It is a hot, humid afternoon in Kinshasa. Traffic snarls and grinds on rutted streets. Heavy rain threatens. Felix Wazekwa’s band members load their bus with musical instruments in the suburb of Limete before heading to a tough neighborhood far across the city. A local candidate running in the elections rescheduled for today has hired them to play at a rally.
“If you can get people to dance, then you can get a message across very easily. The politicians have a message, and I am very good at getting people to dance. So they come to me,” said Wazekwa, who is one of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DR Congo) biggest stars.
The election is two years late and has been forced on Congolese President Joseph Kabila, in power since 2001, by popular and international pressure. The stakes are high. The victor would command the DR Congo’s security establishment — and the lion’s share of the revenue generated by the country’s vast mineral resources. The losers are likely to face years of repression.
In the DR Congo, music and politics are inseparable. To gain an advantage, many politicians turn to the country’s singers and band leaders, hiring them for rallies, commissioning special compositions, or simply paying for a mention during a song.
“During the campaign I sing what I’m told to sing. I’m not here to judge,” said Wazekwa, who recorded a single praising the government’s presidential candidate, Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, based on a text prepared by aides.
With no revenue from royalties, systematic pirating, limited infrastructure and few public performances, many Congolese musicians have always relied on wealthy patrons.
“The artists need money and politicians, especially those who have been in power for some time, want to burnish their image. This is a cheap way of getting publicity. You pay to be mentioned in one song, and it gets replayed many, many times,” Kinshasa-based analyst and columnist Israel Mutala said.
The DR Congo is a creative powerhouse, despite its deep poverty and endemic instability — and its eventful political history has one of Africa’s richest soundtracks.
In 1960, the song Independence Cha Cha, celebrating the end of Belgian colonial rule, was a continent-wide hit. During his disastrous three-decade rule, former Congolese president Mobutu Sese Seko commissioned “praise songs” from top artists.
In the past few years, a more contemporary and gritty style has emerged to challenge the famous rumba lingala, the DR Congo’s 70-year-old, Cuban-influenced, popular musical tradition.
Not all see the tight ties between creative artists and politicians as healthy.
“If there’s a relationship between music and politics, then it’s a very perverted one. When there are so many dead, raped, sick and miserable in this country, then we musicians have a responsibility, too. These are our fans, our brothers and sisters,” said Alex Dende Esakanu, aka Lexxus Legal, one of the most popular Congolese rappers. “Of course, musicians have the right to take the politicians’ money, but I say it’s immoral.”
Esakanu, 39, is an opposition candidate and spokesman for the campaign of Martin Fayulu, a former businessman who was a marginal figure before the campaign, but has been attracting large crowds.
“The authorities are doing everything they can to block us. If the elections are fair, we have every chance of winning,” said Eskanu, speaking to reporters at his home in a poor neighborhood of central Kinshasa which, like most of the city, suffers from a chronic lack of electricity and drinking water.
The DR Congo is in better shape than after the terrible civil war that ended in 2002, but 14 million of its 76 million inhabitants need emergency aid. In the east, dozens of militia battle for resources and at least 300 people have died in an outbreak of Ebola. The country is the size of western Europe, but has no real road or rail network. Prices for basic necessities are soaring.
“People have a deep, strong desire to express themselves at the polls. They think that by voting, they will have a better life. There is deep disillusion with the government and they want to punish those who have been in power,” Mutala said.
Many blame the problems on Kabila, who took power at 29 after his father, Laurent, was assassinated in 2001, but Kabila’s reluctant decision to step down, two years after his second electoral mandate expired, has defused some tension.
Most observers believe that Shadary would win, and many fear fraud to make sure the government’s choice is the victor. People have been shot at by police during rallies and protests.
On Wednesday, the electoral commission announced that it was canceling voting in the cities of Beni and Butembo and their surrounding areas, because of Ebola and militia violence. The areas are an opposition stronghold, and local politicians denounced the move as an effort to swing the vote in Shadary’s favor.
The two biggest opposition political figures have been barred from the contest on legal grounds, so votes against the government would be split between Fayulu and Etienne Tshisekedi, the only other candidate.
“They’ve been very tactical, very clever. They’ve got the opposition exactly where they want them,” one diplomat in Kinshasa said of the government.
Kabila this month told reporters that he would not leave politics and planned to run in the 2023 elections.
Wazekwa defended his work for Shadary, who is under EU sanctions for his role last year in a crackdown on pro-democracy protestors.
“If I say no to him and not to others, then I’m making a political statement, but now, because I’ve played for one candidate, I’m being labeled as being on his side. This just isn’t fair. In France, Johnny Hallyday was for [former president Nicolas] Sarkozy. In the US, [US presidential candidates] Hillary [Rodham] Clinton and Donald Trump had artists who supported them, so why is it a problem when it’s in Africa?” he said.
Other musicians said that refusing a request from the government brings significant risks: tax investigations, canceled licenses to perform and worse. A rapper who criticized the “vultures in velvet” in power was abducted this month by unknown men in the eastern city of Bukavu.
Melo Costa Yekima, one of the leading figures in a new wave of younger musicians mixing dance with rap, said he had refused demands to record from both the government and the opposition.
“You can’t separate music from politics... I just try to ring an alarm bell and tell things as they are in our society,” Yekima said.
“The elections are a good thing, but I don’t think that they will bring the changes that people want,” he added. “But I am optimistic. I believe that things will sort themselves out here one day and that the Congo is going to be beautiful.”
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