In March 2007 Kabila once again chose the path of violence. As vice president during the 1 + 4 regime, Bemba had had a right to a private militia. Now that he was a mere senator, however, he refused to disband his corps of guards. There was no way, of course, that he could continue to avail himself of a little army of five hundred freebooters. But after the attack on his house in August, he—not without reason—feared for his safety. With his Garde Républicaine, after all, Kabila still had a private army of no less than fifteen thousand troops, an elite corps he had assembled during the transitional period. On March 21, on Boulevard du 30 Juin, the city’s busiest arterial, Kabila’s men opened fire. For three days Kinshasa was in a state of paralysis. Office buildings and embassies had been hit by mortars. Bodies lay scattered about on rotundas. A storage tank for fuel exploded in flames. More than three hundred, perhaps as many as five hundred, were killed. Afterward the presidential services arrested and tortured an additional 125 persons, most of them from Équateur. Dozens were murdered.13 Bemba himself, despite the international warrant out for his arrest, fled to Portugal. He figured that his senatorial immunity would protect him. But in May 2008 he was arrested in Brussels and handed over to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where at the time of this writing he is still awaiting trial.
“There shall be discipline,” Kabila had said. His violent actions in August, January, and March, however, did not bode well. It reminded many of the way Mobutu, immediately after his coup, had four cabinet ministers hanged to underscore his authority. Kabila’s Garde République also reminded people of the former DSP and his intelligence services of those maintained by Mobutu. But was there any substance to that? Perhaps the truth was all much more tragic, much more banal. In all three cases the incidents had followed upon skirmishes that got out of hand and ended inadvertently in a bloodbath. Kabila could hardly admit it of course, but what these incidents were, in fact, was proof that he had no control over his troops, not even his own elite troops, rather than any demonstration of active malice on his part. Mobutu had wanted to show that he was a powerful figure with powerful principles; Kabila had to hide the fact that he was a weak figure surrounded by feeble institutions.
But there was no hiding: soon enough, Kinshasa was buzzing with rumors that Kabila was hooked on cocaine—no, that he spent the whole day playing with his Nintendo—no, that he had been shot and wounded and that was why he showed his face so rarely. People went looking for the wildest explanations for the inefficacy they saw. “Après les élections = avant les elections” (after the elections = before the elections) they mumbled, a sarcastic nod to the situation at independence in 1960. His popularity plummeted, even in the east of the country. Only rarely did one see him smile; rarely did he appear in public. Only now and then did he appear on television: seated at his desk like a stony sphinx, he would read aloud an announcement.
But still, at the start of the Third Republic, a new élan could be noted here and there. The huge, unwieldy parliament voted on fifteen laws during the first ten months of its existence, called sixteen ministers to account, set up eight investigative committees, and discussed a budget. An investigation was started into reported corruption and unlawful mining contracts.14 The new spirit became even more tangible in Lubumbashi, where the public spaces were given an impressive face-lift. The holes in the asphalt were repaired, playgrounds and school were renovated, sixteen hundred garbage containers were placed around the city, and a public sanitation service was set up.15 When I arrived there in June 2007, workers were busy checking and repairing streetlights and pruning trees along the city center’s long, straight streets.
This was, however, invariably the work of a few energetic individuals. That parliament seemed to be getting down to brass tacks was thanks to its dynamic speaker, Vital Kamerhe, one of the president’s confidants who understood the art of concisely paraphrasing interminable debates and leading the way to a decision. Katanga once again showed initiative thanks to Moïse Katumbi, a flamboyant businessman who combined cunning with populism and remaining unconditionally loyal to le grand chef in Kinshasa. Kabila needed such dynamic figures to convince the people that his five workplaces were coming along well, but at the same time he made sure their popularity did not exceed his own. New elections, after all, were to be held in 2011. When the widely popular parliamentary speaker Kamerhe openly criticized Kabila’s military operations in the east of the country in January 2009, he was forced to resign and the regime lost one of its more intelligent players. Since that time, Katanagan governor Katumbi has—by his standards—been strikingly quiet. His voluntaristic approach had initially served to illustrate the disadvantages of highly personalized government. In June 2007 I saw that the general hospital at Lubumbashi had recently installed two brand-new coolers in its morgue and acquired a truck for picking up corpses. Don de Moïse (donated by Moïse) was painted in huge block letters on the sides of both. Generous, to be sure. But the hospital itself, the country’s second largest, had not had a drop of running water for the last four years.16 Patients going to the toilet had to first wade through a four-centimeter (1.6-inch) thick layer of dreck and piss. I saw it with my own eyes.
The elections cost a ghastly amount of money and generated great expectations, but before long people began concluding that the results had been quite meager. In keeping with age-old custom, the members of parliament bumped up their own monthly salaries—to forty-five hundred dollars in 2007 and then to six thousand dollars in 2008—and bestowed upon themselves and their secretary chairperson shiny new Nissan Patrols: it was one of the few agenda points that met with a little dissent.17 “I don’t get it,” a Kinois told me once. “During the campaign all those candidates looked us straight in the eye, but the first thing they do after being elected is to have themselves driven around in a four-wheel-drive with tinted windows so they don’t have to see us anymore.” As a result, important dossiers like military reform, governmental decentralization, and legal reforms remained untouched, with all the consequences one might imagine.
At the hospital in Lubumbashi I was introduced to Luc, a handsome young man. He was confined to a wheelchair. Nine months earlier he had been arrested one night while trying to steal a roll of electrical wire. In the absence of formal jurisdiction, Congo is marked everywhere by kangaroo courts. The crowd avenged itself on Luc by dousing his hands and feet with gasoline. He watched himself burn. His left foot, his right foot, his left hand. A few months later he went to the toilet and saw his right hand fall off. All he has left now is a thumb. He cannot operate his own wheelchair. And the judicial system is still a farce.
With the cabinet, things went no differently. In October 2008 Kabila replaced soporific Prime Minister Gizenga with Adolphe Muzito, who had previously been his minister of the treasury: a well-behaved, harmless man who has in the meantime done nothing in particular to distinguish himself, beyond accumulating some suspicions of corruption. With a few celebrated exceptions, most of the cabinet ministers proved equally indisposed to action. And why should they act? To display initiative was to risk falling from grace and losing a lucrative post (as happened in late February 2010, when Kabila once again reshuffled his cabinet team and invited twenty new notables to join him at the banquet table). Besides, real policy was established elsewhere, within the president’s own closest circles. In the Third Republic, true power did not rest with the country’s democratic institutions, but with a handful of the president’s most trusted advisers, including his mother and his twin sister. The real policymakers are often those like Augustin Katumba Mwanke, who owes more to his years of loyal service to Kabila than to any charisma or competence. Concerning military affairs, for example, the most powerful man since 2009 has been John Numbi. He is not the defense minister or chief of staff of the national army, but inspector general of police and long one of the president’s favorites. He has had almost no military training.
Bright spots? Yes, a few. Until the international banking crisis in 2008, Congo
’s currency had remained relatively stable: one dollar equaled some five hundred Congolese francs at that time, only to fall afterward to nine hundred to a dollar. Year after year the budget grew, but by 2010 it still added up to only $4.9 billion, comparable to the annual means of a medium-sized European city or half that of New York’s Columbia University in the course of a single academic year. Hardly enough to finance the reconstruction of a gigantic country in ruins. What’s more, half that sum is coughed up by international donors: a quarter of it goes to repaying the nation’s debts. GNP rose by a few percentage points annually, due largely to mining activities, but that too is marked by total dependence on foreign capital.18 In 2009 per capita GNP was $200, clearly higher than the $80 seen in 2000, but still a far cry from the $450 of 1960. To arrive at a par with the current level of neighboring Congo-Brazzaville ($4,250 annually, thanks to oil revenues), the population will have to wait until 2040, an internal document from the prime minister’s office said in February 2010. And that will only be achieved if one can assume consistent real growth of 13 percent annually and an unchanged population growth of 3 percent.19
In macroeconomic terms, therefore, slight progress is being seen, but such trends say nothing about the life of the common people. The Human Development Index, calculated by the United Nations each year for every country in the world, provides a much better view of citizens’ welfare than does per capita GNP; the index takes into account such things as the degree of literacy, education, health care, and life expectancy. In 2006 Congo found itself on the tenth lowest spot; in 2009 only five countries had a lower index score. Not a particularly propitious trend.20
Each year Foreign Policy magazine, along with the Fund for Peace, publishes the Failed States Index, a list of the world’s sixty most defective states. In 2009 Congo was number five, worse than Iraq, and two places up from 2007.21 After a period of slight improvement, Congo seems once again about to descend into chaos and mismanagement. The Doing Business Index for 2010 places Congo in 182nd place in a field of 183 countries: only the Central African Republic scored worse. Anyone hoping to start a business in Congo must count on reserving 149 workdays for administrative purposes. Obtaining a building permit easily takes 322 days. On an average, one pays taxes thirty times a year. The tax on profits equals almost 60 percent—money that never ends up with the common Congolese citizen.22
What that common Congolese citizen does end up with is disease. The infant mortality rate is one of the world’s highest: 161 out of every 1,000 children do not live to the age of five. One out of every three children under the age of five is underweight. Life expectancy at birth is forty-six years. Almost 30 percent of the population is illiterate, 50 percent of the children do not attend elementary school, 54 percent of the population has no access to clean drinking water.23
SO WHY DON’T THE PEOPLE RISE UP? Within an eighteen-month period, a government investigation revealed in 2007, some $1.3 billion disappeared into the pockets of three national financial institutions and six state-owned businesses.24 A dizzying sum, yet it produced no public outcry. Of the sixty mining contracts with international concerns such as Anvil Mining, De Beers, BHP Billington, AngloGold Kilo, and Tenke Fungureme Mining scrutinized by parliament under Kamerhe’s leadership, not one was shown to be sound.25 State-owned Gécamines in 2008 contributed only $92 million to the state treasury, rather than the $450 million the government was owed.26 The diamond mines of Bakwanga and the gold mines of Kilo-Moto provided almost no revenues. But public outrage? Belligerence? Fury? Given, there were a few incidental strikes by civil servants and teachers, but the common Congolese makes the best of a bad job and is almost ashamed of the hope he once cherished in the run-up to the elections. “Ca va un peu,” it goes, it goes, he will answer when you ask how things are going.
In November 2008 I talked about this with Alesh, a twenty-three-year-old rapper from Kisangani and one of the most promising figures in Congolese hiphop. Rap is a relatively new genre in Congo, but for Alesh it is a way to break through the lethargy. In his song “Bana Kin” he point an accusing finger at the deadening music scene in Kinshasa: “Your music is rich and shows us the tradition / but ethically speaking offers no contradiction.” Figures like Werrason and J. B. Mpiana had not roused the country from its slumber, even if their commercial ditties may have had some artistic value. Alesh viewed religion in equally nuanced terms: “I’ve got nothing against praying / But for them it was a mosquito net / That kept them tangled, deep in debt / like a spider’s web.” To talk to Alesh was to talk to a new, self-aware generation freed of colonial or postcolonial inferiority complexes. “We have to dare to criticize ourselves; too many dreams die because of a lack of hope,” he told me. In 2008 he recorded “L’élu,” a merciless song in which he reminds the elected representatives of their promises: “You add to the dissension, with all your condescension / you have all these pretentions, but the people long for your detention.”27
WERE THE ELECTIONS, THEN, nothing but a show, after all? A difficult question. For millions of citizens they were of undeniably great symbolic importance. The zeal with which people voted and counted showed that this was more than a pipe dream on the part of the international community. But the elections were more meaningful before and during the actual polling than they were afterward. The ritual was at least as important as the result. It was, after all, an illusion to hope that proper elections would immediately lead to a proper democracy. The West has been experimenting with forms of democratic administration for the last two and a half millennia, but it has been less than a century since it has started putting its faith in universal suffrage through free elections. How then could the West expect that particular method to magically transform a deep-rooted culture of corruption and clientelism into a democratic constitutional state in accordance with the Scandinavian model? And then in a region that, during its precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial eras, had known almost nothing but forms of autocratic rule? How naive would one have to be to suppose that it would all land on its feet after that initial electoral impulse? Democracy must be the objective—it is, after all, the least bad of all forms of government—but in Congo very little emphasis was laid on the vitally necessary steps along the road to a democratic system, or on the pace at which those steps were to be taken. In 1955 Jef Van Bilsen had predicted that thirty years would be needed for the switch from a colony to a sovereign state, but today the situation is in many ways worse than it was then. Free elections should not be the kickoff to a process of national democratization, but the crowning glory to that process—or at least one of the final steps. Peace, security, and education should go before, as well as local elections that can stimulate the formation of a grassroots culture of political accountability. In principle, the local elections should come first, but Kabila disdained and ignored them.
Western political experts often suffer from electoral fundamentalism, in the same way macroeconomists from the IMF and the World Bank not so long ago suffered collectively from market fundamentalism: they believe that meeting the formal requirements of a system is enough to let a thousand flowers bloom in even the most barren desert. Nobel Prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz, however, has clearly showed that “sequencing” and “pacing” are essential to the introduction of a market economy.28 One does not start cultivating the desert by first sowing the best of seed. The same goes for introducing a democracy.
With its enthusiastic attempt to install democracy once and for all in Congo by means of the formal electoral procedure, the international community has above all sidelined itself. Democracy was the aim, obscurantism the result. For, as the democratically elected president of a once-again sovereign country, Kabila was not about to tolerate any more foreign busybodies—after four years of patronization by the CIAT, he had had enough of that. To put it cynically: America and Europe paid enormous sums to gag themselves diplomatically in Congo. One can, of course, flourish promises of loans and attach to them preconditions for good governance (the
new buzzword at the IMF and World Bank in particular, but the European Union is all-too-willing to hop on the same bandwagon), but why would an African head of state respond to such advances when China offers much more money and is far less cantankerous about what’s done with it?
Some political scientists claim, by way of hypothesis, that three or four elections are needed to make things go in the right direction. That one must not despair too soon. That it is normal for a country to sputter a bit after a cold start. Repeated elections can, indeed, generate a pattern of change in which responsibility is taken; leaders may ultimately feel called upon to consider governing well. But it can just as easily become a hollow ritual and one that provides autocratic regimes with a thin veneer of legitimacy. It is much too soon to decide whether such elections actually promote democracy in Congo. It should be noted, however, that in September 2009 Kabila—with an eye to the elections in 2011 and 2016—set up a commission to determine whether the term of presidential office should not be extended from five years to seven and whether the constitutional limit of two mandates should not be scrapped, making him permanently eligible for reelection.29 It should also be noted that in 2009 a number of human rights activists were arrested for their critical stances.30 One of the president’s bosom buddies (who didn’t know that I knew he was a bosom buddy) once told me casually during a lunch shortly before the elections: “As president, Mandela was much too Western; Mugabe and Mobutu, those were real African leaders.”
LATE NOVEMBER 2008. I was having a meal with two brothers, both young actor-directors, at a little Indian restaurant across the street from the MONUC base in Goma. We were sitting outside under the awning, waiting patiently for our food, when my phone rang. Tomorrow’s trip would have to be canceled, I heard, the driver had run into problems, his battery was dead or his tank was empty, no, no, it was all very complicated, there was no way I could help, he was very sorry and wished me a good evening.
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