Page 25 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 25

Community
Samuel Phillips
is a writer, photographer, author of
several books, and co-publisher of
Msingi Afrika Magazine.
Email: philpsalmist@protonmail.com
And you know what they say,
whatever you hear for a long
time, you will begin to believe.
And the moment you believe it,
you are captured in the never-
ending spin of that narrative
in all its variations, until such
a time as you look again into
the mirror of the truth of who
you are, change your trajectory
of belief based on the wisdom
that you find, and then like a
beautiful sunflower at dawn,
emerge again, a true and
majestic you.
The Weaponization of
Poverty in Africa
In an interview we had with
one of our friends from the
Democratic Republic of
Congo (DRC), when asked
why the wealth of the DRC
does not reflect in the lives
of the Congolese people, he
made mention of something
WWW.MSINGIAFRIKAMAGAZINE.COM
profound. Below is a short
excerpt.
Msingi: Why is the wealth
of Congo not reflected in the
lives of the Congolese people?
Answer: It is not reflecting
because they never allowed us
to have leaders who can lead.
Yes, that’s number one. These
international communities do
not want the well-being of the
Congolese people. So that is
the problem. If you [put] them
[the people of the DRC] in
a good situation, they’ll [the
international communities]
start to look, they will start to
ask what are you doing there?
So, maintain them in poverty
so that they are only crying
for what to feed their stomach.
That’s why it is easy for a
Congolese to get refugee status
in every country. So, they
allowed us to run anywhere and
be accepted except to the same
DRC and those who stayed
they maintain them subject to
poverty. So, the only thing they
want is food and nothing else.
If you go to DRC you will
find a contrast. You cannot
believe that there are persons
in the DRC who are travelling
in private jets and there are
people who do not even have
one spoon of porridge to eat.
Let me give you an example
of [how] bad leadership has
destroyed DRC. We had
Mobutu come into power;
he wasn’t elected by the
Congolese people. Who we
wanted was Lumumba. He
was killed and then they
brought Mobutu. He was
brought by Belgium and
America to suppress the vision
of Lumumba which he had
developed. So, we had Mobutu
being used by the American
CIA and other multinational
companies to destroy the
country.”
This heartbreaking tale of
what happened in Congo and
what is still going on even
right now is mostly the story
of the whole of Africa, but at
different levels. True leaders
of the people are either killed
or character assassinated by
foreign powers and then they
install puppets who constantly
put the people in poverty while
they plunder their country’s
natural resources.
However, these narratives
about a poor Africa are not
the true identity of the African
people. Poverty in Africa is a
carefully crafted and global-
power-backed agenda to keep
Africa as farmland where
ISSUE 25 | MARCH 2024 25