Kinshasa, May 22nd, 2021 (CPA).– Pr Joél Lisenga Bolila from the University of Kinshasa (UNIKIN) and the Protestant University in Congo (UPC) announced on Friday during an interview with the CPA , the publication soon in Kinshasa of his book entitled « Political leadership and underdevelopment in the DRC: the city of Kisangani and its postcolonial elites », published by Harmattan, Paris 2021. According to the author, this book, which will be focused on the baptismal font in the coming days in Kinshasa, seeks to provoke a rupture, a distance from the « conspiracy » and alarmist theses excessively highlighted in several works by research on the causes of underdevelopment in postcolonial African states. Its starting point, he said, is a question relating to the « agency » of the political elite in the face of the development of his nation, approached from the socio-political context of the city of Kisangani, chief- place of the former Orientale province in the DRC.
The author said he spoke in his investigations of the persistence of a bitter struggle for leadership, against a background of competition and discord between political leaders from different districts of the former Orientale province. “With these discords, they have contributed significantly to the economic, social and cultural underdevelopment of this city by taking stock of the crystallization of repeated rebellions, wars, devastating riots and massacres of civilians at the origin of the awful pseudonym which was glued to him, from the first years of independence, Kisangani (Stanley city), the martyr city of the DRC”, he insisted. The main indicators of the struggle for leadership Prof.
Joél Lisenga said he reflected on the relationship between political leadership and the development of the DRC, by correlating the main indicators of this struggle for leadership and their consequences on development since the country’s accession to the independence (1960) until the end of the first phase of the political transition in 1997. The reader will easily discover, he argued, that the struggle for leadership is one of the factors behind the underdevelopment of the city of Kisangani. According to him, the quest is twofold, in particular, to reduce the misdeeds of leadership and underdevelopment nationalism and more fundamentally, to develop leadership and development nationalism. ACP/
