DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO
Emperors and Old Clothes
Nawa Punyo joined a rally recently with other Roman Catholics in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, to demand that President Joseph Kabila resign.
“Kabila has been playing around for long enough; it’s time for him to go,” Punyo, an unemployed laboratory technician, told the Financial Times. “We are all suffering but politicians are doing nothing for us so we are turning to our (church leaders). They are the voice of the voiceless.”
Kabila was supposed to leave office in December 2016, when his second term expired. Instead, he has twice postponed elections and stayed in office. Assuming power in 2001 after the assassination of his father, ex-President Laurent-Désiré Kabila, Joseph Kabila had been in charge for more than 17 years, a typical period among strongmen leaders throughout Africa.
But as Punyo’s comments illustrate, things might be changing.
Led by Moise Katumbi, a former provincial governor, opposition leaders have joined forces to make sure Kabila holds elections in December.
“You have chosen me to lead us to the coming elections,” Katumbi said at a gathering of supporters recently in Johannesburg, South Africa, according to Bloomberg. “I call for unity among the opposition because we have to work together, hand in hand, to go toward free and transparent elections.”
Katumbi has been in self-imposed exile in South Africa since May 2016. A month later, a Congolese court sentenced him in absentia to three years in prison for selling property illegally. The judge who sentenced him said Kabila’s agents pressured her, the BBC reported.
Kabila should fear Congolese voters.
The country is blessed with a fortune in minerals like copper and cobalt. Yet 75 percent of its people live in poverty.
Ethnic strife claimed dozens of lives recently in the country’s northeastern region, Al Jazeera said. Refugees escaped the violence in boats, traveling across Lake Albert to Uganda. They’re part of a total of 4.5 million people who are now displaced due to a variety of conflicts throughout the vast country.
The United Nations is warning that two million children might die from starvation unless they receive aid soon, wrote Voice of America.
Botswana’s Ministry of International Affairs recently assessed the situation with a remarkable statement that dispensed with diplomatic niceties.
“We continue to witness a worsening humanitarian situation in that country mainly because its leader has persistently delayed the holding of elections, and has lost control over the security of his country,” said the statement, as cited by Reuters.
The next nine months will determine whether the tragedies unfolding daily in the Congo will outweigh the president’s ego.
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