The author Antoine Vumilia Muhindo in an interview with Safiye Can.
Antoine, you are a prose writer and a poet. You were invited to the “Africa Alive Festival” in Frankfurt where you had a reading in Café Wiesengrund – café littéraire philosophique et critique –. Can you describe your impressions of the evening to us?
My biggest fear in reading as well as in communicating has always been to find myself in front of a bored audience. I wondered what it would like be to read and talk about the Congo and its torments in Germany. Standing in front of all these people I assumed that their only experience concerning the Congo would be limited to what they watch on the television. But now I must say I was really impressed by the curiosity and openness of the people I met in Frankfurt!
Did you get the opportunity to visit the city of Frankfurt during your stay? What did you like most about Frankfurt and of Germany in general? What did you dislike?
Despite the fact that my stay in Frankfurt was short, I visited a number of places. It was a real pleasure to walk at night along the Main as one of the organizers of the “Africa Alive Festival” was telling stories about the legendary origins of the city of Frankfurt. “Charlemagne pursued by the Saxons miraculously crossed the Main after a prayer ...” This is exactly the kind of epic story we hear everywhere in Africa. But listening to this more than 8000 miles away from home made me feel a little bit at home. As people, the Germans are as much warmer than I imagined at first. They can easily break the ice and start talking with strangers in a waiting room at the airport. This is quite a difference from what I observe in Scandinavia, where I am settled. Unfortunately I also happened to hear stories about racist networks existing within the police in Germany. A number of black people have been murdered but it seems that the authorities have done not much to solve the issue. This is not the kind of thing we expect from a civilized nation.
It´s not a secret that the future of your country Congo means a lot to you. As a young man you joined the revolutionary movement of Laurent-Desire Kabila, which aimed to bring down the regime of the dictator Mobutu. On reflection, do you think that you and all who joined this movement to bring more democracy to the Congo were deceived to replace an old dictatorship by enthroning a new dictatorship following the revolution?
There is no doubt on that. I believe that this adventure was one of the biggest scams that my country has ever known. Capitalist and imperialist forces took advantage of the fertile ground offered by the kind of tidal wave that rose in the 90s against Mobutu´s dictatorship, the enthusiasm of the youth for change and the pretext of the genocide that had taken place in Ruanda, in order to take control over the Congo's riches. To make it even more cynical, they hide behind revolutionary rhetoric! Many young people were attracted, including me. Unfortunately this situation is still going on nowadays with one new pseudo rebellion almost every six months.
How did it feel, when those with whom you fought side by side with against Mobutu to bring freedom to Congo, later accused you of high treason and condemned you to death?
Above all, I felt betrayed. I experienced what a character in Honoré de Balzac´s "Colonel Chabert" calls "the disgust of humanity”. It happened during the nine months of that so-called trial which was actually a festival of lies and hypocrisy. At the end I felt very sad for my country, knowing that our failure would plunge it into a vicious cycle of missed appointments with history.
Although you were innocent, you have been locked up in the infamous prison of Makala for nearly ten years. Most people even can´t imagine how it feels being locked away for one day. What was the source of your strength that helped you to survive these days? And how did you manage not to lose your hope and the belief in the positive side of humanity?
I understood that after the regime failed to execute me physically because of the international pressure, they´d want to break me morally. The biggest daily challenge for me was to still continue to believe in my own humanity. I built a close and special relationship with words and their creative power. Literature and the meditation of the Bible as well as the practice of yoga were a mediation to bring me back to myself. It was like I was protected in an airlock that nothing could destroy. This is how I crossed that desert.
What does it mean for you as a politically ambitious poet to be silenced and imprisoned in your own country?
This is just one of the most horrible suffering to endure: to be subjected to the deceitful logorrhea of the regime´s propaganda without the ability to utter one single word! This is unacceptable, because "Dictatorship is fed with the silence of people ". I do believe that the freedom of mind and of speech is our first right as citizens, even more important than the freedom to elect representatives.
After your impressive reading at the “Africa Alive Festival” I asked you how it feels to be in Sweden, and you answered: “It´s like leaving a prison and moving to the next one, one without roof.” What are you missing the most being in Sweden?
But first, what was most impressive to me was your reading, Safiye. You provided flesh and blood and nerves to my words trough your reading of “Like the Prophets”. So to give an answer to your question, I would say that I miss the freedom to participate in my peoples´ daily life: their struggles, joys and hopes. I feel like I am in those dreams where you run without being able to move, you shout but no one can hear.
In Frankfurt you asked me about the reasons I am writing poems. You also wanted to know when I first started to write poems. May I ask you the same question?
As far as I can pretend to do some kind of analysis on myself – which is never easy in public, I think that at the origin of my writing there is a gap, an emptiness, or to be more precise, a chaos that left behind a mother who disappeared too fast – I was 4-years old. As a teenager the aims of my first poems was to tame, to name that pain, to fill, to understand that emptiness, the absence of that person who has almost never been there. I just could not write anything without a hint to my mother. The results were very tearful poems.
Your poems and prose texts are distinctive and contain philosophical messages. It is obvious that you have an excellent philosophical background. Can I ask you straight: what is freedom?
At the risk of sounding old-fashioned, my approach of freedom is a bit away from the currently widespread individualism. I feel close enough with Jean-Paul Sartre who said he could not be truly free if all men were not free as well. I got this approach from the Ubuntu concept (Sub-Saharan Africa).The starting point of Ubuntu is a kind of con-fusion of the individual, the society and the natural environment in, if not a single entity, nevertheless a kind of common destiny. So the definition of freedom is to be found in the full and harmonious self-development, in other words a blossoming of the individual in a social and environmental context.
In the documentary film “Antoine: A Journey from Hell” you recorded the daily brutality and the terrible conditions in the prison of Makala by using a camera, which you smuggled into the prison. In what way did this daily struggle for survival influence your thinking, and do you believe that reading books and writing poems helped you to survive these terrible days?
My daily struggle for survival taught me to be thankful for the simple things in life. It also taught me that the most important battlefield is in our mind. To me, writing was a matter of life or death. It felt like being in the same position as Scheherazade, the character of the tales of the “One and Thousand Nights Tales”, who was safe as long as she could tell stories. Words can have the power to create, to bring change because they convey the energy of mind, as we know it. There is no better antidote to death.
How do you judge the role of Europe, during the years of war until 1996? Do you think the global community did not make enough efforts to help the victims and innocent people imprisoned in the Congo?
The Congo is kind of Palestine in Africa. The land of genocides and wars that the global community- as you name it -refuses to acknowledge. You can imagine that in such context, it is difficult to find people in Europe, who can be moved about the fate of dozens of innocent people in a jail. It seems to me that the European Community was hoping that the death of Laurent-Désiré Kabila would bring stability and peace to the region of the Great Lakes. They avoided weakening the current regime by rising issues like the human rights. In view of the evolution of the situation, we can realise today, that stability, which ignores justice, can only be precarious.
What are your wishes for the future of your country the Congo? Do you believe generations to come will fulfill these wishes?
I just wish the Congo appropriates his destiny as Lumumba said, that one day Africa would write its own history. Yes, future generations – not necessarily the next – can accomplish this wish, but it is up to the current generation to show the way. The youth need landmarks and stepping stones.
After you finished your reading in three languages in Frankfurt you gave your highly impressed audience some interesting messages and advice. Do you finally want to say a few words to the readers of the Heinrich-Böll-Foundation?
Since we live in a world where the life of Europeans may be affected by an event that occurs on the other side of the planet, I ask the readers to monitor the foreign policy led by the representatives they elect. When these governments back up authoritarian regimes in Africa, it may generate immediate economic benefits, but long-term it will create frustrations, wars and terrorism in Africa, which will end up harming Europe.
Thank you very much for this interview. It was a great pleasure to talk with you!
The pleasure was all mine.
This interview was conducted by the poet Safiye Can in March 2014.
This interview has been translated by Hakan Akçit.
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Leseprobe von Antoine Vumilia Muhindo (weiter)
Biographie von Antione Vumilia Muhindo (weiter)