Black Magick and BioTech

Came across these interesting articles equating bio-technology with black magick and alchemy.

One could say that the current food crisis resulting from biotechnology applied to mass production of foods as well as their commodification into bio-fuels is an act of black magick.

Fulfilling the prediction made by Shulamith Firestone back in the seventies when she did her feminist critique of reproductive biotechnology warning of its return to the creation of the alchemists homonuclus; the creation of life without the mother.

Black Magic, Biotech & Dark Markets


“On some islands mana [magic] is the word for money”
Marcel Mauss

The characterisation of biotech as black magic is primarily meant to indicate the
ambivalence of instrumentality in biotech, an ambivalence which actually enables the connection between biological life and economic value. Traditionally, black magic refers to the use of magical actions for maleficent purposes (spells, witchcraft, demonology). The idea of black magic took a particularly strong hold in Renaissance Europe, where it coincided with trends in Jewish and Christian mysticism.

The infamous black magicians of the period and after – from Cornelius Agrippa to Eliphas Levi – were often seen as instrumentalists, manipulating the forces of the natural world (in the Hermetic tradition) or of the traditions of ‘white magic’ (occultism, cabala, alchemy).14 At the root of black magic was the fear induced by an instrumentalisation of the natural world, in order to gain
‘unnatural’ control.
Curiously enough, the tropes of black magic specifically, and magic generally, are not uncommon in popular accounts of the biotech industry. For instance, Cynthia Robbins-Roth’s book From Alchemy to IPO provides a hero-narrative of the biotech industry, recounting the development of recombinant DNA techniques and the formation of Genentech, the first biotech start-up.15 For Robbins-Roth, the biotech industry realises the dream of alchemy, not only through its ability to control matter, but in its ability to generate value through this transformation of matter. Robbins-Roth does not mention black magic, because this alchemical biotech activity is seen as the ultimate in humanistic endeavor. But neither does she explore
in depth the controversies genetic engineering experiments prompted in the 1970s.

But what if we take this trope of biotech as magic seriously? We would, first of all, have to point to a definition of ‘magic’ that would warrant the connection to biotech.

A number of historians of religion, including James Frasier, have positioned magic as incommensurate with technology (for Frasier magic is situated between religion and technology, for it has a logic, but that logic is not rational or ‘scientific’). Indeed the division persists to this day, along the lines of the rational/irrational.

In this context, Marcel Mauss’ famous study, A General Theory of Magic, is useful, for it attempts to conceive of magic as deeply connected to both the social and the technological.

Mauss’ study, though not without its problematics (including an exclusive focus on
‘primitive’ cultures), is noteworthy in that it redefines magic according to social and technological criteria. It suggests that magic is not transcendental (above and beyond social reality), but immanent to collective and individual practices in daily life. Mauss’ theory of magic also points to the implicitly pragmatic and instrumental character of magic in society; magic rites associated with healing and medicine are among his most common examples. To this we can add several more qualifiers, for we want to suggest that biotech is a form of black magic, and not just magic generally speaking. If magic is both immanent (social) and instrumental (technological), then black magic is an instrumental use of the immanent qualities of magic. That is, black magic folds the instrumental back upon the immanent, it folds technology back upon the social. When this happens, the object of the magical action becomes the social body itself. Instead of magical practice constituting orcontributing to the social (as in Mauss’ theory), in black magic it practices on the social.
(This is biopolitics with smoke and mirrors.) In this folding back of the instrumental upon the immanent, the social body is ‘shaped’ according to the hermetic dictates of the technological (the technological becomes synonymous with its efficaciousness). This can be said to constitute the maleficent character of black magic. It results less from a desire for world domination and more from a confusion specific to black magic, a confusion of the interrelation of the immanent (social) and the instrumental (technological).
What does this have to do with biotechnology? On one level all of this is perhaps too
abstract. But, if we keep in mind our notion of black magic (aided by Mauss’ theory), then it is hard to deny certain analogies in the biotech industry. For instance, consider the pharmaceutical industry. The manufacture of drugs has long been the single most lucrative output for bioscience research. Even when discussions of ‘post-genomic complexity’ abound, the output for such research is first and foremost in drug discovery. Drugs operate not only by sympathy (vaccines), antipathy (anti-virals) and contiguity (GM foods), but the integration of the pharmaceutical industry with health care systems means that a network for regulating
“biovalue” operates in the long term (health insurance, drug prescriptions and subscriptions).
Likewise, any computer based laboratory technology achieves a magical
transfer of properties, simply by encoding and decoding DNA into a computer. Finally, the biological database can be seen as a means of ‘capturing’ or possessing biological life via the various property and patenting structures and health care systems.
Recall our initial question: how does biotech create a link between biological life and economic value? And how does it do this as a network which displays control-without-control?

In short, biotech as a form of black magic mediates between ‘life’ and ‘property’ via
the use of information technologies. Information is the ‘medium’ – in both senses of the term. The space in which black magic biotech operates is the space which separates and connects biological life and economic value, matter and property. ‘Information’ has become the equivalent of mana in the biotech industry. The notion of information – genetic codes, computer data, stock quotes – covers a wide range of meanings, and in doing so it functions as the means by which biotech establishes and regulates the interactions and transactionsbetween life and property. For contemporary biotech, ‘information’ is mana.


Notes on Alchemy, Metonymy and Engendering Simulacra
Growing Things: Banff New Media Institute, 2 – 4 June, 2000 and Australia, 1 July – August, 2000

The representational imaginary of Nature “disappears with simulation – whose operation is nuclear and genetic …genetic miniaturization is the dimension of simulation” according to Jean Baudrillard. From this situation forward many scenarios are possible. Many proximate universes and combinations could evolve. It is possible that a benign biotechnology will take place in controlled environments such as isolated fields and greenhouses and will be economically viable in these special regulated areas. Nanoscience and nanoengineering could develop new and improved material properties including ones with enhanced electrical conductivity, optical properties and mechanical strength that will lead to breakthroughs in classical electronics, architecture, pharmacology and artificial life forms. Materials that are actually intelligent surfaces and films could perform everything from photosynthesis and camouflage to building materials that last longer and sense weather conditions, modifying their structures in order to be more or less permeable to humidity, air and light. Intelligent antibodies could find and destroy malignant cells in the body. Nanochemists and engineers are also designing nanometer-scale machines and molecular motors that are capable of interacting with the environment as well as within the human body. In all of these instances nanotechnology is characterized by a kind of organicism that imitates nature at the atomic and molecular level and is exemplified by a non-linear, distributed, redundant, parallel and overlapping intelligence. Nanoengineering aspires to transform inexpensive, abundant and inanimate constituents into self-generating, self-perpetuating, self-repairing, self-aware entities that are capable of communicating with each other and responding to the environment. These new technologies represent formal ways of organizing architectures of all kinds from cities to computers and telecommunication systems and seemingly provide humanity with unprecedented control over the material world. This research is in its earliest stages, and as is often noted, it is similar to the transistor technology and silicon-based research of the 1940’s and 1950’s. Early experiments indicate that at least at a certain scale these goals are attainable.

At the risk of presenting a classical binary critique, much of nanoscience and nanotechnology is not the result of multidisciplinary research, and is following more formal rather than content-based developments typical of the early stages of research. Although much of this breakthrough science is a positive result of pure research, it is now time for more multidisciplinary work by artists and scientists in order that new applications, forms of content and visualizations can evolve simultaneously with technological advances. In this sense, as artists, we are moving further away from mimesis and representation that have typically positioned us across a critical gulf (distance) between art and life and moving further into the integration of life-like art. These developments are occurring at the same time that many scientists are becoming more involved with mimesis and representation (at least on the nanoscale) even though they are of course modifying the world. It is essential that these new technological developments incorporate a cultural component that includes re-thinking humanism or what it means to be human in these changing terms. We need to explore ways of using these new tools to access our past and future within the present in order to maintain our cultural diversity while creating rich new hybrid forms of art, entertainment and life. The decisions of what it means to exist within this world that science fiction has been charting during the past several decades should not be left to scientists, engineers, politicians and the military – industrial complex. Issues that address what can be built and accomplished in the nanoscale universe need to be explored by the public in ways that are experimental and critical while communicating the implications of future developments.

In another scenario of refictionalization, one could see that escaped and mutant versions of modified plants would begin to spread and a situation similar to the Borges story where the map becomes the territory actually takes place. Only it is the territory that finally remains in tattered shreds in various regions of the profuse desert of prolific and disease resistant plants that aren’t plants. In the case of nanomaterials replacing organic surfaces with ones that are impervious to decay and erosion, but not to mutation and change, we could end up with a new world built on the premise that it would require little maintenance, while actually needing constant reading and interpretation. In fact this simulation could require more maintenance to control mutations and the catalytic changes of positive feedback that could result in out of control rapid, accelerated growth, rather than slow evolutionary change. At this point where information and material properties would be intelligent and self-propagating, we would also change. Through molecular and quantum computing we would co-inhabit the world with intelligent artificial life forms who perhaps initially become the farmers of this extensive simulation whose purpose is to control and maintain the simulation within certain boundaries. It is possible that massively parallel quantum computers and devices would be ideal for maintaining this simulation. This is a scenario of the near future and it may be that we never create quantum and molecular computers that are capable of these phenomena, or that the applications development will be slowed by competing technologies. However I believe that it will be possible to create quantum devices and quantum algorithms surprisingly quickly.

SEE:

Mad Science-Flourescent Pigs

GMO News Roundup

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Dead Weight Of The State

Michael Taussig is one of the few Marxist Anthropologists to study magick. Over twenty years ago I came across his book;The devil and commodity fetishism in South America"; which deals with the beliefs of Bolivian Miners about the devil living in the caves they mine. Many of these miners are children as documented in the film;The Devils Miner.

And they are of course indigenous peoples, enslaved by their Spanish colonizers hundreds of years ago to mine for the old Empires of Europe. They have transfered the belief in animistic spirits from their earlier native religions, to the god forms of their adopted religion; Catholicism. As with most colonized peoples the old gods become the devils of the new religion.

Commodity Fetishism and the Devil had a major influence on me in looking at a historical materialist/dialectical interpretation of magick.

I recently came across an interview with Taussig, about his book The Magic Of the State and his comments are worth reprinting here, in light of my post on Gothic Capitalism.

In The Magic of the State, you write about the relation between traditional magical rites and rituals of spirit possession and the workings of the modern nation-state. You base this book on fieldwork on a magic mountain in the middle of Venezuela, where spirit possession is practiced, and where theres something about spirit possession which is amicable toward hierarchy, stratification, and maybe even the State.

This book concerns spirit-possession on the mountain of Maria Lionza in central Venezuela in the 1980s and 1990s, where pilgrims in large numbers become possessed by the spirits of the dead under the rule of an imaginary spirit queen, Maria Lionza. Especially important are the spirits of the Indians who allegedly fought the Spanish in the sixteenth century and the independence soldiers of the early nineteenth century, including many black foot soldiers as well as white officers, most notably Simón Bolívar—as highlighted in the state’s school textbooks, in the unending stream of state iconography from postage stamps to wall murals on bus stops and outside schools, from the standardized village, town, and city central square, the naming of mountain peaks, and of course in the physiognomy of authority wherever it be.

The dead are a great source of magical élan, grace, and power. This has been present in many cultures since the first burial. Indeed Georges Bataille (to whose ideas The Magic of the State is greatly indebted) argued from archaeological evidence and physical anthropology that the corpse is the origin of taboos, respect for the dead being what separates the human from the animal... Just imagine, then, the power that can accrue to the modern state, that great machine of death and war!

People today gain magical power not from the dead, but from the states embellishment of them. And the state, authoritarian and spooky, is as much possessed by the dead as is any individual pilgrim. The current president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, is the embodiment of this. In a sense he was predestined by this mystical foundation of authority as writ into the post-colonial exploitation of colonial history. The success of the Patriot Act and of the current US administration owes a great deal to this, too, after 9/11.

However my argument is that such spirit possession is a dramatization not only of the Great Events but also of the more subtle imageric- and feeling-states present in the artwork of the state any and everywhere, from the traffic cop and tax clerk to the pomp and ceremony of national celebrations, from a Latin American pseudo-democracy to the US and Western European states as well. Hobbess Leviathan is mythical yet also terribly real. This is where the rationalist analysis of the state loses ground. Foucault was amazingly short-sighted in dismissing blood and the figure of the Ruler.

It is not only the capitalist state which rules based on the rites of the dead but capitalism itself as Marx reminds us.

Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor it sucks.
Karl Marx

If Capitalism is vampiric then the modern Terror State and its perpetual State of Terror (an extension of the Cold War) is very much a Zombie state, a state that has created a fictional monster; the terrorist, who once upon a time was the Anarchist of the 19th Century and today is Islamic Jihadists. Terrorists/Zombies are everywhere, they are out to get us, they are going to overwhelm us in shopping malls. The popularity of modern Zombie culture is a reflection of the cultural terror created by the politics of fear.


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Out Of The Hogwarts Broom Closet

The Christian right wing bigots that already fear and hate Harry Potter and attack the novels and movies for being about magick and witchcraft can now add the heresy of sorcery = sodomy to their inquisitional charges.

Dumbledore was gay, JK tells amazed fans The late Richard Harris as Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. There could hardly have been a bigger sensation if Russell Crowe, Rod Stewart or Sven-Goran Eriksson had come out of the closet. Millions of fans around the world were yesterday digesting the news that one of the main characters in the Harry Potter novels, Albus Dumbledore, is gay. The revelation came from author JK Rowling during a question-and-answer session at New York's Carnegie Hall. It instantly hurtled around the internet and the world. News websites in China and Germany announced starkly: 'JK Rowling: "Dumbledore is gay".' One blogger wrote on a fansite: 'My head is spinning. Wow. One more reason to love gay men.' After reading briefly from her mega-selling book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, on Friday night, Rowling took questions from an audience of 1,600 students. A 19-year-old from Colorado asked about the avuncular headmaster of Hogwarts School: 'Did Dumbledore, who believed in the prevailing power of love, ever fall in love himself?' The author replied: 'My truthful answer to you...I always thought of Dumbledore as gay.' The audience reportedly fell silent - then erupted into prolonged applause.

Lynda Harris writes, rather charmingly, "In medieval Europe, the Cathars were often referred to as 'Bougres.' This was an acknowledgement of the fact that their religion had originally come from Bulgaria." Yes, and also that the Cathars, like many other heretic groups, were accused of unconventional sexual acts, hence our word "buggery." We know that this word was current in fifteenth-century Italy at least, because Michael Rocke lists it among the terms used by accusers of sodomites in Florence at that time:

abbracciare to embrace
buggerare to bugger
fottere to fuck
servire to service
sodomitare, or sodomizzare to sodomizen

And we read in Gabriel Audisio's Waldensian Dissent, p. 76f.:
According to Hansen, a German historian at the beginning of the twentieth century, the label vaudois was apparently used for the first time to refer to sorcerers in the French-speaking regions of Switzerland and in Savoy. In these parts, vauderie meant lust, and sodomy in particular. A man accused of this in France was called bougre (Bulgarian, or bugger), in Savoy vaudeis. Since bougerie or vauderie was believed, wrongly, to be an act of heresy, heretics tended to be accused of bougerie or vauderie. In these regions, during the great wave of persecutions at the beginning of the fifteenth century, people commonly called sorcerers vodeis or vaudois. Meanwhile, the notion spread that the satanic Sabbath was a practice common to Cathars and the Waldensians. A theologian, for example, entitled his treatise against sorcerers written in 1450, Errores gazoriorum seu illorum, qui probam vel baculum equitare probantur (Errors of Cathars or those who ride on brooms or rods). Jurists and theologians, finding the term vaudois applied to sects of sorcerers, equally used the expression without further consideration. In this way, the double confusion grew up, between vaudois meaning bougres (sorcerers) on the one hand and vaudois meaning heretics (Waldensians) on the other.

"Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers ...".(Revelation 22:15)(Critical Essay)

Revelation 22:15 lists practitioners who do not have the approval of the writer: "the dogs and sorcerers and fornicators and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood." Unlike the "blessed ... who wash their robes" (22:14), they have no right to attain the tree of life nor to enter the city. They are "outside."

Nearly all, if not all, scholars read this list, and its parallels in 21:8 and 9:21, as a "catalog of evildoers" (Schussler Fiorenza: 110) or a list of moral vices (Kraft: 279) that the writer saw in his social world. Typical is Massyngberde Ford, who says that 22:15 "appears to refer mainly to unethical conduct: the dogs are sodomists, the 'sorcerers' ... refer to poisonous magicians or abortionists, then follow the prostitutes ... murderers and idolaters"

The odd one out in this list is the very first: "the dogs." All others are obviously humans who practice certain vices. But to whom or what does the term the dogs refer? Are they to be understood at all in relation to the next group on the list, the sorcerers (pharmakoi)?

SEE:

Bush Apologizes to Witches

Bulgarian Women Abused

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Happy Birthday Uncle Al

Amongst Thelemites, Aleister Crowley is affectionately called Uncle Al. Being a play on his name and the holy book he wrote; Liber AL (vel Legis).

Today,October 12 , is his birthday.

He tempered his spirituality/philosophy with a sense of humour, a quality absent amongst true believers. As well as adopting the moniker 'the Great Beast', something his fundamentalist mother called him, he also said;

"I am a Hell of a Holy Guru"



Edward Alexander Crowley 1875-1947


SEE:

Today in History

Sunday In Hell

New Age Libertarian Manifesto

Libertarianism

Conspiracy Theory of the Week

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Curses!

It appears though that Wicca has made it into the Big Leagues in America. As in Major League Baseball. Not so strange since most sports types are superstitious and after all witchcraft and magick is commonly used in Soccer.

Garner can’t find right voodoo doll

Looking for a way to slow down Chicago Cubs ace Carlos Zambrano, Houston Astros manager Phil Garner decided to try voodoo.

“I’m confused,” Garner told Chicago’s Daily Southtown. “I went online and looked for my voodoo guy and I’m going to have to pick one and try to get it. Most of these curses are against lovers … I’ve got to find one that puts a curse on a baseball player.”

Of course there are other ways to curse a ball player.

“It wasn’t voodoo. I stayed away from the voodoo. I can’t go into the details. I’ll just have to tell you Wicca (a form of witchcraft),” Garner said to the Houston Chronicle, explaining his latest plan.

But Voodoo ain't Wicca. The former does claim on occasion to use curse magick the latter says it doesn't.


Voodoo is Black Magick, as in originating in Africa, while Wicca claims to be White Magick, as in Eurocentric.

A Witchcraft suppression bill, currently being drafted by the Mpumalanga legislature, has struck fear into the hearts of South Africa's witches, who fear the dark days of medieval witch-hunts may soon return.

The bill, leaked in June to the South African Pagan Rights Alliance (Sapara), threatens to undermine the freedoms and rights of a religious minority by criminalising and prohibiting their right to exist and practise their religion, says Sapra convener Damon Leff.

The draft, titled the Mpumalanga Witchcraft Suppression Bill 2007, states in its introduction that it is "to provide for the suppression of witchcraft in the province".

In Chapter 6 it states any person who "professes a knowledge of witchcraft or the use of charms" or "for gain pretends to exercise or use any supernatural powers, witchcraft, sorcery or enchantment" shall be guilty of an offence.
One of the major causes of the Western pagans' upset, according to Leff, is the failure of the bill to recognise the doctrinal and ethical gap between Western pagan and some forms of traditional African witchcraft.

And according to Vos, by lumping the two religions together the bill has overlooked how differently they approach the issue of ethical responsibility.

"While in rare cases (some in Mpumalanga) murder has been committed to get hold of human tissues, such as hearts and genitals for muti practices, the furthest a Western pagan would go is to collect human hair and nail clippings," he claimed.

Another serious criticism Western pagans in the country harbour is the bill's stereotyping of witches and witchcraft as being harmful and dangerous to their community.

The bill defines witchcraft as "the secret use of muti, zombies, spells, spirits, magic powers, water, mixtures, etc, by any person with the purpose of causing harm, damage, sickness to others or their property".

Leff has asked the Mpumalanga advocates to replace it with the definition: "a religio-magical occupation that employs the use of sympathetic magic, ritual, herbalism and divination".

AIDS, Witchcraft, and the Problem of Power in Post-Apartheid South Africa

As an epidemic of AIDS sweeps through this part of Africa, isidliso is the name that
springs to mind amongst many in the epidemic’s path. To the extent that this occurs, the epidemic of HIV/AIDS becomes also an epidemic of witchcraft. But the implications for a witchcraft epidemic are quite different from those of a public health crisis, at least as such things are conventionally conceived in western discourses of social and political management.

In this paper I will examine some of the implications of interpreting HIV/AIDS
infection as witchcraft and ask what they might mean for the legitimacy of public power in post-apartheid South Africa. For when suspicions of witchcraft are in play in a community, problems of illness and death can transform matters of public health into questions of public power, questions relating to the identification and punishment of persons deemed responsible for bringing misfortune to the community, that is: witches.

So instead of using pins in dolls to curse his opponent perhaps Garner should have found a witch who was good at casting Lucky Mojo Spells.

Like this guy.

Wiccan Wins Lottery

Wiccan instructor Elwood "Bunky" Bartlett says a New Age book store made it possible for him to become an overnight multi-millionaire.

The Maryland accountant, who claims to hold one of four winning tickets sold for Friday night's estimated 330 million dollar Mega Millions jackpot, says he made a bargain with the multiple gods associated with his Wiccan beliefs: "You let me win the lottery and I'll teach."

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A Big But

When an explanation is not an explanation it usually ends with a "but".

As is in this case of the latest scientific explanation for why folks experience their astral body.

"Brain dysfunctions that interfere with interpreting sensory signals may be responsible for some clinical cases of out-of-body experiences," said Henrik Ehrsson, a neuroscientist formerly of University College London, and now at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden.

"Though, whether all out-of-body experiences arise from the same causes is still an open question," he added.

SEE:

Kabbalistic Kommunism

Snake Oil Saint

For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing

New Age Libertarian Manifesto

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Acoustic Ecology

I was listening to CBC 2 radio this week and they played Canadian acoustic ecologist performance artist and composer R. Murray Schafer.

Who in the 1980's blew me away with his eight hour invocation of RA at the Ontario Science Centre. While I was not there, I got to hear it on CBC. Which of course I would not hear on private for profit radio.

Schafer shows that musick is magick and vis versa, that it is one of the key elements to ritual, and thus all music is sacred, even when it is profane.

If you like the minimalist and avante garde music of Edgar Varèse ,Phillip Glass, Terry Riley, or Steven Reich, you will love Schafer.

R. Murray Schafer has achieved an international reputation as a composer, an educator, environmentalist, scholar and visual artist. Born in Sarnia, Ontario, in 1933, he was raised in Toronto.

Schafer entered the Royal Conservatory of Music and the University of Toronto in 1952 to study with John Weinzweig. His casual contact with Marshall McLuhan on campus in that period could arguably be singled out as the most lasting influence on his development.
He went to Vienna in 1956. After two years he went to England, studying informally with composer Peter Racine Fricker. While in Britain Schafer supported himself by writing (resulting in a book, British Composers in Interview) and by the preparation of a performing edition of Ezra Pound's opera Le Testament (1920-1) broadcast by the BBC in 1961.

As the 'father of acoustic ecology' Schafer has been concerned about the damaging effects of noise on people, especially dwellers of the 'sonic sewers' of the city. His booklets The Book of Noise and The Voices of Tyranny are pleas for anti-noise legislation and urban soundscape improvements through reduction of potentially destructive sounds. Of the various publications Schafer released after his work with the World Soundscape Project, the most important is The Tuning of the World (1977) where he summarizes his soundscape research, philosophies, and theories. The concept, central to Schafer's thinking, has influenced his composing. The background rhythmic structure for String Quartet No. 2 ('Waves') is based on the intervals at which ocean waves crest; the graphic notation of No Longer Than Ten (10) Minutes was influenced by charts made of Vancouver traffic noise.

While Schafer's focus in the 1970s was his soundscape work, in the 1980s it was Patria, a 12-part cycle of musical/theatrical works begun in 1966. Schafer's dramatic works employ music and theatre in a manner which he calls the 'theatre of confluence' (a kind of Gesamtkunstwerk reflecting his urge to explore the relationships between the arts). Schafer has used ritual as a way of revitalizing contemporary theatre, several works transforming the theatre audience into participants. Patria 6: RA is a dusk-to-dawn ritual enacting the descent to the underworld and resurrection of the Egyptian sun god. For its Ontario Science Centre premiere in Toronto, the audience was led through 29 different performance sites during the 11-hour ritual.

And again this August he will be performing in the wilderness.

Princess of the Stars
R. Murray Schafer, Banff Festival of the Arts, 1985. Performed in Two Jack Lake, near Banff, August 8-10, at dawn for the Banff Festival of the Arts (photo by Scott Rowed).

Suppressing a youthful urge to become a painter, Schafer entered the Royal Conservatory of Music and the University of Toronto in 1952 to study with Alberto Guerrero (piano), Greta Kraus (harpsichord), John Weinzweig (composition), and Arnold Walter (musicology). In view of Schafer's later proclivities, however, his casual contact with Marshall McLuhan at the university might be singled out as the strongest and most lasting influence on his intellectual development. Disillusioned by what he came to view as the confining atmosphere of the university, Schafer terminated his formal studies in 1955 and embarked upon an intensive autodidactic routine with an emphasis on languages, literature, and philosophy. The LRSM remains his only formal diploma.

The CBC recorded Schafer's Wolf music which he has performed for 15 years, in a forest for a select audience, but mostly for the ambiance of playing in the forest. So if a trumpet sounds in the forest do we hear music? The wolves do.

Wolf Music is not only a composition: it is an annual ritual music-drama involving sixty to seventy people over eight days, taking place on a lake in the Haliburton Forest and Wildlife Reserve. The composer and six professional musicians each lead small groups of people whose very presence are part of the performance. So, too, are the flora and fauna, the lake,the wind and even a passing jet. This description of the work could be very unappealing to those who are not attracted to ecologically-based spirituality, or those that feel this style of composition is passé. However, apart from Schafer's narrative (which, frankly, I could have done without) the listener is easily able to bypass the philosophy to get at the music, which is beautiful and imaginative.

R. Murray Schafer's environmental music drama, And Wolf Shall Inherit the Moon (1988- ), stands at the nexus between the lived experience of performance in the Canadian wilderness and Schafer's romantic idea of the North. A collaborative project involving 75 volunteer participants, the work takes place over an entire week each August in the Haliburton Forest and Wild Life Reserve near Ontario's Algonquin Park. It forms the epilogue to the composer's massive Patria series (1966- ). Simultaneously performers, creators and audience, the participants camp together as they enact Schafer's participatory and ritualistic theatre - a theatre specifically designed for performance in the Canadian wilderness.

When they camp and work together each summer, members of the Wolf Project participate in Schafer's idea of the North, his vision of a Canada reconciled to, and integrated with, its wilderness environment. They return from this liminal realm to their urban lives distinctly changed, no longer the uneasy inhabitants of a humanly undigestible wilderness.

My articles on music:

What's Opera Doc

Summer Solstice Give Or Take A Day

Thick as a Brick

Dion Sucked

Shaft

Trumpetlingus

Christy Moore Viva La Quince Brigada

Brown, Ford, Castro

The N Word

Hip Hop Gun Culture

John Lennon Working Class Hero

Revolutionary Music Flashback

Happy Birthday Mozart

Soul of a City

Before MTV

Nazanin

Happy Birthday Bob

Daniel Barenboim's Dream

Rich Man's War

Classical Rock

Ennio Morricone A Fistful of Composer

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Congo's Ghosts

Guerrillas kill rare Gorilla's.

It is the Ghost's of Africa returning. Like the Mountain Gorilla's themselves ,having been rumored for hundreds of years but only actually identified as such in 1905, the Mayi-Mayi are a thing of myth and magic.

Warriors threaten to kill rare gorillas in Virunga National Park

Illegal living; May be reprisal for government crackdowns

Peter Goodspeed, National Post

Published: Thursday, May 24, 2007

Guerrillas are threatening to slaughter half the world's rare mountain gorillas living in a wildlife reserve in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

About 200 Mayi-Mayi, warriors who dabble in black magic and cannibalism, attacked three observation posts in Virunga National Park earlier this week, killing one warden and gravely injuring four others.

The Mayi-Mayi, tribal militias led by individual warlords, remain one of the most powerful forces in the area. They have a reputation for ruthlessness and are responsible for rampant human rights abuses.

They also practice magic on a scale that borders on the bizarre. During the civil war, the fighters would sing and dance their way into battle, wearing garlands of vines, which they believed made them invisible. They also frequently sported shower hoses, drain plugs or faucets around their necks to turn enemy bullets into water.

The Mayi-Mayi have been known to cannibalize fallen enemies, eating the hearts of their victims. They have repeatedly clashed with park rangers in Virunga, which was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1979, but has also been earmarked as an endangered site since 1994.

Congo Fighting Threatens Rare Gorillas

Renegade fighters attacked observation posts in an eastern Congo nature reserve, killing one ranger and threatening to slaughter a band of rare gorillas if security forces launch a counteroffensive, conservationists said Monday.

About 200 of the Mayi-Mayi fighters who remain active after Congo's ruinous 1998-2002 civil war attacked three posts Sunday in Virunga National Park, Wildlife Direct said in a statement. One ranger died and three were injured in the attack, said the group, which is active in the area.

If security forces attack, the Mayi-Mayi are threatening to wipe out a nearby group of gorillas, it said.

The fighters "are doing everything to sabotage the good intentions of well- intentioned conservationists," the group quoted park director Norbert Mushenzi as saying.

Fighters in the region killed endangered mountain gorillas in January and Mayi-Mayi fighters machine-gunned hundreds of hippos in eastern Congo in late 2006, the group said.

Many people in deeply impoverished eastern Congo subsist on "bush meat" - or the flesh of animals like chimpanzees, monkeys and gorillas that may include rare and protected species. The region is deeply impoverished after years of neglect, war and ongoing strife, sullying efforts by conservationists to protect endangered species.

The Mayi-Mayi fought on the side of government troops during Congo's war, and many have resisted joining a postwar army in the country also guarded by thousands of U.N. peacekeeping forces.

Famed for their looting and raping sprees, the Mayi-Mayi also claim many parts of Congo's east as their domain, bringing them into conflict with park rangers charged with protecting the Central African nation's dwindling wildlife.

In January, WildlifeDirect accused rebel fighters loyal to a renegade Congolese army general of butchering two silverback gorillas - adult males so called because of their grey colouring.

But the rebel fighters of General Laurent Nkunda later agreed to stop killing the rare primates.

Richard Leakey, Chairman of WildlifeDirect and credited with ending the slaughter of elephants in Kenya in the 1980s, said more than 150 wildlife rangers have been killed on active service since the beginning of armed conflict in eastern Congo.

Violence in North Kivu province has been on the rise in recent months due to failing efforts to integrate rebel fighters into the ranks of the national army.

Civilians say abuses have increased, often by these "mixed" army units.

Congo-Kinshasa: Monthly Human Rights Assessment - April 2007

The Mai Mai movement first began as a peasant uprising in the 1960s.

The group, said to be part of the Mai Mai rebel movement, which has been known to eat gorillas and whose fighters believe they are impervious to bullets

"Mayi-Mayi are civilians who have been resisting the Rwanda occupation, " Mr Kirubi told the BBC, adding that the Kinshasa government fully supported the tribal warriors.

The mountain gorillas themselves are the stuff of myth and mirth. The largest of all living primates, the animals have a strong upper body and muscular arms and broad hands and feet, closely resembling human hands and feet. It is this deceptively awkward body structure that inspired the first Godzilla film, which featured what essentially was a giant gorilla.

Because the animals generally live in dense forests at high altitudes, they are covered by a thick blanket of body hair, giving them an out-of-the-tropics look. The thick hair enables them to live in altitudes where temperatures routinely drop below freezing point.

The mystic aura of the mountain gorillas was greatly enhanced when researchers, including the famed Jane Goddall, realised that despite their great physical strength, they are generally shy and gentle beings living primarily on plants.

Gorilla mother and baby in Virunga National Park.

The Director-General of UNESCO, Koïchiro Matsuura, has written to Joseph Kabila, President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and to Jean-Marie Guehenno, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, asking for measures to stop the poaching and killing of endangered animals in the five World Heritage sites of the DRC.

The Director-General's initiative follows reports that several hundred hippopotami and at least two mountain gorillas have been killed in recent months in the Virunga National Park, inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1979 and on the World Heritage List in Danger in 1994. DRC's four other World Heritage sites - the nationals parks of Garamba, Kahuzi-Giega, Salonga and the Okapi Wildlife Reserve - are all inscribed on the Danger List.

Close encounters of the Rwandan gorilla kind

Like other indigenous native movements the Mayi-Mayi are similar to the native American Ghost Shirt Societies (see; Iraqi Ghost Dance) and their counterparts in the later Kenyan uprising against British Colonialism; the Mau-Mau.

The Mau-Mau, like the Mayi-Mayi were accused by the British of using magic.

It has been said that no one knows the real meaning of "Mau-Mau" other than a Kikuyu (also Gikuyu) tribesperson and that is because its name, like its origins, is shrouded in ancient African tribal mysteries and covered in blood. On the other hand, some authorities claim that the name was invented by European settlers and applied to the native insurrectionists in Kenya. At any rate, the name was first heard among the white population of Africa in 1948 when police officials in the British colony of Kenya began to receive rumors of strange ceremonies being held late at night in the jungle. These midnight assemblies were said to be bestial rituals that mocked Christian rites and included the eating of human flesh and the drinking of blood. Then came the reports of native people being dragged from their beds at night, being beaten or maimed, and forced to swear oaths of initiation to a secret society. In each case, their assailants were said to be members of a secret society called the Mau-Mau.

Black & Red Magic | TIME

Monday, Sep. 01, 1952

In the British Crown Colony of Kenya, while 3,000 coal-black tribesmen, huddled in a kraal, watched in awe, a goat was slowly beaten to death and buried alongside a virgin ewe. After that ancient rite, supposedly strong magic against evil, an official representative of the Great White Queen Across the Waters pronounced a solemn curse against the Mau-Mau. The Mau-Mau (rhymes with yoyo) is a native secret society which has lately been worrying the British. London is afraid that the Mau-Mau might plunge Britain's East African empire into guerrilla war, and turn Kenya into another Malaya.

In recent years, the black 97% of Kenya's population has banded together in a dozen fanatic, anti-white secret societies run by witch doctors and pledged to the slogan: "Africa for the Africans." One called itself the "Men of God"; another was the "Spirits of the Dead," led by a soccer player named Elijah, who used his soccer medals to persuade the tribesmen that he was divine. The Mau-Mau is the most feared and successful of them all. From their jungle hideouts, Mau-Mau raiders burn the huts of tribesmen who go to work for the white man (at 7¢ a day), murder white farmers with knobkerries and assagais, snipe at British officials.

Their whispered propaganda makes much of the fact that 3,000 whites monopolize almost all the fertile land in the cool "White Highlands," leaving the blacks to grub for a living in barren, low-lying "reserves." The Mau-Mau teaches that the white man's medicine (e.g., anti-rinderpest inoculation) kills instead of curing, and that pregnant black women are aborted in white hospitals.

Kenya's British police have caught and jailed 1,000 Mau-Mau blacks, flogged thousands more. Yet the secret society is growing at a pace that suggests professional organization and funds from abroad. The Mau-Mau's leader, Kenya officials are sure, is black-bearded Jomo ("Burning Spear") Kenyatta, 50, a thickset Kikuyu dandy, who runs the outwardly respectable Kenya African Union (K.A.U.), whose stated purpose is Negro advancement. A London-trained anthropologist who wrote (1938) a first-rate study of his people, Facing Mt. Kenya, Kenyatta is a devotee of Red magic. He spent the '30s in Moscow as a student-guest of the Kremlin, returned to Kenya after World War II. now heads a chain of 135 bush schools which spread anti-British propaganda and uphold old barbaric rites (e.g., female circumcision).

Last week, at their leader's invitation, 30,000 members of K.A.U. attended an open-air meeting in the dusty village of Nyeri, 100 miles north of Nairobi. Those who wore hats were asked to take them off because, Kenyatta explained, hats are a symbol of the white man's rule. In an impassioned speech, he pressed one demand : "The whites must give Kenya back to us Africans!" Then, while white Kenyans hollered for his arrest, Mr. Kenyatta quietly tucked his ebony walking stick under his arm, walked home to his nearby bungalow and settled down to a book of essays by Bertrand Russell.

Like the Ghost Shirt societies of North America, these hunter warriors still believe in the efficacy of magic, in particular the similarity between the two groups is the belief that magical talismans can make them bullet proof.

They are also called the Mai-Mai , which is the French appellation for them.

The Mayi-Mayi like other Indigenous peoples struggles against colonialism began as liberation movements, in this case one trained by Che Guevera. Later with the abandonment of Beligum colonies that led to the Rawanda disaster, the Congo became a centre of the exodus of refugees and the return of the indigenous warrior society the Mayi-Mayi. And with that came the accusations of the colonialists of the Mayi-Mayi being cannibals, depicted as primitive, superstitious,infantile (ie. child warriors), brutish (accusations of rape, dismemberment, etc.).

The same accusations were applied to the Native American Indians, Voodoo and the Haitian uprising, the Mau-Mau and the Indian Thugee's, (which some have asserted were a purely English invention).

All these statements must be taken with large doses of salt, since they are the common myths of Imperialism. Note the sources for the accusations. Such as the ones of cannibalism supposedly practiced by the Mayi-Mayi, one comes from a Catholic priest, a religion that has long accused those it oppresses as practicing heathen rites and smears their paganism with the epithet of cannibalism.

This is not to belittle the horrors of the Congolese/Rawandan wars, but the blame for this situation lies with the Belgium/French colonizers and their allies in the UN.

Eco-Tourism, the creation of national parks for endangered species, is the new face of colonialism . The conflict in the Wilderness parks is one of modern colonialism, where good people who are concerned with the disappearance of indigenous species such as the Silverback's and other Mountain Gorillas clash with the needs of the indigenous peoples in the region.

Having failed to adequately meet the social needs of these peoples, they restrict their access to traditional hunting and gathering areas, pushing them out of their homelands, instead of providing them with an alternative to killing chimps and Great Apes for bushmeat.

The fact is that colonialism destroyed the indigenous populations, human and ape, and have transformed this region into a killing zone. The result of the benign neglect by the international community of its responsibilities in the region which continue today.

Africa remains the Dark Continent, since the the Imperial nations of Europe abandoned it after the post WWII struggles for national liberation. They turned off the lights and left leaving Africa to struggle as best it could instead of aiding the new nations that evolved from their colonial pursuits.

Mayi-Mayi
Alliance pour la resistance democratique (ARD)

Mayi-Mayi is the main militia groups active in the Kivus region of Congo [Zaire]. It is opposed to "Tutsi domination" and the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD), but is otherwise seemingly without any clear objective and frequently change allegiances. No homogeneity exists between the various Mayi-Mayi groups, and the names of various commanders such as Louetcha, Padiri and Dunia frequently come up. As of late 1999 these forces were being re-supplied all over North and South Kivu to attack the positions of the Rwandan army. The Alliance pour la resistance democratique (ARD), based in the Fizi region, is believed to be a Mayi-Mayi front.

Mayi Mayi militia formally surrender before DRC army, MONUC
by Jennifer Bakody / MONUC 10 nov. 05

IRIN Africa | Great Lakes | DRC | DRC: Mayi-Mayi child soldiers ...
DUBIE, KATANGA, 27 January 2006 (IRIN) - Some 44 child combatants formerly allied to the Mayi-Mayi militia have left Dubie, in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Katanga Province, for the provincial capital, Lubumbashi,

News: Great Lakes, DRC: 8000 Mayi-Mayi accused of cannibalism ...

Source: United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs - Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN)

Date: 13 Feb 2003

In January, CDH denounced alleged acts of cannibalism committed by armed militias, citing numerous "fighters who paraded through villages, wearing the dried genital organs of their victims".

"They were walking around with human heads at the ends of spears to intimidate villagers suspected of supporting the Forces armees congolaises [FAC, the Kinshasa government army]," said the CDH statement, issued on 8 January. "In the territory of Malemba-Nkulu, Chief Makabe went around with a dried infant around his neck."

CDH argues that the impunity permitted by the provincial authorities will facilitate cannibalism and other human rights violations regularly perpetrated in this region of the DRC. It criticises political, police and military leaders for not having brought to justice those guilty of past acts of killings, abductions, amputations, and trafficking of human organs.

The governor of Katanga, however, countered that his own investigations had failed to prove acts of cannibalism by the Mayi-Mayi. "This is not true," stated Ngoy. "All the Mayi-Mayi leaders admitted that there had been instances of exactions, and sometimes taking body parts, but not cannibalism."

Refugees stream out of Congo

David Gough in Kigoma
Guardian

Tuesday July 13, 1999

The Mayi Mayi groups, who are armed and supplied by Mr Kabila's government, believe that the Banyamulenge ethnic group - who are Tutsis and who form the bulk of the RCD's ranks - are not true Congolese. They say that the RCD rebellion is a foreign invasion which they have vowed to defeat.

Refugees describe Congo's eastern province of Kivu as "close to anarchy". The situation is compounded by rival Mayi Mayi groups battling one another for control. "The Mayi Mayi used to have only spears but now they have many guns as well," said one refugee.

According to Jean Paul Kakobe, a Catholic priest from the south Kivu town of Uvira, the RCD began a big offensive against Mayi Mayi groups on June 15 - a campaign which has led to the flight of thousands of refugees into Tanzania and internal displacement of more than 100,000 others.

Father Kakobe said that in September last year he witnessed a barbaric ritual performed by a Mayi Mayi group on a beach on the shores of Lake Tanganyika, exemplifying their hatred for the Banyamulenge. "The Mayi Mayi had captured and killed two Banyamulenge rebels. They built a fire on the beach, cooked the bodies and then proceeded to eat them."

DRC: The peculiar terror that is northern Katanga

NYONGA, KATANGA, 13 February 2006 (IRIN)

The Mayi-Mayi wear masks and talismans and claim to have magical powers that stop bullets from penetrating their bodies. If not for their AK-47s, they might resemble ancient African warriors. The so-called "Mayi-Mayi phenomena" in Katanga, however, is actually recent. The groups formed in 1998, when President Laurent Kabila created armed civil defence forces in Katanga to stop Rwandan military from invading. After the Rwandans left, the Mayi-Mayi quickly devolved into an anarchic assortment of pro- and anti-government groups. When Joseph Kabila became president in 2001, he lost control of them completely. For the last year or so, many Mayi-Mayi groups in Katanga have rallied around a leader named Kyungu Mutanga, alias Gedeon. Under his command, villages have been systematically pillaged then burned. There are countless reports of atrocities. Yet, until there is a definitive human rights investigation into Gedeon's abuses, separating myth from reality will remain difficult. All the displaced people interviewed, as well as government soldiers and Mayi-Mayi fighters, said that what terrifies them about Gedeon are stories that he and his men are cannibals. However, none of them - even the Mayi-Mayi - said they had witnessed acts of cannibalism. Neither had they ever met anyone who witnessed them. Still, they all said they believe the stories. Many abandon their villages because of a rumour that he and his men were coming. Gedeon clearly rules though terror.

Mayi-Mayi: A rebel movement in Kivu (Democratic Republic Of Congo)

Luca Jourdan, Univ. Piemonte Orientale

This paper addresses the history and the ethnography of Mayi-Mayi, a rebel movement in the Kivu region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Between October 1996 and May 1997, Mayi-Mayi appeared on the stage of the AFDL war, which put an end to Mobutu's regime. The movement is still very active in the rural zones of Northern and Southern Kivu. Actually the term Mayi-Mayi refers to a cluster of groups scarcely co-ordinated among themselves, ones that are often striven by internal conflicts. At the same time some common characteristics allow constructing a general view of the entire phenomena. First of all the rebels make a constant resort to war rituals, centred on the belief in the power of mayi (that means water in Congolese Swahili), a special treated water supposed to save rebels themselves from the bullets of their opponents. Second, the movement articulates a set of common grievances based on nationalist ideals in order to oppose Mayi-Mayi to Uganda and Rwanda military intervention in Kivu. As I will show, meaningful links can be sorted out between the present Mayi-Mayi rebellion and the resistance movements, which characterised the whole area in colonial and postcolonial times. Mayi-Mayi speaks to a symbolic continuity with the beliefs and rites related to the invulnerability of warriors widely documented also in other African context. I believe that these symbols and practices supply to the scarcity of modern weapon. At the mean time Mayi-Mayi ritual discourse constitutes a efficacious strategy of mobilisation, which favour the enrolment of new recruits, in a context where the youth easily joins local militias to escape their social marginality in the local and national political arena. Mayi-Mayi references to the ancient rebellions and to the fight for independence validate the political discourse of the rebels, and reinforce their war rites.

DRC: From protection to insurgency - history of the Mayi-Mayi

GOMA, 16 Mar 2006 (IRIN) - Before colonialism in Africa, community life centred on ethnic customs and culture. In pre-colonial Congo, people lived under the authority of a traditional chief, in observance of these cultural norms.

According to Jean-Marie Kati Kati Muhongya, a political analyst and civil rights

In the 1960s, soon after independence from Belgium, politicians who were discontent with the country's leadership organised such youths into armed militia groups. From January 1964, Kati Kati said, one such leader, Pierre Mulele, who served as education minister in post-colonial Congo, organised the youths into strong militias as part of what he termed "the peasants’ revolution". A Maoist who was trained in China in guerrilla warfare, Mulele is credited with encouraging a Marxist-Leninist struggle in an effort to remove Mobutu Sese Seko, a Western-backed autocrat.

Kati Kati said Mulele drew support from the traditional chiefs, who were often medicine men, to encourage youths to join the armed struggle. The youths believed that the medicine men had made them invincible to bullets, inspiring the slogan, "Mulele Maji", meaning if you are for Mulele, all bullets directed at you would turn to water. This slogan later evolved into "Mai Mai" or "Mayi Mayi" (Congolese Swahili for "Water Water"). Hence the naming of Mayi-Mayi militia groups in various parts in today’s Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Jason Stearns, a Nairobi-based senior analyst in the International Crisis Group, told IRIN that the Mayi-Mayi have existed in eastern DRC since the so-called "Mulelist rebellion" of the 1960s. The militias reappeared in force in 1993 in North Kivu, from which they spread to the rest of the east. The Mayi-Mayi was a local defence force against the predation of Mobutu's army and the influx of soldiers of the Forces armees Rwandaise (known as the ex-FAR)and "Interahamwe" militiamen from neighbouring Rwanda in 1994.

activist in Goma, the capital of North Kivu Province, communities continued their traditional practises even after Congo became a fiefdom of Belgian King Leopold II in the 1880s and later a Belgian colony. One of those customs was to segregate young boys in the bush for up to one month, to prepare them for manhood. Kati Kati said that during their time of seclusion, youths underwent training in many fields, including how to protect their communities from intruders.

In Foreign parts: Magic of Mayi Mayi

Independent, The (London), Feb 8, 2003 by Declan Walsh

INSIDE A church nestling among the hills of eastern Congo, a venerable warrior gives a rare audience. He is talking about politics, war and why he is invincible to gunfire.

"I am a Mayi Mayi general so I carry the gris-gris [magic charms]," declares General Jeannot Ruharara, a whiskery, weatherbeaten man. "They protect against snakes, lightning, disappearance - and, of course, bullets." He has a wooden staff in one hand and a mobile phone in the other, but the tools of his magic are pinned to his chest like medals of honour. It is a selection worthy of a Shakespearean cauldron - tail of buffalo, claw of eagle and horn of antelope but also cola nuts, dirty feathers and plastic beads.

He reaches into the hairy confusion, pulls out a dark phial, and smiles. "This is the maji", he says. The maji - Swahili for water - had been blessed at a ceremony in the mountains. It will be sprinkled on his troops moments before they enter battle, he says, and then they will be invincible to enemy bullets. "Even shells and rockets," he chuckles.

But something looks familiar. I pull closer to the magic bottle, and it has writing on the cap in English. It reads: "Boots Pharmaceuticals".

"In that sense, they are the result of a power void, which made communities arm their youth for protection," he said. "They kept this function of community protection throughout the war, and in some cases the population was proud and satisfied for these local defence forces. Indeed, the dawa, or magic, of the Mayi-Mayi comes from the Congolese soil, and the strong patriotism within the group strikes a cord within many Congolese."

Of all the gun-toting groups roaming the Democratic Republic of Congo [formerly Zaire], few are as enigmatic as the Mayi Mayi. It has no guiding leader, no command structure and no reliable estimate of numbers. Instead, the movement is a vaguely connected patchwork of factions - some disciplined soldiers, others village bandits - scattered over a lawless region the size of the British Isles. Apart from their faith in the armour- plating powers of water, every Mayi Mayi has one thing in common - a growing role at the heart of Africa's worst war.

Officially the fighting, which was started by Rwandan forces in 1998, has ground to a halt. Last summer's peace deal between Rwanda, which backs rebel forces, and the Kinshasa government is holding. A transitional government could by in place by April. But here in the east - the cradle of the conflict - talk of peace means little. War rages on.

The Mayi Mayi, which has only a sideline place in political negotiations, are slugging it out with Rwanda's puppet army, the rebels of the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD). After more than four years of destruction and awesome savagery, ordinary Congolese are nakedly hostile to their pro- Rwandan RCD "liberators". And so the water warriors - mostly village lads armed with old AK-47 guns - have, in some areas, come to enjoy a popularity akin to that of the French resistance under Nazi Germany.

"The aggressors have come to destroy our country," said General Ruharara during our interview in Ndolera, a village of 6,000 people on the edge of his mountain demesne. "We are here to fight them."

General Ruharara, 55, is one of the original Mayi Mayi. He learnt his soldiering in the Sixties with another, more famous, revolutionary. "Ah yes, Ernesto Che Guevara, that was him," he says, smiling at the recollection. "We used to call him Ernesto. A giant of a man. Big, thick hair. Smoked a lot."

In 1964, Che Guevara led a force of 100 Cuban commandos to eastern Congo to boost the socialist revolution against Mobutu Sese Seko. It was a disaster. After seven months, he withdrew bitterly. "They lack revolutionary awareness," he wrote of his Congolese cadres. "Corrupted by inactivity ... saturated with fetishistic notions ... devoid of any coherent political education ... all these traits make the soldier of the Congolese revolution the poorest example of a fighter that I have ever come across."

General Ruharara, then 17, had a more positive memory. "Guevara taught us a lot. We hope he can come back to help us some day." I break the news that Che Guevara was executed in Bolivia in 1967. The general arches an eyebrow, then shrugs nonchalantly. "I have been living and fighting in the bush since then," he said. "Who was going to tell me?"

In this war the Mayi Mayi has teamed up with the Kinshasa government, which has supplied guns and money. But like much in this huge, chaotic country, even covert patronage goes awry. Two years ago Kinshasa airdropped sacks of money but they contained 50 and 100 franc notes - denominations rejected in the rebel-held zone. "We had to throw the lot away," said Jean Marie, the general's "public affairs" officer.

Yet the signs are increasing that the Mayi Mayi wants to be taken seriously. Last October a surprise alliance of factions took control of Uvira, a strategic port on Lake Tanganyika, for one week. Townspeople said the bush soldiers behaved with exemplary discipline. And more recently, the commander of the biggest faction, Joseph Padiri, has begun helping the United Nations demobilise Rwandan Hutu fighters on his turf. It is clear that peace will only come to Congo if the Gordian knot of the east is untangled, and the Mayi Mayi wants to be part of that solution.

But back in Ndolera, one matter remained. I had been promised proof of General Ruharara's maji: a goat would be blessed, troops would open fire on it and lo, the animal would live. Alas, on the day, the great test was not possible - for technical reasons. "The gunfire could alert the enemy and bring him towards us," General Ruharara offered in half-apology. His whiskers curled into a knowing smile again. The goat was safe, and so was the Mayi Mayi myth.

Militia's reign of terror comes to an end in DR Congo

DISARMAMENT: Members of the `mayi-mayi' warrior-mystic militia are living in fear of retribution as they lay down their arms after 10 years of senseless slaughter

THE GUARDIAN, LUBUMBASHI, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO
Monday, Jul 03, 2006, Page 6

One of Africa's most-feared militias has crumbled and now faces the wrath of the population it terrorized. The mayi-mayi, warrior-mystics who have ravaged the Democratic Republic of Congo for 10 years, are surrendering in droves.

Exhausted and hungry, in recent weeks entire units have emerged from the jungles of one of their last redoubts, Katanga Province, to lay down weapons and plead forgiveness.

For hunters who used spears and arrows as well as guns to slaughter thousands, it is now their turn to be hunted. There is pressure for the leaders to be tried for war crimes and a backlash against the soldiers and their families.

Other armed groups still prowl volatile eastern provinces, but the end of the mayi-mayi in Katanga is a significant boost to stability and should open the countryside to aid agencies tackling one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

"One can no longer speak of the mayi-mayi as a political force. Their influence and visibility have greatly diminished," said Kisula Ngoy, Katanga's governor.

The Congolese army and UN troops swept through their strongholds and splintered the once mighty militia into ragged bands to prepare the country for an election scheduled for July 30.

The campaign has been controversial -- the Observer revealed last month how UN troops participated in the destruction of civilian hamlets -- and the UN has launched an investigation.

However flawed, the offensive has broken the mayi-mayi.

"You could see it when they surrendered," said Gerson Brandao, a senior official with the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which helps to demobilize combatants. "They couldn't keep running any more, they were exhausted."

Hundreds of guerrillas have flooded demobilization centers in remote towns such as Dubie and Mitwabe, performing elaborate and emotional ceremonies as they remove amulets credited with magical powers. Some wept, others looked resigned, as they handed over bracelets and pouches which supposedly rendered them invisible and bulletproof.

"There are remnants still hiding in the bush ambushing people, but the militia as such has no military strength. It's the end of the mayi-mayi phenomenon in Katanga," Brandao said.

It is an ignominious demise for what was hailed as a patriotic force at the outset of the 1998-2003 war, a murderous affair involving six foreign armies and myriad homegrown groups which left 4 million dead, mostly from hunger and disease.

To repel Rwandan and Ugandan troops President Laurent Kabila turned to tribes of hunters and farmers loosely known as the mayi-mayi. With cursory training and AK-47 assault rifles, the militia had some success, bolstering a widespread belief that its fighters had magical powers, a superstition which paralyzed some opponents.

Foreign forces withdrew with the war's official end in 2003, but the mayi-mayi, fractious and lacking effective command, missed out in the transitional government's carve-up of power and spoils. Alienated from its former sponsors in the capital, Kinshasa, the militia laid waste swaths of eastern Congo for three years, displacing hundreds of thousands and making a mockery of the supposed peace.

"In some cases the mayi-mayi publicly tortured victims before killing them in public ceremonies meant to terrorize the local population," said the New York-based watchdog Human Rights Watch.

Now the worm has turned. Lacking popular support, political allies and a driving ideology, the militia in Katanga crumbled when confronted by Congolese troops.

A key turning point was the surrender in May of the most influential warlord, Kyungu Mutanga, better known as Gedeon.

Claiming to have communed with the ghost of his late mentor, Laurent Kabila, Gedeon ordered his 150 followers, many of them child-soldiers, to hand over amulets and charms along with their weapons.

SEE:

Another Dirty Little Secret

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