Roundtable Discussion Follows New Beginning

Freddy Mulumba of Le Potential and Benoit Kambere of Echo des Grands Lacs during roundtable discussion

On June 10, PAS Kinshasa held a roundtable discussion concerning President Obama’s “New Beginning” speech in Cairo and the issues it raised in the DRC.  The panel included members of the journalistic, political and academic communities.  The setting was intimate, and the conversation was wide-ranging.  In general, the panelists all agreed that the speech had a large and positive impact on the Congolese people.  Now everyone is waiting to see what substantive changes result, and whether President Obama’s visit to Ghana will be the occasion for an equally historic speech concerning Africa.

Here are some excerpts from the panelists’ comments:

“Africans can feel sympathy for the Muslims because they, too, have suffered from a colonial heritage.  We hope that when Obama comes to Africa, he will bring a similar message of peace, tolerance, and justice.”

“My friends and I saw the speech as a rupture, but as we say here, a positive rupture, breaking away from something bad and toward something good.   The U.S. is more than a nation.  It is a notion, an idea that is in everybody’s head.  Obama is getting people to redefine that notion.”

“Obama is one out of many - different races, different religions.   The best civilizations are diverse.  In Europe you can go from Cyprus to Gibraltar on one passport.  In Africa, we are still divided by borders and face border conflicts.”

“What interested me was what he said about women’s rights.   He wants to empower women by giving them access to education and work.  He worries about pornography and vulgarity on the internet.  When he spoke about the struggle for women’s rights, he said that struggle was still going on in the U.S.  As an African woman, I hope that equality will happen quickly.   Violence against women is a problem for everybody, not just the Muslim world.”

“Previous U.S. presidents gave speeches that were one-sided, focused on protecting the U.S. against its enemies.  But the more you try to protect yourself, the more threatened you become.  Obama is the first president to give a balanced speech.  If the extremists continue with a biased discourse, they will appear more and more marginalized.”

“When the world hears ‘Congo’ it should mean coming together.  That’s our destiny.”