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Photo credits: Fred de Sam Lazaro (top, middle), Nikki See (bottom)
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Democracy in the Rough
Tuesday, September 12, 2006 at 9 P.M.
WIDE ANGLE is on the ground as the Democratic Republic of Congo holds its first elections in 45 years -- an election supported by more than $450 million from the United Nations. The stakes are high in Congo, a nation rich in timber, diamonds, and coltan -- a substance essential for small electronics from cell phones to laptops to Play Stations -- but the country is reeling from decades of dictatorship and a civil war that left more than four million dead. We follow a former school principal running for parliament who sees her Christian faith as the means for improving living conditions in a country where the per capita income is $100 per year. And we explore what the election means to ordinary Congolese like Jean "McCoy" Kajanda, a would-be accountant who instead spends his days knee-deep in a muddy river bed, sifting the soil for diamonds, earning less than a dollar a day -- not always enough for his wife, Sophie, to feed their three young children. Through a diversity of voices in a country rarely seen on U.S. television, "Democracy in the Rough" immerses us in a nation haunted by war, threatened by corruption, and torn over how to move toward a democratic and more promising future.
 Watch a preview video
Producer/writer Fred de Sam Lazaro is an executive producer at the Minnesota PBS affiliate, Twin Cities Public Television. Among the productions he has spearheaded are the highly acclaimed MADE IN CHINA series and the documentaries DEATH OF THE DREAM and SETH EASTMAN: PAINTING THE DAKOTA, broadcast on PBS. Since 1985, de Sam Lazaro has been a correspondent for THE NEWSHOUR WITH JIM LEHRER, reporting on domestic and international issues. In 1999, he became a contributing correspondent for PBS' RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY. He has reported from the remote Chad-Sudan border region where he led the first American television crew to cover the deepening refugee crisis there; and he filed stories on ethnic and religious conflict and reconciliation in Rwanda, India, and the former Yugoslavia. His reports have received awards from the International Film and Video festival and the Angel Award, among others. De Sam Lazaro was awarded an honorary doctorate by St John's University, in Minnesota, in recognition of his early reporting on the AIDS pandemic from India and Africa.
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