DRC: Third Republic: 1990 - 1997 (continued)

Updated June 2005

The Third Republic placated neither the opposition within the country, nor that in exile. In May 1990 students at Lubumbashi University were massacred while engaging in anti-government demonstrations. In November 1990 a political rally in the capital was violently suppressed and furthers public demonstrations occurred in February the following year, as well as a three-day general strike (Gregory Mtembu-Salter 2002, Country Watch 1998).

In mid-1991 Mobutu convened a national conference that included some 2 842 representatives from various political parties and civil society organisations. The Zaïrian National Conference had a lengthy duration (August 1991-December 1992). The forum gave itself a legislative mandate and elected Archbishop Laurent Monsengwo as its chairman, and Etienne Tshisekedi (leader of the UDPS) as prime minister. In the meanwhile looting by soldiers escalated into prolonged and widespread riots resulting in huge numbers of deaths and large scale destruction of property (Gregory Mtembu-Salter 2002).

Mobutu had no intention of allowing power to slip from his hands and he set up a rival government with its own prime minister. While his manoeuvres were condemned by foreign powers the opposition in the National Conference was paralysed by infighting among its members. The ensuing stalemate produced a compromise merger of the two governments into the High Council of Republic-Parliament of Transition (HCR-PT) in 1994, with Mobutu as head of state and Kengo wa Dondo as prime minister. Although presidential and legislative elections were scheduled repeatedly over the next 2 years, they never took place (Gregory Mtembu-Salter 2002).

The creation of the National Electoral Commission in May 1995 with a mandate to manage the electoral process did not bring about significant progress towards the holding of elections; consensus decision-making ham-strung the functioning CNE, a lack of resources made the work of the Commission difficult and the absence of a legal framework rendered the planning and the implementation of electoral operations nearly impossible.

By the time civil war erupted in the Great Lakes region, the transitional process initiated in the Congo had failed to make substantial progress toward a democratic system. In fact, by the end of 1994, the civil war and genocide in neighboring Rwanda had overflowed into the Congo. Crowds of refugees, including thousands of members of the militias responsible for the massacres in Rwanda, fled to the eastern provinces. This significantly exacerbated many long-concealed political and ethnic tensions in the eastern part of the country. Besides, Hutu civilian authorities of the defeated regime and militia forces, commonly called Interahamwe, were using refugees' camps as bases for sporadic raids against the Tutsi-dominated government established in Kigali (Country Watch 1998).

In October 1996, Rwandan armed forces invaded the Congo. This coincided with the emergence of a rebel coalition led by Laurent-Desire Kabila, the Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo-Zaïre (AFDL). Supported by Rwanda and Uganda, the AFDL aimed at ousting Mobutu by force and advanced rapidly until it was poised to take Kinshasa. Following the failure of peace talks initiated by Nelson Mandela between Mobutu and Kabila in May 1997, Kabila proclaimed himself president and Mabuto fled, and the country was renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The Third Republic was at an end (Country Watch 1998).

References

COUNTRY WATCH 1998 "Country Information for the Congo (DRC)", [www] http://www.countrywatch.com/mi_topic.asp?vCOUNTRY=40& SECTION=COVER&TOPIC=POHIS&TYPE=TEXT (page off-line 22 Oct 2007).

MTHEMBU-SALTER, G 2002 "Recent History", IN Murison, K (ed), Africa South of the Sahara 2002, Europa Publications.