Arts activism in East Congo

Chérie and Petna Ndaliko delivered the annual James S. Coleman Memorial Lecture on May 12, speaking about their work with Yole!Africa, a nonprofit cultural center where youths can develop new skills and pursue opportunities in war-torn eastern Congo.

by Catherine Schuknecht 

UCLA International Institute, June 3, 2015 — “The most significant impacts of art on individuals in communities facing violence are in fact immeasurable — they are these deeply internal, transformative experiences that people have as a result of engaging with creativity, as a result of engaging with critical thinking,” said Yole!Africa Executive Director Chérie Rivers Ndaliko. Chérie and Yole!Africa’s founder and artistic director, Petna Ndaliko, together delivered the James S. Coleman Memorial Lecture on May 12 at Kaufman Hall. The husband-and-wife duo discussed their work with the cultural center in Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The Coleman Lecture is hosted annually by the UCLA African Studies Center (ASC) in honor of Professor James Smoot Coleman, who founded the center in 1959. The World Arts & Cultures/Dance Department (http: //www.wacd.ucla.edu/) cosponsored the event with support from the Mellon Postdoctoral Program in the Humanities, “Cultures in Transnational Perspective. (http: //mellon.humanities.ucla.edu/)"

Petna Ndaliko is an internationally renowned filmmaker and activist who has been the featured speaker at events sponsored by the United Nations and the European Union. Chérie Rivers Ndaliko is a professor in the department of music at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and author of the forthcoming book, Charitable Imperialism and Necessary Noise: Art, War and Humanitarianism in the East Congo.

A sanctuary in Goma

Established in response to a violent crisis in eastern Congo, the Yole!Africa center provides a safe space for Congolese youth to develop skills and gain an alternative education necessary to thrive despite conflict in the region. Explained ASC Director Françoise Lionnet, “Yole!Africa is the center of the youth-led nonviolent resistance movement through artistic practice.”

At the time of its founding in 2002, the East Congo was in the early years of a crisis that began with the second Rwandan invasion of the DRC in 1997.

The invasion was launched as an offensive against extremist Hutu militants who were responsible for the 1994 Rwandan genocide, which targeted the Tutsi minority in Rwanda, killing close to 800,000 people. This resulted in an extended war between Congo’s government, aided by Angola and Zimbabwe, and the still active M23 rebel group (http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_23_Movement).

The region’s population continues to live in daily fear of death, sexual violence and displacement. Services deemed non-essential, such as education and cultural centers, have been shut down, and continue to suffer from the fall out.

Without schools to attend, the country’s youth has limited opportunities. “The three primary options for young people were to join a rebel militia, get killed by a rebel militia or try and seek refugee status,” explained Chérie.

Early on, Petna recognized a profound need within a community where young people lacked opportunities to shape their own futures. The filmmaker hoped that art might serve as a useful tool to fulfill this need and founded the center in 2002. “As we all know, film and film making is a political art of representation, so controlling our own image was very, very important,” he remarked.

Fifteen years later, the violence that triggered Yole!Africa ‘s founding persists and the center continues to offer youth a safe environment to cultivate learning and self-expression. Specifically, it offers classes and specialty workshops in numerous areas, including the digital arts, dance, journalism, music production, computer literacy and language proficiency. All classes are free, allowing the center to serve between 14,000 and 17,000 young people each year. Many students go on to pursue professions in law, business, politics, journalism, education, international relations and art.

Petna noted that creating art in a war zone is not without its dangers. “Telling a story today still in Congo . . . can cost [a] life,” he explained, adding that as artists, he and his students are on the front line of the conflict in East Congo every single day.

There is a similarity between a camera and a gun, he explained. “[Both] shoot, but one shoot[s] to take away life and another one shoot[s] to preserve life.” Yet the opportunity to pursue artistic expression supersedes this danger for many students.

Hubert Bonke, a student of cinema at Yole!Africa, fears for his own life because he fears for the death of his film projects. “Dying without making my film, that would have been so terrible for me!” said the student, who was profiled in a student-produced film entitled, “Dream Under Fire.”

Confusing artistic production with foreign agendas

Despite the successes of Yole!Africa, Chérie and Petna are concerned that the growing popularity of local arts-based activism among nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and other transnational organizations may inflict more harm than good. “Our concern is that the tendency to celebrate artistic endeavors as inherently positive erases and silences the violence that can be perpetrated against the autonomy, value and perception of communities through well-intentioned, but ill-suited creative projects,” explained Chérie.

In February 2013, Yole!Africa collaborated with two international NGOs — Solidarity International and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) — to hold a music competition. That competition, said Chérie, revealed several issues relating to foreign intervention in a nation’s artistic production.

The competition was intended to produce songs that would help educate local populations about preventing cholera disease through hand washing. At the time, cholera was spreading through internally displaced persons (IDP) camps in North Kivu province of the Republic of the Congo. Most submissions critiqued the competition’s focus on hand sanitation rather than on the impact of limited access to clean water. Other entries denounced the fact that IDP camps and international interventions, rather than poor hand washing practices, are actually responsible for the spread of cholera.

However, the NGOs awarded the prize to one of the few songs that refrained from criticizing the emphasis on hand sanitation, thus excluding the broader statements most artists were interested in making.

“From a local perspective, people argue that by substantiating the claim that NGOs like Solidarity are meeting local needs,” explained Chérie, “songs like this become part of the vicious cycle of raising funds that result in supporting only those who have the power to continue to confuse local needs with foreign agendas marketed as arts activism.”

Related problems of foreign intervention in art and culture production include editing, which is perceived as censorship, and paying high fees to musicians, which undermines the local economy. These issues prompted Yole!Africa to launch the online series, “Art on the Front Line,” which serves as a platform for artists to express uncensored dissent independent of NGO sponsorship.

All pictures by Catherine Schuknecht/ UCLA.

​

Published: Wednesday, June 3, 2015