“The common people have lost a lot since the time of the Belgians. We lived better in the Congo of colonial times”
From the outset, Zeka Sizo, who is known in the diaspora, made a point of specifying: “Do not see provocation on my part, nor nostalgia or apology for colonialism. I am a free spirit and I say what many think in the DRC when they see the country collapsing”.
Zeka Sizo, who is 62 and lives in Belgium, is a former spokesperson for the Coordination of Undocumented Migrants Movements. Four months before the elections in the DRC which will elect the next president in December, the man who comes from the province of Lualaba, the former Katanga, delivers a cash testimony.
promises and a song
Zeka Sizo was a child in 1960 when the Congo gained independence. What he knows of the period, he knows through what the elders say. “In colonial times, we had jobs. When the Belgians left, the common people found themselves without work. At Independence, they were made promises and again and again promises but the situation has continued to deteriorate continuously until today. The people do not find themselves in the regimes that have succeeded since Mobutu. Politicians are mafia. We have schemes for the benefit of the few. In 1960, there was the song “Cha cha independence”. The people remained with empty promises and the memory of the song. He won nothing with independence. He finds himself continually losing. Everything is rigged, the elections too. The people do not vote as they should. Mafia politicians do what they want and we already see that with the elections in December it will be the same. Mobutu got rich, the Kabila got rich and Tshisekedi continued with the same policy of personal enrichment and enrichment of family and friends. In this there is nothing for the people”.
“Everyone knows it, everyone sees it, everyone is silent”: these atrocities which take place 6300 km from Brussels
Met in Brussels, Zeka Sizo evokes tribalism, “this other scourge”. In Congo, he says, real power is held by the Luba ethnic group from Kasai. “More than five hundred ethnic groups make up the Congo but it is the Luba ethnic group that leads the way. The Congo has been independent for sixty-three years but in reality, we are starving in the Congo of Tshisekedi”.
Baudouin, this great king
Zeka Sizo comes from Sandoa, on the Lulua River, the country of the Tshokwe, that of Moïse Tshombe. “Before Independence, with the Gecamine of the Belgians, Sandoa was a beautiful city, calm and urbanized. We lived well in Sandoa. There were roads and trains were running. Today we no longer go to Sandoa. The roads are in such a state.”
With emotion, Zeka Sizo evokes King Baudouin as the “symbol of a beautiful era”. The king “loved the Congolese”. King Baudouin he said, “should always be there today for the good of the Congolese people” when now, “the people are continually being duped”.
Papa Zeka, as many in the diaspora call him with respect, lives in Verviers. He has created and presides over several associations including ‘Les Amis du Monde’ and ‘International movement for the construction of collective identities’, the MICIC. Very invested in integration, diversity and living together, Papa Zeka is a wise voice from Africa who wants to be heard in the West. “In the Congo, people only hear promises. In the east of the country, you have this war and these massacres which have caused millions of deaths for thirty years in an almost general indifference. This war supported by the great powers, we feel that there is complicity in Kinshasa. What we don’t see is that it’s a business war. A business war on the back of a suffering people of 90 million people.”
And Belgium
Belgium, for Zeka Sizo, has a role to play. “Since colonial times, Belgium has constantly chosen the wrong partners it supports. For higher reasons, industrial, economic, financial, geopolitical, it has supported politicians who have filled their pockets and continue to profit. It is high time that the Belgians opened their eyes and put some morality into it. Support the Congolese people. There are talents, intellectuals, academics, doctors, nurses, engineers, artists, entrepreneurs, associations, journalists, good people to support in Congo apart from the corrupt”.
