Africa's peace seekers: Petronille Vaweka

Tail twitching, the beast stares at her, ready to pounce.

Reporters on the Job The Monitor gives the story behind the story.
Often a peace deal comes down to an individual willing to step between the warring parties and forge peace. Part 1 - 09/12/05 Gen. Lazaro Sumbeiywo's last mission: peace Timeline: Sudan's long path from war to peace Part 2 - 09/13/05 Betty Bigombe struggles for peace in N. Uganda Timeline: Uganda's fitful path toward peace under Museveni Part 3 - 09/14/05 Petronille Vaweka won't back down in a troubled corner of Congo Timeline: The march to peace in Congo, Africa's heartland.
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But she knows better than to flinch. Moving slowly, she bends her knees and places her iron hoe gently in the dirt.

Staring straight back, she begins talking to the lion. "I'm not your enemy," she says. "I'm only going to the field, and I won't hurt you."

The lion watches. The woman stands silently. Moments pass. With a swish of his tail, the lion leaps away.

Petronille Vaweka, a top official ineastern Congo, grew up hearing this story about her grandmother's courage. She tells it today as a defining tale in her own life - a life devoted to using the power of words to disarm the gun-toting militias that stalk the villages in this lawless corner of Africa.

"If you are facing someone who is violent, you must never use force," Ms. Vaweka recalls her grandmother saying. "The first thing is to put down all your instruments. Then look at them, right into the eye."

* * *

The militia leader's conditions were clear: No large contingent of bodyguards could come with her; no United Nations peacekeepers. Vaweka, on a mission to free two kidnapped government workers, would be allowed to negotiate for their freedom accompanied only by her husband and a few aides.

She agreed, despite the militia's menacing reputation. The Patriotic Resistance Front of Ituri (FRPI in French, the main language) is one of the groups implicated in the brutal killing of nine Bangladeshi UN peacekeepers in a Feb. 25 ambush. FRPI leader Germain Katanga is now in prison awaiting trial.

Vaweka knew this was her task, and hers alone. She's the top official in the fledgling government of Ituri, a province the size of West Virginia in a country as big as Alaska and Texas combined. Ituri is one of Congo's richest regions - and one of its most violent. It's chockablock with gold, diamonds, oil, and coltan (a rare ore used in cellphones and laptops). But the UN estimates that 60,000 people have died here since 1999. Greedy outsiders - including leaders in neighboring Uganda and Rwanda - have stoked ethnic tensions and supplied the region's many militias with weapons to fight for control of the riches.

In this case, the FRPI had snatched two of Vaweka's local administrators from their offices in broad daylight. It was a direct challenge to Vaweka's authority - and her government's efforts to establish control in this long-chaotic region. She couldn't afford to have her administrators locked up.

Petronille Vaweka

JIRO OSE/SPECIAL TO THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR 1948 Born in Ituri Province of then-Belgian Congo 1979 Widowed, then married Paul Ciongo, her son's guitar teacher 2000 Worked for Oxfam as hygiene promoter 2000 Started Foundation for Everlasting Peace 2003 Appointed President of Ituri interim assembly 2004 Appointed Ituri District Commissioner A musical family The Ciongo-Vawekas recorded a 3-song CD entitled "Mekadishkem" or "God Who Makes us Holy."

So on the steamy morning of July 17, Vaweka and her group drove off into the bush. Twenty miles outside Bunia, Ituri's capital, they were met by a half-dozen armed militia members. Vaweka made sure to shake hands with each, looking into their faces with her dark, penetrating eyes.

They were led to a ramshackle tin-roofed church. Everyone left their guns at the door. But more soldiers were outside, weapons ready. The FRPI, it seems, had called a kind of town meeting, with about 600 local villagers present. Vaweka and the militia leaders sat on a raised wooden platform. Villagers sat in pews.

Given the delicacy of the situation, others might have started gently. But Vaweka was soon scolding the audience for tolerating the soldiers. " You've been taken hostage by this militia," she told them. "But you should be free, because the militias are children, and there is no bigger force than you, the people."

To the militia she said frankly, "The administrators are your servants. If you take them hostage, who will serve you? And who will serve the people?"

Those who know Vaweka say one source of her strength is her insistent truth-telling - to diplomats, militia leaders, anyone. "She's always respectful - but always frank," says Anneke Van Woudenberg of Human Rights Watch in London, who has worked in Ituri for years.

On the platform, militia leaders at first defended themselves, complaining they'd been left out of the recent integration of ex-militia into Congo's national Army, the FARDC. As Congo's 1998-2003 war wound down, Vaweka and others encouraged Ituri's militias to enter a UN-run disarmament program. Some 15,000 have done so since Sept. 2004, the UN says. Many have joined FARDC ranks. But there are still roughly 1,000 hard-core combatants in Ituri, including the FRPI.

To the militia, Vaweka lectured: "If you're not in communication with administrators" - and instead take them hostage - "how can they help you" join the Army?

Soon, the FRPI leaders sat with heads bowed in shame, Vaweka says. Finally, they offered her a hen and some Coke. It was a sign of peace. She reciprocated with some juice she'd brought as a kind of host gift. The mood lightened. A few days later, the hostages were released unharmed.

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Story continues below

A SHADOW OF THEIR PAST PRESENCE: Many of the militias, like this one on the streets of Fizi, in eastern Congo, are now part of the new national army forged under a peace deal signed in 2003. FINBARR O'REILLY/REUTERS

Slowly by slowly, as some Africans say, peace is coming to this part of Congo. Negotiation by negotiation, Vaweka chips away at the assumption that force is the path to power. Starting five years ago as a lowly civil-society worker - and now as the province's top official - her determination to stand up for order, and for villagers, in a region where militias have run roughshod for years, is helping to roll back the rule of the gun.

"If anyone in Congo deserves a Nobel Prize, it's Petronille," says a diplomat in Kinshasa.

Just two years ago in Bunia, armed groups were besieging the UN headquarters and killing people in the streets. These days, gunshots no longer ring out, and residents can walk around town at night. New businesses, including an Internet cafe and an Indian restaurant, have opened recently.

To be sure, the UN is a major factor. It got aggressive in the wake of the nine peacekeepers' deaths. It fights hold-out militias with helicopter gunships, armored-personnel carriers, and heavy weaponry. But observers say Vaweka's role is central, too.

"The armed groups complain bitterly about her," mostly because she confronts them, says Ms. Van Woudenberg. "But everyone knows if she wasn't there, there would be massive problems."

Over the years, she's held countless negotiating sessions with militias - cajoling, lecturing, and pushing them toward peace. "I won't undertake something unless I know I'll succeed," she says.

Yet she pays a personal price. Long ago, she sent her older children away from Ituri for their safety - and keeps a close eye on her younger, adopted children, one of whom is a former child soldier. Death threats are a daily occurrence.

And complete peace in Vaweka's region and nation remains elusive. She wishes her grandmother were still around to advise and inspire. "I think about her," Vaweka says, "every day."

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