Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra feature stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write a 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: Hope, Fear Mark Congo's First Democratic Elections in 46 Years, 07/31/06
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/july-dec06/congo_7-31.html

Initiating Questions:

1. Where is the Democratic Republic of the Congo? Find it on a map. What countries surround it?

2. What stories about African countries have you seen or read in the news recently?

3. What is your view of life in Africa?

4. How does violence and conflict cause people to be sick and die from ailments such as hunger and disease?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. Why is the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the news right now?

The people of the African nation of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one of the most dangerous places in the world, voted Sunday in their country's first multi-party election since 1960.

2. What is causing much of the violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo?

Much of the country's violence can be traced to ethnic clashes that have raged throughout central Africa, and to ongoing power struggles for natural resources such as gold, diamonds, copper, zinc and timber.

3. What dictator seized power and ruled the Congo for more than 30 years?

The Congo won independence from Belgium in 1960, but soon thereafter an army colonel named Mobutu Sese Seko seized power in a coup d'etat. He renamed the country Zaire and for more than 30 years, ruled with an iron fist and put aside nearly all of the country's wealth for himself.

4. Who are the Interhamwe?

Rwandan Hutu rebels, known as the Interhamwe, fled to Zaire after orchestrating the mass killing of about 500,000 to 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994.

5. What led to the overthrow of Mobutu's regime?

Mobutu allowed the Hutu rebels to remain in eastern Zaire.

Angry with Mobutu for providing sanctuary for their enemies, the Rwandan government supported a rebellion lead by Laurent Kabila, who finally ousted the brutal Mobutu regime in 1997.

6. Why did Rwandans and Ugandan switch from supporting Laurent Kabila to supporting rebel groups?

Kabila's backers in Rwanda and Uganda also felt they could count on the new leader to drive out Hutu rebels.

Within a year, however, Kabila changed his mind and refused to expel the Hutus. The Rwandans and Ugandans immediately switched sides, and supported rebels seeking to overthrow Kabila, starting a new civil war in 1998.

7. What happened to Laurent Kabila and who took his place?

Kabila was assassinated in 2001 and his son, Joseph Kabila, was named head of state in his place.

8. How many people die every day in the Congo? How many have died since the start of the recent civil war?

According to a 2005 report by the International Rescue Committee, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the deadliest place in the world, with about 1,000 people dying every day because of preventable disease and famine brought on by the continuing violence.

Some 4 million Congolese, half of them children, have died since 1998.

9. Who is considered the front-runner for the Congolese presidency?

Incumbent Joseph Kabila appears to be the front-runner for the five-year term presidency.

10. How many people die every day in the Congo? How many have died since the start of the recent civil war?

"Perhaps we're heading for a masquerade or a parody of elections," three main opposition candidates, Jean-Pierre Bemba, Azarias Ruberwa and Arthur Z'ahidi Ngoma, wrote in a joint statement.

These candidates, former militant leaders who are now vice presidents in the transitional government, accused the electoral commission of printing too many ballots and setting up fake polling stations.

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. Why is it important to know about conflicts occurring far away from you and around the world? Explain your answer?

2. Research one of these African countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Namibia, Angola, Zimbabwe. In a short essay, discuss that country's successes and its problems. Include what you think life might be like in that country for someone your age. Present your essay in a class discussion.

3. Research the U.S. government's response to the crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. What is the government doing? Should it be doing more? Why or why not?

4. An International Crisis Group expert made this comment about aid for the Congo: "This is not a two- or three-year process: this is going to last for the next 10 to 20 years; we need to change the system which has been in place since independence." Do you think the United Nations is making the right decision to keep its largest peacekeeping force in the Congo when wars and humanitarian crises are affecting nations like Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, East Timor, and Lebanon? If you were the Secretary-general of the United Nations, how would you determine where to send your peacekeeping forces?

Write a 300-500 word essay on either of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra (extra@newshour.org). Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.