THE Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) faces a growing humanitarian crisis in the wake of a conflict between sovereign states and the M23 militia, involving neighbours which include Rwanda, Uganda and now Kenya. Thousands have been forced to flee, have faced severe injury and death from violence currently permeating across borders.
The ongoing violence has even reawakened ethnic conflict between the Hutus and Tutsis, threatening bloodshed not seen since the 1994 genocide in and around Kigali.
Moreover, the country has been proven time and again to play host to the unabated and ruthless torture of its own citizens from within country, with in some cases children as young as five or six being forced to mine in the resource-rich Province of Katanga, arguably home to the minerals necessary to fuel the entire world’s green industrial revolution, by its own government
But these myriad crises are not stopping DR Congo President Félix Tshisekedi from travelling to Washington DC, holding court at 5-star hotels and flaunting the veil of an African Democracy to all and sundry.
And while there is no ‘one size fits all’ model to democratising nation-states borne out of the genesis of colonialism, any chance for tangible change to the regime’s status quo is back at home being quenched by those that serve the ruling party.
The DRC is a francophone civil law-oriented country, its main provisions able to be traced to Napoleonic code. This doctrine, however, means one can be presumed guilty before being proven innocent, and enables the weaponisation of rule of law against those that would challenge the establishment.
Case in point: In Kinshasa, the Chairman of the country’s Tribunal of Commerce, has just been asked to step down so as not to stand in the way of the ongoing seizure of political opponents’ property and resources by the Tshisekedi administration.
Well, he was threatened to resign is the more appropriate vernacular, a monumental precedent, with news breaking that indeed he did step down, under extreme duress.
Were he not to, were a defence put forward by him to protect the property and resources of political opponents, those necessary for said opponents to effectively compete during the DRC’s upcoming presidential elections, then Congolese lives would be at direct stake.
This latest development is not novel to the country – opposition leaders and their followers have had to seek exile or face street justice from cronies of the administration and others.
Recent multimedia footage also makes very clear who is in control of the mines of Katanga, as Chinese soldiers have been caught shouting instructions to DRC soldiers to assault their own countrymen who, as exhausted and operating under extreme conditions, cannot dig with their bare hands any longer for the minerals which start up the world’s Tesla’s (more than 80 percent of the world’s coltan, for example, can be found in the DRC).
Despite these unbelievable conditions which reflect the crisis in leadership plaguing Haiti, in the DRC, there is a quiet reckoning coming.
While the present administration may be able to, amid the hundreds of African delegations congregating on Washington DC, gloss over the failures in leadership at home, the unabated and highly popular support of alternative leaders may pose a direct threat to the systemic corruption that the DRC has emblemised since the Kabila administration first handed the keys to the castle to Mr. Tshisekedi.
2023 may in fact bring a disruptive and lasting change to the crisis continuing to afflict the DRC, allowing a select few to profit from the geopolitical game of chess playing out between China and its superpower rival and host to the US-Africa Leaders Summit.
