The “Soft Weapon” of Theater: Reintegrating the Former Child Soldiers of the DRC Back into Civilian Life
By Alison Skilton; Interview Translated from French by Amelie Namuroy
The Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of the world’s most war-ravaged places. Quite frankly, if you asked passing strangers on the street to say what comes to mind when they hear the words “the Congo,” you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who can think of anything positive.
I sat a block outside my apartment on the benches on Ocean Parkway, one of Brooklyn’s main thruways, and did just that. “What’re the first words that come to mind when you think of the Democratic Republic of the Congo?” I asked several rightfully confused passersby. “Where?” a few admittedly said. The rest responded how I figured they would, with words like “war,” “poverty,” “death,” “AIDS,” “starvation,” and a littering of other humanitarian crises that scourge mankind.
Unfortunately, these people aren’t completely wrong, and those words do describe certain aspects of the country’s current situation. But one unique grassroots peacebuilding initiative has sprung up through the darkness to tackle one of the country’s problems: the infamous child soldiers — some as young as five — often pictured toting AK-47s. “A funny idea came to my mind,” says Joseph Tsongo, a young Congolese journalist, activist, and the manager of a community-based radio station on the edge of the Eastern Congo’s Virunga Park, “It was to rehabilitate these children with a soft weapon that is participatory forum theater.”
THE BACK STORY
The Congo — its eastern provinces specifically — has been the epicenter of some of the deadliest conflicts, both homegrown and foreign-born, since WWII — and it’s been happening for over two decades [1]. The wars in and around the region have been raging since 1994, when nearly two million Rwandan Hutus fled into the eastern DRC to escape their country’s Tutsi-led ethnic genocide [2]. With them came their conflict, as Tutsi militiamen — backed by Ugandan forces — who were amongst the refugees began to raise new Congolese armed groups, igniting a complex web of ethnic tensions that already existed in the region.
These militias eventually became so powerful that they marched to the country’s capital of Kinshasa, located nearly 1000 miles from the major cities of the East, and overthrew the president [3]. He then called for help from Zimbabwe, Namibia, and Angola, bringing the total number of African countries that had a dog in the fight for the Congo to six. A proxy war between them all was fought on Congolese soil until 2003, with each of the countries using the war as a cover to pillage civilian villages and loot natural resources. This conflict became known as Africa’s first world war, and as goes with any war, the civilians paid the steepest price.
Despite being the site of a billion-dollar-per-year UN peacekeeping deployment — the largest in the world until the one in the South Sudan surpassed it in 2018 — the DRC is rife with post-war problems, brought on by the usual suspects of national instability: a struggling economy, regional conflict, decaying infrastructure, political corruption, self-serving foreign intervention, and, most tragically, another generation of disenfranchised children lost to the evils of a conflict that wasn’t theirs [4]. These children knew only war; most grew up in refugee camps where food was scarce, diseases like Cholera and Ebola ran rampant, and women would routinely disappear in the night to either be raped or sold into sexual slavery by the militias that lurked in the dense rainforests on the camps’ borders.
Many of these children were themselves kidnapped by the guerilla groups — Mai-Mais as they’re called locally — and exploited, forced to enlist in the armed militias and commit atrocious war crimes against their own people, ordered to take drugs and rape people at the command of their chiefs. Through socio-economic reintegration programs initiated by the Congolese government, thousands of children have managed to escape these armed groups.
But upon leaving the groups, an entirely new set of roadblocks emerge. In a country where people live on an average of less than $500 a year and unemployment hovers around 50 percent — even higher in the eastern regions — there are few opportunities [5]. Local communities are also reluctant to take the children back, the criminal acts of militia members fresh in the minds of the villagers. With nowhere to go, no family, and no job prospects, many of the young people fall back into the open arms of the militias.
THE “SOFT WEAPON”
The question then arises: how do peacebuilders rehabilitate the children who escaped these ordeals? Joseph Tsongo thought outside the box while devising an answer. He started a theater workshop.
Tsongo’s program, called Amani Kwetu, which means “peace in our country” in the local language, was launched two years ago. “It was born from the idea of promoting the social inclusion of former child soldiers,” says Tsongo, “Because we live here in a context of conflicts and wars where children have only the destiny to take up arms and will be forcefully enlisted in the armed militias raging in the region.”
He continues: “Generally, we organize theater workshops and shows every month where the former child soldiers first express their emotions (fear, sorrow, joy, worry, anger…) and little by little, we build a stage by offering to these young people to share and then to play what they experienced during the war, how they joined the armed groups, what happened in the bush.”
The stage provides both a platform from which the children can express themselves and a safety net for those emotions, thinly-masked by scenes and characters and lines. “The idea is that with the theater, these children relax and express themselves in a relaxed atmosphere,” Tsongo says. “Another important thing is that this kind of theater is a little tragic and real, it leads people to do introspection to recover. The participatory forum theater also facilitates the interaction between these former child soldiers and members of the local community including people they knew from before.”
The ultimate goal for the children is reintegration into their communities and readjustment to public life; for the audience, who are often asked to participate by telling their stories at the end of the performances, it is to overcome their stereotypes and prejudices and learn to accept the children back into their society. The program’s teachers have mentored over a hundred former child soldiers so far.
Tsongo himself was born during the war, and the violence that thundered around him made him want to become an actor of change, even though he had nothing but his computer and his camera. “That’s how I made the commitment to put my words on the evils that gnaw Congolese society to try to change the situation,” Tsongo says. “Here, it is not just a question of denouncing the evil that works in the shadows, but also and especially of ordinary citizens like me who have extraordinary stories. […] I offer the environment the media visibility it deserves…and all this in writing and in images.”
Tsongo receives no help from the government in his endeavors, instead relying on a small group of like-minded civilian activists to put on his drama workshops. He personally ventures into the bush of Virunga National Park where the Mai-Mai camps are and implores young soldiers to return to civilian life. There are still about 70 armed groups active in the region today; “In fact, people are more and more hostile and are ready for anything anytime, just a joke, and shots strike,” Tsongo adds.
Tsongo is just one actor of change, waging his own war against a goliath foist upon him. He insists that his generation is aware of the chasm their country is in and is ready to spark change. They are not lacking in ideas or strategies, he says, but in politicians with goodwill who are willing to work with and for the people. To keep up with the UN’s peacekeeping efforts in the Congo, follow @MONUSCO, @UNOCHA_DRC, and @UNVsintheDRC. To contribute to peacebuilding efforts, research a reputable organization — check out the IRC, CARE, or WHO to start — and donate to their cause.
References:
- Ida Sawyer et al., “The Eastern Congo.” Council on Foreign Relations. Accessed March 9, 2019. <https://www.cfr.org/interactives/eastern-congo#!/?cid=soc-at-interactive-the_eastern_congo_infoguide-121015>
- “Q&A: DR Congo Conflict.” BBC. Accessed March 9, 2019. <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-11108589/>
- Ida Sawyer et al., “The Eastern Congo.” Council on Foreign Relations. Accessed March 9, 2019. <https://www.cfr.org/interactives/eastern-congo#!/?cid=soc-at-interactive-the_eastern_congo_infoguide-121015>
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
