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“This f—ing war, ay mother, no one owns it! It’s everybody’s and nobody’s. It keeps fracturing and redefining itself, militias form overnight and suddenly a drunken foot soldier with a tribal vendetta is a rebel leader and in possession of half of the enriched land, but you can’t reason with him, because he’s only thinking as far as his next drink… At least I understood Mobutu’s brand of chaos. Now, I’m a relative beginner, I must relearn the terms every few months, and make new friends, but who?”
                                 - Mr. Harari in Ruined

In Ruined, playwright Lynn Nottage captures the constantly shifting alliances and tragic absurdity that marks the ongoing war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Rendered with great humanity, clarity and, surprisingly, humor, Ruined is the story of Mama Nadi, the ambitious owner of a canteen that serves everything from a cold beer and a warm meal to the company of a woman. Through Mama Nadi we meet the women who work for her and the businessmen, peddlers, government soldiers, rebel fighters and miners who frequent her canteen. In this portrait of a place and its people, Nottage offers us a window into a country that has suffered immeasurable losses since the beginning of the war that has raged there for more than a decade.

The roots of the conflict can be traced to the 1994 genocide against the Tutsis in neighboring Rwanda, where approximately 800,000 people lost their lives during only three months of fighting. Members of the military force of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, the government responsible for the genocide, led more than a million Hutus into exile in the Congo (then called Zaire), where both military and civilian refugees established themselves in camps along the border. There, under the direction of defeated political and military leaders, soldiers and militias were reorganized and rearmed in preparation for new attacks on Rwanda. This sparked a series of invasions and attacks by forces from Rwanda, from within the Congo and from Uganda, eventually transforming the conflict into the widest interstate war in modern African history.

In 1997, Congolese rebel forces under the leadership of Laurent Kabila, and with the backing of Rwandan and Ugandan troops, marched on the capital of Kinshasa and overthrew President Mobutu Sese Seko, ending 30 years of one of the most corrupt dictatorships on record. According to BBC World Service, Kabila was met by “adoring crowds everywhere he went.” But only a few months into his reign, Kabila broke with his former Ugandan and Rwandan allies and enlisted the help of forces from Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia, expanding the conflict and setting the stage for years of brutal warfare. The main foreign contenders signed a cease-fire accord in July 1999, but it was not until Kabila’s assassination in 2001 and the installation of his son Joseph Kabila as president that Uganda and Rwandan troops and other foreign forces began their retreat.

The war officially ended in 2002, but thousands still die each month from treatable diseases, and the Congolese army, foreign-backed rebels and home-grown militias continue to struggle over power and the land – land which contains some of the world’s largest deposits of gold, copper, diamonds, tin and coltan, a resource used to power small electronic devices such as cell phones and laptop computers.

According to a recent CBS News report by Anderson Cooper entitled “War Against Women,” the most frequent targets of this brutal war are women. In Nottage’s play this reality is brought vividly to life by the introduction of a luminously pretty and smart young woman named Sophie, who was destined for a university education until she was captured by militia soldiers, brutalized and left for dead. The title of the play, Ruined, is a terrible euphemism for what happened to Sophie – and what happens to Congolese women every day.

Rape by armed soldiers from government forces as well as rebel groups has become the norm in the Congo, according to Anneka Van Woudenberg, a senior Congo researcher for Human Rights Watch and one of the authors of a study entitled The War Within the War: Sexual Violence Against Women and Girls in Eastern Congo. In some villages, as many as 90 percent of the women have been raped. While sexual violence and rape have always been a part of warfare, Van Woudenberg argues that this epidemic is different. “What’s different in the Congo is the scale and systematic nature of it as well as the brutality,” she explains. “This is not rape because soldiers have gotten bored and have nothing to do. It is a way to ensure that communities accept the power and authority of that particular armed group. This is about showing terror. This is about using it as a weapon of war.”

Compounding the physical and emotional effects of rape is what often happens to the women after they are attacked. Another character in Nottage’s play, Salima, describes how her husband reacted when she returned home from being held as a prisoner by a group of soliders:

He called me a filthy dog and said I tempted them. Why else would it happen? Eight months in the bush, passed between soldiers like a wash rag. Used. I was made poison by their fingers, that is what he said. He had no choice but to turn away from me, because I dishonored him.

Sadly this happens to rape survivors throughout the Congo. Dr. Denis Mukwege, a physician in Eastern Congo who performs reconstructive surgeries for women who have been raped so brutally that they can no longer control their bodily functions, says that he used to think the husbands who abandoned their wives were irresponsible. “But now I understand things differently,” he explains. “They haven’t fled because their wives have been raped, but because they feel they’ve been raped. They have been traumatized, humiliated, because they weren’t able to do anything to protect their wives and children.”

While the situation in the Congo is bleak, individuals and organizations are working hard and making headway to transform the lives and futures of Congolese women. Anneka Van Woudenberg and Human Rights Watch are fighting to reform the justice system in the Congo so rapists will not go unpunished. Physicians like Dr. Mukwege are providing hope for women who might otherwise be condemned to a lifetime of unbearable physical pain. And individual women – survivors – are fighting to create a future for themselves and their children by learning important skills, such as reading and writing.

Nottage draws on these women to craft the characters at the center of this play – Mama Nadi, Sophie, Salima – all survivors who refuse to let themselves be destroyed by the brutality around them. It is this spirit of survival and dignity that infuses Lynn Nottage’s play and the women it portrays with an energy, vitality and irrepressible sense of hope.

This article was originally published in the September-December 2008 edition of ONSTAGE. Reprinted with permission from Goodman Theatre.