[Mapping Report 3/3] DRC: culture to maintain memory
Audio 02:28
In 2000, Kisangani was the scene of clashes that left at least 700 dead.
Getty Images / Malcolm Linton / Liaison
By: Patient Ligodi Follow
6 min
In the city of Kisangani, cultural actors maintain the memory of the violence that destroyed the city and killed at least 700 people.
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Three actors on the stage and a very attentive audience.
The play at play evokes democracy in Africa and its contradictions.
This is the 10th edition of the Ngoma Festival.
The Taccems Group, which organizes it, specializes in indoor theater, but also plays what it calls intervention theater.
It was in this context that he put on a show on the Six Day War.
A play that was difficult to perform during the occupation of the pro-Rwandan rebellion of the RCD.
Olivier Maloba is artistic director of the Taccems Group.
“
They were very knowledgeable about the content of the show.
And that posed a lot of problems.
We were suspended during the RCD.
It was forbidden to play this show on the entire area occupied by the RCD because we denounced the violence and other misdeeds of the war on the social side of the population,
”he says.
"The theater is the mirror, the reflection of society"
But Olivier Maloba and his team find it important to continue to represent this violence.
“
The theater for us is the mirror, the reflection of society.
We put on the set what society cannot say in the face of the political constraints that we are subjected to.
We, as cultural, we have the chance to find ourselves on the set without distinguishing the audience and we send our message,
”he explains.
The armed violence of the early 2000s is also present in other artistic disciplines such as song and dance.
A troupe called “Tshopo Road Map” is one of the city's most famous folk ballets.
The show, like a book for the younger generations
Sylvain Asani is the coordinator: “
We sang by saying that we no longer want war here in the province of Tshopo.
The war did not benefit us, on the contrary.
The war destroyed even our cultural and traditional values beyond the destruction of human lives and buildings in our city.
".
For him, the show is like a book for the younger generations.
“
Among these children, the orphans of the Six Day War may be present.
They need to know why they were orphaned.
And why the city is in this state.
We must teach these people to avoid conflicts because it benefits no one,
”says Sylvain Asani.
The Tshopo Road Map also maintains a micro-library and a small art exhibition hall from the region.
The ambition, according to its promoters, is to draw from each culture of the province, objects teaching peace, justice and peaceful coexistence.
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