WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2010-08-02 Time: 13:00:02 Posted By: News Poster
By Joachim Buwembo
Nairobi – Halfway through the World Cup extravaganza, another important event on the continent drew international attention. This was the 50th anniversary of Congo’s independence.
As I watched my president and Belgian royalty join President Joseph Kabila for the big do in Kinshasa, I wondered why it was South Africa and not Congo that had the capacity to host the World Cup on our continent.
I find a comparison between the two countries more in favour of Democratic Republic of Congo for several reasons. For, at 50 years, the DRC should be more mature than South Africa that has just turned 16. Moreover, the DRC is far ahead of South Africa in terms of natural wealth.
Granted, the two countries are similar in that they almost equally suffered the worst form of minority domination – King Leopold’s brutal repression and apartheid respectively.
Otherwise, Congo is far better endowed than South Africa in riches such as gold, diamonds, uranium and coltan.
But even more important, Congo by far beats South Africa in basics like fertile soils and fresh water. While South Africa has to import water from Lesotho, Congo has plenty of rainfall and the mighty Congo River’s fresh water flow is so massive it penetrates many kilometres into the Atlantic before finally mixing with the ocean.
Another resource that Congo has in abundance that South Africa can’t even begin to dream about are its massive natural forests.
The philosophical question about whether a tree that falls in the middle of a forest where nobody hears it actually makes a sound, is actually real in Congo.
Thousands of huge trees fall in the vast forests of Congo every year, without a single human ear ever hearing them.
When it comes to human resources, Congo has many brilliant people. The Congolese don’t just make great music, for which most of us know them.
I have attended international conferences with them, seen Congolese scientists read from meticulously handwritten volumes as their counterparts from other countries download files from iPhones and consult with electronic archives back home.
Anyone interested in Africa’s development should think long and hard about why Congo is not more powerful than South Africa today.
Could it simply be that Congo got independence too early and South Africa just waited long enough to become a more viable state?
If Sergeant Joseph Mobutu had not immediately benefited from the murder of Patrice Lumumba and sat for some 27 years in a Belgian prison, would he have emerged in 1987 a wise, old man who did not have to bestow under served military ranks upon himself and re-baptise himself with weird titles like “the Cock who etc”? Would then a free and fair election in about 1990 have seen him elected president only to serve one five-year term as leader of a multiracial nation without trying to become a black Leopold?
A respected Joseph Mobutu would be a role model and he wouldn’t have had the desire to loot his country, prey on his ministers’ wives or build castles in a country with no roads.
And suppose the ANC had been given power to govern South Africa in 1960, would a then vigorous, younger Nelson Mandela have taken the path of Robert Mugabe, discouraged a multiracial society, dismantled institutions, nationalised private enterprises, destroyed infrastructure and clung onto power? What causes the difference between the Mandelas, Mobutus and Mugabes?
Joachim Buwembo is a Knight International fellow for development journalism.
Original Source: 
Original date published: 31 July 2010
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201008020215.html?viewall=1