Not many people today speak about the 5.4 million people murdered in DR Congo in the past decade, due to the invasion of the country by Rwanda. It came in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide, when 800,000 Tutsis and many Hutus were murdered in three months by Hutu gangs known as the interahamwe. When the genocide was stopped by the arrival of the Tutsi-exile-led Rwandan Patriotic Front, the interahamwe fled to eastern DR Congo (then known as Zaire).
Even less often spoken about today is the mass rape of Congolese women by a variety of Congolese militias. A recent Guardian article (tinyurl.com/6gav7j9) documenting the horrible forms of rape which led to the exclusion of the raped women – who are unable to have babies, cook, farm and carry out family duties – made me think again about the meaning of genocidal rape.
Much has been written on rape as a weapon of ‘ethnic cleansing’, when women are raped not merely because of men’s uncontrolled sexual urge, but in order to change the composition of the enemy’s ethnicity, humiliate the men-folk and ensure the destruction of their society.
The rapes in DR Congo may have something to do with the country’s colonial history. There is so much rape committed by men who’ve been colonised and enslaved. You have to wonder what it’s done to these men, to their collective psychological memory. According to Eve Ensler, New York-based writer and activist, and author of The Vagina Monologues: “Centuries of colonialism, slavery and exploitation by the west have come together and are now being delivered on the bodies of the Congolese, most dramatically on the bodies of women.”
The article does not simply tell the horror story of eastern DR Congo, which has become known as the ‘rape capital of the world’, and of Congolese women as victims of gender-based violence. Rather, in telling the story of City of Joy, a centre for survivors of rape in Bukavu which was initiated by Ensler, it tells an uplifting tale of women as active agents of resistance.
Half a million Congolese women, perhaps many more, have been raped since 1998, and in particularly brutal ways. City of Joy, a haven where survivors of gender violence who have healed physically live for six months and are educated, is one response. It is the product of a shared vision that the women don’t just need help – they need power.
“Eve asked us what we wanted,” says one of the women. “And we said: shelter. A roof. A place where we can be safe. And a place where we can be powerful. That’s what we now have.”
Reading this article gave me a lot of food for thought. Often the only way we can speak about the victimisation of women, and of war-time rape, is through speaking of women as victims of violence. But City of Joy is evidence of the power of women survivors.
Dr Ronit Lentin is head of the MPhil in Race, Ethnicity, Conflict at the Department of Sociology at Trinity College Dublin. Her column appears fortnightly in Metro Éireann.
