DRC: Re-Democratisation and the endless transition to the Third Republic (continued)

Extracted from: "Democratic Republic of Congo" IN Compendium of Elections in Southern Africa (2002), edited by Tom Lodge, Denis Kadima and David Pottie, EISA, 70-73.

In June 1998, the first of a succession of cabinet reshuffles removed several Tutsi personalities from their ministries. Kabila was increasingly aware of rising popular dislike in Kinshasa of the extent of Tutsi - and Rwandan - influence over his administration. Against a background of skirmishes between Banyamulenge and non-Tutsi units in the army as well as fighting between Interahamwe and Tutsi communities in the Eastern provinces, the Rwandan government announced its support in August for a new rebellion, this time led by the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Democratique (RCD). Given the support of the Rwandan military, the RCD was soon able to secure control of the Eastern provinces. Widely viewed as a Tutsi secessionist front despite its multi-ethnic leadership, the RCD appeared to have no structured popular following outside the Banyamulenge communities and within the areas under its control it both behaved and was viewed as an occupying force. However, further opposition to Kabila's government appeared in the form of the Mouvement pour la Liberation du Congo. This emerged in Equateur, Mobutu's home province, in November 1998. It was led by Jean Pierre Bemba, the scion of a wealthy Kinshasa family, and it featured in its hierachy many senior former officers in the Zaïrean army. As with the RCD, the MLC enjoyed foreign sponsorship, this time from the Ugandans, enabling it to establish a third Congolese administration in the north-west regions of the country.

Since August 1998, Congo has been in a state of intermittent civil war, bouts of fierce fighting interrupted by bad weather and various short-lived ceasefire agreements arranged on the basis of an Accord signed between the main protagonists in Lusaka in July 1999. Effectively, the country is partitioned between three administrations, each resulting from military occupation. The war involves the armies of six nations besides the Congolese, Uganda and Rwanda, each sponsors and active allies of rebel movements, and supporters of the Kinshasa government, in order of importance, Zimbabwe, Angola, Namibia, and Chad. Libyan and Burundian soldiers have also played more peripheral roles. In addition, the Interahamwe have constituted a separate military force, though supported by the Kabila administration and a second militia, the Maï-Maï, has also sought to contest Banyamulenge land occupation in Kivu and Maniema provinces, again with Congolese army support in the form of air-drops of supplies.

Against this background of civil conflict and multinational military invasion (and competition between the invading forces for control of lucrative trading opportunities in diamonds and timber), the most important political developments have been as follows.

First, the clauses of the Lusaka Accord provided for the establishment of an all inclusive National Dialogue which would seek a political consensus on the institutions which would represent and govern a third Congolese republic; All the main parties to the conflict with the exception of the Interahamwe and the Maï-Maï were to become signatories to this commitment by the end of August 1999.

Secondly, though, notwithstanding his acceptance of the Lusaka Accord, Laurent Kabila was to enact a series of measures which appeared to entrench his administration and inhibit the development of any serious political competition. These included a law on political activity in January 1999 which imposed extremely rigorous requirements for the registration of political parties, the construction in Kinshasa of a network of elected Comites Populaires du Peuples, organisms of local government which, in the traditional Zaïrean state/party mode combined representative and administrative functions, the appointment, not election, in mid 2000 of a new parliament, based in Lumumbashi, and a series of press crackdowns and arrests of political opponents.

The third major development was Kabila's own assassination on 16 January 2001, in still obscure circumstances, in which senior army officers appear to have been the main conspirators. Laurent Kabila was succeeded by his son, Joseph, installed at the behest of the Lumumbashi parliament on 24 January. Almost immediately Joseph Kabila signalled a more conciliatory politics with pledges in his flfSt public address of dialogue with Congo's neighbours, of market reform and of political liberalisation.

These promises have been substantially kept. After a third military disengagement agreement which allowed for the arrival of a force of several hundred United Nations peacekeepers (whose presence in the Congo government-controlled territory had hitherto been resisted by Laurent Kabila), representatives of the government, the rebels (now somewhat realigned as a consequence of splits in the RCD), civil society, and the 'unarmed opposition' signed on 15 August, 2001 a 'Pacte Republicaine', establishing common principles for a Congolese national dialogue, to open at Addis Ababa three months later. In May 2001, the government abrogated the law on party registration replacing it with much easier requirements for parties to obtain official recognbition.

Since August 2001, two sessions of this dialogue have,taken place, in Addis Ababa and at the Sun City resort in South Africa. The Addis Ababa meeting concerned itself chiefly with issues of who should be represented.