Artículo World Politics Review, 07.03.2017 William Clowes, periodista radicial y de prensa en Kinshasa
Since the Democratic Republic of Congo secured its independence in 1960, its people have become accustomed to living under unstable or dictatorial governments, but they entered 2017 especially unsure of where their country stands. At the heart of their uncertainty is the continuing refusal of President Joseph Kabila to clarify his long-term ambitions. But the death of a longtime opposition leader last month has only added to the confusion.
Many Congolese remain convinced that Kabila aspires to a third term, currently forbidden by the constitution. Several of his influential supporters have openly advocated for a referendum that would remove term limits. In public and private, however, others close to Kabila insist he isn’t motivated by a desire to cling to office, but rather to create conditions conducive to Congo’s first democratic transfer of power.
It came as no surprise that Kabila didn’t step down on Dec. 19, the day his second term expired, or that he would continue as head of state into 2017. This had been clear ever since it became apparent that the presidential election originally scheduled for last November wouldn’t take place on time. Last May, the pliant Constitutional Court assented to Kabila presiding over the country during this limbo period, ruling that he must remain in office until he’s replaced by an elected successor.
Late last year, Kabila’s government saturated Congo’s cities with heavily armed soldiers and police who unsparingly enforced a ban on political protest introduced several months earlier. A United Nations report found that security forces killed at least 40 people and arrested more than 900 across several cities over several days in December. These were hardly the actions of a committed democrat.
On New Year’s Eve, however, Kabila’s political alliance and the main opposition coalition, known as the Rassemblement, struck an agreement that, if applied to the letter, paves the way for the president’s exit in late 2017. The deal, which was mediated by the Congolese Catholic Church, stipulates that its signatories won’t try to change the constitution—theoretically addressing the most acute fear of Kabila’s adversaries. A national unity government headed by a prime minister from the Rassemblement is supposed to be formed, tasked with stewarding the country toward presidential, parliamentary and provincial elections in December 2017. If all goes to plan, the people of Congo could, perhaps, begin to contemplate life after Kabila.
But the accord has failed to persuade the Congolese people or the international community that Kabila has abandoned any aspirations to hold onto power. The president’s alliance and the opposition coalition reconvened in early January to hash out the composition of both the new government and the committee responsible for implementing the deal. Consensus, however, has been rare, and disagreements, including over how to choose the new prime minister, have fueled doubts about the good faith of the president’s allies. The prospects for elections in 2017 become slimmer the longer it takes to get the agreement off the ground.
If progress was glacial during January, it came to a shuddering halt on Feb. 1 when Etienne Tshisekedi—the president of the Rassemblement and the head of Congo’s largest opposition party, the Union for Democracy and Social Progress, known by its French acronym, UDPS—died in Belgium. The 84-year-old wasn’t just the leader-in-waiting of the accord’s monitoring committee, but the symbolic father of the Congolese opposition. A one-time ally of Mobutu Sese Seko, the autocrat who ruled for 32 years from 1965, Tshisekedi founded the UDPS in 1980 and held sway over the party until the end. He ran in the presidential election in 2011, declaring Kabila’s victory fraudulent and himself the true president.
Tshisekedi, who had been in poor health for years, left in September 2014 for Brussels, where he remained for nearly two years. But his last hurrah reaffirmed his unparalleled talents among Congo’s politicians. In June 2016, he oversaw the creation of the Rassemblement, bringing together disparate interests and former enemies to establish an impressive anti-Kabila bloc. The following month, he returned to Kinshasa, where he was received by an enormous, rapturous crowd.
The ailing Tshisekedi’s leadership of the opposition may have been largely symbolic, but it was unquestioned. There is nobody else waiting in the wings to replace him who can command similar deference from both the people and the political class. The Rassemblement’s foundations appear immediately shakier in his absence. The necessity of swiftly filling the vacuum created by Tshisekedi’s departure has reawakened the factionalism that has historically plagued opposition movements in Congo.
The most influential pillars within the Rassemblement are the UDPS and the G7, a group of seven parties that supports the presidential ambitions of Moise Katumbi and broke with Kabila in September 2015. Katumbi is the only politician who wields star power comparable to Tshisekedi, but he is currently in exile after being convicted of illegally selling a property, a charge he’s denounced as politically motivated. The G7 and key figures within the UDPS decided to split the leadership of the Rassemblement in two. On March 2, with the backing of some smaller parties, they designated Tshisekedi’s son, Felix, and Pierre Lumbi, a G7 party chief, as the presidents of the political bureau and the council of experts, respectively. Most of the Rassemblement has also nominated Felix Tshisekedi to be the next prime minister.
Some experienced members of the opposition bristle at the increasingly prominent role of the G7. They view its involvement in the coalition and Katumbi himself with skepticism, because they’re relatively recent converts to the opposition cause. The coalition’s restructuring and in particular Lumbi’s elevation have gone down badly with some UDPS heavyweights as well as other groups within the Rassemblement. That Lumbi was Kabila’s special adviser for security from 2011 to 2015 only antagonizes them further. A fringe of the Rassemblement—sizable but still a minority—has refused to recognize Lumbi’s appointment and nominated an alternative, while a marginal faction has rejected both of the new presidents.
Some Rassemblement members are remaining circumspect for now and evaluating their position, while everyone—in public at least—is behaving respectfully toward Felix Tshisekedi, a political neophyte with a big name.
If, as many suspect, Kabila endorsed the accord mainly to buy time to weigh his options, the fallout from Tshisekedi’s death strengthens his hand. Nonetheless, he faces a headache with the repatriation of Tshisekedi’s body to Kinshasa and subsequent funeral. The government managed to avoid protracted violence and bloodshed during December, principally due to a stringent application of its protest ban. Kabila won’t be able to prevent a large and impassioned public gathering when Tshisekedi returns to Congo for the final time and will have to think carefully about how to manage the crowds.
Memories of Sept. 19 and 20 last year, when security forces killed about 50 people in Kinshasa during a demonstration organized by the Rassemblement, are still fresh. The date of Tshisekedi’s funeral still hasn’t been confirmed as the government liaises with the UDPS and the Tshisekedi family, both of whom are nervously taking the temperature of the zealous party faithful. Fears that the event could be volatile and trigger clashes between an unpopular state and its opponents are justified.
Assuming that both the opposition and Kabila can overcome their own challenges, Congo will simply return to exactly where it was at the end of January, with the bones of a potentially constructive political deal urgently requiring flesh. The same prosaic yet vital tasks—forming a national unity government, raising the electoral budget, organizing the elections—still await both sides’ attention. Until the focus returns to the drudgery of governing, a democratic handover will remain elusive.
