🔗 Share this article

Throughout the initial period of the morning, a young boy roams through the streets of Goma. He takes a wrong turn and encounters thieves. At his residence, his father flicks through TV channels while his mother tallies bags of flour. Words are absent. The silence is broken only by static on the radio.

By evening, Baraka is resting on the shore of Lake Kivu, looking south to Bukavu and east towards Rwanda, finding no hope in either direction.

This is the opening to Baraka and the Unpredictable Life of Goma, the initial comic by a young visual artist, Edizon Musavuli, shared earlier this year. The story illustrates common hardships in Goma through the eyes of a child.

Prominent Congolese artists such as Barly Baruti, Fifi Mukuna and Papa Mfumu’Eto, who grasped the public’s imagination in comic strips in the past, primarily worked abroad or in Kinshasa, a city more than a thousand miles from Goma. But there are limited contemporary comics based in or about the Democratic Republic of the Congo written by Congolese artists.

Expression provides light. It's a beginning.

“I have been drawing since I could hold a pencil,” Musavuli states of his journey as an artist. He began to follow the craft dedicatedly only after finishing high school, registering at a media institute in Nairobi. His studies, however, were halted by monetary constraints.

His first personal display was in January 2020, arranged with a cultural institute in Goma. “It stood as a major display. And it was impressive how everyone responded to it,” says Musavuli.

But just a year later, the brutal M23 militia, aided by Rwanda, returned in eastern DRC and disrupted Goma’s vulnerable art scene.

“Local illustrators are really relying on international exhibitions like that,” he says. “If they’re not around, it will seem like we don’t exist. That’s what’s happening right now.”

When M23 took over Goma in January this year, the city’s artistic venues weakened alongside its economy. “Art gives hope, it's a foundation, but our situation here doesn’t change. So people in Goma are not really engaged any more,” says Musavuli.

Creators and expression have long been consigned to the periphery of the state agenda. “Creativity isn't something the government prioritises,” he says.

Using Instagram, he began posting private and public experiences of Congolese life in the form of cartoons. In one post, describing his childhood, he titled an interactive story: “I’m from where you learn to run before you walk.”

In one clip, which has since generated more than 10,000 views, he is seen working on an incomplete painting, while firearms are heard in the background.

It was against this backdrop that Baraka and the Unpredictable Life of Goma was created. The story is filled with social commentary, highlighting how normal activities have been eroded and replaced with constant uncertainty.

Yet Musavuli states the short comic was not meant as overt political commentary: “I’m not really a political artist or activist however I say what people around me are thinking. That’s how I do my art.”

Although we lack influence but not doing anything is so much worse. When someone hears you, it’s something.

Inquired about he feels able to express himself freely under occupation, he says: “People can speak openly in Congo, but can you remain unharmed after you speak?”

Producing art that appears too critical of M23 or the government can be perilous, he says: “In Kinshasa it’s normal to talk about everything that’s wrong with the rebels. But in Goma it’s standard to not do that because it’s not protected for you.

“From an administrative perspective, we are separated from the ‘actual’ Congo,” he says. Unlike other cities in the North and South Kivu provinces of the DRC, Goma remains under full dominance by the M23.

According to Musavuli, some artists have come under coercion to create pro-M23 content out of apprehension for their lives. “If you are an artist with a voice in Goma, the M23 can use you, sometimes by force, or the artists make that decision to work with M23,” he says. “It's not straightforward to judge. But I cannot allow myself to do something like that.”

Although instability is one challenge, earning an income through the arts is another difficulty. “There's an issue in Congo that people don’t buy art. The majority of the artists here have to do other things to get by.” Musavuli works as a cartoonist for a digital outlet.

But he adds: “I don't solely doing art to generate income.”

Regardless of the risks and the financial uncertainties, Musavuli says he wants to continue producing work that gives representation to the disenfranchised people of Goma. “Our community is strong – this is not the first time we have been through this.

“Even without control but inaction is so much worse. Although your voice is heard by just two people, it’s something.”

Towards the finish of the comic story, Baraka walks alone down an quiet road, his head held high. “Next day may seem exactly the same,” he says, “but I persist moving. Holding on to hope is already resisting.”