Where silence becomes an accomplice, and absence is a refrain.
Hundreds of Congolese protesters gather outside the BBC Broadcasting House to condemn the capture of Goma in North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo, and denounce the exploitation of coltan mining, believed to be an underlying motive in the offensive.(0Krisztian Elek / LightRocket via Getty Images)
EDITOR’S NOTE:
Do you hear that silence?
Soundtrack to a Coup d’État is a phenomenal film—brilliantly crafted.
Johan Grimonprez unearths truths about the overthrow of Congo’s first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, that history tried to sever, layering them like an intricate composition where every note matters.
It is also a warning.
A warning that is being met with applause instead of action.
Audiences marvel at the editing, the nonlinear structure, the radical way jazz intertwines with the story of a crime.
They are impressed, engaged, intellectually stimulated.
And then—
they move on.
The film exists, but the silence remains.
I do not expect you to fathom the pain of the Congolese people today.
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I do not expect you to stretch your imagination to grasp the inhumane exploitation of land, the abuse of innocent children, children who only wish to rest on their mothers’ bosoms but instead witness them raped, crying, or taking their last breath as gunfire interrupts their small, running feet.
I do not expect you to feel it.
But I do expect you to hear it.
Even as you make me feel crazy for expecting you to hear it.
The sound of UN guards laughing as they dismiss a small but mighty group of Congolese protesters.
The sound of busy footsteps on First Avenue, people too preoccupied with their routines to pause.
The sound of a Congolese mother calling a phone that will never ring is making my ears bleed.
The sound of a city cut off from the world, suffocated at the throat, is irregulating my breath.
As if my people’s deaths aren’t the reason you were able to connect with loved ones by Zoom during the pandemic.
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As if our mothers’ rape isn’t the reason you can hear your son, studying abroad, answer your call.
As if you don’t owe it to us to consider that we, too, want to live and communicate.
But in peace, not at the price of our children.
And yet, silence.
Not just in Congo, where bombs fall without warning and leave behind echoes of mourning.
Not just in Bukavu, where rape crushes dignity and joy, this weapon that stings deeper than a fatal degree burn, that shatters entire families in ways no statistics can measure.
Not just in the villages, where children dig for cobalt with hands too small to even hold their mothers’ thumbs.
But here, in New York City.
Where we marched for George Floyd’s breath.
Where we spoke justice to power through Zoom organizing meetings.
Where we circulated evidence of injustice and said her name: Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor.
How is it that our comfort remains uninterrupted even as a genocide unfolds for the sake of the very phones we use to demand justice?
Break this loud silence!
It is a silence louder than any siren.
It is a silence that drowns and that kills.
Filmmaker Grimonprez himself said:
“Le revers de la médaille c’est que pendant que les Belges regardent du jazz à la télévision, un génocide est en train de se produire au Congo oriental.”
The flip side of the coin is that while the Belgians were watching jazz on television, a genocide was taking place in Eastern Congo.
What has changed?
Today, you watch a film that maps the violence, that stitches together sound and silence, that tells you what has been done and what is still being done.
Then you go home, and the war continues.
People analyze the film’s historical layers, debate its themes, but they are not worrying about the Congolese people still dying.
I do not need you simply to understand the film.
I need you to engage with what it demands of you.
Not just to be awed by its craft but to recognize that it is not just a film.
And who am I? Why should you care? I am a Congolese artist and filmmaker terrified by the idea that what we create is just for vibes. We, the Congolese people, need you to say our names, say that we too matter, if not because you believe it then because without us and the existence of our home, our minerals, our labor, you wouldn’t have most of what you think is more important than us.
Here is a document of a war that never ended.
Here is a call to action, not a closing statement.
You cannot treat it as an intellectual exercise while remaining silent in the face of the very horrors it exposes.
To do so is to play into the very system it critiques.
To do so is to watch history unfold and decide to let it repeat.
Maybe 1885—King Leopold’s curse, backed by the Western world’s infamous Congo Club—feels too far removed for you.
Maybe 1961—Patrice Lumumba’s last day, engineered by the same Club one year after we dared to claim independence—feels too far removed.
So let’s focus on last week.
At least 3,000 dead.
One of them was my cousin.
He was home when the bomb fell.
My mother spoke to him on Sunday, January 26.
Then silence.
For two days, she called his phone, hoping, praying it was just the Internet shutdown.
That it was nothing more than a power outage.
That the rebels had only cut the networks.
That he was safe.
But he wasn’t.
A call came.
And the silence was no longer just a silence.
It was the end of his life on earth confirmed.
A city cut off from the world.
Goma thrown into digital darkness.
No news could leave.
No messages could arrive.
While my cousin was dying, while hundreds of others were being slaughtered, the Congolese people were held hostage inside their own grief unable to call for help.
Unable to say goodbye.
Unable to tell their own stories.
And the world moves on.
Unworried.
Uninterrupted.
Not because the killings have stopped.
Not because the war is over.
But because the silence is effective.
Because silence echoes, far and wide.
What does silence do?
It makes you believe nothing is happening.
It makes you believe that history is history.
That colonialism is past tense.
That 6 million bodies, and just since 1998, are not stacked beneath the global economy.
But history is not past.
Imperialism has not ended.
It has only evolved.
Found new words, new weapons, new justifications.
My people have died for rubber, for gold, for diamonds, for uranium.
Now we are dying for cobalt, for lithium.
For the devices you cannot live without.
I am not even asking you to get loud.
I am asking you to turn up the volume.
Because right now—
right now, the radio is off.
Right now, the world is enabling thousands of deaths for profit.
And I do not need everyone to march.
I do not need everyone to scream.
But I do need something.
I will take a whisper over nothing.
Because right now, I hear the outcry of Congolese people, but from everyone else—
not even whispering.
Africa, United States of Africa, please whisper.
Please say something. Spirit of Lumumba, please come awaken the zeal of unity in us.
Western allies, please say something to your leaders.
I will take one hour of your time.
I do not need a world full of people shouting.
But I do need a world where people are at least speaking.
Where people are doing.
If you have breath in your lungs,
if you have power in your voice,
then use it.
Not just in admiration of a film.
Not just in academic debate.
Not just in passive acknowledgment of history.
Because silence is not passive.
Silence is not neutral.
Silence is a weapon.
And if you continue to wield it—
then you are choosing the side of those who kill us.
Maliyamungu MuhandeMaliyamungu Muhande is a Congolese artist and filmmaker based in New York. For ongoing reports and analysis on Congo, she recommends the work of Kambale Musavuli; for action updates and information, Friends of the Congo; for grassroots support, Focus Congo.