Please keep South Sudan and Sudan in your prayers along  with the Democratic Republic of Congo!!

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From BBC News Africa: South Sudan Nhial Deng Nhial: We are on brink of war

South Sudan’s foreign minister has warned his country is on the brink of war with Sudan following days of fierce fighting along the border.

Nhial Deng Nhial told the BBC Sudanese forces had invaded the town of Jau, which was in the south.

He urged the international community to intervene and said he hoped full-scale hostilities could still be avoided.

South Sudan seceded from the north in July following years of civil war in which some 1.5m people died.

The border between the north and south has not yet been officially designated.

Since July Khartoum and Juba have accused each other of supporting rebels in the border areas.

‘Tanks and aircraft’

Mr Deng Nhial said the clashes in Jau, which he said was a town in Unity state, were the biggest threat to peace since South Sudan’s independence.

“Although there have been frequent aerial bombardments of different places in the Republic of South Sudan, we think that Khartoum has raised this offensive to an entirely new level by committing ground forces to cross into the Republic of South Sudan,” he told the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme.

“We are still very much committed to the principle of dialogue with Khartoum – we are still hopeful that we can pull back from the brink of outright war.”

Earlier, Col Philip Aguer, spokesman for South Sudan’s army – the South People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) – told the BBC that Khartoum had used tanks and long-range artillery in the offensive on Jau, which started on Saturday.

Antonov aircraft had also bombed the area, he said.

Southern troops had now recaptured the town, but Sudanese soldiers were still in South Sudan, he said.

“This is a war situation and if they don’t withdraw, the SPLA will force them out,” Col Aguer told the AFP news agency.

Across the border in the state of South Kordofan, Sudan’s army has for several months been battling rebels, who once fought against Khartoum during the civil war.

South Kordofan is one of several border areas which failed to hold popular consultations about their future ahead of South Sudan’s independence.

Mr Deng Nhial denied accusations that his government was supporting the rebels in the northern border areas, known as the SPLM-North.

“We had been associated with the SPLM-North during the years of our struggle. After independence we severed all military ties with our units in the north and we didn’t provide any additional equipment,” he said.

The foreign minister said it was important that the border be properly demarcated.

“Khartoum continues to drag its feet although we are agreed that close to 80% of the border is no longer in dispute,” he said.

“This in our mind raises serious suspicions.”

Please pray for the Democratic Republic of Congo! We have  the privileged of working there !

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From BBC Africa: Appeals for calm after disputed DR Congo Election:

Burning tyres sent palls of smoke over areas in Kinshasa loyal to Etienne Tshisekedi

There have been appeals for calm in the Democratic Republic of Congo following the victory of President Joseph Kabila in disputed elections.

Main opposition candidate Etienne Tshisekedi has rejected official results and declared himself the winner, raising fears of violence.

Mr Tshisekedi along with the EU, the US, Britain, France and former colonial power Belgium appealed for calm.

Riot police are patrolling the capital, Kinshasa, and gunshots have been heard.

The city, in the west of the country, is an opposition stronghold and columns of smoke were seen rising over districts backing Mr Tshisekedi as groups of young men burned tyres.

On Friday evening, election commission chief Daniel Ngoy Mulunda announced that President Kabila had gained 49% of the vote against 32% for Mr Tshisekedi.

Many shops and stalls in Kinshasa’s markets have been closed for most of the week as the country awaited the results, which were delayed by several days.

We have done our own calculations and I received 54% to Kabila’s 26%. His term is finished. I am the president”

Etienne Tshisekedi Opposition candidate

Meanwhile, in areas loyal to President Kabila, mainly in the east of the country, residents cheered and supporters staged victory parades.

“I reject these results, and in fact I see them as a provocation against our people,” said 78-year-old Mr Tshisekedi.

“It is scandalous and vulgar. We have done our own calculations and I received 54% to Kabila’s 26%. His term is finished. I am the president.”

Mr Tshisekedi later appealed to his supporters to “stay calm and peaceful”.

However, he added that he was waiting to see if diplomatic efforts would change the situation.

The army says it has about 20,000 soldiers on standby in Kinshasa. The atmosphere in the city is said to be tense.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for “any differences regarding the provisional results of the polls to be resolved peacefully through available legal and mediation mechanisms”.

The French Foreign Ministry appealed for peace, saying: “France calls on all Congolese political players to show restraint and a spirit of responsibility.”

US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Washington was calling on DR Congo’s leaders and their supporters “to act responsibly, to renounce violence, to resolve any disagreements they might have through peaceful dialogue”.

Who is Joseph Kabila?

• 40 years old
• Born in a rebel camp in eastern DR Congo – where he enjoys most of his support
• Spent his childhood in Tanzania
• His father, Laurent Kabila, overthrew long-time ruler Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997
• He first became president after his father’s assassination in 2001
• Oversaw the signing of a peace accord in 2002 to end a five-year conflict involving several other nations
• Became DR Congo’s first freely elected leader in 2006, winning a run-off poll with 58% of the vote
• His campaign slogan was: “Five building sites of the republic”
• Shies away from public speaking
• Is married with one daughter

• Joseph Kabila: DR Congo’s president in profile
• Failed state: Can DR Congo recover?
• Waiting in vain for a train in DR Congo

The announcement of the results had been delayed since Tuesday, with election officials blaming logistical problems.

Four other candidates have said the election was rigged and should be annulled.

International observers said the vote was flawed but stopped short of calling it fraudulent. Most said the irregularities were not enough to change the outcome.

Deadly clashes marred the period leading up to the election and thousands of foreigners and Congolese have fled the country for fear of further violence.

Mr Kabila, 40, has been president since 2001 following the death of his father, Laurent.

In 2006 he won the first elections since the end of a five-year conflict and is due to be sworn in on 20 December for his second term.

But his victory must first be confirmed by the supreme court.

He enjoys greater popularity in eastern areas, where his origins lie and where he is credited with helping to end the war.

However, he is less popular in the west, partly because he is not fluent in the local Lingala language and because some see him as representing foreign interests.

Mr Tshisekedi has said he has no intention of taking an election dispute to the court, which he regards as “Kabila’s private institution”.

Earlier this year, the constitution was amended so that the candidate with the most votes would win the election, removing the need for a second round.

The BBC’s Thomas Hubert in Kinshasa says the move succeeded in dividing the opposition.

But it means Mr Kabila is bound to face legitimacy challenges as he has been re-elected with less than 50% of the vote, amid widespread suspicion of electoral fraud and with very little support in the west.

Although DR Congo is rich in minerals such as gold and diamonds, years of conflict and mismanagement mean it recently came bottom of a survey of living standards around the world.

Please keep the Democratic Republic of Congo in your prayers. Especially lift up our Congolese brothers and sisters in Christ. The Christians I have met there are beautiful examples of God’s grace, love, and faithfulness in the midst of much difficulty. Pastors are hungry for biblical teaching and literature. Please pray for Reaching Africa’s Unreached as we seek to come alongside God’s work in this beautiful country….thank you!!!

The article below comes BBC Africa:

Failed state: Can DR Congo recover?

As the Democratic Republic of Congo prepares for just its second general elections in four decades on 28 November, Congolese affairs analyst Theodore Trefon considers whether this failed state, still recovering from a war which led to an estimated four million deaths, can ever be rebuilt.

People in the Democratic Republic of Congo expect very little from the state, government or civil servants.

In fact, ordinary Congolese often repeat expressions like “the state is dying but not yet dead” or “the state is ever present but completely useless”.

It seems they also expect little from the upcoming elections and there can be little argument that DR Congo is indeed a failed state.

Ordinary citizens are poor, hungry and under-informed.

The government is unable to provide decent education or health services.

The country – two-thirds of the size of western Europe – is a battleground.

The citizens of DR Congo pray to be delivered from the brutal militias that still control parts of the eastern provinces, where rape has become so commonplace that one senior UN official called the country “the rape capital of the world”.

Inside DR Congo

• SIZE
• MINERAL WEALTH
• TRANSPORT
• POPULATION
• DATA

Predators

I asked a university colleague if he thought things could get worse.

“When you are rock bottom, you can still dig deeper,” was his response.

Public administration is in shambles. Civil servants have mutated into predators.

Ferdinand Munguna is a retired railway worker in Lubumbashi, the mineral capital of DR Congo in the south of the country.

He has to bribe the man working in the pension office who requires “motivation” before processing the old man’s file. Mr Munguna complains that his pension is “hardly enough to buy soap”.

Starting a business in DR Congo takes 65 days compared to the sub-Saharan African average of 40 days. In neighbouring Rwanda it takes three days.

And guess which country has one of the worst air safety records worldwide?

The prestigious Foreign Policy magazine’s Failed States Index puts DR Congo in the critically failed category. Only Somalia, Chad and Sudan (when it included South Sudan) have worse rankings.

The recently released UNDP report on human development indicators put the former Belgian colony at the bottom of the 187 countries it surveyed.

DR Congo, Africa’s second largest country, has a literacy rate of 67%

On the political front, President Joseph Kabila has shown much more interest in regime consolidation than implementing his five-point development agenda – which most Congolese consider more as a political slogan than a development initiative.

When criticised, Mr Kabila’s henchmen resort to the ultimate force of dissuasion.

Take Zoe Kabila, the president’s brother, who ordered his Republican Guard escort to beat up two traffic officers because they did not give his 4X4 priority.

Usually immune to the brutality of the security forces, even people in Kinshasa were shocked by this incident at a busy downtown intersection.

Numerous cases of journalist beatings and killings have also been reported.

Floribert Chebeya, a highly respected human rights activist was murdered, allegedly by members of the president’s inner circle.

Unfair Congo bashing

Poor leadership is a major problem for DR Congo.

There are few figures on the political landscape with vision, leaders able to bring an end to corrupt government, reduce poverty, solve the country’s security problems or improve the well-being of ordinary people.

DR Congo bashing has become a mantra amongst academics, humanitarian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and policy makers.

But I think that this is unfair.

While it is important to maintain pressure on Kinshasa’s unabashedly corrupt political establishment, we also have to consider the country’s troubled past.

Few societies have accumulated so many woes.

Those old enough to remember say the whip and chain is what they associate most with Belgian colonialism.

Others however are nostalgic and wish for the Belgians to return to solve the country’s problems.

Cold War policies facilitated the maintenance of the brutal dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko.

He ruled what was then named Zaire for 32 years, supported by the West because of Cold War strategic interests.

Two wars – the liberation war that toppled Mobutu and “Africa’s first world war”, from 1997-2002 – are overwhelming obstacles to development, state-building and well-being.

DR Congo is also victim to what is commonly referred to as “the resource curse”. The central government cannot control borders with its nine neighbours.

Much of DR Congo’s coltan, a mineral used in computers and mobiles, is illegally exported through Rwanda. Precious tropical hardwoods are siphoned off through Uganda.

Surreal

DR Congo’s financial and technical partners – the so called “international community” – are also to blame.

DR Congo’s road to development is paved with good intentions

They have no master plan for reform. They do not share a common vision and often implement contradictory programmes.

Belgium supported the idea of decentralisation arguing that it could bring government accountability down to the grassroots level. The World Bank blocked the process.

Bank experts have some control of the treasury in Kinshasa but they have absolutely no idea of how resources in the provinces are managed.

Data collection is a surreal concept in DR Congo – many offices do not have electricity, let alone computers.

Absence of national sovereignty is another hallmark of a failed state.

DR Congo is a country under international trusteeship. Important decisions are taken by World Bank technocrats, UN officials and increasingly by international NGOs.

When the electoral campaign officially opened last month, candidates travelled to Europe and the US to garner support.

The UN mission, Monusco, is playing a key logistical role in the elections by transporting ballot boxes across the vast nation. People would not be able to vote without this kind of support.

Whatever accountability there is in DR Congo is directed towards international backers, not the Congolese people.

Congolese authorities have abdicated from the development agenda.

Road rehabilitation and bridge building have been delegated to the World Bank and Belgian Technical Cooperation.

Monusco is supposed to look after the security sector. The World Health Organization and medical NGOs try to deal with the public health challenges.

The UK is involved in reinforcing governance programmes, while churches provide primary education.

The state is an absentee landlord – outside partners do its work.

Dynamic survivors

So DR Congo is on an artificial life-support system. But replacing the state, or acting on its behalf, is not viable in the long-term. It undermines state-building momentum.

DR Congo and its partners are clearly confronted by the tragedy of powerlessness.

The system is such that when things do not work, go wrong or do not move forward, it is never really anyone’s fault.

There are plenty of good excuses. A colleague told me when asked why he did not show up for an appointment: “Well, there was an eclipse that day.”

While DR Congo is clearly a failed state, Congolese society has not failed.

On the contrary it is strong, vibrant, dynamic, tolerant and generous. People have a sense of taking charge of their own destinies.

Women form rotating credit systems to compensate for the absence of an accessible banking system.

Farmers band together to hire a lorry to get their cassava or charcoal from the central city of Kikwit to market in Kinshasa.

Bebe, who lives in the Paris suburb of Griney, sends money home to Kasai via Western Union. Some months it contributes to school fees, others it pays for medicines for her ailing mother-in-law.

Her father will spend some of it on Primus, the beer of choice in Kinshasa.

“Elikia” means hope in Lingala and there is much of it throughout the country.

Hopes for positive change will come from the people, not from the Congolese political establishment, and certainly not from outside interventions.

Theodore Trefon is senior researcher at the Royal Museum for Central Africa and author of the blog Congo Masquerade: The political culture of aid inefficiency and reform failure.

On 25 November, the BBC World Service is broadcasting a special one-hour debate in front of a Kinshasa audience: Is DR Congo a failed state? Tune in at 1900 GMT.

More on This Story

DR Congo: Dreaming of Democracy

Background

• DR Congo: Facts, figures and dates

• Q&A: DR Congo conflict

• Justice but no peace

• Rape dilemma

• Can rainforests survive logging?

• From rebel-held Congo to beer can

• 50 years of chaos

• Rebels Inc: Multinational fighters

• Peace mission

• Remembering Congo’s rumba king

This heart moving story has help give me a greater perspective on what is beautiful in God’s eyes! May it spur us on in heralding the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ!

“…This poor victim of elephantiasis became a radiant Christian and could do nothing other than tell other people of the grace of God which He had shown in sending His Son Jesus Christ to die for them. He lived in a small African village and determined that every soul in that village should hear the good news of salvation. It was extremely difficult for him to walk with the monstrous legs that bore him about, but he thought nothing of the pain but toiled on from hut to hut to tell those who dwelt there about the Savior who had come into his life. Each evening he would return to his own hut where he was maintained by the kindness of his relatives. At the end of several months he was able to report to the missionary that he had visited every hut in the village and that he was now starting to take the gospel message to a nearby village about 2 miles away. Each morning, he would start out, painfully walk the two miles to that village and return the two miles before sundown to his own hut. Finally there came the day when he had visited every hut in the neighboring village. His work being done in these two villages, he remained at home for some weeks but began to be more and more restless. He spoke to the missionary, who was also a medical doctor, about another village that was about twelve miles away through rugged jungle. He asked if the gospel had been taken to that village. As a boy, before he had been afflicted, he had traveled the jungle path to that village, and he remembered that it was a large village and that there were many people there, and he knew that they need the good news of the Savior. He was advised not to think of going to that village, but day after day the burden grew upon him. One day, his family came to the missionary and said that the man had disappeared before dawn, and could not be found anywhere. Afterwards, the full story became known. He had started down the path toward the distant village. Step after weary step he had dragged his leathery legs and gigantic feet along the path that led to his goal. The people of the village later told how he had come to them when it was already noon; his feet were further swollen, bruised and bleeding. He had been forced to stop and rest again and again and the painful journey had taken many hours. They offered him food but before he would eat he began to tell the people about Jesus. Up and down the village he went, even to the very last hut, telling them that the God of all creation was Love and that He had sent His only Son to die that their sins might be removed. He told how the Lord Jesus had been raised from the dead and had come into his heart bringing such joy and peace. As the sun was low in the evening sky, he started on his way down the jungle path toward home. The darkness of Africa is a terrible darkness, and the night can bring forth many creatures from the jungle. The sun went down and the poor man dragged himself along the path through the night guided by some insight that kept him from going astray. He later told his pastor that his fear of the night and the animals which might come upon him was more than balanced by the joy that he had in his heart, as he realized that he had told a whole village about the Lord Jesus Christ. Toward midnight, the missionary doctor was awakened by a noise on his front porch. He listened but all seemed still. Somehow, he could not go back to sleep and he went to the door with a light to see what had caused the noise. There at the door to the hospital he found the poor man lying on the porch. He had returned to the village from his long trip and the stumps of his legs were bleeding and wounded. The missionary called his helpers, and they lifted the man, almost unconscious into one of the beds in the little hospital. The doctor said that in all his years of practicing medicine in the African jungle he had never seen such a frightful sight. The man’s feet, ruined and twisted by his disease, had been torn and ravaged by his long journey. Unashamed, the doctor told how he had bent over those bleeding feet to minister to them, and as he wiped away the blood and cleaned and bandaged them, he told how his own tears had fallen with the ointment upon them. The doctor ended the story by saying: ‘In all my life I do not know when my heart was more drawn to another Christian believer. All I could think of was the verse in the Word of God, “How beautiful are the feet of them that bring good tidings that publish peace….'”  emphasis mine (James Boice Commentary on Romans, Vol.III pgs. 1249-1251)