During the first hours of the morning, the protagonist strolls through the streets of Goma. He makes a mistaken turn and encounters thieves. Back home, his father flicks through TV channels while his mother checks bags of flour. Words are absent. The stillness is shattered only by noises on the radio.
As night falls, Baraka is positioned on the shore of Lake Kivu, gazing south to Bukavu and east towards Rwanda, discovering no hope in either direction.
This is the beginning to a visual story set in turbulent Goma, the debut comic by a emerging visual artist, Edizon Musavuli, shared earlier this year. The story portrays common hardships in Goma through the eyes of a child.
Influential Congolese artists such as Barly Baruti, Fifi Mukuna and Papa Mfumu’Eto, who seized the public’s imagination in comic strips in the past, mostly worked abroad or in Kinshasa, a city over 1,000 miles from Goma. But there are few contemporary comics set in or about the Democratic Republic of the Congo written by Congolese artists.
Art gives hope. It represents a foundation.
“I have been drawing since I could hold a pencil,” Musavuli states of his evolution as an artist. He began to pursue the craft seriously only after finishing high school, joining at a media institute in Nairobi. His studies, however, were cut short by economic challenges.
His first solo exhibition was in January 2020, organised with a cultural institute in Goma. “It stood as a major display. And it was impressive how everyone engaged to it,” says Musavuli.
But just a year later, the brutal M23 militia, aided by Rwanda, reemerged in eastern DRC and disrupted Goma’s delicate art scene.
“Artists in Goma are really dependent on international exhibitions like that,” he says. “If they’re not around, it will feel like we don’t exist. That’s what’s happening right now.”
When M23 took over Goma in January this year, the city’s cultural hubs faltered alongside its economy. “Expression fosters optimism, it’s something to start with, but our circumstances here doesn’t change. So people in Goma are not really interested any more,” says Musavuli.
Creators and expression have long been consigned to the periphery of the state agenda. “We are not something the government prioritises,” he says.
Turning to Instagram, he began posting private and public experiences of Congolese life in the form of cartoons. In one post, narrating his childhood, he labeled an interactive story: “Where I'm from, sprinting precedes stepping.”
In one reel, which has since generated more than 10,000 views, he is seen working on an unfinished painting, while gunshots are heard in the background.
Within this environment that the comic narrative was created. The story is charged with social commentary, showing how daily life have been stripped away and replaced with perpetual insecurity.
Yet Musavuli states the short comic was not meant as explicit political commentary: “I don't consider myself a political artist or activist however I say what people around me are thinking. This is the way I do my art.”
Even without authority but inaction is so much worse. When someone hears you, it’s something.
Questioned if he feels able to express himself freely under occupation, he says: “Free expression exists in Congo, but can you remain unharmed after you speak?”
Making art that appears too negative of M23 or the government can be risky, he says: “In Kinshasa it’s acceptable to talk about everything that’s wrong with the rebels. But in Goma it’s standard to not do that because it’s not secure for you.
“Politically, we are divided from the ‘actual’ Congo,” he says. Unlike other cities in the North and South Kivu provinces of the DRC, Goma remains under full control by the M23.
Based on Musavuli, some artists have come under duress to create pro-M23 content out of apprehension for their lives. “For those with talent with a voice in Goma, the M23 can utilize you, sometimes by force, or the artists make that decision to work with M23,” he says. “It’s complicated to judge. But I cannot allow myself to do something like that.”
Although instability is one challenge, making a living through the arts is another hurdle. “There's an issue in Congo that people don’t buy art. Most of the artists here have to do other things to make ends meet.” Musavuli works as a cartoonist for a digital outlet.
But he adds: “I’m also not 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 overlooked people of Goma. “People here endure – 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.”
At the end of Baraka and the Unpredictable Life of Goma, Baraka walks alone down an deserted road, his head held high. “Tomorrow might look exactly the same,” he says, “but I persist moving. Maintaining optimism is already fighting back.”