Power of a narrative: Breaking out of Western abuse cycles

Rwanda's recent suspension of development cooperation with Belgium isn't just another diplomatic dispute in Central and Eastern Africa – it's more like a restraining order on an abusive ex. This week's announcement, citing Belgium's aggressive campaign to restrict Rwanda's access to development finance, comes with no sugar-coating: Rwanda will not be bullied or blackmailed into compromising national security. The government argues that Belgium's actions undermine the African-led mediation process for DR Congo and risk delaying peaceful resolution of the conflict. ALSO READ: “We will not be bullied” - Rwanda suspends dev't cooperation with Belgium As Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie explains, power lies not just in telling stories, but in determining where they begin. The current narrative often starts with accusations about Rwanda's alleged mineral exploitation in eastern DR Congo – a classic case of gaslighting that represents what Adichie calls the danger of a single story. To understand today's crisis, we must start earlier, with the systematic dismantling of African autonomy. In 1961, Congo's first democratically elected Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, became one of the first African political victims of this abusive system. His assassination, orchestrated through a coordinated effort between Belgian officials, US intelligence, and French security services, came after the West declared him guilty. His crime? Advocating for Congolese control over their own resources. What was his particular plaintiff's complaint? Lumumba opposed Belgian-owned Union Minière du Haut Katanga's exploitation of mineral wealth. For this, they gave Congo's first democratically elected leader capital punishment. ALSO READ: Nduhungirehe rebukes Belgian minister over ‘hypocritical’ statement Belgium's 2002 acknowledgment of moral responsibility and the 2022 return of Lumumba's tooth to his family amounts to little more than the hollow apologies typical of unrepentant abusers. The pattern of control continued. After Lumumba's assassination, they installed their handpicked successor Mobutu Sese Seko, whose 32-year dictatorship maintained the colonial extractive model. Western corporations continued operating in Congo, which was renamed Zaire under Mobutu. Belgian interests through Société Générale de Belgique and Union Minière (later Gécamines), American companies Texaco and Gulf Oil, and French firm Bolloré Group dominated the economy. France, like an enabling family member, maintained its grip through the RECAMP military training program (initiated in the 1990s), development aid, and cultural initiatives via Alliance Française – all tools of control masked as help. Today's landscape shows the same pattern with a few new players. While Chinese firms like China Molybdenum and Sicomines have replaced many Western interests, significant Western presence remains through Swiss-based Glencore, Canadian firms Ivanhoe Mines and Barrick Gold, and French companies Perenco and Total. There are 270 registered airports and airfields all over DR Congo, with major mining operations maintaining their own private airstrips – escape routes for resources while the Congolese people lack basic road infrastructure. France's position as the UN Security Council's pen holder for African affairs is exactly how abusers maintain control through community institutions. Like a toxic ex's mother who heads the neighborhood association, France dictates the international community's understanding of regional insecurity. This institutional gaslighting has real consequences: when we begin the story with the West's version of current conflicts while ignoring historical and present truths, it blinds the world from crucial information of ongoing ethnic violence hiding behind their designated scapegoat for the mineral theft narrative – a calculated storytelling that lets blood spill while pointing fingers to those who bleed. The UN peacekeeping mission, deployed to DR Congo in 1999 ostensibly to help dismantle and neutralize the FDLR, tells this story clearly. The UN's own experts have documented how the Congolese army (FARDC) has integrated the FDLR, a group linked to the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, into their units, with FARDC-registered weapons found in FDLR camps. Yet this evidence of continued abuse gets buried under victim-blaming narratives. There is a word, an Igbo word, that captures these power structures: nkali meaning to be greater than another. As Adichie explains, stories too are defined by this principle: How they are told, who tells them, when they're told, how many stories are told, are really dependent on power. If you want to dispossess a people, writes Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti, the simplest way to do it is to tell their story and to start with, 'secondly.' Start the story with the failure of the African state, and not with the colonial creation of the African state, and you have an entirely different story. This has been manifested completely with the West's narrative of 'Rwanda stealing minerals from Congo.' For if we begin the story from the assassination of Lumumba in order for the West to steal minerals, the placement of Mobutu who aided and armed FDLR at the request of France – whom also controlled the UN narrative on this issue – then the world would know a completely different(and complete) story. Rwanda's action to sanction Belgium echoes beyond Central East Africa – it speaks to every person and nation who has had their story twisted by those in power. When a victim of abuse finally speaks their truth, they threaten not just their abuser, but the entire system that enabled the abuse. Her action demands not just a new chapter, but a completely different book – one written by those who have bled, not those who caused the bleeding.

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Power of a narrative: Breaking out of Western abuse cycles