"Subject matter sets Thomas de Wouters’s images apart, as does his visual approach. His strange, square, black-and-white images look as if they were made by a 1960s-era New York street photographer set loose on the modern-day front." James Estrin, New York Times
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Inside Lucha RD Congo, December 2016 - May 2017
‘New-Congo’, Lumumba's Dream or future Citizen Reality?
The postponement of the elections seems to have been overcome and Kabila further strengthens his position as President-dictator. Far from the dream of Lumumba, is this its end?
In Congo, bigger and richer country of sub-Saharan Africa, takes place the future of Africa. At the time of social networks, non-political citizen movements strengthen, from the 'Broom Citizen' in Burkina Faso to 'La Lucha' in the DR Congo via 'Y en a marre' in Senegal and 'it’s enough’ in Gabon: all struggle for a more just society. The struggle seems to be uneven but mobilization is growing.
“No hostages of the past. Neither slaves of the present. Neither beggars of our future”
On 28 September 2016, I meet Fred Bauma, just out of Makala prison (Kinshasa) after 18 months of detention. Fred is in Brussels to testify before flying away to be received to the US Congress. In Congo I dive into the heart of La Lucha.
The images plunge the public into the reality of those who live and struggle for the advent of a new Congo. This Congo dreamed by Patrice Lumumba, a Congo of Freedom, Justice, Peace, a Prosperous Congo, a truly Independent Congo. We are at the heart of this Ghandi-inspired citizen movement, non-violent, non-partisan, non hierarchical, made up of young people of any social groups, origins and religions, who share the same desire for change. “La Lutte pour le Changement. La Lucha.”
But at what price ... in the interrogation rooms of the ANR (National Intelligence Agency) always the same questions, always the same answers. "We are the change that the Congo is waiting for. Wherever unreason abounds, reason ought to be superfluous." In a country where one dies of thirst on the water's edge, where one breaks poverty in a fertile nature and shouts at Poverty beside mountains of gold, diamonds or copper, when injustice is the rule, resistance becomes a law." (ext. Lucha, ext. M. Séguier).
Prison, blows and wounds, mockeries, extortion ... there is a price to pay for this vital struggle. Congo will change by the Congoleses, not by those other gods that are the UN, NGOs, foreign powers ...
