I ASKED THE hotel to take down the mirror over my worktable and I replaced it with a poster of Kabanga. When I sit down in front of my computer, I look at him and promise, “I’ll get you, Kabanga.” And when I start wondering what this is all about, I look at the poster. He’s my age, and the first to be charged at the International Criminal Court, an accidental historical character, imprisoned here because he wanted too much and made all the wrong choices. Both of us are in the same stream of chance, he in history, and I in life. The more I look at him, the more I study him, the less sympathy I have, the fewer attenuating circumstances I can find for him. He is here because he wanted power. I am here because I have no power over life, only the ability to analyse the complexities of politics and its evolution, which has nothing to do with life. Compared to him, who destroyed thousands of lives, I’m a drone with no view of the future. Sometimes I feel inferior to him. I feared the violence of life. Kabanga cast himself into it. “He put his foot on the head of the screaming child and with his Rwandan boot he pushed down hard.” We can’t use that passage at the trial since neither witness nor document proves that the boot was Rwandan, and that the child had not committed some punishable offense. It’s also impossible to prove that it was “hard” or that the child was “screaming.” This is not an easy job. I can see in the photo that the child is screaming, but that isn’t enough. We all know he’s guilty, but justice doesn’t know that yet. I admit it: Kabanga fills my thoughts entirely. I am a monomaniac and might constitute a danger for society if this obsession was oriented toward any other human being. I live with this man. But he doesn’t really obsess me; I never dream of him. I observe him, I analyse him, dissect him, manipulate him, weigh him, and question him the way a biochemist works on a promising molecule, frets over the initial results, but, trusting intuition, pursues the splitting of the molecule, combining it with other elements. In the eye of the microscope, all its beauty and complexity will appear, and then perhaps a new drug that might even save lives. The scientist who ends up winning the Nobel Prize isn’t a man obsessed, he’s just working, doing his job. That’s what I’m doing with Kabanga. Stubbornly, I am doing my job.
He is a handsome man, and I can imagine that when he was young, his piercing eyes and determined features impressed the girls. We can’t say it in the courtroom, but we do know it: Kabanga seduced every girl he came across. We have an interview with a certain Martine who maintains she bore his child. She states that Kabanga beat her when she showed him the beginnings of her belly. How could you beat a woman who is carrying your child? Youth can explain the inexplicable. I am searching for something human in him. I do not believe in absolute evil.
I thought I was being entrusted with the analysis of a major criminal, since the Court doesn’t deal with petty thieves. I love that facile formulation. But Kabanga is a petty criminal, a very ordinary man responsible for very major crimes, crimes against humanity. I looked into his childhood. I was hoping for some indication, an event that would explain the path he took. But there was nothing, not a single clue from his childhood that would have turned him into a man whose destiny took him to a prison in The Hague. Rather vague and inconsistent testimony attests that he was either a brilliant student or a troublemaker, but never both at the same time. I look at his photo. The man is sure of himself; his eyes challenge the camera. But if you read his biography, you see he is completely mediocre. His actions are what make him exceptional. As a student he was smart enough to go on to college, but not smart enough to be accepted in a department like law that leads to the civil service, or politics or medicine that open the door to wealth. Kabanga chose the university in Kisangani and studies in psychology. That says a lot. He was more interested in the diploma than in a job. I make a note: “A need for recognition and status.” In Africa, a university diploma, no matter its worth, automatically confers the status of intellectual to anyone who has one. A few accounts describe how, during his studies, Kabanga, in cafés and restaurants, claimed he was a psychologist and counselled patients for a few CFA francs under the table. We can’t use that proof of intellectual dishonesty in the trial, but it would be worthwhile to inject small doses of it to make the judges understand that Kabanga is a cheat and a liar.
Obviously, in Bunia no one consults a psychologist, especially one trained at the university in Kisangani. But his attendance in school, seminary, and university, and his diploma, his ability to speak in long sentences with psychological jargon impressed everyone he met. He was a gentleman for some, a complete rascal for others. He strutted and ravaged the female population of Bunia. I know that for a fact, we have testimony, he lifted his little finger and the waitress slipped into his bed, or the vendor in the market, or his boss’s secretary. Is that testimony credible? Hard to say, since it’s often the product of women seduced by Kabanga, then obviously disappointed not to have been chosen for his wife. When I compile and examine that material, I am abandoning the jurisdiction of the law. Kabanga’s adventures are of no interest to the case I am working on. I am starting to settle the score at a distance with a man I despise. Emotions are disturbing the analysis.
I studied to become what I am: an analyst at the International Criminal Court. Kabanga studied to become a psychologist. If I sold shoes or was a taxi driver, I would feel frustration or a sense of failure. Not Kabanga. He went to university because he wanted to become an intellectual. He didn’t choose psychology because he wished to ease the pain of the soul, or offer relief to children terrorized by legends or wars. He studied psychology because he couldn’t do medicine or law. What interested him, a childhood friend testified, was power and money, especially the former. He sold dried beans and liked to talk prices with the Ugandan major in charge of supply, who explains to him that the gold market was more profitable. They become friends, since they shared the same habit of cheating their bosses. That’s how wars are started. A major tells a psychologist that if he and his friends took control of the gold mines, everyone would get rich. The major pressed the point as girls circled around the two future Midases. They ate pizza and drank whisky in a restaurant owned by a Lebanese man who also had a gold trading business. Kabanga waved over Marguerite, a prostitute, and told her to come and join him later. Marguerite was positively thrilled. Night fell like a cloak of lead, suddenly, like a punch, a crushing blow. Karim, the Lebanese guy, sat down. “Thomas, all the Hema businessmen have their own militias, a few dozen armed men, why not get them together and fix the land problem with the Lendu once and for all? You know how to talk, people respect you, the Ugandans trust you.” The major nodded his head and added, “You form a party, you get those people together, we’ll train you, and you take control of Ituri, then we divide it up, the diamonds, the gold, and the coltan.” The three of them drank a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black and slapped each other on the back. Marguerite was impatient. She told Kabanga she wanted to leave. The psychologist got up slowly, walked over to her, and knocked her out with a heavy, powerful punch to the jaw. Then he sat down and ordered another bottle of whisky. We know the woman never got up, but Kabanga will not be judged for that murder. It isn’t covered by the Rome Statute, but by local criminal justice.
I don’t like the man. I don’t respect him, he has no intellectual qualities or true political project. But out of concern for justice and equality, I try to find extenuating circumstances for him. I search and search, I reflect, I analyse, and I can find only one that speaks to my Western mind: poverty. But goddammit, all Africa is poor, so all Africans have the right to become criminals. That doesn’t cut it. And besides, he wasn’t really poor. He was able to finance his studies. I don’t believe the man is a twisted criminal, a monster, a serial killer like Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. Those people are psychopaths, madmen, psychiatric cases. No, Tom—I use that familiar tone with him as I work on his file—committed crimes the way a bureaucrat or a government employee fills out forms or closes his wicket in front of a long line of waiting people so he can take his coffee break. He was not moved by irrepressible impulses or uncontrollable fantasies. Crime was not the objective in itself, but a tool, a mechanism to get what he wanted. That makes him more repulsive to me. An ordinary man, thousands dead, three thousand child soldiers. All of it carried out, thought through, organised with absolute cool-headedness, with no real hatred, and no emotion. The coldness of crime, biting and cutting like a February blizzard.
I have a separate file called “Rape.” If I take all the testimony seriously, Kabanga raped a woman a week for two years. If one of the girl soldiers had witnessed a rape, we would have been able to use this aspect against him. But that’s not the case. The two girls who are going to testify will describe how they were kidnapped, then forced into combat, and with one of them, forced to wrap electric wire around the testicles of a prisoner and squeeze until they popped out. She cried so much when she told that story that the prosecutor wasn’t sure she’d make a useful witness. I’ve accumulated thousands of such things in my files and memos about Kabanga, but very little of it will be admissible in court. Justice is not concerned with malicious personalities, and judges are not there to reflect on the qualities or faults of the accused, only on his responsibility for the crimes.
The man is cruel and basically worthless. He took pleasure in dominating and humiliating people for no apparent reason. His malice obsesses me, it’s a form of pettiness, mediocrity, like filth, human garbage. I am not thinking of the serious crimes he is accused of, but his behaviour on a daily basis—Kabanga in his life as a normal man, the businessman, the customer in a restaurant, the lover and husband, in his relations with domestics and people in the street.
Testimony of Marie, a waitress:
“I am a student. It was my first day at work as a waitress. Mr. Kabanga came in and asked me to move three customers who were eating at his favourite table. I told him I couldn’t do that. He called me a whore and went to see my boss, who agreed to his request immediately. His two bodyguards were boys who were thirteen or fourteen, I knew them from school. They called me a whore too. He ordered an American pizza. I don’t know the difference between pizzas. The one I served him wasn’t the one he ordered. He grabbed my wrist and twisted it so hard I thought it would break. Then he went to see my boss in his office. I was fired on the spot. In the street, his bodyguards grabbed me by the arm and led me to his house. Mr. Kabanga showed me to Commander Komo and Commander Komo raped me.”
In that testimony, the only thing with legal importance is the two child soldiers. All the rest disgusts me. There was no witness to the rape, but I believe her.
The 11:59 pm train. Sometimes distress overcomes me and I picture myself in a train taking me to someone I would love tenderly, the right way, the way women want to be loved. Sometimes I imagine a house, a child crying, a little yard. Sometimes I think of happiness. Then I go back to work.
Though he was eloquent and self-confident, Kabanga suffered from an enormous social inferiority complex. In Bunia, the big businessmen and the powerful landowners are Hema from the south. Kabanga came from the north.
Testimony of Aristide, one of Kabanga’s employees:
“When he came to Bunia after his studies, he only had his diploma and his fine way of speaking. He knew a lot of handsome words. He visited the merchants and the heads of the Hema community. ‘Don’t you see the Lendu are going to take control of the region? They’re united, while we’re divided. We need to unite the Hema of Ituri and retake control of our land, our gold, and our coltan.’ Until then the merchants were happy just to count their profits and pay off the judges when there was a conflict. Each had his own armed guards made up of unemployed, bored young men who waved around their pistols to impress the crowd. Kabanga said he would turn those little groups into a national militia, and train them, make real soldiers out of them, so the Ugandan occupiers would understand that he was the only man they needed to talk to, and that way they would stop playing the Hema against the Lendu. The Ugandans, you understand, sir, were in our country to keep the peace, but you can’t eat peace. They were out to take our wealth. Everybody has always wanted to steal our wealth and everybody has always succeeded. Look at how we live in this province of gold and diamonds. And the whole Congo is like that, a rich country whose riches leave on a long journey. Kabanga told the commander he could form an army that would serve Uganda. Kabanga was negotiating with both sides. He took money from the merchants and from the Ugandans. That’s how he started his dried bean business and his gold exchange, and then one day he announced in the newspaper that the Congolese Patriotic Union had been founded, it was going to form a regular army and demand autonomy for the province. Kabanga was enjoying himself immensely. When he came home a little drunk from his rounds in town, he would chortle and describe how everyone was eating out of his hand, and how he was manipulating all of them, the Ugandans and the Hema, especially the ones from the south who considered themselves superior. But he would have them licking his boots, it was only a matter of time. He pointed to a dead mosquito on the table. ‘Aristide, are you asleep or what? What’s that thing doing on my table? Come here. Lick it up!’ I washed the table with my tongue as he made jokes. ‘It doesn’t taste as good as a woman, but it’s better than nothing. Anyway, that’s what you are—nothing.’ Madame Kabanga tried to kill him because he humiliated her so badly, he made her do the job of a domestic. He told her to get naked and soap herself up and wash the floor with her breasts and her belly. He laughed and laughed as she rubbed the floor and he laughed even harder when the bullet missed him. ‘Can’t even shoot straight, a real woman.’ He beat her to his heart’s content and threw her out the door, naked. ‘You’ll find a taker dressed like that, for sure.’ Madame Kabanga was quickly replaced by a girl he humiliated in a thousand ways that I don’t wish to describe because the thought of it offends me. Why did I stay in his employ? Sir, it’s obvious you come from a long way away. I had a job and the boss paid on time. Humiliation is part of life like the sun that almost always shines, like crickets and poverty. When you’re African, if you want to survive, you have to be philosophical about it.”
I understand their words, but they don’t resonate in my heart. That’s because I know nothing of real pain, humiliation, and resignation. I know nothing of the world’s tragedy in my flesh. I am an analyst, a witness, a sort of interface. How should I live? The last train has passed. It must be three o’clock in the morning.
Testimony of Josué:
“I was selling cigarettes in front of the Lebanese restaurant where Mr. Kabanga would come and eat on the patio. I had no desire to sell cigarettes, but my parents took me out of school. They didn’t have enough money. I thought I might make enough to go back to school. I sold lighters and condoms too, but only the Whites bought condoms. My dream was to play rap music. We started a group, we recorded a tape, and I would sell it with my cigarettes. Mr. Kabanga had turned into a boss. He was always surrounded by his young bodyguards, some of them were my friends and they showed me their Kalashnikovs, they liked to play with the safety. I didn’t envy them because the only thing I wanted was to make music and get to Kinshasa somehow. Do you know MC Solaar? That day, Mr. Kabanga was having dinner with a big Ugandan military man. He came and bought a pack of Marlboros. ‘You’re Josué, I know who you are, your parents owe me money. You’ll have to work for me to pay back their debt.’ He didn’t even give me the money for the cigarettes. Then he took my whole carton. That’s how I became what you call a child soldier. At first, it wasn’t too hard. We did exercises like at school, we crawled under barbed wire, we scaled little walls made out of logs, and we sang songs about how the Lendu were the devil. They gave us rifles made of wood, we marched up and down, and we listened to nasty speeches about the Lendu. I didn’t know they ate Hema children. We were pretty proud of ourselves, we were well fed, and we were with our friends. I figured the money would show up soon, so I didn’t worry. The first time we fired our Kalashnikovs, I realized it was serious and that we weren’t kids anymore. At the start we aimed at tree trunks, just to learn how to handle the rifle, how to hold it correctly so it would be stable. Then they set up straw men fifty metres away. I was a good shot, the Ugandan instructors told me. A short burst and the straw man completely disintegrated, he flew into a thousand pieces, everywhere. I trembled as I wondered if it would do the same thing to someone like me, who’s a lot more solid than a straw man. Yes, it does the same thing. I saw it once during the attack to take control of the goldmines. I shot and a human being did the same thing as the straw man. Both arms up in the air, his body thrown backward, pieces of flesh flying everywhere. I hope I didn’t kill anyone else. But then I did worse and I still can’t sleep because of it. Mr. Kabanga told me to shoot a prisoner in the anus and I did. Every night, I hear him howling like a hyena caught in a trap of sharp sticks that doesn’t kill him right away, but makes him suffer and die slowly. If you have to kill, you should do it fast. I ran away. When I went back to my parents’ village, everything had been destroyed. I found an old uncle who hadn’t moved, he was still living in his burned hut, and he told me my parents were ashamed of me, they had repudiated me. I love my parents, and what I did, I did for them, and since I can’t tell them that, I’ll tell you, sir, and maybe they’ll hear me, I don’t know, on the radio or the TV. The radio would be better. My father has a transistor. But I think I’ll never be able to play music again.”