Dr Denis Mukwege
Dr Mukwege escaped an assassination attempt on his life on October 25, 2012 in Bukavu. He was almost days after taken to Europe for his safety. But his conscience has been calling him to go back.
Is this a challenge to the Kabila’s government which cannot guarantee Congolese people’s security? Strongly so.
In a recent article, I called upon to Congolese to stand up against their government because it does not fulfill its constitutional obligations towards them.
RFI reports that Mukwege is returning home to be close to his patients at the Panzi hospital in Bukavu on Sunday 13th January 2013. This could become a daunting issue for the Kabila’s regime.
The doctor has been treating Congolese women and girls victims of rape for many years. But since a few years he realised that this was not addressing the issue he was faced with in his work as a surgeon.
He started advocating against the irresponsibility of the Kinshasa government which has not been doing anything serious to tackle the root causes of persistent insecurity in the Eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Hundreds of thousands of victims of rape have been reported since the first war of DRC invasion in 1996.
The November 2011 general elections that put Kabila in power have been widely decried. The majority of Congolese voices the illegitimacy of his government.
On top of this, they complain that it has been incapable of putting in place a strong army able to protect the integrity of the country against invaders like Rwanda and Uganda using proxy rebel groups such as M23 and others alike.
Will the return of Dr Mukwege reinforce the weakness of Kabila’s government when it will expose again its ineptitude on the issue of citizens’ safety on the Congolese territory?
Or will it start a new chapter somehow presently unpredictable in the long tragedy of Congolese Eastern provinces?
Let’s wait and see. Time will tell. As they say.
