Then came the first layer of the swamp: a gaggle of forty-three “political parties” that each had only one or two MPs. Together this confused mass represented 55 seats. Most of these “parties” were in fact simple vehicles for well-known individuals who needed a party label for their respectability: Joseph Olenghankoy (FONUS), Boboliko Lokonga (Parti Démocrate Social Chrétien), Diomi Ndongala (Démocratie Chrétienne), Roger Lumbala (RCDN), Augustin Kisombe (MDD), and Olivier Kamitatu (ARC). Kamitatu, a former member of Bemba’s MLC, was the only one who stood to emerge from the mass because his party was already busy recruiting independents to broaden its influence.
The fourth and last layer of MPs was that of the independents. Together they occupied 63 seats, and if the elections had not been held according to a bizarre electoral system designed to favor small parties to the detriment both of the large ones and of the independents,145 these independents might have seated over 100. They were tribal chiefs, well-known figures, successful businessmen, or even former warlords, big men of the provinces, a floating and unruly mass, fairly well-grounded in their local realities but often devoid of any larger view, potentially prey to strong emotions, winking at the big guys, often waiting to be bought if the price was right.
After the August clashes the situation remained tense between the Bemba and Kabila camps. There was a lot a haggling in the aisles and, predictably, “Li’l Joseph” and his allies were better at it than Bemba.146 The key electoral alliance they managed to win for the second round was to get the support of Gizenga and his PALU. This was a masterful stroke because, even if Gizenga could not bring 100 percent of his vote to Kabila, he could reasonably be expected to get between 60 and 70 percent. This provided Kabila with a modicum of western support which he sorely lacked and deprived Bemba of the possibility of creating a homogeneous western bloc. Then, less important but also useful, the AMP got the support of Nzanga Mobutu and his UDEMO. This did not make much of a difference, since everybody knew Bemba would get the vast majority of the Equateur vote, but it opened a little split in the Bangala vote and prevented it from producing a solidly hostile mass in the north. The final stroke was to get Kyungu wa Kumwanza and his UNAFEC to support the AMP. Katanga was going to give a majority vote to Kabila anyway, but the young president’s support would essentially be among the Balubakat, and UNAFEC could add a strong Lunda-Tshokwe “southern Katanga” component to what was a basically “northern Katanga” plus Lubumbashi power base.
The second round of voting took place on October 29 and the results were known two weeks later: Kabila had won with 58 percent of the vote to Bemba’s 42 percent; turnout had been 65.4 percent of the registered voters.147 The next day Bemba rejected the results of the polls and started court proceedings to challenge them.148
What can be made of these claims of rigging? First, if the election was not always fair, it was free. Of course, in the Congo’s immense space and confusion a few ballot boxes here and there got stuffed or “lost.” But these minor mishaps did not significantly alter the validity of the results. There was no systematic rigging, as had been known to occur in other African countries. Why? The answer is not clear, but it was probably a mixture of causes: first, the AMP was bound to win without rigging; second, the elections were fairly well monitored; third, there was a diffuse feeling on everybody’s part that heavy rigging would be counterproductive since the population, exasperated by years of suffering and political violence, wanted a clean election; and last but definitely not least, large-scale rigging would have been extremely difficult to organize given the country’s size and circumstances.
When the Supreme Court rejected Bemba’s claims of rigging, his militiamen, who had strong popular support in Kinshasa, invaded and burned down the Supreme Court building after the police had run away.149 There was a tense standoff for a few days while everybody waited to see if Bemba would comply with a presidential ultimatum to remove his men to Camp Maluko, outside the capital. He finally agreed but finagled the numbers and eventually did not fully comply.150
But the elections were now over, with a minimum of disruption. The east-west split was wide and visible, but it had not materialized violently. The international community’s partiality in favor of Joseph remained embarrassingly obvious. Jean-Pierre Bemba was a very poor candidate for leading a constructive opposition, and the AMP was indulging in a “winner-take-all” attitude not very conducive to good governance. But all in all, given the Congo’s past history and its spectrum of possibilities, it was a rather normal situation. Expecting more would have been unrealistic. The friends of the Congo were cautiously optimistic, and Bill Swing breathed a sigh of relief.
The morning after syndrome (November 2006–July 2007)
The risk of internal political paralysis
In a report issued in June 2007, the advocacy NGO International Crisis Group wrote, “More than six months after the Kabila inauguration, challenges are piling up with no long-range strategy for addressing them in sight.”151 The assessment is both true and perhaps a bit too severe. But there are some very weak points in the new regime which perhaps still considers its very existence with a certain degree of disbelief.
First, the AMP is an incoherent gaggle. It is not a “government” in the proper sense of the word, but rather a coagulation of groups operating out of completely mercenary interests (several of the smaller parties) or outdated and almost mystical ideological strands (PALU). Antoine Gizenga, who was made prime minister both to reward his support and because his puritanical integrity could be used as a bulwark against corruption, is not a real government leader. His authority over his unruly ministerial stable is weak and his impotence serves the palace clique that surrounds the president. In theory, the presidential cabinet, which was reorganized on March 17, 2007, could run the government from behind the scenes. But its boss, the technocrat Raymond Tshibanda, is too timid and not well-connected enough to exert a real counterweighing influence. As a result, the old palace guard (Augustin Katumba Mwanke, the man for financial and mining deals; Samba Kaputo, the security adviser; Denis Kalume and Brig. John Numbi for internal affairs; Marcellin Cishambo for unofficial diplomacy) are the ones actually running things. Because their interest is of course not to reform or change or streamline government operations, they have a vested interest in “personally fruitful” stagnation.
Then there is a disturbing tendency to “solve” problems through the use of often disproportionate force administered in confused and unprofessional ways. This first became evident in the way the rebellious members of the Bundu dia Kongo (BDK) politicoreligious sect were dealt with in January 2007. The situation came about when the AMP slate for the Bas Congo governorship “won” by 15 votes to the 14 given to the MLC slate.152 The head of the BDK political sect, Ne Muanda Nsemi, was a candidate for the vice governorship and he was irked at being “beaten” by AMP candidate Deogratias Nkusu Nkuuzi because Nkuuzi and his boss, Mbatshi Batshia, had paid more and gotten the MLC MPs (who are a majority in the Regional Assembly) to vote for the AMP slate. This resulted in riots that left 138 people dead. The reason for the exaggerated violence was the intervention of the Angolans.153
What happened when Jean-Pierre Bemba refused to disband or remove his militia is another case in point. On November 13, 2006, President Kabila had issued a decree requiring the vice president’s personal guards to be included in the army. Yerodia Ndombasi and Arthur Z’ahidi Ngoma complied, Ruberwa negotiated a good deal for the reintegration of his boys, and Bemba kept silent and did nothing. The MLC leader has a difficult personality, and his mixture of adventurism and genuine fears requires kid glove handling. Instead, on March 6, 2007, General Kisempya, the FARDC chief of staff, gave him nine days to get his men out of Kinshasa. The deadline passed without any action being taken and Bemba felt he had again gotten away with it. Then, on Thursday, March 22, around noon, troops of the GSSP attacked elements of Bemba’s bodyguard in the downtown Kinshasa area of La Gombe. They were quickly repulsed, and Bemba’s
men started to fan out from their positions. They went down to the Nguila Beach and to Ndolo Airport, from where they could call in reinforcements from former FAZ in Brazzaville. Government forces had melted away, and it took a strong intervention by the Angolan-trained commandos to bring things back under control. But they did it their way, using light artillery, heavy machine guns, mortars, and RPG-7 anti-tank rocket launchers, with no special care toward the civilians; 348 people were killed and several hundred wounded.154 Bemba had abandoned his men and taken refuge in the South African Embassy as soon as the fighting started, finally leaving the country on April 11 to go to Faro in Portugal, where he owns a villa. Thus a mixture of political incoherence, military incompetence, and gross brutality resulted in both a massacre and a politico-diplomatic deadlock.155
The economy: donors, debts, and the Great Mining Robbery
We saw in the previous chapter that by late 2002 the previously disastrous state of the economy had started to improve. The foreign donors were an essential part of that process; the first serious global effort by multilateral financial institutions had begun in September 2001, when debt rescheduling lowered the (multilateral) debt service to about $160 million a year.156 A year later the Club of Paris debt was restructured. Out of $10.3 billion, $4.6 billion was canceled157 and $4.3 billion was rescheduled, leaving another $55 million still owed yearly to service the commercial debt. Thus by the beginning of 2007, the DRC could live with a debt service of about $215 million to $220 million a year. But there was still a lot of resentment against the international community at having to pay even this amount since it corresponded mostly (about 90 percent) to debts accumulated by the Mobutu regime, which were directly attributable both to the West’s toleration of his corruption and to the political support the dictator had been able to muster. Thus the fundamentally orthodox monetary option chosen by Budget Minister Adolphe Muzito in 2007 came under heavy fire for pandering to “foreign interests,” even though Muzito himself was a member of the radical PALU.158 The quarrel is both understandable (paying for Mobutu’s debts rankles the public) and unrealistic: without satisfying these unpleasant technical requirements it would not have been possible to bring in the fresh money that has been coming since 2002, when $1.7 billion of cofinancing was arranged through the World Bank. Every year since then there has been a sustained effort, culminating in 2005, when the Bank approved eighty-six different loans addressing the needs of fourteen different economic sectors and totaling $3.62 billion.
And dealing with the Congolese authorities has not always been easy for the international community. Due to pork barrel politics in an election year, the 2006 budget was overspent by 141 percent, and this led to the suspension of relations with the World Bank and the IMF. The international financial institutions had desperately tried to save the Congo from itself by offering a Programme Relai de Consolidation, whose period of application was supposed to be from April to December 2006, but it has not been adhered to. A rather desperate “Plan for Corrective Measures” implemented in October of that same year did not work either, which resulted in the complete suspension of the DRC from collaboration with the international financial institutions. In Kinshasa in February 2007 Paul Wolfowitz, chairman of the World Bank, promised a new facility of $1.4 billion for 2008, after a new structural plan would be devised in collaboration with the new Ministry of Finance and the Congolese Central Bank, whose governor, Jean-Claude Masangu, personally retained the trust of the IMF and the World Bank. But the whole thing got embroiled in Wolfowitz’s personal problems at the World Bank, and an exceptional facility of $180 million had to be disbursed in March to plug the gap. These rigorous monetary and budget policies are beginning to bear fruit: inflation has sharply receded to probably around 10 percent, and for the first time since the end of the war, the Congolese franc has strengthened appreciably against the U.S. dollar.
Congolese Franc Exchange Rate against the U.S. Dollar
Nov. 1997
Jan. 2000
Dec. 2003
July 2005
Feb. 2007
May 2007
5
200
375
470
570
500
The rate of exchange is essential because of the massive dollarization of the economy. The U.S. currency circulates everywhere, and DRC monetary policy is thus indirectly in a symbiotic relationship with U.S. financial policies. The tax base has shrunk to less than 4 percent of GDP, and a major problem is now looming on the horizon with the planned administrative reforms of the provinces and with decentralization.159 If the whole set of measures goes through as planned, the central government will be starved of tax money. And if it does not, this might cause violent reactions in some of the more politically unstable provinces. The fine line between these two extremes will be a difficult one to toe.
With an insufficient tax base and a negative balance of trade, public finances still rely heavily (over 40 percent) on aid. Whatever is not in the peasant self-produced and nearly nonmonetary sector of the economy is under direct foreign perfusion. The only services available to the people are foreign-created, foreign-run, and foreign-financed. The UN and NGOs together spend $3 billion a year running hospitals, providing transport, paying the army, and supporting the school system. The only media organ with a national reach, Radio Okapi, is a UN-NGOs joint venture.
But one of the main problems of this aid, a problem typical of many postconflict situations but particularly preoccupying here, is the very poor coordination between projects and implementing agencies. Duplication, confusion, and waste are rife. This lack of coordination is particularly damaging because of the endless levels of corruption typical of the DRC. This is probably where the consequences of the thirty-two years of Mobutist dictatorship have had the worst impact. Mobutism as a system implied and presupposed corruption, even elevating corruption to the level of an institution.160 This create a political and administrative culture wherein the stealing of government funds was seen as normal, even praiseworthy; civil servants would boast to each other of their achievements in theft. This culture has survived Mobutu and is still causing havoc in the economy today. The problem is not only a moral one, it is a financial and economic one: the extent of corruption is such that the government is largely economically dysfunctional. The coexistence of middle-ranking civil servants paid $50/month working in parastatal companies under bosses who are often paid up to $15,000/month (and who steal quite a bit beyond these opulent salaries) has a demoralizing effect on the workforce.
But the mining situation overshadows everything else in the economy, and the way it is handled will be a make-or-break test for the new regime. The mining industry is in a state of flux and confusion, hovering between rich memories (the colonial days and the Mobutu regime before 1985–1988), a descent into hell (the late Mobutu period), and a state of piratical endeavors during the war and immediately after. By 1997 the Zairian mining industry was in such a state of disarray that junior companies were in a position to raid it with the hope of parlaying their freebooters’ expeditions either into cash (reselling their permits) or into joint ventures with major cornpanies.161 From that point of view the 2003 mining code is an ambiguous document, as it was prepared by President Kabila’s advisers to bring along to Sun City to seduce the mining interests (and the South African government) into helping Kinshasa. It largely worked, but the price has been an almost supine deference to predatory mining interests and a slanted tax system whereby some of the richest mining assets in the world contribute at present a meager $40 million a year to the national treasury.162 Thus the thirty-two joint ventures that Gécamines has entered into with foreign “partners” often amount to asset-stripping and unequal “leonine” contracts, which have come under fire since the end of the transition. Other, formerly prosperous parastatals (OKIMO, MIBA, SOMINKI) are now nearly bankrupt after signing partnership agreements amounting to a form of legal swindle.163 In April 2007 Mining Minister Martin
Kabwelulu launched a commission charged with reviewing the most suspect of the contracts.164 A partial list includes the various activities of such groups as Australian Anvil and the Belgian-Congolese George Forrest Group, the shocking contract concluded for the Tenke Fungurume Mining site with the U.S. giant Phelps Dodge165 just before the elections, the KOV contract and all the activities of the Dan Gertler/Barry Steinmetz association, the Moto-Gold contract with OKIMO, and the Kamoto tailings contract. Forestry contracts, although carrying less of a taxable potential, are also an important economic resource that has been abused by unscrupulous operators since the war.166 Together with the security situation, the future of the mining industry will probably be the other key factor in the ultimate success—or ultimate failure—of the electorally approved transition process.
The east refuses to heal
The whole debt, aid, financial management, and contractual analysis business was addressed by different segments (World Bank, IMF, BAD) of the international community than the political problems, which remained the preserve of the UN and of what would have once been called “the Great Powers” assembled within CIAT. Contrary to the “financiers,” who tended to be very technical, those other segments of the international community considered the elections to be the be-all and end-all element that was going to put an end to the regional wars and restabilize the Congo. But even if the elections were critically important, this was an oversimplified view of the situation.167 Apart from the economy, security remained essential—and “security” was another name for the eastern problem. Bad as the Kinshasa clashes and the Bas Congo BDK massacre had been, they did not have the capacity to durably and fundamentally damage the country. The recurring and apparently intractable character of the eastern violence was considerably more problematic because it preexisted the war,168 had been made worse by the war, and would not stop even if the war stopped. This meant at least two things. First, military problems were perhaps more fundamental than electoral problems. This was put bluntly by South African observers: “The possible consequences of inaction and of not supporting a new national Army are much more dangerous than any delays in the electoral process. The incomplete process of demobilization and disarmament and of the creation of the new national Army could contribute significantly to a return of major hostilities.”169 Although the possibility of renewed major hostilities seems low (the foreign factor has slowly been deconstructed), the danger of continued anomic violence remains high, with all its disastrous corollaries in terms of national self-image, diplomatic weakness, and damage to foreign investment possibilities. Second, the military problems could not be dealt with in exclusively military terms. FARDC power had to be there as a deterrent and an ultimate recourse, but the real solutions in the east were historical, ethnic, geographical, economic, political, and cultural, in that order. Such a deconstruction of complicated and toxic patterns dating back to colonial days could not be achieved easily, were not really within the competence of the UN, and would take much more time than it took to organize an election.
Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe Page 47
