Testimonial

DRC: “Prison teaches looking backwards”

— Published on 29 October 2019.

In January 2001, the former president Laurent-Désiré Kabila was assassinated. Shortly afterwards, Mwana1 was convicted of an offence against national security. He was one of 51 individuals convicted in this case by the Congolese justice system. Still in prison nineteen years later, despite being granted amnesty, he speaks out.


  1. His name has been changed. 

Prison is its own strange world. It’s the coexistence of all sorts of conflict. A place where the guilty and the innocent live together, and consequently, either break down or hold on.

I cultivated conditions for survival: I strengthened my physical and mental endurance to avoid succumbing to depression and physical weakness.