DR Congo President Felix Tshisekedi waves to the crowd during a campaign
rally in Kinshasa, on December 21, 2018. The president seems to be
trying to find a legitimacy based on democratic and reformist actions as
president, precisely because he didn’t get it the ballot in December.
PHOTO | LUIS TATO | AFP
There has been alarming news out of the Democratic Republic of
Congo in recent days, but also some surprises and promising
developments.
On the gloomy side, Congolese health
authorities announced a record 26 deaths last week alone of people
affected by the Ebola epidemic in the east of the country.
It
was the first time that figure had been reached, the Ministry of Health
said. Since the beginning of the epidemic, according to reports, there
have been 957 Ebola-related deaths.
The current Ebola
outbreak in the DRC is the most serious in the history of the virus,
after the one that killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa in
2014-2016, according to the UN.
East Africa should pay
more attention to the DRC’s struggles with Ebola, because should it lose
the fight and there is a spillover, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi could
pay dearly.
However, perhaps no country is better
placed to help DRC than Uganda, whose first deadly tango with Ebola in
2000—then still an enlightened period of President Yoweri Museveni’s
rule before it was beset by corruption and systems were taken over by
vested interests—enabled it to develop some of the best anti-Ebola
smarts you will find on this continent.
But there was
also a very positive development. Congolese prosecutors announced they
had dropped an investigation into allegations that popular opposition
leader Moise Katumbi hired mercenaries to help oust former president
Joseph Kabila’s regime.
This followed a court decision
in mid-April to annul a three-year prison sentence imposed on Katumbi.
The sentence had been for a trumped-upcharge of property fraud.
Katumbi,
a former governor of the country’s copper-mining Katanga region, was
charged after defecting from Kabila's ruling party and announcing he
would run for president in 2016.
His “crime,”
therefore, was the familiar old one in Africa of wanting to lead a
country when the occupant of the office has designs to be president for
life.
Kabila eventually gave up his bid, and late last year an election produced a shock winner—current President Felix Tshisekedi.
Tshisekedi was polling third in opinion surveys, with the opposition’s Martin Fayulu the far-out favourite to win.
Kabila
then pulled the electoral heist, ditching his PPRD party’s candidate
Emmanuel Shadary, and helping steal the election for Tshisekedi.
Kabila’s
party dominates the legislature, and the view was that Tshisekedi would
be little more than his useful puppet. Yet, precisely because he has a
weak hand and needs Kabila, Tshisekedi is doing some very unCongolese
things.
He has moved to release the hundreds of
Kabila’s political prisoners, and has toured the vast country with a
humility rarely seen from a Congolese leader.
Tshisekedi
seems to be trying to find a legitimacy based on democratic and
reformist actions as president, precisely because he didn’t get it the
ballot in December.
A modestly stable and democratic
DRC, easily the world’s most resource-rich nation, could dramatically
alter the fortunes of the region and put a lot of honest money (for
once) in people’s pockets.
In terms of global cultural
politics, next year its capital Kinshasa will overtake Paris as the
largest French-speaking city in the world.
A lot of these changes are happening without being much noticed, because most people still don’t take Tshisekedi seriously.
Maybe for the good of DRC, it should remain that way.
Charles Onyango-Obbo is a researcher and writer on politics and public affairs.
No comments :
Post a Comment