DRC: Democracy at a crossroads

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is organising its third ‘multi-party, democratic, free, fair and transparent elections’ on 28 November 2011, since gaining independence from Belgium on 30 June 1960.

The people of that vast mineral-rich country have many times demonstrated and confirmed their maturity by being willing to give power and legitimacy only to governments which they have elected through a multi-party, democratic, free, fair and transparent electoral process. Since the DRC's accession to independence in 1960, the people of the DRC have democratically elected leaders to whom they have conferred the legitimacy of power while retaining the right to hold those governments accountable. However, the facts show that the legitimacy of Congolese democratically elected leaders needs Western powers’ ‘rubber stamp’.

As soon as the Congolese people democratically elect their leaders and confer them the legitimacy to rule, pressure is immediately put on Congolese leaders to seek Western powers’ approval, by showing that they will attend to Western interests during their tenure of office. Failure to do so has often resulted in a chaos carefully orchestrated (sometimes in a hidden or covert way, sometimes in an open or overt way) and managed by the same Western powers in order to create a new undemocratic political order that would serve their interests. In doing so, Western powers constitute themselves into another source of legitimacy of power in the DRC, by hoisting to power Congolese leaders who are unquestionably ready to purchase such a legitimacy from them, in other words, ‘the men they can do business with’.

INTRODUCTION

The long-suffering people of the DRC aspire for democracy, stability, development and peace not only in their own country but also in the Great Lakes Region as a whole. However, it seems that the ‘Democratic Republic of Congo’ is ‘democratic’ only in name, because the reality on the ground is otherwise. The Congolese people are determined to make democracy a reality in their country, but every time they have gone to the ballot box, democracy, stability, development and peace have always eluded them soon afterwards, like a game of snakes and ladder: Crisis – elections – crisis. This cycle seems to have become unbreakable because history is always repeating itself in an ongoing manner, since the DRC gained its independence from Belgium on 30 June 1960.

So far, the analysis of the situation in the DRC by the UN, Western media, Western academic circles, Western NGOs and Western governments has only focused on internal factors which rightly are the main sources of political and economic instability related to the legitimacy of power in the DRC – or the lack of it.

Yet, it is also necessary to critically examine the assumptions in the global system of economic and political relations and how these can be reviewed, revisited or re-looked at in such a way as to reach a new paradigm shift that will usher a new phase or concept of democracy and development in the DRC. It is basically to see where the power centres of the global village that our world has become lie, and what little choice for the diversification of economic and trade partners they leave to "poor" African countries such as the DRC. We also need to understand why their blame-game for under-development - which has, in a one-sided way, always targeted the deficiencies of the often "corrupt state" in Africa - needs to be challenged without leaving any taboo or any stone unturned.

After all, as the only superpower left, the United States of America – which did not participate in the Berlin Conference – is claiming the lion’s share of Africa’s resources, as Kintu (1997) suggests. According to Kintu (1997:1), the US’s desire to devour Africa was best explained by the late American Under-Secretary of State For Commerce, Ron Brown, while visiting Uganda. He told a dinner party audience that "For many years African business has been dominated by Europeans while America gets only 17% of the market. We are now determined to reverse that and take the lion’s share."

Why should democratically elected African governments give or let the US take the lion’s share instead of giving the lion’s share to the people who elected them? Which should come first – American interests or African people’s interests? What means will the US use to take the lion’ share? Is it possible to respect democratically established government in Africa and take the lion’s share at the same time? These are the questions that need to be asked.

It is worthwhile therefore to also look at both international and external factors that prevent democracy from gaining ground in the DRC, including the ever-changing new world order after the end of the Cold War, the current global financial and debt crisis affecting the Western countries, and the rise and rise of China. All of these have implications for the DRC, a very geostrategic country in the heart of Africa, a third of the size of China, abundantly endowed with of still unexploited strategic and priceless natural and mineral resources.

A brief summary of the history of democratic elections in the DRC, which has just celebrated its 51st anniversary as an independent and sovereign state shows that the DRC has had four head of states since its independence (two elected – Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Kabila). Mobutu made a coup d’état, while Laurent Kabila drew his immense legitimacy from the fact that he put an end to Mobutu’s 32 years of dictatorship, put the country back on track in order to subsequently organise elections.

THE LUMUMBA ERA

The resilient and hopeful Congolese people saw the first multi-party and democratic elections organised in 1960 as an opportunity to shake off the Belgian stranglehold and colonial yoke and rule themselves through democratically elected leaders in a unified country. They elected Patrice Lumumba, a powerful and charismatic leader, the first ever democratically and legally elected leader in the DRC.

Lumumba was determined to establish a democratic rule as he put it in his independent day speech:

"We are going to put an end to the suppression of free thought and see to it that all our citizens enjoy to the full the fundamental liberties foreseen in the Declaration of the Rights of Man. We are going to do away with all discrimination of every variety and assure for each and all, the position to which human dignity, work, and dedication entitles him…"[1]

But ‘the too nationalist and panafricanist’ Lumumba was not given a chance to govern and to prove himself. Western powers used the ‘politics of no African leadership effective control’ in Congo; that is, elected or not, the US and its Western allies would not be prepared to let Africans have effective control over strategic raw materials. Just a few months after Lumumba became head of state, Belgium masterminded the mutiny of the army to justify sending troops to back the secession of the southern rich-in minerals Katanga province as well as the South Kasai province. Lumumba was eventually overthrown and assassinated on 17 January 1961. His assassination was the outcome of plots orchestrated by American and Belgian governments, which used Kasavubu, Mobutu and other Congolese accomplices and a Belgian execution squad to carry out the deed. Lumumba’s physical elimination had removed what the West saw as the major threat to their interests in the Congo.[2]

THE MOBUTU ERA

The strategy of putting ‘more amenable leaders in power in Africa’ and the politics of ‘using an African hand’ to neutralise a fellow African who is not complying, worked. Lumumba’s assassination was followed by the United Nations, the US and European support for a Cold War ally, Mobutu Sese Seko through whom Congo's rich resources would then cheaply be made available to them rather than used for Congo’s own people and development.

Mutiga (2004) states that Joseph Désiré Mobutu settled down into being ‘The United States of America’s Man in Zaïre’ – as President Ronald Reagan used to call him.[3] Reagan also referred to Mobutu as ‘a friend of democracy and freedom’ and ‘a voice of good sense and good will’.[4] President George Bush senior for his part called Mobutu ‘one of our most valued friends on the entire continent of Africa’. This is according to a 1989 report in the US Department of State Bulletin.[5]

William D. Hartung (2009) suggests that the US accordingly prolonged the rule of Zairian dictator Mobutu Sese Seko by providing more than US$300 million in weapons and US$100 million in military training. Mobutu used his US-supplied arsenal to repress his own people and plunder his nation’s economy for three decades, until his brutal regime was overthrown by Laurent Kabila’s forces in 1997.[6]

With Lumumba’s death, the young Congolese democracy was decapitated by the same Western powers which preach democracy to Africa. The elimination of Patrice Lumumba had nothing to do with ‘Cold War politics’, as it is often argued, because post-Cold War legitimate African leaders, who, today dare to challenge Western hegemony in their countries immediately face the same fate as Patrice Lumumba (Laurent Kabila, Gbagbo, Gaddafi, etc.,).

LAURENT DÉSIRÉ KABILA, ‘THE MAN WHO HAD TO DIE’

In 1997, Laurent Désiré Kabila, a long-time Lumumbist guerrilla fighter, overthrew the regime of Mobutu Sese Seko, thanks to America’s diplomatic support, as well as the military support of Rwanda, Uganda, Zimbabwe and Angola. But as soon as he settled in Kinshasa, Laurent Kabila did an about-turn and began to review all the contracts that Mobutu had signed with Western multinational mining companies as well as those he himself had signed with American and South African mining companies when he was a rebel, arguing that he had no legitimacy for doing so at that time and demanding that they pay up-front for decades of future profits. Talbot (2001) suggests that Kabila had upset his military backers, who had brought him to power by reneging on deals to sell off mining concessions as well as by refusing to accept IMF proposals to pay off the country's huge debts incurred under Mobutu (more then $14 billion).[7]

Lokongo (2001) states that Laurent Kabila had explained that ‘more than 30 years of African independence have offered to the world a sad spectacle of a continent looted and humiliated with the complicity of its own sons and daughters’, and expressed the wish ‘to see Africa entering the 21st century totally independent of foreign interference’ and declared that the battle for Congo’s independence and sovereignty was fought in the interest of Africa as a whole’. For Laurent Kabila, the DRC ‘has a vocation of exporting peace, development and security to the rest of Africa because a weak Congo means a vulnerable Africa from its centre, an Africa without a heart’.[8] Laurent Kabila was eventually assassinated in the same circumstances as Patrice Lumumba was on 16 January 2001.

Laurent Kabila refused to be remote-controlled and proved to be independent-minded. The DRC was consequently plunged into a 10-year war of aggression in 1998 when the Rwandan and Ugandan governments supported by foreign powers invaded Congo, aiming to annex the mineral-rich eastern Congo to their respective countries (Martens 2002).[9]

Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe backed Congolese government forces against Uganda and Rwanda troops who were masterminding so-called Congolese Tutsi rebels fighting for Congolese nationality and Congolese rebels; all this under the pretext of eradicating the Hutu militia group known as the Front de Libération du Rwanda (FDLR), accused of having committed the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda and who had crossed the border into Congo. After all, the FDLR are still operating in eastern Congo.

Braeckman (1999) argues that the right of hot pursuit, if applied, could have extremely serious repercussions for the whole region, since the extremist elements responsible for the genocide are not confined to the Congo. There are numbers of such groups in Tanzania, in the Central African Republic and throughout French-speaking Africa, not to mention the networks organised from Belgium, Switzerland and Canada. She concludes that Rwanda and Uganda were motivated by the lure of mineral wealth more than anything else because, according to her (2001), the reasons initially invoked for the war have faded to reveal the belligerents’ real motive – shameless plunder of Congo’s riches.[10]

ENTER JOSEPH KABILA

President Joseph Kabila underwent a military training in China. His father Laurent Kabila too followed a military training in Nanjing military academy, China.[11] Kabila junior took power after his father Laurent Kabila was gunned down ‘by his bodyguard in his office’ on 16 January 2001. He was then the head of the Territorial Army. Joseph Kabila faced many challenges. First of all how to get foreign troops out of the country, put an end to fighting and establish a cease-fire throughout the country, along with a transitional government, followed by the organisation of pluralistic elections. He signed peace deals both with Rwanda and Uganda and with the leaders of the various rebel movements. He accepted to share power with the latter during the transition in order to prepare for elections.

During the transition, various warring factions shared power under the ‘1+4 System’ (one president and four vice-presidents, the four being the leaders of the four main factions in the war, each responsible for a particular commission). They divided even state-owned enterprises and embassies among themselves, each faction managing its own share like a private business (although one could look at it as the price Congo had to pay for peace, hence the justification for Joseph Kabila’s ‘politics of concessions’).

The first electoral exercise was the constitutional referendum, which was held over two days, on 18 and 19 December 2005. In 2006, Joseph Kabila was democratically elected thanks to the international community’s financial and logistic support for the organisation of the elections. The elections were held as one of the best in African history. For the first time in 45 years since the murder of Patrice Lumumba, democratically elected institutions were put in place in Congo. The elections were held as a great achievement for and by the people of Congo.

Currently, in the DRC, the president is elected by absolute majority vote through a one round system to serve a five-year term according to the new constitutional voting reforms as AFP reported.[12] This means the president can be elected without an absolute majority. The new rules which will apply in the November 2011 elections will mean that whoever gets the highest score in a sole round of voting will become president, regardless of the size of the score. The government says the change was introduced in order to save money and prevent street tensions that often come alongside a run-off, thus sparing the DRC the Ivory Coast-like post-election scenario. But the constitutional change has boosted the chances of incumbent Congolese President Joseph Kabila who was elected in 2006 through a two-round system.

DRC IS SLOWLY BUT SURELY OWNING ITS OWN ELECTORAL PROCESS

Congolese truly want to manage their own affairs. They have proven it this time by the fact that, the Congolese government will finance 60 per cent of the costs of the 28 November 2011 elections (during which 48 per cent of Congo’s 65 million people – that is 31,024,640 Congolese voters – already registered by the country’s National Independent Electoral Commission - will cast their ballots). The remaining 40 per cent of the costs will be met by external partners and the international community (USA, European Union, United Nations Development Program) – just like they did in 2006. If the government funds the whole electoral process, the ‘historically ever divided opposition’ will not accept it, suspecting the government to be pulling the strings behind the Independent National Electoral Commission. The international community has already announced that it will strictly monitor the electoral process to ensure peaceful, transparent and free elections.

CAN JOSEPH KABILA SAY ‘NO’ TO AN EXTERNALLY-IMPOSED WESTERN LEGITIMACY OF POWER IN THE DRC?

Strategically, ‘yes’. After what happened to Patrice Lumumba and Laurent Kabila, Joseph Kabila is perhaps aware that Western powers can remove him any time and replace him with another Congolese or even someone of Rwandan origin as president if he does not want to serve their interests best. So Joseph Kabila chose the strategy of the ever-flexible bamboo, which bends with the force of the wind only to recover its initial position when the wind has subsided.

At the beginning of his presidency immediately after the assassination of his father Laurent Kabila – whose first 10 trips did not take him out of Africa after inauguration and the 11th of which was to China as Martens (2002:284) suggests[13] – Joseph Kabila decided to turn to the West, in order, as Braeckman (2011) suggests, to ‘purchase’ another round of external legitimacy from Western powers.[14] Braeckman argues that Joseph Kabila won the 2006 elections partly because, after the assassination of his father who was disliked by Western powers, Joseph Kabila, from 2002 to 2006, used moderation and played a ‘re-assuring’ game with Western powers. He promulgated an extremely open and liberal Mining Code to foreign investors; he promised to privatise state-owned public enterprises and guaranteed that all the demands made by the International Committee in Support of the Transition (CIAT) would be met.

The CIAT was a diplomatic mechanism representing 15 states and international organisations that was mandated by the peace agreements signed between the warring parties in the DRC in December 2002.

Braeckman concludes that this, not only facilitated Joseph Kabila to win the 2006 elections following the ‘nod’ of Western powers, but also the discarding of his fiercest opponent, Jean Pierre Bemba. That is what Braeckman calls ‘Joseph’s Secret’, but that is also the reality behind elections and democracy in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

‘COUNTRIES DO NOT HAVE PERMANENT FRIENDS OR ALLIES, THEY HAVE ONLY PERMANENT INTERESTS’

Unfortunately, when Joseph Kabila turned to the Western powers for assistance after the 2006 elections, they said they had other priorities. Perhaps this was a wake-up call for Joseph Kabila. This is how, in an interview given to Gettleman of the New York Times,[15] Joseph Kabila himself explained why he turned to the Chinese for help after being disappointed with the West’s empty promises:

‘We said we had five priorities: infrastructure; health; education; water and electricity; and housing. Now, how do we deal with these priorities? We need money, a lot of money. Not a 100 million U.S. dollars from the World Bank or 300 from the IMF [International Monetary Fund">. No, a lot of money, and especially that we're still servicing a debt of close to 12 billion dollars, and it’s 50 to 60 million U.S. dollars per month, which is huge. You give me 50 million dollars each month for the social sector and we move forward. Anyway, that's another chapter. But we said: so, we have these priorities, and we talked to everybody. Americans, do you have the money? No! Not for now! The European Union, do you have three or four billion for these priorities? No! We have our own priorities. Then we said: ‘why not talk to other people, the Chinese?’ So we said, [Chinese"> do you have the money? And they [the Chinese"> said, well, we can discuss. So we discussed’.

This interview suggests that Joseph Kabila turned to the Chinese only after seeking help from Western powers. That is exactly the dilemma Patrice Lumumba faced. Increasingly desperate, Patrice Lumumba went on an international trip to enlist Western support (including to Washington, London, Brussels…) to have Belgian troops who had orchestrated the secession of Katanga to leave immediately. He did not get the support he expected and turned to the Russians for help. He was immediately accused of being a communist and eventually assassinated.

Congolese leaders turn to other partners other than the ‘traditional Western partners’ because they are in need; and a friend in need is a friend indeed! They do not mean necessarily to play of the West against the East and so on. When Joseph Kabila turned to the West, the DRC was almost on the verge of bankruptcy. Reuters reported that the DRC’s foreign reserves, which stood at over US$225 million in April 2008, fell to just US$36 million in early February 2009. The World Bank reacted quickly and Marie-Francoise Marie-Nelly, the DRC’s World Bank country director, announced that the bank has proposed lending the country US$100 million in emergency funds from early March to help offset the effects of dwindling mineral export revenues, as Lokongo (2009) reported.[16]

The question we want to deal with now therefore is: ‘What happened after Joseph Kabila turned to the Chinese in his country’s hours of needs?’

In the same interview given to Gettleman (2009:2), President Joseph Kabila himself confessed that he did not understand the resistance he has encountered from Western powers about the Chinese deal.

Global financial institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank and the Paris Club of Lenders put pressure on the DRC government to ditch the Socomin deal with China – a Beijing-based, joint-venture between the DRC’s Gécamines and a group of Chinese state-owned enterprises – as a condition to get its debt forgiven. Some Western donors said they supported the deal ‘in principle’ because it would give the DRC access to capital on a scale it could not receive from anywhere else. But, led by the Paris Club of creditors and the IMF, they raised objections to specific provisions.

In fact, when Joseph Kabila turned to the Chinese, Karel de Gucht, then Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs was so angry that he told President Joseph Kabila: ‘You are not going to give King Leopold II’s Congo to the Chintox!’ (Chintox is a derogative term for Chinese in Belgium). This revelation was made by Colette Braeckman, journalist of the Belgian daily ‘Le Soir’ and expert on the Great Lakes Region of Africa’s affairs, during a conference on the ‘50 years after its independence: Congo’s Renaissance’ she organised on 23 October 2010 in the Centre de Culture et de Congrès de Woluwe Saint Pierre in Brussels.

Schlamp (2011) reported that the ballots from the DRC’s 2006 election hadn’t yet been counted, but already Europe and America forged plans for whoever would win the election and become president. In two confidential meetings, representatives from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) met with emissaries of the United States and the European Union to come up with the blueprint of a future Congolese government policy. The new president had either to agree to strict economic and political conditions or the Western powers would cut off aid to the strife-torn country (meaning they wanted a weak president).[17] Luckily enough Joseph Kabila had China! Schlamp’s report clearly vindicates the title of this article – ‘One election in the DRC, but two sources of legitimacy’.

Joseph Kabila recently outlined some his achievements during his 10 year-long tenure of office, including the organisation of the first democratic elections in 46 years, the construction of new infrastructures thanks to the 'China-Congo Infrastructures for Minerals Deal', the restoration of peace and the reunification of the country. He even told the Congolese parliament to revise the 2011 national budget because the members of parliament allocated themselves more money than civil servants, the army and the police (so whom are they representing? The people or their own belly?), he ordered the suspension of illegal mining activities in Eastern Congo’s conflict areas but Rwanda and the London Stock Exchange felt the pinch. What happened? On 27 February 2011 Kabila’s residence in Kinshasa was attacked as a result by hundreds of assailants and gunmen ‘from outside the country’, 19 of whom were killed and eight loyalist soldiers were also killed. It was a failed coup attempt according to the official sources, as Hogg (2011) reported.[18]

CONCLUSION

Western powers preach ‘democracy’ to African people. At the same time, they confiscate that democracy by confiscating African countries’ economic power by seeking to control Africa’s massive wealth and continue to keep Africa as ‘the assisted continent’ through the UN, NGOs, churches, IMF, World Bank … mechanisms. Or, if African countries have no economic power, we can deduce that there is no democracy in Africa. How would then democratically elected leaders who really want to develop their countries deliver wellbeing to their people who elected them without having full economic power? Those who are plundering Africa’s wealth are therefore confiscating democracy with the complicity of their ‘men in Africa’.

There is only one way forward for Africa in general and for the DRC in particular, since the DRC can never develop in isolation with the rest of the continent. African countries, to achieve true democracy, must first of all achieve a full economic independence following the merely political or ‘flag and anthems’ independence they have achieved, and democratise that economic power. To democratise economic power means that African countries must exercise their power to deal with the rest of the world only on their own terms for the benefit of their people. In order to redress the current balance of power which is not tilting in their favour, African countries must establish the rules of the game for their foreign partners to follow; they must come to develop their own technologies thanks to a ‘Win-Win-South-South Cooperation’ or WWSSC (because Western powers will never share their technologies with Africa for fear of losing control), in order to transform their own natural and mineral resources on the spot – including the manufacturing of arms to defend their political and economic sovereignty – and create not only jobs for their people but also markets on national, regional, continental and international levels. They can no longer afford to remain forever consumers of finished goods manufactured by others with Africa’s own resources cheaply looted through Western controlled mechanisms, including the IMF, the World Bank, the UN, Western NGOs or Western-controlled Catholic and Protestant churches...

The day the politics of ‘divide and rule’ used by Western powers will no longer work in Africa will mark the beginning of Africa’s renaissance. In the meantime, the DRC, above all, must not unravel – because if the DRC unravels, the whole continent will; making the words of the Martinico-French-Algerian revolutionary thinker Frantz Fanon ring true. Fanon, as we know, once described Africa’s shape as that of a revolver with the Democratic Republic of Congo serving as the trigger.

The reality is that Western powers have a hidden agenda: To make of the DRC a ‘Western protectorate in Africa’ while the Congolese themselves want to make of the DRC ‘the China of Africa’. Who will have their way? The Congolese people of course but only if they are united; united in the framework of a united Africa.

BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

* This article was updated on 22 November 2011 at 08:50 (GMT).
* Antoine Roger Lokongo is a PhD candidate in the Department of International Relations, Peking University/ Centre for African Studies.
* Please send comments to editor[at]pambazuka[dot]org or comment online at Pambazuka News.

NOTES

[1] De Witte, L. (2000). The Assassination of Patrice Lumumba, Paris: Karthala.
[2] Duodu, C. (2011) Patrice Lumumba - the Rise and Assassination of an African Patriot,[Online">, Available: .
[3] Mutiga, M. (2004) ‘The Ugly Side of Ronald Reagan’, The Standard, 20 June 2004.
[4] ‘Zaire: The Rise and Fall of Mobutu’, Revolutionary Worker (20 April 1997 1997), #903, p.7).
[5] See: US Department of State Bulletin (1989) Visit of Zaire's president - Mobutu Sese Seko and George Bush addresses, includes related information – transcript, Washington, U.S. Government Printing Office).
[6] Hartung William D. and and Moix, Bridget (2009) ‘Report: U.S. Arms to Africa and the Congo War - World Policy Institute - Research Project’, World Policy Journal, Fall 2009.
[7] Talbot, C. (2001) The Congo: Unanswered questions surround Kabila’s assassination,[Online">, Available: .
[8] Lokongo, A.R. (2001) Media coverage of the Congo invasion: In the footsteps of Western interests?[Online">, Available: http://www.lalkar.org/issues/contents/sep2002/congo.html[September 200">.
[9] Martens, L (2002) Kabila et la Revolution Congolaise’, Bruxelles:Epo.
[10] Braeckman, C. (1999) ‘Carve-up in the Congo: Partition Poses as Protection’, Le Monde Diplomatique, October 1999.
[11] - See: ‘DR Congo to hold one-round elections in November’, AFP (15 June 2011). Kabila et la Revolution Congolaise’, Bruxelles:Epo; p.284.
[12] ‘DR Congo to hold one-round elections in November’, AFP (15 June 2011).
[13] Martens, L.; p. 284.
[14] Braeckman, C. (2011) ‘Comment les Américains suivirent le match Kabila-Kamerhe’, Le Soir, 6 février 2011.
[15] Gettleman, J. (2009) ‘An Interview with Kabila’, New York Times, 3 April 2009.
[16] Lokongo, A.R. (2009) Sino-DRC contracts to thwart the return of Western patronage[Online">, Available: .
[17] Schlamp, H-J. (2011) ‘Congo’s Future: A Western Protectorate in Africa?’, The Spiegel, 17 August 2011.
[18] Hogg, J. (2011) ‘DR Congo exhibits hundred held for Kabila attack’, Reuters, 7 March 2011.