An Ordinary Miracle: Free Elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo Photo Ray Dirks

When I was asked to travel to Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to photograph that country’s first legitimate elections in more than 40 years, I was filled with anticipation and apprehension.

My wife and I had lived in Kinshasa in the 1980s. Our eldest daughter was born in Vanga, entering the African night serenaded by hippopotamus foraging along the banks of the Kwilu River. My work required that I spend my time with ordinary Congolese—and I became passionate about bringing their stories of decency and dignity to the world.
Friendship, passion and romantic memories drew me back to Kinshasa. Recollections of automatic rifle barrels churning in my stomach and of being kidnapped by armed thugs, mixed with the almost palpable chaotic energy that swirls through Kinshasa, put a slight knot in my stomach.

With election excitement already in the air, I had journeyed in 2005 to Kinshasa, Kikwit and remote Kajiji with Pakisa Tshimika, a Congolese now living in California. We travelled to Kajiji together with Pascal Kulungu, a friend living in Kinshasa—it was a homecoming for them. We were the first outsiders in Kajiji in more than a year. It is a breathtakingly beautiful but tragic community, fallen off the world map. To witness how the suffering tore at the souls of Pascal and Pakisa and to see how ordinary people, even in forgotten Kajiji, longed for elections, hoping against hope that they would bring peace—followed by repairs to basic infrastructure, health care and education—caused the anticipation in me to far outweigh the apprehension.
I arrived ten days before the 30 July 2006 elections. Forty years worth of missed opportunities to electioneers had erupted throughout Kinshasa.

Wave upon wave of election banners were strung across every major route, posters pinned to every tree trunk and wall. It was as if a giant piñata filled with election paraphernalia had been whacked open above Kinshasa. Young people wearing t-shirts emblazoned with photos of their leader, primarily President Joseph Kabila or main opposition figure Jean Pierre Bemba, sang and danced. Wealthy candidates for presidential or national deputy positions held boisterous rallies. Poorer candidates, I learned, typically did not hold public rallies. Concerned for their own safety, the expectation to give gifts in return for attendance, a hold-over from the days of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, stopped them.

The next day I set out to meet Pascal, who directs a small centre dedicated to conflict resolution and the promotion of good governance, located in the Mennonite Brethren Church offices. He was leading voter workshops throughout the city, training international election observers and running for a national deputy position, one of 885 candidates vying for 14 electoral positions. I asked him why he was running. “To bring a culture of peace to government”, he replied.

The DRC needs a culture of peace desperately. In the past decade, more people there have died due to war and war-related causes than in any other country on earth. Pascal wants to set an example as a man of peace and yearns to help his country become peaceful so that common citizens can live reasonable lives. Pakisa has set up a foundation to help rehabilitate educational and health-care institutions, and yearns for peace so that he can help fellow Congolese to access improved health care and schooling.

Electoral commission workers sort out ballot bags before they sealed results are entered into the computers in the complilation centre. Photo Ray Dirks

A happy voter. Photo Ray Dirks

The Thursday before the elections, Mr. Bemba held a massive rally at Tata Raphael stadium, with estimated attendance varying wildly from 60,000 to 1 million. But, without question, the rally brought the tension percolating under the surface to near the point of blowing the lid off the city. I was near the stadium as the rally was to begin. Our car was surrounded by chanting young Bemba supporters. Kabila placards were thrown at our car and passers-by tried to force the doors open. We were made to run over Kabila signs, followed by dancing and cheering. The atmosphere was mostly festive, but no one expected it to last.

Bemba’s militia and Kabila’s police later clashed, and some people were killed. A church was set on fire, and a famous musician’s studio was torched. Mysterious explosions at Bemba’s downtown compound followed, bringing his heavily armed, rag-clad militia menacingly onto Trente Juin, Kinshasa’s main thoroughfare. With the help of a significant United Nations presence in the area, rioting was limited and ended that same evening.
The recent brutal civil war had never reached Kinshasa, but the great concern of the local population was that if a new war erupted, it would begin there. Many people feared the mayhem following Bemba’s rally was the moment anarchy might take over. On top of the concern about a renewed war, they remembered the two incidents in the 1990s when police and military rampaged in the city, virtually destroying its economy.

I had arranged to walk to three Mennonite churches to find out how ordinary people were preparing for the elections. I was to visit on the two days prior to the Sunday polling day. Two churches immediately cancelled after the Bemba rally, informing me it was too dangerous to walk in their areas. Kinshasa was overwhelmingly a city in opposition to the President.
Mr. Bemba was popular and had declared foreigners to be in league with the President. The pastor of the third church told me I was welcome to visit. Hundreds of thousands of Kinois live far from roads frequented by foreigners. Vehicles must be abandoned; as sides streets filled with people and market stalls gradually evolve into narrower and narrower tracks, which eventually become dirt paths bordered by long grass, broken by spotlessly swept dirt yards around homes. The city becomes a massive village.

The pastor guided me down a long kiosk-lined street. Years of compressed refuse made it spongy beneath our feet. After five minutes, we turned to the lip of one of Kinshasa’s many erosion-sliced ravines. The street became a slight path and we descended into the valley, filled with homes, gardens and trees—not a road or vehicle in sight or earshot. The tiny church building was made of a few poles holding up a couple of sheets of tin and a worn-out blanket pinned to one side between poles to keep the afternoon sun off the parishioners.

But daily life continued all around. Children were playing; women glistening in sweat carried up water from a pump at the bottom of the ravine. The thump of manioc being pounded floated on the air. From afar it is difficult to imagine that daily life goes on in unstable parts of Africa—but it does. Ordinary people remain amazingly resilient; they struggle to live lives of dignity, doing the best they can for themselves and their families.
Speaking to parishioners at the church and others in the vicinity, the overwhelming attitude was one of wary optimism. People were suspicious and expected fraud, but at the same time desired from the depths of their souls for stability to come out of a fairly-run election. That strong wish carried over to the next day. Congolese police and United Nations troops were out in force, each patrolling the streets in convoys, reminding potential troublemakers that this was to be an orderly day—and for the most part it was. In a remarkable show of dignity and a will to finally have a say in their lives, ordinary Congolese proceeded to the polls, waited patiently and voted. Electoral Commission employees diligently did their best in a situation new to them.

A young woman receives voter information after a church service. Photo Ray Dirks

At one Bureau de Vote, an election observer noted a man unable to stuff his oversized ballot into the box. He shook uncontrollably; an entire life of living under dictatorship rattled through his body—dictatorships, where police and military were regularly the enemy of the people not their protectors, where politicians raped the resources of a potentially wealthy country and where ordinary people were irrelevant, not just at home but to the world.
On 30 July 2006, Congolese voters for the first time had an opportunity to determine their future. Although jaded and doubtful, the enormity of the moment was not lost on them. Citizens produced a miracle of the ordinary. Will their leaders follow the lead of their people? History says no, but maybe the future will be different.

Three weeks later, first-round results were announced, with Mr. Kabila ahead of the other presidential candidates. However, he did not have the majority needed to avoid a run-off. He received an overwhelming support in the east, but Mr. Bemba, who placed second, won in the west, including in Kinshasa. As the announcement of the results neared, violence erupted between Kabila’s forces and Bemba’s militia, but was contained and ended after a few days. A second round took place on 29 October, with Kabila securing a clear majority.

Is the Democratic Republic of the Congo emerging from the shadows? Photo Ray Dirks

In a large country with little infrastructure, few passable roads, more than 50,000 polling stations, some accessible only by dugout, and devastated by war and anarchy, the most complex election in history in the DRC took place, as stated by the United Nations. There were some violence and undoubtedly some irregularities. Mr. Bemba disputed, but eventually and reluctantly accepted the results, while many followers of Etienne Tshisekedi, a long-time prominent opposition leader, boycotted the election at his request. Nonetheless, independent observers, including the Carter Center, declared the results to be correct. There are warts and all, but as of this writing the DRC is a democracy. Good people like Pascal and Pakisa will continue to work  for peace and to better his homeland’s health care and education system, respectively. Because of the impressive display of ordinary Congolese, there is more reason to hope, more reason to believe, that people like Pascal and Pakisa can really make a difference and can build on an election miracle.