we meet Martin, the person in charge of Inades Kasai, in his office in Kanaga. ‘Autopromotion’ is the magic word in the conversation. It is the core of the self-development that Broederlijk Delen supports in Congo. This method gives opportunities to groups to realise their own plans with their own means and strength. The method cuts across the widespread custom of foreign countries to continuously donate money or goods to a community, according to Martin. In that case a group is completely or partially ‘maintained’. It remains very vulnerable and depends on those gifts, because it doesn’t create a basis for its own sustainable economy.
All this doesn’t sound strange to the Congolese people. For decades, they have known that it’s best to rely on their own strength and cooperation. The Congolese government stopped investing in the countryside a long time ago. If the parents don’t pay their children’s teachers themselves, there is no education. If they don’t take care of the health post and the nurse’s wage, there is no health care.
The basis of the Congolese countryside, ‘autopromotion’, is the only capital the farmers have: their knowledge and their yearly profits. You can sell your yield and buy consumer goods with the profits, but that doesn’t cause any change for the community. On the other hand, you could invest part of your profits in common facilities, in the establishment of a rural economy or in new profitable activities. No one can do that on his own, because the profits are quite small. Therefore it is important to work together as a group because it allows you to come up with projects and find money to realise them. That is how, step by step, year by year, self-development is realised. Development that is not only about how to raise the disposable income in rural areas?, but also about how to make sure people can spend that income in the countryside itself. Because that is the only way a region can prosper.
Martin: The project can start by building or repairing a school and buying didactic material. The group doesn’t provide free education. The parents pay a contribution for the teachers’ wages and for the repayment of the invested money. But by buying didactic material, the group does provide better education.
By advancing the nurse’s wages or by making sure there is always a stock of basic medicines available in the health post, people can invest in health care and, as such, make it available in the village. The group doesn’t provide free health care. The patients and their family pay for the service and, as a result, the group gets the invested money back. Group members get a reduction, since that is the beginning of real health insurance.
In the same way the group can set up a village store. Or buy a maize and cassava mill. Or invest in new profitable agricultural activities, like pig breeding, a chicken farm, fish pools or the production of improved planting and sowing seed.
Many groups also dream about other realisations: little companies that process the agricultural production on the countryside itself. A savings and credit bank at village level that allows families to invest their savings with a small interest or to contract a small loan for an important purchase. A fund to maintain the road, etc. Such activities give rise to new employment opportunities within the area of agriculture as well as outside of it.
Democratisation and human rights
Strong organisations as a driving force for a lively rural economy … the farmer groups know that this is what they are aiming for with their efforts. Yet they are very vulnerable. Even though peace was restored in the main part of Congo, the war is definitely not over yet in the east. A transitional government rules the country, which obliges all former rebel leaders and president Kabila to work together.
The organisations in Bongo and elsewhere have their own ideas about ‘good governance’. The farmer groups set the example by working democratically and by controlling their money transparently. They made a list for their future political leaders: respect for human rights, good control of the roads, a government that listens to the people, etc.
A strong civil society
Crucial for Congo’s future is the growth of a self-conscious rural civil society. Polycarpe Mpoyi shares that opinion. He is the coordinator of Broederlijk Delen partner Solidec-K, a network of human rights organisations in the province of East Kasai: The farmer groups and their organisations are training grounds for democracy. Cooperation and training make the people strong and emancipated. They dare to stand up for their rights and to engage in a dialogue with the authorities. Democracy does not start with the problems in far Kinshasa. It starts in the field, where the roads are in an abominable state, where it is unsafe, where human rights are systematically violated in the war’s aftermath. People take part in the control of their region and as such their country through their organisations. This is an important step in the transition to democracy and for the preparation of elections.
Democratic elections in 2005?
Elections. Is it really possible for Congo to go to the polls for free democratic elections for the first time since their independence? During our visit we can sense a careful optimism among the people we spoke with.
“Cette transition doit être la dernière” (this transition has to be the last one). This is the slogan on the stickers of Rodhecic, a Congolese network of human rights groups inspired by Christianity and a partner of Broederlijk Delen. Nowadays, the network has an important role in the preparation of fair and transparent elections. In Kinshasa we talk to coordinator Rigobert Minani about the chances democracy has to succeed. He realises what a huge challenge it is: This time, we want it to be serious. The international community forced the rebel leaders to stop the war and to form a transitional government together with president Kabila in preparation for democracy. The international community – including Belgium- has to keep playing its part and force our political leaders to keep their word. But we also want to play our part. Together with the Church and dozens of organisations we have started to inform and mobilise the population, even in the smallest villages.
Voices for Congo
Our partners work very hard. Broederlijk Delen supports their plans. During the campaign we explicitly ask for Flanders’ cooperation. Financial support is very much needed. With the action model ‘Voices for Congo’ we give the much-needed political and moral boost. With musical activities we give voice and support to our partners’ own plans. We sing and make music for a dignified future for the Congolese people. We become a giant speaker for the call for democracy and respect for human rights. We want to draw the attention of our politicians in Belgium and Europe to their own responsibility in the establishment of a democratic Congo.
For that purpose, we are launching a music competition: make your own song, rap song or part song to support the plans of our partners in Congo, and perform it at a ‘Voices for Congo activity’.
Digging deeper during forty days
Every year the campaign is a perfect period to look for a ‘new breath’ for our solidarity work. From our own roots we find it in the biblical religious tradition. In this campaign we also explicitly want to look for the spiritual sources from which Congolese people draw their faith and strength. It may help us to again make a clear choice for community building and for a world with a future for everyone.
In Congo people aren’t waiting for the end to war, violence, dictatorship and the exploitation of natural resources. They have already started to make their dreams come true; with their own strength and means. Broederlijk Delen supports them in this. Their organisations are our partners. They apply the typical features of the Broederlijk Delen method:
Development through their own plans
The plans of groups of people are the best guarantee for a permanent change, because only their own plans are really adapted to the local situation and are really supported from the beginning on.
Development within the community
Cooperation is an efficient way to fight poverty. What is not supported by the group, is not sustainable. This choice cuts across the idea that everyone has to take care of himself.
Development through the eyes of the poorest
The poorest can bring about change themselves. Broederlijk Delen’s main focus is on rural communities and on groups that suffer the negative consequences of globalisation.
Development for the entire human being
For our partners development is not possible if only directed at material things. Development concerns all dimensions of life, also spirituality.
Development requires a structural and worldwide approach
Our partners do not work on an island. Through all their cells they are connected with the local situation and with the international causes of poverty. As such, our partners in the South are also involved in political actions and international lobby work. In the Congo of today, the transition to a democratic society is a priority.
Broederlijk Delen
supports groups of people in the South to realise their own plans in their struggle against poverty and injustice.
It's the people in the South who find the solutions themselves. Only this guarantees that the solutions are adapted to their specific context. This way of working of Broederlijk Delen guarantees sustainable results!
