S.O.S in Eastern Congo:Magic Sticks, Corruption and Gorilla Warfare

A Rwandan businesswoman named Rose Musabuwera controls another network—she is a big provider to the gorilla trade, according to local insiders and investigators. This Madame of the gorilla trade is colourfully referred to as the “motor brain that nourishes the networks.”

When asked the source of the infant gorillas, “motor brain” said the babies are taken from a forest named BUKIMA, within Virunga Park and in collaboration with “armed soldiers.” When asked if any bushmeat was sold, she replied it was sold to the wives of soldiers being integrated into the ranks of the Congolese army at Rumangabo. This could possibly mean the Mai Mai troops or those of Laurent Nkunda. Wildlife Direct has a patrol post in this area, but seems surprisingly ignorant of this ongoing and public trade, and remains silent.

The Congolese investigative team identified the three-pronged “axis” of the trade route: [1] Sake to Goma; [2] Goma to Kiwanja and Rumangabo; and [3] Kibumba. Sake is 25 km from Goma, and Congolese army soldiers control this “axis” with support from MONUC.

Militia and regular Congolese army officers and soldiers are believed to be involved in the hunt for magic gorilla sticks. “All the network of the traders and their facilitators are at work in search for the magic sticks,” reported I.C.P.E. “This business has interested every social class including the responsible at every level as the price is very attractive and can go up to 20.000 U.S. dollars.”

The Kibumba route is especially pourous, in spite of the number of check points erected on this main route through the Virungas. Kibumba is 30 km north of Goma, the site where some 300,000-350,000 Rwandan refugees were herded during the Rwandan genocide. Smugglers are either complicit with authorities or the guards at the roadblocks are accomplices. A motorcyclist told the team that he had transported baby gorillas in cardboard boxes on the Goma road, that is, the Kiwanja-Rumangabo route. He is paid by the hour and considers it “a good job.”

Whether or not one believes in the fantastic tales of magic gorilla sticks imbued with supernatural powers, or attributes the horrific loss of mountain gorillas in July 2007 to human greed, revenge or hunger, several key questions have still not been answered.

After all of the time, money, suffering and blood that have been poured into the World Heritage site known as Virunga National Park since Dian Fossey gave her life in 1985, why has the slaughter of mountain gorillas suddenly been escalated to a degree that Fossey herself did not witness?

Why haven’t primatologists reported the use of walking sticks as tools by the aging patriarchs and matriarchs of the great apes? Why haven’t the big primate protection organizations like Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and the Jane Goodall Institute and the Gorilla Organization reported the rise of the illegal trade in magic sticks that is reportedly behind the recent gorilla killings? This is the stuff mainstream media latches on to and spreads like plague.

Why did the recent spate of mountain gorilla killings begin in perfect coincidence with the January 2007 appearance of the mercenary forces known as Wildlife Direct? The same thing happened in Kenya when Richard Leakey organized mercenary forces there: elephants were slaughtered in record numbers. In a review of Leakey’s book, Wildlife Wars The respected East African writes:

“When Leakey embarked on a full-scale war against elephant poachers, he was up against well-trained bandits from Somalia. He writes that everyone—the public, the rangers themselves, journalists and even the international press—were so afraid of the poachers that when he made the famous remark that he would invite the press to take snaps of dead poachers, he was seen by reporters as a sort of ‘Clint Eastwood character running amok in the savannah.’ ”

The mountain gorilla is not alone in paying the price for the Western “conservation” and “humanitarian” industry operations in Central Africa. With all the bloodshed, with all the killings come new markets for the Western charity/misery industry, new jobs for white expatriates, new sales of shiny new SUVs for Toyota and Nissan—and the ongoing devastation and death of Congolese people.

Congo today is a humanitarian disaster that makes the Titanic look like a speck in an ocean of blood. Magic gorilla sticks indeed. The people of Congo get the shaft, no matter how you look at it. It is no wonder the local sorcerers and marabouts need a little magic.

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