Hollywood Star Ben Affleck Acts for Africa

Ben Affleck, Hollywood actor and director of  Iran hostage-crisis drama “Argo”, reprised one of his more serious roles this week, as expert on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a far cry from his next on-screen role as Batman!

Affleck testified on Wednesday in Washington D.C. on the murder and mayhem in the DRC. Since he founded the Eastern Congo Initiative in 2010, a non-profit advocacy group which aims to improve that region through locally-run economic development initiatives, Affleck has become a credible authority on the area.

The movie star introduced himself  to the SenateForeign Relations Committee as “Ben Affleck. I am an actor and director,” and then modestly admitted, “I am not a Congo expert but an American trying to do my part.”

During his testimony he said “it’s the Congolese folks who are making the real difference and it’s those people who are inspiring me to do this work.”

Since civil war broke out in 1998, five million people have been killed. Over a million have been forced to flee and cannot return home. And billions of dollars has been spent with only minor improvements.

Affleck proposed certain plans of action the USA should take, including an increase in agricultural aid, a necessity to deal with government corruption and a need to ensure that fair elections are held.

He admitted his own early mistake in believing the widely-held  “caricature of Africans just hanging around waiting for somebody to help them”, and said that he now knows the people of the Congo are better able to improve matters themselves, “as opposed to somebody parachuting in from, say, New Jersey.”

The Hollywood star said that this role will be his legacy.

“Outside my family and my work, this is it. This is my legacy,” he said. “This is the thing I will be identified with. I take it extremely seriously.”

SOME FUN FACTS ABOUT THE CONGO

• In 1951 the Oscar winning movie, African Queen starring Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn was filmed in DRC.
• Nine nations border DRC: Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia
• The Democratic Republic of Congo is home to the 2nd largest rainforest in the world—18% of the planet’s remaining tropical rainforest is in the DRC
• There are over 250 ethnic groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo and more than 240 identified languages.
• In 1908 Activists including Mark Twain started the first international human rights campaign, The Congo Reform Association, to expose gross and rampant abuses of labour and by public servants in King Leopold II of Belgium’s Congo Free State.
• Virunga National Park, located in eastern Congo, was Africa’s first national park and has the highest biological diversity of any national park in Africa.
• DRC is the birthplace of African Rumba music, a fusion of Latin and African music, which dominates airwaves across central Africa. African rumba swept the region during the 1960s when many countries were gaining their independence.
• In 1974 DRC was the first sub-Saharan African country to go to the FIFA World Cup
• Uranium extracted from the Shinkolobwe mine in the DRC was used to produce the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II
• The Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara spent a year in Congo fighting with rebels in 1965.

Source: easterncongo.org/

SOME UN-FUN FACTS ABOUT THE CONGO

• Violence, poverty and disease in the DRC have claimed the lives of over 5 million men, women and children.
• Despite democratic elections and multiple peace agreements, the eastern region is still impacted by conflict—more than 1.3 million people are not able to return to their homes.
• There are more than 300,000 Congolese refugees living in neighbouring countries.

Source: easterncongo.org/

More Info

Eastern Congo Initiative website

View South African award-winning photographer James Oatway’s photos of the DRC.