CONGO-HUMAN RIGHTS: Brazzaville’s Lethal Guns Sow Hunger

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Nana Rosine Ngangoue and Moyiga Nduru

POINTE NOIRE, Oct 6 1997 (IPS) - Before a power struggle between two politicians transformed the capital of Congo into a battleground, the Central African nation and its three million people had never had to beg for food aid.

Now, four months after the outbreak of a war between forces loyal to President Pascal Lissouba and former head of state Denis Sassou Nguesso, Congo has joined the list of countries where international organisations have had to intervene to prevent hunger.

The civil war, which began when the national army tried to arrest militiamen loyal to Sassou Nguesso, has destroyed Brazzaville. The fighting, which has already claimed about 4,000 lives, has been concentrated mainly in the capital, but it has had a devastating effect on the national economy as a whole.

The port of Pointe-Noire, for example, Congo’s economic capital, has suffered from the bloodletting in Brazzaville some 500 kms away. The average number of ships that dock there daily had shrunk from 10 before the war, to four. Food imports have gone down and, as a result, prices have gone up by 30 to 50 percent.

“Economic operators don’t dare bring in goods any more since they are afraid they will be plundered,” explains Samba Jules, a public servant who came to Pointe Noire after being displaced by the fighting. “Some others cannot do anything because with the administrative formalities, for example, things are very dfficult now. Almost everything used to be done in Brazzaville.”

Brazzaville, the political and administrative capital, is in ruins. The buildings that once housed public offices have been destroyed, along with the official documents they used to contain.

More than 250,000 people, Samba included, have fled Brazzaville for Pointe-Noire since the clashes broke out on Jun. 5. Many left their savings behind, blocked in banks in the capital, with little hope of ever recovering them. For almost all the displacees, food is the biggest problem.

“It’s hard for us displaced public servants,” said Samba.”We can’t get our salaries unless we go back to Brazzaville as the state has been demanding. Going back to Brazza is suicide. I prefer to stay here and die of hunger.”

The plight of the displacees has led the World Food Programme (WFP) to add Congo to the list of countries where it distributes food supplies. It has just started handing out one-month’s ration of maize, beans, oil and salt to some 14,000 displacees classified as the most vulnerable population in the port-city.

The distribution teams will later proceed to four other major towns in nearby provinces in southern Congo. It plans to hand out a total of 1,433 tonnes of food aid to some 60,000 Congolese displaced by the fighting, the WFP said in a statement released in early October in Nairobi, Kenya.

An estimated 80,000 people have remained in Brazzaville despite the fighting. Many others moved into the southern provinces in recent months. “Now, after spending weeks living in abandoned shelters or with friends and relatives, they’ve run out of money to buy food for their families,” according to the WFP.

About two weeks ago the WFP arranged for more than 300 tonnes of food to be shipped by train from Pointe-Noire to the southern provinces of Bounza, Niari, Lekoumou and Kouilou where its teams will begin distributing food this week.

The organisation said it began organising an urgent airlift of relief food to Pointe-Noire early last month when it became evident that many families were suffering from food shortages. A total of 135 tonnes of high-value food items — beans, vegetable oil, and salt — were flown into the port-city from Luanda, Angola, on eight WFP flights using Boeing 727s.

The WFP also said it already had 1,300 tonnes of cereals in stock in Pointe-Noire which were now being drawn upon. “We have also just received a new shipment of food from WFP operations in Kisangani, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which may be airlifted to Pointe-Noire over the next few days,” it said.

The relief operations have been confined to the south since it is extremely difficult and risky to travel to Brazzaville, nor is it easy to reach the north, which has been severely hit by famine, according to various reports.

“There is a critical and very problematic situation in the capital but the humanitarian and security conditions are such that we cannot work in Brazzaville,” explained Christiane Bertiau, the WFP spokesperson here. “In Pointe-Noire we’ve been having food airlifted from Luanda. It’s easier.”