Pulitzer Prize Winning Play, Ruined is Playing

Lynn Nottage

Brooklyn native, Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer Prize winning play, Ruined which won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama is about the plight of violence who are being negatively impacted by the violence against women that has occurred and is still occurring in the war torn African country, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

A Scene From The Play, Ruined

The play educates audiences about how sexual violence is being used as a weapon of war on women in DRC. Lynne’s play is raising awareness and giving Congolese women a voice they wouldn’t have had. It has had great reviews. Ben Brantley in his The New York Times review, wrote: "Ms. Nottage, the wide-ranging and increasingly confident author of Intimate Apparel and Fabulation or, the Re-Education of Undine, hooks her audience with promises of a conventionally structured, purposefully plotted play, stocked with sympathetic characters and informative topical detail. She delivers on those promises. Yet a raw and genuine agony pulses within and finally bursts through this sturdy framework, giving Ruined an impact that lingers beyond its well-shaped, sentimental ending. . . . Ms. Nottage has endowed the frail-looking Sophie, as well as the formidable Mama, with a strength that transforms this tale of ruin into a clear-eyed celebration of endurance."

In a recent article, Emily Watson writes:

“When I saw Ruined, I saw the Congo I knew, with the horror and humor and the confusion that is the reality of the Congo,” said Anneke Van Woudenberg, from the Africa Division of Human Rights Watch. “So much of what raises our interest in an issue is popular culture—film, books, plays.”

Panelist Muadi Mukenge, from the Global Fund for Women, said Nottage, who traveled to East Africa to interview women fleeing the armed conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, captured what she found there in a way that people can take in. “Sometimes it’s hard to get people to read a book,” she said. “I felt like she brought back what she found and humanized the Congolese people.”

Five million people have died as a result of the war, Van Woudenberg said. “It’s the deadliest one in the world, more deadly than Iraq or Afghanistan, yet we rarely hear about it, and I think that’s partly because of our presuppositions about the Congo, that it’s the heart of darkness,” she said. “It’s horrible, but it happens.”

More than 200,000 women and girls have been raped in the Congo. “It’s one of the worst places in the world to be a women or a girl,” Van Woudenberg said, adding that a large percentage of the rapes are of teenage girls between 12 and 17 years old.

One of the world’s poorest countries, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has vast mineral resources, including gold, diamonds, copper and coltan, which is essential to digital technology, including cell phones and computer chips. Much of the fighting is over these resources, and the Congolese people aren’t the ones getting the wealth, Mukenge said.

“Established multinationals have been profiting for a long time,” she said. “There is a way to have access and develop the Congo and not have the kind of atrocities we’ve been hearing about.”

What’s happening in the country is about more than human rights, Mukenge said. “This is a political and an economic issue,” she said. “Until we know who is providing the guns, we have not asked the right questions. Who is keeping the rebel groups in power?”

Oldham asked the panelists what’s happening in the country that gives them hope. Heidi Lehmann, from the Women’s Empowerment and Protection Unit of International Rescue Committee, is impressed by the resilience of the women. “So many of the women we work with refuse to be defined by the sexual violence they experience,” she said. “The women are saying they are more than that.”

Since so many of the rapes are public, there is no way of hiding it—and that means women come together to support one another and a women’s movement is growing, Van Woudenberg said. She added that in her job of prosecuting perpetrators, she sees some progress. “There are four Congolese perpetrators in jail in the Hague,” she said. “That’s important because how do you rebuild a society if you don’t have rule of law?”

Panelist Rachel Niehuus, from the Cal Human Rights Center, said she was encouraged that when touring Africa, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited organizations in the Congo working with women who had been raped. Clinton then refused to go to Rwanda, which Niehuus finds significant. “Rwanda has played into the violence in the Congo,” she said. “I think this administration has a desire to see this end.”

Mukenge, who is Congolese, is hopeful recalling how different things were when she was growing up. “It’s a very complex situation which makes you think it’s intractable,” she said. “We remember a time when this didn’t exist, so we know we can turn it around.”

By creating this play which just finished a run in Berkeley, California, plays this month in Denver and opens April 22 in Washington, D.C., Lynn is showing that she is truly her sisters’ keeper, and all women in whatever little we can, must continue making women more visible and powerful in the media. However, some may wonder why Lynn or anyone else in the US should be concerned with occurences in DRC. The answer is because DRC is important. Below is why.

Why is the DRC important to the US and the world?

At a recent event, a representative of the group, Friends of The Congo had this to say about DRC’s significance.

“Historically, when Malcolm X was alive, he educated African Americans and the people of African ancestry in the US about what was occurring in the Congo. He explained the significance of the Congo, not only to Africa, but to the world. He explained Congo’s geo-strategic location in the heart of Africa. The country bordered by nine other countries, where you can project power north, south, east or west, better than any other place in the continent.

Congo is the heart of Africa. It is the country which has the hydro - electrical capacity to electrically power the entire continent. The country of which Dr. Frantz Fanon said, “Where Africa is like a pistol and the trigger is the Congo. You pull it and it sets off combustion.” Malcolm X said the fate of each and every one of us is at stake in the Congo. Malcolm educated us about what’s taking place in Congo. He shared its geo-strategic significance. Echo the words of Chairman Mao who said, “He who controls the Congo, controls the world.” A hyperbole none the less, but demonstrates the significance of that country.

The assassination of Lumumba represented the pinnacle of US policy to keep Congo and by extension Africa, in check. Friends of the Congo educates people about the situation and they share with them that there are things we can do help our siblings in Congo. The key thing is to challenge US foreign policy. US foreign policy has worked to install leaders in the Congo. Going back to Lumumba in the 1960s, the moment Lumumba was assassinated, Mobutu Sese Seko was installed as President. Not for one US presidential term of four years or for two US presidential terms of eight years, but for over three decades.

Every time the Congolese people rose up to get rid of Mobutu, the US bombed them. They got the Moroccan or French troops to do their bidding. So the challenge for us here is to put pressure on the US government and US corporations. One key way of doing that is exposing wrong US foreign policies because most people don’t know. For example, Nelson Mandela was on the US terrorist list till he was removed in 2008, by an act of US congress led by the congressional Black Caucus. So even in the case of someone as well known as Nelson Mandela and a country as well known as South Africa most of us didn’t know that Nelson Mandela was still on the US terrorist list. I use this example because people don’t know what US foreign policy is in Africa.

So, in the spirits of Malcolm and Lumumba, Friends of Congo is educating people throughout the US and Canada, traveling to communities, campuses, churches, wherever we can let people know the significance of the Congo and the role the US foreign policy has played in keeping Congo destabilized, dependent and impoverished."

More on DRC: The DRC, formerly Zaire, is a country located in Central Africa. It is the third largest country in Africa and the 12th largest in the world. With a population of nearly 71 million, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the eighteenth most populous nation in the world, and the fourth most populous nation in Africa, as well as the most populous officially Francophone country. The capital is Kinshasa.

The Second Congo War, beginning in 1998, devastated the country, involved seven foreign armies and is sometimes referred to as the "African World War".Despite the signing of peace accords in 2003, fighting continues in the east of the country. In eastern Congo, the prevalence of rape and other sexual violence is described as the worst in the world. The war is the world's deadliest conflict since World War II, killing 5.4 million people.

Note: Although citizens of the DRC are among the poorest in the world, having the second lowest nominal GDP per capita, the Democratic Republic of Congo is widely considered to be the richest country in the world regarding natural resources; its untapped deposits of raw minerals are estimated to be worth in excess of US$ 24 trillion. This is the equivalent of the gross domestic product of the United States of America and Europe combined.

Source: Wikipedia

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