Pepa is a community in the southeast of Tanganyika province of the

Democratic Republic of the Congo The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), also known as the DR Congo, Congo-Kinshasa, or simply the Congo (the last ambiguously also referring to the neighbouring Republic of the Congo), is a country in Central Africa. By land area, it is t ...

. It is located 167 kilometres northeast by road from Pweto, to the west of

Lake Tanganyika Lake Tanganyika ( ; ) is an African Great Lakes, African Great Lake. It is the world's List of lakes by volume, second-largest freshwater lake by volume and the List of lakes by depth, second deepest, in both cases after Lake Baikal in Siberia. ...

Location

Pepa is in

Moba Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) is a subgenre of strategy video games in which two teams of players compete on a structured battlefield, each controlling a single character with distinctive abilities that grow stronger as the match progr ...

territory in the southeast of Tanganyika province. The village is surrounded by high plateau grasslands. It was the home of the Belgian-owned Societé Elgima Pepa until the 1990s, a huge cattle farm that employed 1,200 local people.

War

During the

Second Congo War The Second Congo War, also known as Africa's World War or the Great War of Africa, was a major conflict that began on 2 August 1998, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, just over a year after the First Congo War. The war initially erupted ...

(1998-2003) the region became a battle zone between government forces and rebel groups. Most of the people fled to

Zambia Zambia, officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of Central Africa, Central, Southern Africa, Southern and East Africa. It is typically referred to being in South-Central Africa or Southern Africa. It is bor ...

and almost all the cattle were taken. The area between Pweto,

and Moliro has been called the "Triangle of Death". In 2000 the town was held by RCD-Goma forces and the

Rwandan Patriotic Army The Rwandan Defence Force (RDF, , , ) is the military of Rwanda. Prior to 1994, Rwanda's military was officially known as the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR), but following the Rwandan Civil War and the Rwandan genocide, the Rwandan Patriotic Front ( ...

(RPA). In April 2000 a Rwandan airforce

Antonov An-8 The Antonov An-8 (NATO reporting name: Camp) is a Soviet-designed twin-turboprop, high-wing light military transport aircraft. Development In December 1951, OKB-153 initiated the design of a twin-engined assault transport aircraft, designated D ...

crashed on take-off from the Pepa airstrip killing the crew of four and about 20 Rwandan soldiers including a Rwanda army major, two captains and two lieutenants. Other reports place the death toll as high as 57. In October 2000 Pepa was captured in an offensive by DRC government troops and their allies. The RCD-Goma and RPA forces counter-attacked and recaptured Pepa in November 2000. In October 2000, 10 000 AFDL troops (including Hutu, and Zimbabwean) assaulted at Mutoko Moya (west of Pepa) against 3000 Rwanda/Burundi/RCD forces, forcing them to retreat to Pepa. Zimbabwe Air Force bombers were used. 6000 RCD reinforcements crossed from Burundi across the lake to counterattack. For two days, and hundreds of casualties, there was no result. Then a light battalion was sent on a long outflanking manoeuver, which led to success. The AFDL retreated to Pweto. The Rwandans took other places in the area including Pweto and Moba early in December 2000. By the end of the war buildings that had been used by the military were dilapidated and the community was littered with unexploded and abandoned ordnance. Pepa was an old Belgian commercial farm, in 2010 there were 200 cows left. Pepa changed hands three times in 2000, during the Second Congolese War. The

Mai-Mai The term Mai-Mai or Mayi-Mayi refers to any kind of community-based militia group active in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) that is formed to defend local communities and territory against other armed groups. Most were formed to resis ...

finally occupied Pepa from 2003 until a village strike (collectively refused to work for them) forced them to leave, in 2006. Ben Rawlence, Radio Congo: Signals of Hope from Africa's Deadliest War. (London, One World Publications, 2012) p 183 - 186

Today

About 4,000 people trickled back to Pepa after the war, where aid workers educated them in avoiding the dangers of mines and other explosives. By 2010 the herd of cattle numbered 270 and was steadily growing.

References

{{reflist , refs= {{cite web , url=http://www.maginternational.org/news/dr-congo-bringing-a-village-back-to-life , title=Bringing the village of Pepa back to life , publisher=MAG , date=8 April 2010 , accessdate=2011-11-02 , archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120608024257/http://www.maginternational.org/news/dr-congo-bringing-a-village-back-to-life , archive-date=8 June 2012 , url-status=dead {{cite book , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ceFIryEHTL4C&pg=PA288 , pages=288–289 , title=Genocide and crisis in Central Africa: conflict roots, mass violence, and regional war , author=Christian P. Scherrer , publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group , year=2002 , ISBN=0-275-97224-0 Populated places in Tanganyika Province