Son of the Congo
On August 14th, 1954, Oscar Kashala was born to Etienne Lukumuena and Albertine Ntumba in Lubumbashi in the Belgian Congo. Lubumbashi is the nation’s second largest city (the first being Kinshasa, the national capital) and one of its most modern given it lies in the south of the country which holds the Congo’s vast array of mineral riches- such as copper, cobalt, manganese, uranium and other strategic minerals that are key to continued industrial development and technological innovation worldwide. Thus, it is also a cosmopolitan city and this gave young Oscar a particularly worldly view given he often had friends who were American, British, South African, French, Indian, and Arab. Born to the Luba, one of Africa’s oldest and most powerful ethnic groups with a 2,000-year history, his father worked as soldier in the Force Publique- the army of the Belgian colonial administration. Growing up, Oscar’s parents taught him the value of hard work, love of country, commitment to education, and a particularly Luba trait- empathy for others. It would be these defining values that would come to shape much of his life and work.
Student
A brilliant student, Oscar enrolled in the preparatory College of St. Francis of Sales in Lubumbashi and graduated in the top 1% of his class, and second in the country. He then enrolled at University of Kinshasa’s medical program- at the time among the top 5 such programs in Africa- in 1974 graduating with his medical degree with distinction in 1980, and was ranked first in his class and his nation. From this point forward, Oscar set about on a dazzling array of professional and academic appointments:
While a committed doctor and scholar, the young Oscar remained committed to his country which, by the 1980’s, was mired in a deep and prolonged economic crisis accompanied by the increasingly brutal rule of the nation’s President. Spurned on by the values that had taken him so far, Oscar made the conscious decision to not only serve his people as a physician but to serve his nation by participating in its increasingly clandestine democratic movements.
Activist
The nation of Zaire, as the Democratic Republic of the Congo was called at this time, was ruled over with an iron-fist by the dictator, Mobutu. A friend of both Tito of the then Yugoslavia and Ronald Reagan, Mobutu’s regime was to the world a stalwart ally of non-communist West. Mobutu used this position to create a one party state that brutally punished democratic and human rights activists, made a mockery of the rule of law, and engage in patronage network so corrupt that by the early 90’s he was one of the world’s richest men. As a result, the basic institutions of the state and much of the nation’s infrastructure slowly collapsed, leaving the majority of Congolese in destitution. While at the University of Kinshasa, Oscar ran for and became Chairman of the Council of Elders, a secret organization of students whose goal was to challenge the government on issues of human rights, corruption and politicization of the university. Under his leadership, students organized huge protests against President Mobutu and the Rector of the University of Kinshasa, Mr. Vundwawe Te Pemako. Dr. Oscar Kashala was arrested with his colleagues, and forcibly taken to the governor of Kinshasa, and then to the Chief of Security for Mobutu. Although they were not tortured, they were threatened with death if they did not stop their activities. Despite this threat Dr. Oscar Kashala vowed to never relent, saying in his own words: "I learned that one must be politically engaged in order to change the system in the Congo. “
Researcher and Executive
In 1986, Oscar was appointed as the Director of Zaire’s first ever-National Cancer Center in the Ministry of Health. While here, he successfully applied for and won a fellowship to study at Harvard School of Public Health where he enrolled in a joint Oncology and Immunology PhD program run by Harvard and MIT earning his degree in 1992. During this time, biotechnology was an increasingly vibrant sector in the medical industry and recognizing an opportunity, Oscar took a position as Medical Director and director of its Laboratory for Molecular Pathogenesis for Cambridge Biotech Corporation. In this role, Dr. Kashala, his team, and researchers throughout the nation, carried out of 16 groundbreaking projects leading to breakthroughs for drugs treating cancer. Because of the increasing plight of his people due to HIV/AIDS, Dr Kashala initiated for the first time in the world a program in the pharmaceutical industry to develop vaccine for HIV/AIDS strains that prevailed in Africa, and enlisted the help of the US National Institutes of Health, and the World Health Organization. This unprecedented initiative stimulated the interests by other biotech and pharma companies to follow in his pioneering footsteps. Dr. Kashala then moved on to Millennium Pharmaceuticals in the role of senior Medical Director of Thoracic and gastrointestinal Oncology where he led a series of clinical trials that sought to treat rare and deadly forms of lung cancer. While successful professionally, Oscar remained committed to the democratic yearnings of his country but beginning in 1994 a period of cataclysmic violence would engulf his homeland.
Congo Wars
By the late 90’s, Mobutu’s kleptocratic regime was on the verge of collapse. With the Cold War over, Zaire’s prominence in Washington had waned. In 1994, the government of Rwanda, which borders Congo on the East, launched a genocide against the Tutsi’s, one of the two main ethnic groups in Rwanda with a sizable community in the Eastern Congo. Within a matter of months, over 800,000 Tutsi and sympathetic Hutu’s were massacred. A rebel army composed of mostly Tutsi exiles who had been living in the US, Uganda, and Kenya defeated the Hutu-led government and brought an end to the genocide. Fearing retaliation, hundreds of thousands of Hutu’s fled into the Congo in a massive exodus- many of them war criminals who had carried out the genocide. Mobutu, engaging in a classic game of divide and conquer as a means of buttressing his increasingly shaky regime, exploited ethnic antagonism in the area and in particular against the Congolese Tutsi’s. Given this was a clear sign of his weakening grip on power, an exile and rebel leader by the name of Laurent Kabila launched a rebellion using Congolese Tutsi’s as a major element of his force with the support of Uganda and Rwanda- launching the First Congo War in 1998. Weakened by years of neglect, corruption, and ethnic rivalry, Mobutu’s army quickly collapsed and Kabila entered Kinshasa, the national capital, as victor with Mobutu fleeing to Morocco and eventually succumbing to cancer in September 1997. Kabila then renamed the country the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Unfortunately for the Congolese, Kabila proved to be no different in his commitment to them or democracy than his predecessor. To quell growing alarm at the Tutsi influence in his government, he broke off relations with Uganda and Rwanda. In retaliation, both countries worked through proxy rebel militia’s to overthrow his regime setting off the Second Congo War. Kabila’s corrupt rule left him with few friends in the West to call upon for help and so he engaged Angola, Zimbabwe, and Namibia to beat back the rebellion. Thus kicked off what is called Africa’s first “World War” with some 8 countries armies and nearly 10 rebel groups turning much of Eastern Congo into a battle zone and with each plundering the region’s profound mineral wealth- particularly coltan, critical to every electronics manufacturer. During the close of the war, Laurent was assassinated by his guards and his son, Joseph Kabila, became President. The UN eventually brokered a armistice in July 2003 and a transitional government with representatives from most of the major combatants and civil society was put into place to lead the country into elections in 2006. At this point it is estimated that over 5 million people perished in both Congo Wars- the highest number of deaths in a conflict since World War II.
Movement Leader and Candidate
On a visit to the country in November 2004, Oscar saw the devastation up close and personal but he also found strength in the hope and sense of family still present among his people- values that had shaped his life and carried him so far. While on that visit, Oscar came to the realization that much of his life had been spent seeking to heal others but that it was time to bring his people together to heal a nation wracked by war, poverty, disease and tyranny. He decided to build a movement for reform which he calls “Maboko Pembe” or “clean hands” a reference to the fact that he- nor his long suffering people- are implicated in the nation’s corrupt and violent past. This led to the founding of a grassroots political party- Union for the Rebuilding of Congo (UREC)- and in 2006 he entered the race as candidate for President. While he did not win the race, Oscar pledged to continue to work to build this movement. In the intervening years, Joseph Kabila’s regime has become a mirror image of his father’s and continues to be unable to provide the Congolese with even the most basic of services in-spite of an estimated $24 trillion in wealth. The clean hands movement believes that the root of the Congo’s problems is a political system based on weakening the citizenry by depriving of its basic fundamental rights and robbing it of its development opportunities, a political system that centralizes power in the hands of a powerful Presidency. Given the country’s diversity and wide territory (it is the world’s 11th largest country in area), the movement believes that more power should be given to the provinces to lessen competition for resources in the center and to strengthen the National Assembly and Supreme Court to serve as an effective check on executive overreach. Only by pushing power out, dividing it in the center, and strengthening institutions can the Congo’s political system avoid the excessive jockeying for power and state resources- whose byproduct is corruption and rebellion- which has typified its post-colonial existence. As a leader in the movement, Oscar has once again thrown his hat into the ring as a candidate for President. He has assembled a team of campaign advisers- many of whom are American- to wage a truly grassroots, innovative campaign. Oscar has always believed that future is never written in stone. Ultimately, the future of his country belongs to his people and that his campaign for the Presidency is a vehicle for them to pursue it.