2023-09-30 22:02:34
Win the Legend
My propositions
On June 30, 1960, in his historic and severe attack against colonization, Patrice Lumumba stigmatized the disdainful behavior that was that of the Belgian colonist towards the colonized Congolese as well as the discrimination that the latter had suffered. ” We have knownhe recalled in an acrimonious and unadorned tone, the ironies, the insults, the beatings that we had to endure morning, noon and evening because we were ‘negroes’. Who will forget that to a black person, we said ‘you’ not certainly as a friend, but because the honorable ‘you’ was reserved for white people only? (…) We knew that in the cities there were magnificent houses for whites and crumbling huts for blacks, that a black person was not allowed in the cinemas, nor in restaurants, nor in so-called ‘European’ stores. ‘; that a black man was traveling on the hull of the barges, at the feet of the white man in his luxury cabin”.
In this same denouncing vein, President Mobutu Sese Seko said, on October 4, 1973, from the podium of the United Nations and, also, not without resentment: “Our ancestors were not considered as men or even as beings who have intelligence and feeling, but as masses of muscle from whom mechanical efforts were required, as we ask of the horse, the buffalo, donkey or beef ».
Slavery, colonization and apartheid, systems which had once institutionalized racism and the domination of the black man by the white man, have all been officially abolished. Proven racially discriminatory behavior is today punished in the West by anti-racism laws.
Various minds continue to decry the racism of whites against blacks by continually recalling the cruelties of slavery and the harshness of colonial reality. But how many beautiful souls are offended by the racism of Black people towards other Black people? Who speaks out loud about the apartheid that the Pygmies suffer from members of other ethnic groups in Africa, and particularly in the DRC? People with whom they feel they cannot share the same bed – and therefore never marry –, nor share the same office, nor the same school desk, nor the same dormitory, nor break bread with them at the same table.
How long will this hypocrisy last, ours, which consists of declaiming that the Pygmies are Congolese with equal rights and duties as all the other citizens of our country, people whom we all recognize to be historically the first occupants of the geographical space of the Congo – and as such called “indigenous peoples” – but who, in daily reality, we consider as second-class citizens, sub-humans, outcasts whose hands we just need to work for “us” and votes to vote for “us”. Equality of respect and all other rights are deprived to them, ignored, in particular the right to access any public office, to high functions of the State. The proof is that since 1885, since the Congo existed as a modern state, no Pygmy has held a command position either in the civil or military administration, nor in a public enterprise, nor yet in a political institution. Pygmy scholars with university degrees are nevertheless numerous today.
Is it morally and democratically acceptable that in the province of Équateur for example, where the Pygmies constitute a significant number of the population – they are the majority in the Territory of Ingende – that the latter are not represented in any institution or public service of the province? The same sad reality is observed in other provinces of Congo where there are Pygmy communities.
Congolese civil law – like biblical law – condemns racism and all kinds of discrimination and calls for love of neighbor and respect for the dignity of every human being.
If we cannot force anyone to marry a Pygmy or to invite them to their table – a provision which depends on individual psychology, on free personal decision – we cannot on the other hand indefinitely deprive access to public responsibilities to an important component of the nation following retrograde, ignoble, inhuman, anti-Christian attitudes and dispositions, and in the name of an alleged Bantu supremacism which dates back centuries (“Our relationships with the Pygmies have been like this since our ancestors”, we hear it said) and which, some people believe, must last until the end of the world. The descendants of slaveholders and white settlers would also have taken the “time” and the relationships of suzerainty and vassalage that their ancestors had maintained with blacks as arguments to justify the perpetuation of their domination of black peoples. Inhumane and unacceptable arguments. Everything has and everything must have an end.
Article 197 of the Constitution states that “provincial deputies are elected by direct and secret universal suffrage or co-opted for a renewable five-year mandate”. Article 23 of the law establishing fundamental principles relating to the free administration of the provinces states: “The composition of the Provincial Government takes into account provincial representativeness and women”.
Everyone will agree that the Pygmies are the most discriminated section of the population in our country, more so than women, whose representation we continue to worry about within all national institutions, particularly through the principle of parity.
I thus undertake to submit to all the authorities which will result from the next elections a proposed provision requiring, within the framework of preferential or positive discrimination, the compulsory co-optation of one or two pygmies as provincial deputies in the Provincial Assemblies where there is a significant presence of their communities. University level education will be the first criterion for the co-optation of candidates previously chosen by the associations of indigenous peoples.
My proposal will also call for the mandatory appointment in each government of a Pygmy provincial minister in the same provinces. Seeing later a member of the Pygmy community be appointed member of the national government will also be a great democratic step forward in the “emancipation” of these compatriots.
The materialization of this proposal-request – which should not be the ardent wish of the individual Wina Lokondo, but that of every Congolese having within them the sincere feelings of humanity and civic equality – would be an important signal of struggle against segregation and racism on the part of the country’s high authorities, and also and above all a strong message to send to the children of the pygmies who will now have models representing their communities within different political institutions. It would also be a reason for them to believe in their real belonging to the national community and in the need to undertake major studies which the vast majority of them do not carry out today, because they do not find the ‘importance. What is the point, for a young pygmy, of pursuing long studies when he knows that his job application and his CV will never be accepted anywhere, when his professional future is to be a pushcart or a night watchman? , water well digger, servant, simple laborer?
Allowing the marginalization of “indigenous peoples”, black Congolese citizens, to continue is a dishonor for our country and deprives the Congolese of the legitimacy to decry the racism of the white man towards the black man.
Win the Legend
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#pygmies #Congo #Indépendant