RDC: What's at stake

http://www.rnw.nl/africa/article/whats-stake

What's at stake

Published on : 20 April 2013 - 5:00am | By RNW Africa Desk (Cartoon: Thembo Kash)

More about:

• Cartoon of the week
 
• DRC (Democratic Republic of the Congo)
 
• free speech
 
• freedom of expression
 
• journalists
 
• National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP)
 
• Paul Kagame
 
• Rwanda
• Thembo Kash

This is the last of six cartoons that Congolese artist Thembo Kash is unveiling exclusively for RNW.

About the piece, he says: "Whenever Rwandan President Paul Kagame and his allies are in trouble, they evoke the threat of genocide against the Tutsi minority in the DRC. But Kagame has been in power since 1994 and his many military raids in the DRC have caused millions of Congolese deaths… He invokes the threat of a Tutsi genocide – which is completely untrue – to hide the real reason he's come to the DRC: for looting."

Kash, an independent artist living in Kinshasa, had created these cartoons for a daily newspaper close to the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo, but they were, as he puts it, "refused for reasons you can divine". His work is frequently seen in the DRC newspaper Le Potentiel.

To see other works in the series, click here.

• © Cartoon: Thembo Kash - http://www.rnw.nl/africa