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Rwanda. Twenty-five years after Apocalypses. A transformed country.

Monday, 1 April 2019 8:00

Twenty-five years after the genocide of the Tutsis in 1994, the country is peaceful and the economy is booming. But citizens are striving for more freedom.

September 1994. Two months after the end of the genocide, the capital, Kigali was offering a picture of sadness and devastation. The windows of most government offices were broken. Electricity was off and shootings could still be heard here and there during the day or the night. Dogs were shot systematically because they had become dangerous since they had tasted human flesh. At the entrance of the city, the military searched vehicles for weapons. Hutu “Abacengenzi” (infiltrated) rebels were still active in the country.

In the neighbourhoods of Kigali, the disgusting stink of decomposed corpses was still floating around. I remember to have seen putrefied bodies including a child’s one lying in the bed of a small creek near Gitarama. On the hills which tower the fjords over Lake Kivu, in Kibuye, the stench of corpses which had been abandoned after a massacre occurred several months ago was making everyone sick. After the holocaust, which according a government count, caused 1,074,017 victims, including 934,218 identified ones, the entire country was to be rebuilt. Over two million people who had been forced by the army of the genocidaires to cross the border, were crowding the refugee camps in Congo. The most difficult task was to cure the invisible but deep wounds of widows and orphans.
Twenty-five years later, the transformation is radical.
Kigali, which once looked a calm provincial town, has a totally new skyline, with business centres and high building all over the place. Five-Star hotels raise their towers in different part of town. In the centre, the former headquarters of the so-called “interim government” which masterminded the genocide, the “Diplomates” Hotel has been substituted by the luxurious Serena Hotel.
A few hundred yards from there, tourists are enjoying the swimming pool at the Hôtel des mille collines, without knowing that it had been used in 1994 as a tank for refugees who were then besieged by the dreaded Interhamwe militias. The town which is towered by the new Defence Ministry bunker has grown from 300,000 to over 750,000 inhabitants since 1994.

The expansion is owed mainly to rural exodus and to the arrival of many returnees from neighbouring countries. But the proliferation of houses, offices and industries has also meant land expropriation. Many inhabitants of small brick or corrugated iron houses have been relocated outside of town. The human landscape and its description have changed. Noboby speaks anymore about Hutus, Tutsis and Twas, the categories (ubwoko) which appeared on the IDs before 1994, which made much easier the killers’job. Nowadays, people describe themselves as “Sopecya” (survivors), “Dubaï” (former Tutsi refugees from the Congo or Burundi) or “Tingi Tingi” (Hutu refugees returned from Congo).
Kigali is now one of the cleanest and safest cities of the African continent. Plastic bags are banned everywhere. This deserved Kigali the Scroll of Honour awarded by UN-Habitat in 2008. This policy also allowed start-ups producing biodegradable items such as Jean de Dieu Kagabo’s “Soft Packaging” to emerge. The security feeling has completely changed for the good. In capital, where machetes and grenades caused terror, it is frequent now to see ladies including expatriate ones jogging at night. Markets look prosperous and both imported and local products can be found in abundance.

Most observers admit that President Paul Kagame has managed to restore stability in this devastated land. Efficiency against corruption is recognised internationally. State officials are accountable and must sign performance commitment with specified targets, the “imihigo”. In 2015, Rwanda met almost all the Millenium Development Goals. In ten years, one million people emerged from acute poverty and the country now boasts from an annual GDP growth rate of 7.8%. Yet, poverty has not been completely eradicated. The Agazoho Genocide Widows Association (AVEGA) is trying to assist women which the genocide turned overnight in the head of the family.
Over 95% of the children have access to primary school. Infant mortality decreased by 61% and three quarters of the Rwandans have access to safe drinking water. Women account for 55% of the members of parliament, which is a world record. And the country is one of the few in Africa to enjoy a universal social security system.The ambitious objective to achieve a 563 MW generation capacity by 2020 will not be met. But the country boasts from pioneer infrastructures such as methane gas and peat power stations. It is now considering to harness its geothermal potential. A new hydroelectric power station was inaugurated on the Nyabarongo River. The target is to achieve universal access to electricity by 2025 (as against 34.5% in 2017).

Rwanda has become the epicentre of digital Africa. The small landlocked state is banking in new technologies to create a business friendly environment for investors and ranks already second in Africa, in this category, according the World Bank. In June 2018, Volkswagen was seduced and opened a 5,000 cars assembly plant which produces Passat and Polo models.
A new generation of entrepreneurs has emerged. It boasts from a “knowledge laboratory”, a kind of incubator in Kigali. There is innovation in all directions. The Ikirezi Natural Products company produces citronella, geranium and eucalyptus essential oils for the perfume industry which represent a three-fold increase of revenues compared to the traditional production of beans. A drone airport was also built at Muhanga, to the South-West of Kigali,to transport blood samples, medicines and emergency equipment between remote areas of the country and hospitals. After the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), a brand new Kigali Innovation City has just been set up and is scheduled to train 5,000 engineers per annum. The country has become a symbol of excellency for coffee, tea and cut flowers crops. Huge plans are on track to open up this land-locked country to the outside world. In January 2018, Paul Kagame and the Tanzanian President John Magufuli agreed to build a 400 km railway line between the two countries which will improve Rwanda’s access to the port of Dar-es-Salam. Yet, important efforts are still required.
The European Network for Central Africa coalition of NGOs admits that production and yields have increased over the last ten years. But accordingly, farmers should be more consulted in the process of definition of agricultural transformation strategies. Indeed, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, 4 million Rwandans are still affected by malnutrition. On the meantime, technological can be noticed in the country side. Along the roads, yellow pickets indicate the presence of 4G cables. And the province towns of Kibuyé and Gisenyi also show a construction frenzy.

But at times, one feels Rwanda is still in the middle of a stormy area. Near the Nyungwe forest for instance, military patrols can be seen every two miles, reminding of tensions with neighbouring Burundi. There are still 79,000 Congolese refugees in the country, spread in camps near Butare and between Gisenyi and Kigali. And the authorities want to make clear they stand ready for any kind of threat. At the beginning of the year, a What’s App video was showing Kagame in uniform attending with other officers an artillery exercise.
There is a flip side of the coin, though. Time and again, human rights organisations complain about violations and insufficient press freedom. There is no doubt that opponents are given a hard time. In the past, several were assassinated. That was namely the case of the former Minister of Interior, Seth Sendashonga who was killed by a death squad in Nairobi in 1998. In January 2014, came the turn of the former chief of foreign intelligence, Col. Patrick Karegeya who was found dead in a hotel room in Johannesburg. Many Rwandans would like Kagame to open up the political space but few dare to express loudly such will. There is fear of repression and that open debate might bring back the devils of hatred speech and ethnicism.

François Misser

The Monastery of Debre Libanos.

Monday, 1 April 2019 8:00

From its very foundation, Debre Libanos grew in prestige and power until it surpassed all the other monasteries, thanks in the first place to the personality of its founder, Tekle Haimanot, but also to the permanent support of political power. It is still today at the head of the monastic life in Ethiopia.

The data we have about the life of Tekle Haimanot come from traditions put in writing no earlier than the fifteenth century, 200 years after his death, and they are largely legendary. There are at least three Acts or Gedlat. Putting together the various sources, we may reconstruct the main event of his life as follows. He was born in the province of Shoa, receiving from his parents a deep religious education. At the age of 30, in search of deeper religious commitment, he arrived at the monastery of Hayk, recently founded by Iyasus Mo’a, where he remained for nine years. Then he traveled to the monastery of Debre Damo, where he continued his monastic formation under the Abbot Yohanni, the same one who had instructed Iyasus Mo’a.
Returning to his native land, he stopped again in Hayk, receiving all the monastic customs and usages from Iyasus Mo’a. In 1284 he founded the monastery of Debre Atsbo in his homeland of Shoa, which in the 15th century was renamed as Debre Libanos.

On the life of Tekle Haimanot there are endless legends. One of the best known, which is frequently reproduced in the paintings, is that he lived for seven years in a cave, always standing on one leg without ever lying down. After 7 years, the leg he did not use fell to the ground. Another tradition tells us that he had decided to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. When he was coming down from the monastery tied to a rope, the devil cut the rope so that he would fall into the void and die.
But God gave him six wings so he could fly and not hurt himself. With those same wings he would go to Jerusalem not just once but many times, traveling over the clouds. Also the six wings invariably appear in the portraits of the saint.
While some traditions attribute to Iyasus Mo’a the merit of having been the one who decisively influenced the restoration of the so called Solomonic dynasty in 1270, it is more common to attribute it to Tekle Haimanot. Accordingly, a mosaic of the church built by Haile Selassie in 1965 depicts him placing the imperial crown on the head of the young prince Yekuno Amlak.

Tekle Haymanot lived for 29 years in the monastery founded by him, dying probably in 1313. He was initially buried in the cave where he had lived, but some 60 years later the body was transferred to a more accessible place, where it was the object of great veneration along the centuries. The recent church ordered by Emperor Haile Selassie was built over the tomb of the saint. Many aristocratic families desired to be buried in Debre Libanos and built their tombs in the grounds of the monastery.
From the 15^th century, the abbots of Debre Libanos received the title of echege, which gave them authority over all the monasteries of the nation and which was practically the highest authority in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church after the emperor, since the Patriarchs came from Egypt and, with few exceptions, neither knew the language of the country nor its religious problematic.
With the appointment of the first Patriarch of Ethiopian nationality in 1959, the title of echege was assumed by him.

The academic formation in Debre Libanos was very systematic and rich not only in the field of chanting but also in commentary on the Holy Scripture. On the other hand, Debre Libanos did not excel in the austerity of life and solitude, so much cultivated in other monasteries. The wide area of the monastery is always full of people: pilgrims, visitors, sick people, merchants offering every kind of merchandise. Monks are frequently seen mixing with the crowd, easily distinguished by their especial hat and the yellow shawl.
The monastery is easily accessible. It is about 110 kms away from Addis Ababa on the road that leads to Bahr Dar and Gondar. It was not so easy in previous times when that road did not exist. The monastery is built on a rugged and picturesque landscape, at the foot of a large natural cliff and with another large cliff at its foot. It was victim of the devastating incursions of the Muslim leader Ahmed Grañ, who in 1531 totally destroyed it. Its reconstruction was slow and not complete until the reign of Yohannes I, at the end of the 17^th century. Apart from the modern church built in 1965 by Haile Selassie, the monastery has an older church and some other buildings that serve as dormitories or classrooms, as well as a series of small individual houses where the monks live. The kitchen is remarkable, a long barracks where the monks’ food is prepared every day, consisting of thick bread cakes and hot spicy sauce. The kitchen is considered a sacred place and visitors must take off their shoes to enter it.

The cave where Tekle Haimanot lived is up in the middle of the cliff, about 20 minutes walk from the main church. Until recent times, it was preserved in its natural state and could be visited freely. Now it has been closed with a concrete wall and a large metal gate and can only be visited when the monk in charge opens the gate. The water that drips from its roof is devoutly collected by the faithful in plastic containers because it is tebel, that is, sacred water. A little below the cave there is an abundant spring which is also tebel and the sick go there to drink or to wash. Emperor Menelik was one of the patients who came regularly to the tebel de Debre Libanos in search of a cure for his illness.

With the invasion of Ethiopia by the Italian fascist troops, the monastery suffered another moment of violence and death. Viceroy Graziani assumed that the Orthodox Church and, in particular, the monks, were the most strong opponents of the invasion and lost no chances for revenge. A propitious occasion was the attempt to assassinate him, which took place in Addis Ababa on February 19, 1937. The two patriots who threw the bombs were said to have fled to Debre Libanos. Graziani, without much research, ordered the commander of the area to kill as many monks as possible. According to the report sent by Graziani to Mussolini, the murdered people were about 400, 297 of them monks. Subsequent investigations raise the death toll to more than 2,000.
Debre Libanos remains today, as it was from its very foundation, the most prestigious of all the monasteries and also the biggest in terms of the number of monks. They are about 500, without including a certain number of hermits living in caves in the surrounding area and the young aspirants or students from other monasteries or churches who go there to complete their studies. (J.G.N.)

Boeing 737-MAX Incident Won’t Thwart Ethiopian Airlines’ Ambitions.

Monday, 1 April 2019 8:00

The Addis Ababa – Nairobi route, it’s often a necessary ‘rite of passage’ for those heading for a variety of African destinations. And so it was for the 157 people who boarded the tragic flight of an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX, flight ET302, which crashed at 08.44 on the morning of Sunday March 10, 2019.

Since 1948, when Ethiopian Airlines (then called ‘Ethiopian Air Lines’), the carrier had amassed an enviable safety record. Until the March 10 crash, the company’s deadliest, the only comparable accident in numbers of casualties took place in November 1996. And that was because hijackers forced the pilots to fly a 737 toward Australia, causing the aircraft (not made for such long-haul flights) to run out of fuel. Indeed, Ethiopian Airlines, unbeknownst to the average ‘westerner’ is not only one of Africa’s best airlines. It’s one of the world’s best airlines. It boasts experienced and well-trained professional pilots, modern fleets featuring the latest equipment and highly respected maintenance facilities and practices

The combination of Boeing 787 and ‘Ethiopia’ may come as a surprise to most people. The Boeing 787 is the most highly advanced airliner in the world. Long before airlines in Boeing’s own United States had even ordered them, Ethiopian Airlines started operating them to Paris in June 2012, making it the second airline in the world to do so after launch carrier All-Nippon Airways (ANA) – earlier than any U.S. or European carriers. But, Ethiopian Airlines has achieved a number of ‘firsts’. It was the first African airline to use jets in 1962; it was the first to adopt the Boeing 767 in 1984, the first to use the Boeing 777-200LR in 2010, the first B777-800, the first A350 in 2016 and the first B787-9 in 2017.That’s not surprising, given that the African airline is one of the most advanced, safest and admired airlines in the world, let alone in Africa, where the aviation sector is growing and expected to continue doing so very quickly. Such is the 787’s range, 14,000 km plus, that Ethiopian will start direct services to major South American and Asian cities from Sao Paulo to Kuala Lumpur.

Anticipating a veritable boom in the number of passengers as Addis Abeba positions itself as Africa’s main air transportation hub, the airport has been renovated. The airport and airline’s progress reflect Ethiopia’s own progress and economic growth. Ethiopian currently has 25 latest-generation Boeing 737s: 16 from the 800 series and 9 from the smallest 700. But, it has 30 of the brand new Boeing 737 MAX, all of which have been grounded. The company also deploys Airbus A350, Boeing 777 (as well as the Boeing 787) for its long-haul routes. In 2018, Ethiopian carried 10.6 million passengers.
Now, the high number of 737-Max in Ethiopian’s fleet does raise a number of concerns. Will the airline make a sudden shift toward Airbus or other B-737 competitors as many Chinese carriers have done? For the time being, Ethiopian’s CEO, Tewolde GebreMariam, stated that the airline will maintain a close relationship with Boeing and other airlines to make air travel even safer, even as he conceded that many the B-737 MAX aircraft does present a number of perplexing issues. GebreMariam stressed that his airline exceeded Boeing and FAA recommendations regarding pilot training on the differences between the B-737 NG and the B-737 MAX after the Lion Air accident in October 2018. Ethiopian 737 Max pilots underwent special training on the B-837 MAX simulators. And Ethiopian is among the very few airlines in the world, operating the complete B-737 MAX simulator.

Urbanization to Stimulate Transportation

Africa, has been experiencing an intense urbanization involving some 500 million people, driven by strong economic reasons to move from rural areas toward cities. African cities with more than a million people will increase. This large and rapid shift in the concentration of population will necessarily bring a shift in social and consumption habits especially in such areas as services and food.

The consulting firm, McKinsey estimated that the urban consumer economy in Africa surpassed the USD$ 1.0 trillion mark a few years ago. And that’s more than twice the $400 billion by 2020 value the same famous consultancy projected in 2012. Clearly, Africa has become the “new frontier of global economic growth”. McKinsey said that the consumption sector alone, dominated by food, in the next seven years will grow at a rate of 45%. The drivers and main beneficiaries of this growth phenomenon include Ethiopia, which has been one of the fastest growing economies in Africa. Long term observers expect this continent to become one of the biggest attractors of foreign capital and investment of the next decade.
Africa has the potential to vastly increase food production to feed itself and to become a major supplier of food for the world. Africa has as many as 600 million hectares of unused yet arable land. The Ethiopian Airlines flights to destinations using some of the most advanced airplanes in the world is a serendipitous development in relation to this promising agricultural future for Africa. The transportation links, development efforts and African continental growth prospects are joining to create an image of Africa that has long been hoped for, one that suggests that a prosperous Africa is within reach.

In this context, Ethiopian Airlines and Ethiopia will become even bigger protagonists of Africa’s expansion of air travel. Addis Ababa is expanding its Bole airport passenger terminal, investing $363 million project to this effect. But, and this is a sign of the optimism, Ethiopia’s largest international airport and airline cannot keep up with the increase in passenger and aircraft traffic demand. Bole airport’s main terminal, built to process six million passengers a year, actually handled about ten million in 2018. Ethiopia, as many other African countries, suffers from insufficient infrastructure, which puts the strategically located country (excellent for stopovers from Europe to Indian Ocean destinations) at a disadvantage compared to the growing hubs of Istanbul, Dubai, Abu Dhabi or Doha. The target now will be to expand the terminals to handle as many as 22 million passengers a year. The project is on its way to completion and the new terminal could become operational by the end of 2019. In the context of African airlines, Ethiopian has outperformed Egypt air and South African Airways and now boasts 100 planes in its fleet – the grounded Boeing 737 Max notwithstanding – with an enviable average age of five years (that’s literally a baby fleet in airline terms). The fact that other East African countries such as Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi are also investing in airport expansion can only mean that African governments have decided air transport links are essential aspects of development of their continent.

Alessandro Bruno

Burundi spirals into dictatorship and isolation.

Monday, 1 April 2019 8:00

Four years after the crisis sparked by President Pierre Nkurunziza’s determination to run for a third mandate against the spirit of the constitution and the 2000 Arusha Peace Agreement, Burundi has sunk into oblivion, isolation and dictatorship.

Burundi is a forgotten but ongoing crisis. On the last 21 February, 35 NGOs launched in Nairobi a call to finance aid to the 350,041 refugees then identified in the neighbouring states: 200,688 in Tanzania, 70,059 in Rwanda, 43,038 in DRC and 36,256 in Uganda according the U.N. High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). The NGOs expressed concern for the general ‘lack of interest’ for this tragic situation: as a result, food rations have been reduced and in Tanzanian camps, classrooms are so overcrowded that lessons take place under the trees.

Oblivion is also threatening the victims of human rights violations inside Burundi where repression is likely to continue without foreign witnesses. Indeed, the UN High Commission for Human Rights was forced to announce on the last 4 March 2019 the final closure of its Bujumbura office, at the Burundian authorities’ request. During discussions over the situation in Geneva last February, the UN High Commission’s spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani, expressed concerned over the multiplication of such violations in the countries, mentioning homicides and 11,050 allegations of arrests ans arbitrary detentions between November 2016 and September 2018.
Besides, the government gave three months in September 2018 to foreign NGOs to implement ethnic-based quotas requisites for the recruitment of their staff. Some of them such as Handicap International preferred to leave the country rather than creating an ethnic database which reminds of practices which were in vigour before the genocide in Rwanda. As a result, the measure has considerably hindered of 130 international NGOs.

Climate of impunity

According to Human Rights Watch which also mentions rapes, kidnappings, tortures and intimidations of alleged opponents, most of the worse violations took place during the period before the constitutional referendum of the 17 May 2018 which allowed President Nkuruniziza to remain in office until 2034.
The UN Commission of enquiry on Burundi concluded that the authors of these crimes – the SNR National Intelligence Service, the police and the dreaded Imbonerakure militias of the President’s party – are operating in a general climate of impunity which is favoured by the the absence of independence of the judiciary.

The Commission incriminated directly Nkurunziza by denouncing “recurrent calls to hatred and violence”. According to Human Rights Watch, the violence perpetrated in connection with the controversial referendum caused at least 15 deaths, but the real figure is likely to be much higher. Dozens of corpses were indeed found in the country in suspect conditions. Dozens of journalists and social society activists have gone into exile. One of them is the BBC Africa correspondent Judith Batusama after she reported that President Nkurunziza was promoted “Everlasting Supreme Guide” by the ruling party executives on the 11 March 2018. She had been blamed for that by the National Council of Communication which banned in April 2018 the online forum of the readers of the main independent paper Iwacu and in May the BBC broadcasts after the exiled human rights icon, Pierre Claver Mbonimpa, accused in a radio interview the President to have masterminded an assassination attempt against him and the murder of his son. Germain Rukiki, member of the ACAT group of Christians against Torture could not escape. He was jaile to 32 year prison in April 2018 for ‘rebellion’, ‘offense against the state security’, ‘participation to an insurrection movement’ and ‘attacks against the head of state’.
Burundi has become a hell for gays and lesbians. And on the political front, the future is a dead-end. The inter-Burundian dialogue between the government and the opposition which started in 2014 under the East African Community aegis has failed. In early February 2019, the facilitator, former Tanzanian President, Benjmain Mkapa threw the towel in after the boycott of the talks by Bujumbura officials. The opposition is facing lots of hurdles and harassments. Nkurunziza’s main rival, the historical leader of the FNL guerrilla movement protested on the 3 March 2019 against the prohibition of the inaugural meeting of his new party, the National Congress for Liberty in the capital.

Meanwhile, The Hague-based International Criminal Court is continuing investigations on the crimes perpetrated in Burundi since 2015, which include at least 1,200 deaths accordingly. By December 2018, it had already received 1,700 claims concerning extrajudicial executions and other human rights violations, according to the SOS Torture Burundi NGO. Political instability is one of the main causes of the economic stagnation. After a 0.2% decrease in 2017, the real GDP increased by 1.4% in 2018, owing the raise of the coffee and tea production and improved performances of the services, manufacturing and agro-food sectors. But tourism and the hotel sector are in deep crisis.
For 2019, the African Development Bank foresees only a 0.4% GDP growth and alarming budget deficit of 9% which may even overtake 10.3% in 2020. Agriculture production is vulnerable to climate shocks such as El Niño and EU sanctions are not likely to improve sizeable the picture. All this is not likely to attract foreign investors. According to the Rand Merchant Bank report of 2019, Burundi tanks at the bottom of the continent in terms of business attractiveness. This doesn’t bode well for the situation of poverty, specially in the rural sector and of large unemployment affecting mainly the youth. Likewise, conditions are not met to reduce food insecurity which affects 1.76 million people, at a rate which is twice higher than the African average, with dire consequences: six children out of ten are showing growth delays.

China remains an important partner. Yet, some of its contributions do not benefit to the people and reflect rather the will to cajole the head of state of a country endowed with strategic riches such as nickel and earths. A case in point is the US dollars 20 million presidential palace which was offered on the 14 February 2019 to Nkurunziza. The irony is that the new building which is in Bujumbura may never be utilized because the President decided in December 2018 to transfer the capital to Gitega, in the centre of the country. Even soldiers are unhappy since a third of the US dollar 1,000 monthly wage of the 5,400 Burundian white helmets in the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) is being siphoned by the government, reports the OLUCOME anti-corruption observatory.

François Misser

The Monastery of Debre Damo.

Monday, 1 April 2019 8:00

Among the many Ethiopian monasteries Debre Damo deserves to be mentioned first. Not because it is the largest or the most important, but because it concentrates in itself certain original characteristics that do not occur in others.

In the first place, its antiquity. Founded by Aregawi, one of the ‘Nine Saints’, at the beginning of the 6th century, it is at least as old as those founded by his fellow monks, such as that of Pentelewon in Axum, Afse in Yeha, Gerima in Medera or Jim’ata in Geralta. But, should the monastery not be the oldest in Ethiopia, what is generally admitted is that the church of Debre Damo is the oldest now existing in the country.

According to tradition, it belongs to the time of Emperor Gebre Meskel, son and successor of Kaleb, during the first half of the 6th century, while Aregawi was still alive. Even though it was destroyed and rebuilt more than once, it has kept the original form and is the only existing proof of Aksumite art. In spite of its apparent rusticity, it is a work of perfect harmony. The perimeter of the building is rectangular. Its walls alternate layers of stone and wood, which break up the monotony and create a soft contrast of light and shadow. Also of great beauty is the ceiling, consisting of wooden coffers on which numerous animal and plant figures are engraved. Its connection to the Aksumite architecture is obvious. For instance, the shape of its doors and windows can also be seen in the reliefs on Aksum’s obelisks.
The second characteristic is its picturesque location. Debre Damo is an oval-shaped flat-top plateau, rising up 17 meters from the surrounding landscape and measuring one kilometer in length and a half in width. The bare rock walls drop off steeply on all sides, being accessible only by using the ropes that the monks throw from the top. Tied to them, the visitor is lifted up. Sensations, not all of them pleasant, take hold of him as he climbs up, and even more so, when it is time to go down. Vertigo is one of those sensations, as one dangles off a 17 meter-high cliff. No female presence, not even that of female goats or sheep, is allowed to the holy mountain.

One question arises then: if today it is the monks who throw the rope down to anyone who wants to climb up, who did it for the old Aregawi, the founder of the monastery? Tradition provides an answer to this question. Before Christianity arrived, there was a snake, worshiped by the locals, dwelling on the rock. It was this snake that, in an attempt to kill the holy monk, first helped him up the mountain but, once on top, hurled him violently to the place where the church stands today. The numerous and varied paintings depicting this scene always portray Archangel Michael with his sword raised, deterring the snake from hurting the Saint.

Despite its geographical isolation and difficult access, Debre Damo was very influential throughout history. The emperors through the Middle Ages tried to keep control of it by nominating its abbots. In the 13th century, Iyasu Mo’a and Tekle Haimanot, the future founders of the two great monasteries of Hayk and Debre Libanos, were educated in Debre Damo by the Abbot Yohanni. In the 16th century, when the Muslim leader Aḥmad Grañ began sacking and burning throughout the nation, Emperor Lebna Dengel took refuge in Debre Damo and died there. It was at that both tragic and glorious moment in history that, for the first and the last time ever, the rigid rule forbidding women to climb up the mountain was broken, because it was there that Lebna Dengel’s widow Seble-Wengel welcomed the Portuguese soldiers who had come to the nation’s rescue. It was there that she ‘wisely and cautiously’, according to the Portuguese chronicles, planned the armed resistance against Grañ and it was there that she finally received the news of the decisive victory over him. Debre Damo is, in fact, one of the very few places throughout the Christian empire that escaped the destructive fury of the Muslim Conqueror Ahmed Grañ.

Starting from the 17th century, however, the monastery lost much of its primitive splendor and influence. Talking today with any of the monks living in Debre Damo produces a strange feeling. Their answers to the curios questions of the visitor may respond not so much to how things actually are as to how they should be according to what old traditions affirm. And some of their answers may differ from the reality the visitor can see with his own eyes. For instance, one of them states that the monastery, in all its past splendor, accommodated up to six thousand monks and that, even today, the monastery houses 200 monks and 150 young aspirants. But it is hard to imagine that this rocky and barren ground could house even those 350 people. In the monastery, they have no common life except daily prayers. At midday, they are supposed to meet for the Eucharist. It is now noon and the bell tolls but, out of the labyrinthine alleys, the visitor can see no more than a dozen monks emerging to gather.

Another monk deeply rejects the idea of sending monks from Debre Damo to be educated somewhere else. His viewpoint is that every monk has, in his inner life and in his communion with God, enough resources to feed his monastic life without seeking outside knowledge. Knowledge about the world – he affirms – does not help the monk. Logically enough, he is also against accepting adult vocations in the monastery, “because, in fact, they already know too much about the world”. For him, the ideal vocation is that of the young boy who joins the monastery before having worldly experiences. Even though his answers may not represent the opinion of all monks of Debre Damo, the fact is that boys – almost children – are the ones joining the monastic life. Adult vocations from any sector of society are rare, and even more so from among the educated class. Difficult to imagine today Debre Damo as a center of learning as it is said it was in long past history.
Debre Damo used to possess abundant lands from which rent the monastery lived. But those times have been left behind, especially after the nationalization of the land made by the revolutionary government of Mengistu Hailemariam in 1974. Today the few monks of the monastery live on the offerings of the faithful or the few tourists and from the little subsidy that the Ethiopian Orthodox Church passes them. (J.G.N.)

Brazil. Prisons Without Walls.

Monday, 1 April 2019 8:00

In Brazil, where prisons are places of violence and the rate of re-offending is as high as 80%, there are also penitentiaries where the detainees succeed in changing. The secret? Trust, because nobody is beyond redemption. An experience born of a Christian context.

Cleubert was born into a poor and afflicted family, of an alcoholic mother. By the age of thirteen he was already living a life of crime and he was soon confined in various penitentiaries for minors. As soon as he came of age he was condemned to fifteen years in prison. His was one of those explosive Brazilian prisons, places of real violence and actual torture, scenes of furious rebellions by the prisoners among whom the percentage of re-offenders was as high as 80%.

Cleubert happened to be given an unexpected and life-changing opportunity. He was sent to serve the last two and a half years of his sentence in an Association for Protection and Assistance to Convicts (APAC) centre. It was a prison run by an association for the protection and assistance of prisoners. Founded 47 years ago in the state of São Paolo, its method is today recognised by the UN as one of the best among prison systems. They call them ‘prisons without bars’, since the detainees, called ‘recuperands’, are themselves responsible for security within the structure: there are no guards or arms and the prisoners are not just numbers, irredeemable delinquents, but human beings who are offered the chance to take their life in hand and turn it around. They have to come to terms with their faults and overcome them, to become reconciled with their families and with society and to change into new men and women.

Mario Ottoboni

“It was here in this prison that I discovered the real meaning of life, the meaning of respect for others and the meaning of such words as love and family”, says Cleubert, now married with two children and looking after his mother. In prison he was able to study and earned a degree in jurisprudence. He is now a member of APEC in Betim and in Belo Horizonte and working for the Brazilian Fraternity for the Assistance of Prisoners (FBAC), the organisation founded in the mid-seventies by São José dos Campos lawyer Mario Ottoboni, to ‘kill the criminal and save the person’. Ottoboni died on 14 January last.
“Ottoboni, with a group of volunteers involved in prison pastoral, visited Jacarei prison and was struck by the inhuman living conditions of the detainees: this brought him to think of creating a process that would allow those people to recuperate their ‘image and likeness of God’ now overshadowed, through hope, trust and mercy, the three pillars of what would become the APAC method”.

The story is told by Valdeci Antonio Ferreira, a Comboni Lay Missionary, General Director of the Fraternity, who recalls: “The experiment soon began to produce positive results, so much so that the keys of the cells were given to the volunteers with responsibility for the administration of the structure. At that time I was working in the metal industry at Itaúna, in the state of Minas Gerais, and I, too, was shocked when I visited the city prison. When I heard of the first APAC, I decided to go and see it for myself. I stayed for a year, living together with Ottoboni and the detainees of São José dos Campos. I then returned to Itaúna, determined to create another unit there”.
“It took many years of contrasts and challenges and we barely escaped failure for lack of funds, but, with help from the Catholic and Protestant Churches, the project took shape and countless successful social rehabilitations of former prisoners helped us to show the authorities the validity of the method and the thinking behind it: to protect society, bring help to victims and promote justice. Since then, the APECs in Geazil have multiplied: today the method is being fully applied in fifty centres in six states with a total of around 3,500 detainees; a further hundred centres are being established.

‘People enter here, crimes stay outside’: this maxim – attributed to the Spanish Beccaria, Manuel Montesinos y Molina – looms large on the walls of these special penitentiaries where there are no overcrowded cells or criminal gangs who ‘keep order’ or groups to defend against the violence of the guards as is sadly the case in the 1,436 detention structures in Brazil, the country with one in four of the world prison population.“The APAC – Ferreira explains – are coordinated by Associations that collaborate with the judicial and executive powers in guarding detainees and, once they have served their sentences, in their reinsertion in society, through a virtual partnership between the state and organised civil society. Even though they only receive finance from the state in special cases, to all intents and purposes they represent an alternative to the traditional penitential system: the prisoners serve their sentences in cells but there are no guards.The prisoners themselves keep the keys of the structure and see to the cleaning and cooking, as well as the organisation of security measures in collaboration and co-administration with those responsible for the APAC”.

This begs the question: how come the prisoners do not try to escape? “A phrase once pronounced by a detainee is now written at the entrances to all the APAC: ‘Nobody runs away from love’. When the method is properly applied, with its twelve points that work in combination, with the involvement and commitment of all the personnel, the volunteers and society, in the recovery of the prisoners, they are brought to reflect on themselves and to realise that their sentence is not only a physical state but is also a mental and spiritual condition which must be overcome”, the Director of the FBAC explains.
“The method requires that the person in question must learn to take responsibility for their own actions, to respect others, to love and to live in a community in which they trust. These are values which, within the context of valuing the human person, of accepting reality, of work and of study, lead to a commitment towards society, the family and oneself. This is why, even though it would be easy to flee from within the walls of an APAC, the awareness of having to pay for their mistakes and the recognition of the efforts made for their recovery, do not permit them to do so. The detainees know that a failure on their part could close the doors to other prisoners who, in Brazil and elsewhere, are clamouring for the chance to change their lives in one of our institutes”.

In order to recognise the evil one has done, it is necessary to experience good: and this, in synthesis, is the meaning behind the method invented by Ottoboni. Nevertheless, serving a sentence in an APAC prison is not as easy as it might seem. The structures, usually of small dimensions and set up in places away from large centres, with the agreement of the local community, are ruled by very strict discipline – “it is not sufficient to stop doing wrong; we have to start doing good”, with a full timetable of activities starting at 7am and continuing until 10pm.
The experience of the Associations for the protection and assistance of detainees was born in a Christian context but is open to prisoners of all faiths who are assisted in line with their particular beliefs. “The most important experience for us is to come to know God”, Valdeci Antonio Ferreira again explains. “During these years, we have had various cases of recovering prisoners who professed no particular religion but who, helped by the example they received during their stay with others, decided to become Catholics”.
On the other hand, there are many unusual instances that occur in these prisons without bars. For example, the level of re-offending which in the ordinary prisons in Brazil is as high as 70-80%, is here between 10-20%. One more reason for investing in this model whose costs are 1/3 the amount spent for the same number of detainees in ordinary prisons. We may also mention that, in 47 years in the APEC units, there have never been any episodes of rebellion or uprising or acts of violence as is so sadly the case in the ordinary prisons of Brazil”.
Chiara Zappa

The Monastery of Hayk.

Monday, 1 April 2019 8:00

If we mention the monastery of Hayk (or Hayq) among the three chosen for this dossier, it is certainly not because of the importance it has nowadays, but because of the one it had in the past, especially during the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, and because of its connection and that of its founder, Iyasus Mo’a, with the monasteries of Debre Damo and Debre Libanos.

The modern city of Hayk is located on the main road which goes to the north, about 60 km north of Dessie in the administrative Zone of South Wollo. It is named after a small lake 6.7 km long by 6 km wide in a flat and fertile land. Hayk means precisely ‘lake’. On a small island, which is now linked with the main land forming a peninsula, a church of Axumite style was built in the eighth century and dedicated to St. Stephen. It was destroyed by the Muslim condotiero Ahmed Grañ in 1531 and rebuilt more than once.

The importance of Hayk begins in the thirteenth century when Iyasus Mo’a founded a monastery on the island. Iyasus Mo’a lived between 1214 and 1293. We know about his life from his Acts or Gedle Iyasus Mo’a, which were written in the fifteenth century and underwent various modifications over time. There is more than one version. All that raises serious doubts about their historical value. From the information they give we can conclude that Iyesus Mo’a was a monk in the monastery of Debre Damo where, after seven years of novitiate, he received his monastic habit from Abad Yohanni. From Debre Damo he moved to the island of Hayk, next to the church of San Esteban. There he founded his own monastery, which soon became famous and influential. From it would come out five great personalities that are known as the five ‘lights’. The most shining one was Tekle Haimanot, future founder of the Debre Libanos monastery.
According to some of the versions, the greatness of the monastery would also be linked to the prominent role that Iyasus Mo’a played in the restoration of the so called Solomonic dynasty, which occurred in 1270. It is said that the first king of this dynasty, Yekuno Amlak, was in his youth a novice in Hayk and was educated by Iyasu Mo’a.

Yekuno Amlak, an alleged descendant of the ancient kings of Axsum, of Semitic stock and language, defeated Yitbarek, the last king of the Zagwe dynasty, of which the greatest figure was King Lalibela, builder of the churches of the city that bears his name. The kings of the Zagwe dynasty were Agaw, of Hamitic stock, and considered usurpers by the Semitic people. In gratitude for the support of Iyasus Mo’a, Yekuno Amlak granted the monastery the entire island, sending away the inhabitants who were not monks.
The intervention of Iyesus Mo’a in the restoration of the Solomonic dynasty is in contrast with other sources which attribute this merit to Tekle Haimanot. It is not infrequent in the Acts or Geldes that they attribute the same episodes, virtues or miracles to several saints.

From the sixteenth century, after being destroyed by the Muslim leader Ahmed Grañ in 1532, Hayk’s monastery no longer saw moments of splendor. On the contrary, it gradually lost importance, especially in front of the monastery of Debre Libanos. Between the two there was always a latent competition. In the various controversies that took place throughout history between the ‘House of Ewostatewos’ and the ‘House of Tekle Hamanot’, the monastery of Hayk, being geographically more connected with the north, was preferably in the sphere of the first.
In the dispute that took place around the’anointing’ of the humanity of Jesus, Hayk defended the thesis called qarra (knife) against the other two schools called qebat (anointing), followed in Gojjam, and Sost Lidet (three births) or Ye-tsegga lij (Son of grace), led by Debre Libanos and followed in the monasteries of the south. This controversy lasted from the end of seventeenth century until the late nineteenth and was a bitter one, creating a deep division both in the Orthodox Church as such and specifically in monastic life. It went to the extent that in monasteries such as Waldebba, where there were monks belonging to different tendencies, they did not want to celebrate the Eucharist together. Emperor Yohannes IV settled the dispute in 1878 by forcibly imposing the thesis of qarra, which adopted the name of tewahedo (union).

Both the monastery and the church that can be visited today in St. Stephen of Hayk are of relatively recent construction and offer no particular interest. Most worthy of note in the monastery is its museum, which exhibits a series of pieces that are not easy to find elsewhere. The most notable is a manuscript of the Book of the Gospels written between 1280 and 1281, which is considered the oldest manuscript existing today in Ethiopia. There is also a large stone cross attributed to Iyasus Mo’a and another stone that is said to be an altar where the pagans used to make sacrifices before being converted to Christianity by the holy founder. The museum also exhibits a huge wooden container used to prepare the ingera (local bread) and other kitchen utensils, all coming from the thirteenth century.
Juan Gonzáles Núñez

Africa/China. Chinese Investments in African High Technology.

Monday, 1 April 2019 8:00

Chinese high-tech companies are banking on Africa, especially on the ‘Silicon Savannah’ of Nairobi, to develop strategies aimed at satisfying emerging markets. The unknown factor is the collection and management of mega-data

Of all the roughly 200 technological hubs in the emerging African market, the Nairobi cluster stands out, so much so that it has earned the nickname of the Silicon Savannah. While Silicon Valley itself seems to be losing ground to the competition based in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, China is pouring huge amounts of capital into the African high technology sector: the dragon is diversifying its portfolio and does not seem to want to follow the same story of the trap of infrastructure debts.

This phenomenon regards not only Kenya but all of Sub-Saharan Africa. For example, having completed many Information and Communications Technology (ICT) projects, Huawei has recently announced the opening of a new data centre in South Africa, in the wake of Google and Amazon. Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, a Chinese multinational conglomerate specializing in e-commerce, retail, internet and technology, has expressed interest in the African market, visiting Rwanda and putting together a deal mainly focussed on a network of e-services capable of facilitating interaction with the Chinese market. Transsion, the Chinese low-cost smart-phone giant, is instead getting ready to launch Boom Play, a new music-streaming service, in a joint venture with the Chinese internet provider Netease.
Lastly, an investment of high strategic and symbolic value has been made by CloudWalk, a Chinese start up based in Guangzhou which has signed an agreement with Zimbabwe to install new generation facial recognition software, following the massive domestic filing carried out by the Chinese government for the implementation of its controversial system of social credit.

The Nairobi case

Chinese investment in African technology is therefore taking place over a broad spectrum and extends well beyond the examples mentioned. The Nairobi Silicon Savannah provides excellent examples both of top-down classical investments of the Chinese giants and of a flourishing panorama of domestic innovation: an ideal overview for understanding how Africa, young and full of potential, interacts with the Chinese market which is already consolidated and maturing.

Nairobi is today entirely covered by 4G (Huawei is the prominent contractor for the telephone towers) and, in the past, 3G was offered at a relatively low price, permitting easy access to the internet, often with low-cost hardware brought in by the Chinese. With its pioneering approach to the internet, Nairobi has become the embryo of African technology, the epicentre of platforms to bring together technology and investors. Of these, as many as four of the largest African accelerators are based in Nairobi (88Mph, Savannah Fund, Sinopsis Group and The Growth Hub), together with two important incubators (iLab Africa and mLab). The model is Silicon Valley, with some extra attention given by the institutions: entire structures are dedicated to co-working spaces often supported by the local government, either directly or through policies that foster the establishment of new businesses and new brains.

The foresight of the Kenyan government should be noted because, by the careful use of public politics, it has been able to create a fiscal environment favourable both to investment and to the survival of micro-companies hunting for the ‘killer app’. One exemplary Kenyan product is the micro-payment service M-Pesa, the p2p platform launched by Safaricom in 2007. The success of M-Pesa is due to a design that is tailor-made for the local market, taking into account the payment and remuneration habits of many Africans, according to which the frequency reference if not the month but the single day. In practice, M-Pesa is a service that has become localised and exemplifies the typology and targeting of technologies developed in Kenya in the past fifteen years: from Africa to Africa by nature and design, with the potential to take hold also in some Asian markets with particular exigencies and characteristics.

Nairobi is, then, leading Africa into the fourth industrial revolution, destined to unhinge the current rules of manufacturing industry and to bring about historical changes in the most disparate sectors (from finance to agriculture) with the development of highly disruptive technologies such as big data, the block chain, 3D printing and artificial intelligence (AI). In the coming decades, Beijing aims to gain a position of absolute leadership in the new technologies, especially artificial intelligence (AI).
It is not therefore unusual for the Chinese government to point private companies towards the African market by means of instruments of policy and financing, taking advantage of a very active and receptive emerging market that presents rural and urban trends in many ways similar to those applicable to the Chinese market. In this way, besides filling the infrastructure gap, Beijing sustains the view according to which Africa has ceased to be an aid-driven economy and is about to reach maturity in a strategic market characterised by the convergence of the interests of Chinese investors with those of local governments and local companies. With less aversion to risk-taking than their western counterparts, the Chinses are fully engaging with Silicon Savannah, aware of the greater financial risk but also of the possibility of major gains, both in terms of sales and of innovation aimed at solving specific African interests of a kind potentially similar to those of China.

The problem of Data Harvesting

There is no doubt that China has contributed much to the African information technology from infrastructure for telephonic and telematics coverage to undersea cables with hubs in Djibouti and the Kenyan port of Mombasa, from the training of African technicians in China to the export of low-cost hardware. The other side of the coin, however, is that of data harvesting which explains the distribution of hardware and software with low profit margins: African data are essential if Chinese companies are to achieve domination in future artificial intelligence (AI) markets. The monetisation of user data is already present in Facebook, Google and Amazon. Nevertheless, in the case of such Chinese companies as Tencent or Alibaba, there is even less clarity as to norms. Some may find some meagre consolation in the Facebook defeat by Cambridge Analytica; the Chinese system offers even less transparency regarding the collection and use of data.

The problem is, first of all, normative and can largely be traced to differences in the Chinese concept of ‘privacy’ and the Chinese concept of society which is based on Confucian values that allow for a greater role for authority. Again, Kenya provides a useful example since it is one of the few African countries where discussions are taking place regarding collection policies involving private individuals and institutions, especially after the adoption of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by the EU. Despite this, national institutions are moving in a vast system of actors and pressures where Chinese interest is strong: from this perspective it is necessary to consider the distinction between public and private which in China is mostly formal, as is shown by the transverse presence of people enrolled in the Communist Party in all posts of real responsibility. In the ITC sector, there is an opportunity of having a level playing field, as long as this does not upset Beijing which possesses important means of political and economic leverage. Among these, we find in the case of Kenya, considerable outstanding debts for the port of Mombasa and the Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway.
Federico Zamparelli/CgP

Yasmine Hamdan. A Vagabond Spirit.

Monday, 1 April 2019 8:00

“With her powerful voice and unique style she succeeded in bringing together the treasures of traditional music and the electronic sounds of European pop-rock”.

For some time now, Yasmine has lived in multi-ethnic Paris but she has lived and criss-crossed many cities and cultures in her life of forty three years. It started in Beirut where she was born in 1976, just when the Lebanese capital was in the grip of a terrible civil war that would drag on until 1990. In that troubled “Switzerland of the Middle East” little Yasmine grew up and developed her love for music until, together with singer/producer Zeid Hamdan (no relation), she started the Soapkills project which released its first record in 1999, an album entitled Bater.
Immediately the duo became one of the most important units in the world of the new electronic pop music in the Middle East.

With her powerful voice and unique style she succeeded in bringing together the treasures of traditional music and the electronic sounds of European pop-rock. Restless, curious and with a vagabond spirit, she went to live in different countries from Kuwait to Abu Dhabi, from Greece to Paris where she now lives; her encounter/collaboration with eclectic producer Mirwais (who produced some of Madonna’s work) added even greater stimulus to her explosive creativity.
The turning point came in 2013, thanks to a Belgian label specialising in world-music, which launched her first solo record on all the main European markets: an enchanting album entitled Ya Nass.

The product found the perfect balance between the modern and the traditional, constructed on a continual overlapping of different folk languages, sung in various Arabic languages, including Bedouin, but given substance and filled with cosmopolitan suggestions that soon transformed Yasmine Hamdan into an icon of the underground European scene.
Married to Palestinian producer Elia Suleiman, volcanic Yasmine is also an actress (her part in a film by Jim Jar-mush comes to mind) and composer of soundtracks , also for the theatre.

She never forgets her roots: «I love Arabic culture and I hate how the Arabic world is portrayed by the modern press – she declared during a recent interview at the New York Times – I sing in Arabic to emphasise this: it is both an art and a challenge».
In 2017 Hamdan completed her second solo album, Al Jamilat — which we may translate as “All Things Beautiful”. With this disc the Lebanese singer continues her musical exploration with the help of noted producers like Englishman Luke Smith and highly talented musicians like Pakistani American Shahzad Ismaily and Sonic Youth member Steve Shelley: both skilled in experimentation in the wide ocean of modern pop. The same can be said for her songs which, even though not entirely “political” are riddled with references to current social conditions, including those of the Middle East as it continues its search
for better times.

Franz Coriasco

Europe in the Election Year.

Monday, 1 April 2019 8:00

The European Union finds itself in a contradictory situation in advance of the European Parliament elections in May.

On the one hand, the levels of support for the EU are higher than they have been for 25 years. 62 per cent of EU citizens have a positive view of their country’s membership of the EU; this is as high as 81 per cent in Germany. On the other hand, the departure of the UK sees a country leaving the Union for the first time. On the one hand, the 27 remaining states have shown great unity in the Brexit negotiations and unanimity in their defence of Ireland. On the other hand, the Union faces deep divisions over the question of accepting refugees and migrants.

In 2018, economic growth in the EU was 2.1 per cent, but at the same time, the inequality between rich and poor is growing. On the one hand it is evident that the challenges currently faced in the areas of climate change, immigration, energy, tax and bank regulations cannot be met by individual states in isolation. On the other hand a new nationalism is growing, and the EU is under attack from Eurosceptic populists. At least the fate of Europe is today being discussed in much broader, more engaged terms than it was only a few years ago.

The most important event for the EU in 2019 will be the elections to the European Parliament to be held from 23 to 26 May, in which 340 million citizens are entitled to vote. There is nothing to compare with the European Parliament worldwide; nowhere else is there a supranational institution that functions as a directly elected parliament. Every change to the treaty has expanded its spheres of competence. The proportion of the EU legislation passed with the full co-determination of the European Parliament is now almost 50 per cent.

On the other hand, the European Parliament is itself part of the democratic deficit of the EU. The first direct elections to the European Parliament took place almost 40 years ago, but the European elections are still run along the same lines as the national elections, and their European legitimacy remains limited, especially since the citizens only vote for national parties. These do join together in the European Parliament to form Europe-wide coalitions, but they have no direct connection with the population.

This may be an explanation for the fact that the participation in elections has fallen continuously since the first elections in 1979, when the level was 62 per cent, to 42 per cent in 2014. But as the only body directly legitimized by electors, it is and remains the most important instrument for stronger democratization of the Union. It is therefore worthwhile to fight for the European Parliament and develop concepts for improving it.

In a time when multilateralism is being called into question, Europe’s hour has come. The Union represents an example of how the major problems of the 21st century can only be overcome by supranational cooperation. A prime example of this is the combination of ecological and social issues. It is hoped that the forthcoming European elections will see a high level of participation and a strengthening of the pro-European parties. In order to achieve this, the EU needs Europeans with strong convictions, who are prepared to defend their positions against their detractors.

Martin Maier SJ

Language, the way for Advocacy too.

Monday, 1 April 2019 8:00

I arrived among the Nuer in November 2005. It was my first mission assignment. I had expectantly waited for that moment throughout many years of training. Now I was there and my first concern was learning the language. I did not hide my trepidation: it was my first non-European language.

My confreres were very helpful and they were a continuous point of reference for me. I made friends with many Nuer youths who endeavoured to teach me their language. Every day I spent hours under the trees conversing with those lads. They loved the publications-project of the Summer Institute of Linguistics: A modern reader in the Nuer language that started in 1982 through the fifth edition in 1994.

They made me repeat sentence by sentence hundreds of times. I was also following the thirty-eight lessons of the pedagogical grammar edited in the fifties by Ms. Eleanor Vandevort, an American evangelist who resided in Nassir from1949 to1963. I was constantly referring to the Nuer – English Dictionary by Fr. John Kiggen, a missionary of St. Joseph’s Society and I treasured the 1933 Outline of a Nuer Grammar of the Comboni Missionary, Pasquale Crazzolara.

Nuer people are very proud of their language and culture. They refer to themselves as Nɛy ti naath – the People among peoples – and call their language Thok naath – the tongue of the People-, setting it apart from the other idioms they called the tongue of Dinka or the tongue of Schilluk and so on. A Nuer proverb says Thilɛ thok gua̠ndɛ – a tongue does not have owners, meaning that a language belongs to everyone who uses it. Therefore, Nuer people are very proud to hear other people speaking their language, and the language is the only necessary entry door to become part of their people. Not only that, another Nuer proverb says Thi̠i̠k we̠c ɛ ji̠kɛ – People are the door into the country. However, they do not make it easy for anyone to enter. It is exceptional to find a Nuer who provides a teaching on language for a foreigner, besides the fact that few have the expertise to present the language systematically with proper grammar, syntax and structure explanations.

I started with great enthusiasm. However, I soon realized how arduous Nuer was. I would easily confuse one monosyllabic word from another. I would not hear the different intonations of the seven basic vowels that would produce about eighteen different sounds and many diphthongs. I feared I would never manage to own that language but I persisted in my commitment and the pastoral work helped me a lot. Studying their language, I was getting closer to them and little by little, I was winning their sympathy. The language at the beginning was a barrier; suddenly, it became the means to build up relationships. I became aware how important listening was especially to the Church leaders and catechists with whom I was spending most of my time. Their way of expressing was so different from mine! They helped me to break through my European mind-set and getting closer to a Nuer mind-set.

A language is not only a number of expressions. Any language expresses also the mind-set and culture of the people using it.
Therefore, mastering a language means owning also the culture and mind-set of a people.

Learning the Nuer language, I got interested in their oral literature. It is so rich with songs, proverbs, riddles, tales and myths. It carries a wisdom that oriented the behavior of so many generations. Many times oral literature, being part of traditional society, holds to conservative values and fears transformation. Other times instead it reveals what people and society need to change. This is the point of encounter with the Gospel, which is always change-oriented. Why should a missionary engage in collecting and preserving the oral literature of a people? Could he not simply replace it with the Gospel narratives answering in a more appropriate way to the modern challenges of a given society?

Well, evangelization is not just replacing old clothes with new ones. Missionaries should be sensitive in respecting the identity of people they evangelize. The language and the oral literature are the vehicles of the culture and the identity of each ethnic group. They shape the way the people think, they fix values and orientate patterns of behavior. There are certainly parts of traditional society, which hold to conservative values and fear transformation.

Actually, continuous changes press on a society, often undermine the identity of the people and provoke a void sub-culture. The need to hold onto solid roots is great. However, change is sometime unavoidable and in some cases, it is most needed. The challenge is about making the right steps, promoting a transformation that is deeply rooted in the identity of the people.

While the Gospel is always change-oriented, it does not throw away the old for the new, it rather promotes a transformation from within the culture re-interpreting it in the new context, both at social as well at spiritual level.

The Church has a special mandate to promote both an interethnic Christian identity and a positive identification with one’s own culture. In fact, those who feel that their language and culture are under-estimated tend to see diversity as a threat, fear changes and under some circumstances might react violently. Those instead who are well rooted in their own culture are also more capable to create cross-cultural relationships. Conflict in South Sudan has often erupted from little understanding, false communication, poor esteem within communities fueling deep frustration.

For this reason, language is deeply relevant also in the advocacy process. To empower people to defend and strengthen their human and social rights, it is not enough to be able to exchange properly experiences and ideas; there is a need also of talking the language of people which their narratives, imaginaries, worldview and mind-set.
Daniel Comboni passionately cried out Africa or death in his attempt to regenerate the people of Africa.
Likewise, people committed in advocacy, grasping how identity of a given people is deeply rooted on their language and culture should build any sincere dialogue in a boldly statement: mother tongue or death!

Father Christian Carlassare,
Comboni Missionary in Moroyok
South Sudan

Belgium. The Museum of Africa, a revisited version of the continent.

Monday, 1 April 2019 8:00

The Museum of Africa aspires to be an open space for discussion of the sad colonial past and contemporary African art. There has not been lack of criticisms.

The colonization of Congo – the current Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) – and the rule of neighbouring Rwanda, which then included Burundi, is one of the darkest episodes in the history of Belgium. Although it is almost impossible to know the magnitude of the genocide, it is estimated that at least one third of the population in that area died as a result of the Belgian colonization. Millions of people perished during the military invasion, or as a result of the forced labour, forced displacements, famines, or torture they suffered. Congo was, for years, the personal heritage of the ruler with greatest responsibility for the horrors of colonialism, King Leopold II.

When Brussels hosted the Universal Exhibition of 1897, the monarch created a ‘colonial section’ that would lay the foundations of what we now know as the Museum of Africa. Such was the success of the 1897 exhibition that the King made it permanent, using funds from his interests in Congo to construct the grand neoclassical building which houses the collection today. The colonial section was hosted in the Palais des Colonies (Palace of the Colonies), a grandiose, purpose-built complex designed at Tervuren, to later become the Museum of the Belgian Congo.
The museum, once seen as Europe’s last unreconstructed museum of the colonial era, recently reopened after a five-year, staggering revamp. This was the first major refurbishment since the 50s.The Belgium African Museum houses items, mainly looted, from the African continent during the colonial era which include Congolese artefacts, the beheaded skulls of vanquished tribal chiefs, and more than 500 stuffed animals slaughtered by hunters. “The overhaul was designed to present its collection more sensitively in an effort to shake off its racist and pro-colonial image”, said Guido Gryseels, the museum’s director general, in an interview. The announcement of the refurbishment sparked debates between those who argued that the museum should remain such as it was, as a reminder of how colonial museums were conceived. Many Belgians remain ignorant of their country’s harsh rule in what is now Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in the late 19th century. Others demanded its total destruction.

It was decided to look for an intermediate solution. The decision responded to a practical question: being a historic building the room for maneuver was limited and the budget did not allow to preserve the original building and build a new museum. Renovations were designed to modernise the museum from an exhibition of pro-colonial propaganda to one that is critical of Belgium’s imperialist past, which was not eliminated but explained.
“We thought it was possible to do both, maintaining the building as a space for memory and, at the same time, introducing a new narrative about Africa”, explains Guido Gryseels. The new Museum of Africa is the result of this work.

Archaeological remains, stuffed animals, musical instruments, ornaments, costumes, artefacts … the Museum of Africa is home to one of the most important and rich African ethnographic collections in Europe. But its exhibition is not without controversy. Many of those objects were stolen or obtained by force. Tombs were desecrated. The curators of the exhibition are aware of this, and that is why, statues have been given explanatory plaques highlighting the death and destruction colonialism spawned and with the help of multimedia displays and detailed captions, visitors will be encouraged to take a critical view and to see colonialism through African eyes. All items have been reordered and given new wall texts to highlight the problems of colonialism, and to allow the people of Congo and Rwanda to speak in their own words.
But for many this is not enough. Mireille-Tsheusi Robert, president of Bamko-Cran, a non profit organization that fights racism in the country, said that the government should set up an expert committee to determine as best as possible the exact origin of the items. The organization has asked Belgium’s government to return all objects in the museum which were looted in Congo. Also many others think former coloniser Belgium should return looted items and believe that the museum remains a Belgian museum, with a Belgian view on central Africa. They see it as continuing to be an exhibition of Belgian force, of its conquest of Africa and that it will continue to be such while exhibiting objects stolen during the military campaigns.
“It is not normal that 80% of the African cultural heritage is in Europe”, Gryseels conceded. “It is basically their culture, their identity, their history. We need to have a very open attitude. The question is under what conditions. How do we define what was legally acquired and what was not legally acquired?”

One of the fundamental pillars of the museum renovation has been the collaboration with the African Diaspora in Belgium. “You cannot organise an exhibition on contemporary Africa without involving the Africans themselves”, says Gryseels.The institution devotes a large space to the traditions and rituals, music and languages of the territory between Rwanda, Burundi and DRC, which were once Belgian colonies.The walls of the Colonial Palace are full of references to the ‘civilizing’ work of colonization and to those responsible for the plundering in Congo. The curators of the museum invited several African artists to offer their vision of history through their works, so that references to colonization are mixed with African contemporary art.
Congo-born, Belgium-based artist Aimé Mpane has said that he refused the invitation at first. “Being steeped in colonial history, this place seemed to me to be the last venue to exhibit a work of contemporary African art.Then, after much reflection, I understood that it was necessary to mark it with a work that would respond to the painful memories it evokes”.

Mpane’s New Breath, or the Burgeoning Congo stands in the striking main rotunda where Leopold II’s gold statue still stands. The chiseled sculpture by Mpane is a massive profile of an African man’s head on a bronze base. “My sculpture stands in the precise place that the ‘colonizers’ chose to honour King Leopold II and his entire colonization policy. My work is an obvious answer that, from now on, we will have to count on Africa”.
Mpane said he was intrigued by the opportunity to create a work to stand next to King Leopold’s sculptures and paintings that portray a Congo “stereotyped around very colonial clichés”. He hopes “that these pieces become secondary” to his own, and that this tension represents a new dialogue about the past.
The artist ultimately wants people to look toward the future and to “invite others to collaborate instead of separating into camps”. He believes the museum has made a good first step.
It has taken almost 60 years, but now Belgium has started to face its colonial past. A few months before the reopening of the Museum of Africa, a square has been inaugurated as a tribute to Patrice Lumumba, on the occasion of the 58^th anniversary of Congo’s independence from Belgium. Lumumba, leader of the revolution and prime minister of the first independent Congolese government, was assassinated in a coup d’état in circumstances suggesting the support and complicity of the governments of Belgium and the United States”, according to investigations. The square leads into the Matongé neighbourhood, that is home to many Congolese migrants, the African heart of Brussels.

Last October, Belgian voters elected their first black mayor, Pierre Kompany, who took over the municipality of Ganshoren, a Brussels borough of about 25,000 people. The newly-elected mayor arrived in the country as a refugee from the DRC in the 1970s. He is the father of one of the country’s best known footballers. His son Vincent has been captain of the Belgian national football team for years and is a national star, like football player Romelu Lukaku who is also of Congolese origins.In this context in which reconciliation begins little by little to become a reality, while the shadow of the extreme right hangs over Europe, Guido Gryseels hopes that the Belgium African Museum can become a means of unity. “We believe that the role of the museum is crucial to ensure intercultural dialogue, to open minds and enable a space for debate”, says the director.

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