Jul 21, 2015

Who strives to realise Congo wildlife dream at 83?



"I WAS already saying I'd go live in the Congo when I was nine or 10," says Willem Boulanger, who after satisfying that dream is embarking at age 83 on another – founding a game reserve near Kolwezi.

Tall and tough, with a white moustache but only the slightest stoop, the crew-cut settler is full of tales of the dramatic events that have taken place in the Democratic Republic of Congo since he made his home in southeast Katanga province 56 years ago.

Barely installed in his adoptive homeland, Boulanger was swept up in the unrest that followed independence.

He fought alongside Katangese forces trying to secede from the Congo in the 1960s, and in the 1990s witnessed the ethnic troubles that shattered Katanga, in the last years of Mobutu Sese Seko's long reign.

In Bermuda shorts and walking boots, Boulanger spices his tales with humour, recalling how as a boy in the Belgian city of Mons he was captivated as Roman Catholic missionaries recounted their adventures in Africa's exotic heart.

His African exploits began in 1959 when he took a job with the Mining Union of Upper Katanga (UMHK), a Belgian company exploiting the fabulous wealth of the copper belt. By September, he and his wife were setting up house in Kolwezi.
He learned Swahili fast. "You must take an interest (in local people), how to live with them, understand their customs, respect their beliefs," he says.

"I was in heaven!"

He spent his weekends in the bush, sitting by the fire "chatting about everything under the sun" with friendly tribal elders. "I was in heaven!"

But when the Congo won independence from Belgium on June 30, 1960, riots erupted against the nation's former masters, in the capital Kinshasa and elsewhere.
Boulanger was briefly evacuated to Northern Rhodesia (today's Zambia) but was barely back in Katanga when provincial leaders seceded from the newly born nation.

Their State of Katanga was supported by some Belgian politicians and foreign firms keen to keep a hold over the UMHK. Brussels never officially recognised an independent Katanga, but provided assistance and sent troops.

The United Nations urged Belgium to withdraw and sent its own peacekeepers to help the Congolese army.

A former paratroop officer, young Boulanger was tasked by the UMHK with "providing security" by blowing up bridges and fighting with Katanga's army against the UN troops.

Early in 1963, the rebel province's leader Moise Tshombe conceded defeat. "The government soldiers came as conquerors," setting up roadblocks and fleecing locals, Boulanger recalls.

Determined even then to relax at weekends, he founded a water-sports centre near Kolwezi that helped boost the local economy when wealthy Congolese poured in to water-ski.

By way of thanks, Boulanger was made a "mwami", acquiring the status of honorary tribal chief.

In May 1978, Katangese Tiger rebels opposed to Mobutu crossed from Angola to seize Kolwezi at the cost of several hundred civilian lives. "They wanted to take my Peugeot 504, but I had disabled it," Boulanger says.

"They took the Gecamines car," he adds, using the name given to the UMHK once it was nationalised in 1967.

Within days, the French Foreign Legion counter-attacked and claimed the mining town back from the rebels.

Boulanger was evacuated to Belgium but quickly returned – this time without his wife, who wanted nothing more to do with the Congo.

"Blessed land"

"Congo has been a blessed land for me," says Boulanger, who in time had a daughter with a Congolese wife and considers himself "one of the last old dinosaurs" to have stayed.

Parked in front of his home is his old Land Rover, which sports a logo for the Manika wildlife reserve, a pet project for Boulanger's latter years.

With a lease on 16,000ha of savanna, the white "mwami" plans to bring back a score of mammals that once roamed the region, including leopards, warthogs, giraffes, zebras, gnus and cheetahs.

A visitors' centre was completed in 2010 not far from Kolwezi airport, but much work remains. Boulanger is fencing off a 4,000ha part of the reserve with Guy Mukongi, a young businessman who should succeed him one day.

"We need US$100,000 (RM381,000) to finish the enclosure so the animals can be brought in," says Boulanger.

A small lodge to accommodate tourists had been built beside an artificial pond, but this guesthouse was recently razed in a suspected arson attack. Undaunted, Boulanger plans to start over with fireproof materials.

"We can do anything here," he says, imagining a terrace on stilts in the middle of the little lake where visitors might relax with a drink after a day in the bush.


Fired with enthusiasm, Boulanger even envisages offering guests hot-air balloon trips over the reserve. – AFP

Jul 15, 2015

LHC orders release of supermodel Ayyan on bail


Model Ayyan. PHOTO: FILE
LAHORE: Supermodel Ayyan Ali finally secured bail on Tuesday, some four month’s after she was arrested from Islamabad airport on charges of money laundering.
A division bench of the Lahore High Court (LHC), headed by Justice Anwarul Haq, ordered her release as it remarked that the accused was no more needed for investigation. “The case is apparently also not of money laundering as claimed by the investigators,” the bench noted.
Appearing before the bench, Ayyan’s counsel Sardar Latif Khan Khosa submitted that the Customs officials had arrested his client on fake charges of money laundering as part of a conspiracy and that Ayyan is an honourable girl.
He said under the Customs Act, an accused, if a woman, should be bailed out if the investigation is completed. “As investigations are done, my client should be released,” he added.
Khosa said there was a difference between laws dealing with ‘money laundering’ and ‘money smuggling’, adding that for money laundering it was necessary for the accused to be onboard a flight.
“But Ayyan had neither boarded a flight nor had the stamp of exit affixed to her passport. Therefore, she does not fall under the definition of a traveler and the allegations of money laundering against her are baseless,” he argued.
Appearing before the court, the Customs counsel submitted that the Customs officials arrested Ayyan under section 7 of Customs Act from the VIP lounge of the airport while she was going to Dubai.
“The court has already dismissed her bail application on merit,” he said, referring to the trial court and Custom court’s appellate bench’s earlier dismissal of her bail applications.
Customs officials had arrested Ayyan on March 14 after recovering US $506,800 from her luggage. Later, she was sent to Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail.

Jul 9, 2015

Tunisia hotel shooting


Vast stretches of sand were empty of people along the normally packed beaches of Sousse on Saturday. There were still a few tourists around; they had taken the entirely correct view that the place was safer now than it has ever been in recent times, having a heavy security presence in the wake of Friday’s massacre.
But even these hardy visitors said they would be gone as soon as their holiday finishes, and the gloomy hotel and restaurant owners do not expect a new wave of custom to follow this summer, or indeed anything like the same numbers for the next season either.
It is perhaps surprising that there were so many Western tourists around for the dreadful slaughter. They obviously had not thought that the attack at the Bardo Museum in Tunis three months ago, in which 20 foreigners died, meant that they, too, were potential targets. Or perhaps they simply decided to come despite the risks involved.
The front of the Marhaba hotel (Getty)
The front of the Marhaba hotel (Getty)
The fact is that Islamist extremists have very specific targets in Tunisia. The killer, Seifeddine Rezgui, was extraordinarily careful in his choice of victims, picking on obvious foreigners, deliberately sparing locals when he could, urging them to get out of the way. This is not seen as visceral hatred of kafirs (unbelievers) and altruism towards fellow Muslims, but part of a deliberate plan to destroy the tourist industry, the biggest revenue earners and the biggest source of employment, in the country.
Tunisia has not suffered over much from the arbitrary massacres of suicide bombs. The internal targets have been civic society figures, the security forces and politicians. The aim, it is felt, is to undermine fatally the structures which have made the country, arguably, the only one of the Arab Spring with a fledgling democracy and an election in which the main Islamist party, Enhada, was edged out of power.