DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO
FIFTY YEARS ALREADY ... OR ONLY?
We agree that fifty years for a country that is very little. The risk is that African political leaders hide behind this premise, they are also true lovers, to clear themselves of what their country always resemble the "little things" Fifty years after independence. What about the Democratic Republic of Congo? Kinshasa: current status. EMERY G. UHINDU-GINGALA the outset it is highly suspicious that a country feels the need to emphasize its democratic character in its name. However the fact can easily be observed when there is actually .... Only the Democratic Republic of Korea (North!) And the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and assertive. To appropriate, almost exclusively, the democratic virtue refers to the fact that other countries in the world are hardly provided. Otherwise why not claim it they not? Apart from the age of the country is the mental age of leaders who have succeeded at the head of the DR Congo who tired of worrying, and explains why this country seems to be a vast field of play politicians whose juvenilization vitae aeternam ad stretches. They delight in a game whose stakes are of course the power, but in what he brings instant kudos and fortune. Well then this game exacerbated by the ambitions of the courtiers palm is always returned to those who were in the right place at the right time. Even when nothing is destined to exercise the supreme power of a countries. It is so
Mobutu Sese Seko, of
Laurent Kabila and his son Joseph Kabila
. Unlike the first chairman of Congo Joseph Kasavubu
and his Prime Minister Patrice-Emery Lumumba
, none of these three fellows had "deserved" to be where he found himself. A purely fortuitous conjunction of events have been king. For them the power was a day and they had to take each in turn, to stoop to pick it up ...
Places of Living Dangerously present political climate Congo is the most poisonous and permenantly to think that there is always something that is preparing ... You will encounter a deaf challenge those in power, a latent confrontation, if it does not say his name does not least of victims: the Congolese political scene in recent years is littered with corpses of journalists, dissidents and other human rights etc.. And each time, like a well-established ritual, relatives of power are arrested and eventually confessed their crime. Sidekick or solely responsible for their actions, difficult to see clearly in this vagueness. Now then, following the look you fall invariably on the person of the Head of State, however incriminate that person directly. For fear of retaliation or simply by calculation: living in a constant uncertainty about the future, the Congolese have learned not to bite the hand that feeds them would do with crumbs. And who knows, in a world where the principle of the wheel can be installed in any property shoeshine, it is better spare one who turns the head. For all the real charges against Congolese President fuse elsewhere in the diaspora. "Opponents" are constantly fed and plump launch, at a respectful distance from the field of hostilities, calls the uprising against the regime in Kinshasa. Assured of their own safety and that of their ranting against their inaction as "a people who suffered
without flinching a dictator from elsewhere s'! Because that's the problem of the majority of Congolese from the outside as from within: the origin of the dictator! As if the dictatorship was already was inevitable, and that the preference between two despots, would naturally go to the native country! Strange conception of nationality, in this connection some even suggest the "patriotism" - which appears as death is sweet by brother's hand ... When it comes to romance there are necessarily better!
Leadership and Governance Two men, Joseph Kabila
and Jean-Pierre Bemba embody this tragic melodrama, this bloody episode sentimentalo-citizen with the stench of xenophobia. A story that will still be sunk as much ink as blood! Even if Kabila, President
de facto and de jure DRC, provides political leadership of the country, Bemba himself bitterly dispute the favor in the hearts of the Congolese. Of "resistant" to the current power conscientiously to apply undo as they can what the Kinshasa government attempts to painstakingly build. The aim, moreover confessed being to thwart anything that might contribute to the influence of evil regime. Now therefore in the diaspora, in which we find the most implacable detractors of the Congolese president, discuss any progress in the country under Kabila borders on treason. Nothing less! Intolerance and the primacy of the single thought has obscured any critical thinking. It should however be said, on condition that the young president of the Congo does not have much to gain the sympathy of his constituents. Interactions the people are as rare as his media interviews. A leadership style that confuses and annoys sometimes. Congolese used for flights to which Mobutu, the former dictator of Zaire, formerly the gratified in crowded stadiums, the silence of Kabila is best experienced as a lack of courage, at worst as indifference ... He has been fishing seriously do know people say, "eye to eye" what he thinks. But it gets worse: the Congolese president has never really knew, conclusively, remove any suspicion on his supposed foreign origins. Even past that, conversely, its acquaintances with the Rwandan army are facts. Everyone knows-and Joseph Kabila can deny-that he has already served under the command of General James Kabarere
in the ranks of the Rwandan Patriotic Front
(RPF) when it still was acting in the bush. An episode that silent while he would have been enough simply to explain. But, alas, that's not all. The President of DR Congo does not say what he did. So it gives the impression that no one knows quite what to do, and he improvises the wind. It remains only to fall back on his political agenda. But the latter, if it was developed, only a whole that would be more effective to be routinely indicated. All political leaders, from Obama
to
Sarkozy, hold weekly press briefings, even in times of crisis, everyday. Kabila's Congo gold lives almost in a permanent crisis, the war is never to finish, a crisis of credibility of institutions engulfed in corruption, food crisis recently, a crisis of legitimacy of governance that some do not hesitate to describe as incompetent. Brief crisis of a clear vision for a country living in a total confusion of meaning. Joseph Kabila simply can not not make its mark on the destiny of his country. Strange style of governance that is characterized by the absence of leadership. As in everything he does, and as the President Congolese government in hiding. The man is the opposite of what were his recent predecessors, Mobutu, and even his own father Laurent-Desire Kabila. Joseph Kabila is hiding just! What is telling that he might actually have something to hide ...
The lesser evil Congo is too narrow to accommodate both huge egos that invest
Joseph Kabila and Jean-Pierre Bemba
. The DRC could not live without doubt the current political status quo if Bemba was detained in jails
International Criminal Tribunal (ICTY). A situation beneficial to Kabila who can continue to attend, but always incognito about their business without disturbing the gesticulations of a lackluster opposition. And unlike too many followers of the conspiracy theory that outcrop in the Congo, President Kabila is foreign to the setbacks that knows his political rival. The serious charges (war crimes and crimes against humanity, rape, theft ...) facing Senator Bemba to the ICC are facts. His militia has indeed perpetrated atrocities against civilians Central. Itself also did not deny. His challenge to the Court of the Hague (Netherlands) refers to its own liability for acts committed by the troops he led. This situation is not made to grieve Kabila, who is the image we can only rejoice in his good fortune: he is freed, probably for very long, if only for a still-dangerous opponent. Provided Jean-Pierre Bemba at the beginning of the presidential campaign of 2006, did not weigh as heavily against Kabila. At that time no other major political figure seemed to effectively counter the march of Joseph Kabila to the presidency. After succeeding his late father five years ago the young man was moving towards an easy election victory before the wind would turn towards the very end of the campaign. Because, meanwhile, the incessant insinuations of the infamous secret agent Mobutu
Honore Ngbanda , have been due more reasoned minds. The man, yet known to have hatched some time in the carnage to defend "the virtue offended "by his patron Marshal, against all odds to receive a sufficient credibility to stir up trouble in a large segment of the population. Evidence that the Congolese have a short memory. Failing to convince at least he managed to sow doubt. He used to do, with skill we must admit, some of communication technique, namely the "brainwashing" to construct a false reality based on facts. This plot, up to dress up Joseph Kabila another name than that which he knows, as if he himself had conducted on the baptismal font, in order to isolate paternal lineage. Referring to the passage of the latter in the jungle of the RPF, it was now easy to overwhelm the facetious fakir's burden of all the sins of the DRC against Rwanda Kagame. Now therefore in principle quite simple after all, is to say as much harm as possible, it would still be something ... Since-mission accomplished? - Honore Ngbanda stands strangely quiet in luxurious dependencies Brussels after all acquired at the cost of blood of those he now claims to want to save. Such redemption can not take that miracle, the man forced himself on the way, to "born again" into Christianity, to cover their tracks, while enlisting the most followers as possible to its new liturgy of the "congolité. Related to false prophet DRC can hardly do better ... It is to say that the late effect "Bemba" observed at the end of the 2006 presidential campaign was not at all dependent on the personality of the latter. If he had managed to get elected Jean-Pierre Bemba should have the power to fortuneteller what Honore Ngbanda! Because in fact what Jean-Pierre Bemba otherwise a pale decal Mobutu built by and for the latter. He wanted so much to confuse the model that eventually overshadow the son of the late dictator
Nzanga , her step-brother and Minister of Kabila ADDITION! The animosity between the two pretenders to the political legacy of Marshal is publicly known and made headlines in its time. Never mind, Guru Ngbanda sinned by omission, but that is the least of his vices, by not revealing too
Bemba's past, the president of the Mouvement de liberation du Congo (MLC ). Now then we know that he has led the airline paternal (SCIBE Zaire) with the same brutality as his rogue militia. The same one that has earned her the worst trouble of his life. Warlord predestined? In private they say brittle, authoritarian, contemptuous of the common, not tolerant of his staff no opposition to his own wishes, imbued himself and vomiting sentimentality ... in short, more royalist than the king!
two evils, they say,
must choose the lesser . Jean-Pierre Bemba president would he really was the lesser evil for the Congo? Just because its origins "to him" not suffer any doubt? The throes of a renewed Mobutu-a, and revisited by Bemba would they have been preferable to the delays of Kabila who improvises with a vengeance? The latter, far from it, is not a saint. But with whom was it signed a pact: the devil or a sorcerer's apprentice?
Fifty of locally "Who does not move backward," poses the saying. In the case of the DRC the decline is so important that he has performed well beyond the point of departure. The misery in which the Congolese languishing is so serious that the mortality rate would normally exceed that of the birth. It is simply a miracle that the population is not already in To date, decimated at least half. The proverbial ingenuity of Congolese-this ability to turn any situation to them today plays a trick. Rather than resist they adapt. Where any people aware of the riches that its territory should object that this is always the same ones who benefit, the Congolese are still smarting from his plan. Even in terms of natural wealth, the DRC is considered the richest country in the world! But that is a given, though factual, anecdotal become for new generations fed slogans, the activists intended anthems fill the mind more than your stomach. And if wealth is nevertheless promised, poverty is still justified: War! Well then this is true only for the last decade. What about the thirty years during which, precisely, Mobutu never tired of wielding "
found peace" as a balance sheet and draft policies? No one in this long period of peace, however, did not see any break on the horizon wealth. In terms of development the country remained glued to the box-departure while people saw every day living standards plummet. Although not all: the family and relatives of the "Leopard of Zaire" (they still had in hundreds of thousands of people) shamelessly enriched themselves, paid from the state budget and a common pool personal! But the Congolese are struggling to learn the lessons of history yet eventful: is that wealth, and peace, must necessarily aggregate competence and a sufficient dose much higher than the previous three conditions of good citizenship: respect for the public good, common good, and the exaltation of the idea ... This is an ideal with which the Congolese elite, the Mobutu regime to date has taken considerable liberties and reckless in practice. To keep to that rhetoric. But no one virtue, at least openly oppose. Even when it is mentioned that to save face for the gallery. All these facts and more, contributed to swallowed the Democratic Republic of Congo, the misnamed, the level of a banana republic! Or so it is not there a destiny that borders on the fatality, much less a divine decision irrevocable. This is just status quo may change to something else, the better, provided-but perhaps too much to ask-a real awakening of patriotic consciousness. Morality policy, politicians must be said, part of voluntarism: change, change the fate of his countrymen. Patriotism is mostly that, rather than quibble about the origins of humanity!
What tomorrows for Congolese Congo All agree that the giant should be a cure sickly shock: such a coup, for example, advancing the most radical, left out the country for a while schemes of democracy in order to "make clean"! But it is forgotten that the DRC has already tasted this medication, Mobutu and Kabila father arrived in power in a coup-free cure its ills. When they would also not depend on that. One and one does indeed justified their successive interventions "liberating" than to fight the status quo, the carelessness of their predecessors. In other words ... the desire to do the housework. Worse, it is not uncommon that evoke nostalgia and see-especially in the diaspora of all absurd ideas, in the providential man, strong man. The last two presidents of the country (always Mobutu and Kabila's father) were clearly the strong men whom no country, in truth, no one really needs. They also have marked the history of the Congo by an unhealthy cult of personality. We will be at least grateful to Joseph Kabila (son) to have been the Congolese economy. Even if you choose the other extreme, concealment: He always seems embarrassed to be where he is, as if he always came back and not someone, somewhere, would have simply played a bad turn.
DRC, to put it mildly, not doing well. Now therefore critically ill patients feel so bad they feel they suffer everywhere and everything. The country of Patrice Emery Lumumba-suffering, he, as an acute crisis of morality. And that person for forty-five years-the seizure of power by Mobutu to-day fails to reverse.
How then clean up a political and social culture mired in pursuit of personal good and its corollaries: corruption, embezzlement, confusion between public and private, irresponsibility (non charging), incompetence, resourcefulness high the rank of modus vivendi so. All countries in the world struggle against these scourges by the establishment of democratic institutions and reliable. First and foremost an independent judiciary and of political money. Justice said the law-because, notwithstanding its sanctions and rejects impunity among all evil-evil is the linchpin of any country that calls its citizens to civic participation. Excluding this point hello! From all that Joseph Kabila n'al'air vaguely know that intuitively. Without the design clearly. Yet so few of his courtiers warned inclines to instruct; that feed them This timely confusion. It was already the case with his father and Mobutu before him. Thus such a boat drunk DRC vogue at the option of depravity that may cause him to lust: his first son alas, then its neighbors, and all those who intended to use without paying the price in advance ... This DRC sick of being too rich. Its young president, too soon cast into the political arena, is unprepared for the job he holds and which seems so little concerned. Joseph Kabila is clearly delivered to himself in the middle of predators with portfolios they undertake conscientiously to empty. Even those who can speak well on behalf of the cabinet of the waffle. And when he calls on the fiftieth anniversary of his country, Rwanda Paul Kagame, still one of the great destroyers of the DRC, if not the worst-president intends to sacrifice to Realpolitik. In so doing he incurred the wrath of his fellow citizens by giving the impression to sign a pact with the devil. The same which once was accused of being related! This is the type of errors that are committed when people are not yet fifty years!
EMERY G. UHINDU-GINGALA
