It is in that atmosphere that the Gatumba massacre took place. Gatumba was a refugee camp in northwest Burundi, close to the borders of both Rwanda and the DRC, where about 160 refugees were killed on August 13 “by unknown elements.” The FNL Burundian Hutu guerrillas immediately claimed the horror as their work, but it soon transpired that the slaughter had been a joint venture between several fanatically anti-Tutsi groups of Congolese Mayi Mayi, FDLR guerrillas, and indeed the FNL.76
The Gatumba massacre finally gave the hard-line Tutsi camp what it considered to be a decisive justification for resuming hostilities. Nkunda said he was going back to war “because of the planned genocide,” and FAB Chief of Staff General Niyoyonkana declared, “We have now decisive proof of FNL, Hutu Interahamwe, ex-FAR and Congolese Mayi Mayi complicity… . The DRC attacked our country77 and we will not wait till a second massacre takes place.” Burundi (Hutu) President Domitien Ndayizeye tried to calm things down a bit by saying, “It is still early to think of an offensive in the DRC,” and Nkunda answered, “Last time I captured Bukavu I withdrew peacefully. But this time once I capture it again I will never withdraw.”78
Then, on August 23, Azarias Ruberwa, the former RCD-G leader and now national unity vice president of the Kinshasa government, flew to the east and announced that he was suspending his participation in the transition. For one moment it seemed as if the whole process painfully crafted in Sun City had come crashing down. The international community was appalled. Cindy Courville, the U.S. National Security Council person in charge of Africa, flew to Kampala on August 28 to try to whip up an emergency “conference on armed groups.” But the main problem was that there were not two institutionally clearly defined camps: the new supposedly “integrated Congolese Army” (FARDC) was divided against itself, with Kinyarwanda speakers poised to fight members of other ethnic groups and to fight among themselves according to the Tutsi-Hutu line of cleavage.79
Gen. Mbuza Mabe first retook Minova and later signed what amounted to a nonaggression pact with the 8th Military Region commander Maj. Gen. Obed Rwibasira.80 By then the Rwandese army had entered the Congo and was fighting FDLR groups around Rutshuru with the help of Nkunda’s men. Pro-Rwibasira and pro-Mbuza Mabe groups of FARDC soldiers were fighting each other, and so were “integrated” and “nonintegrated” Mayi Mayi combatants. The international community was falling prey to increased panic; the British government put pressure on MONUC so that it would not mention the presence of the Rwandese troops and their involvement in the fighting in North Kivu.81
Meanwhile Kigali had finally brought the crisis to the boiling point. On November 25 a direct phone call to MONUC announced Rwanda’s decision to cross the border (it already had, but not officially) and attack the FDLR. On the same day, Aziz Pahad, South Africa’s deputy minister of foreign affairs, asked MONUC to attack the FDLR to preempt Kigali’s move. What he did not say (did he know it?) was that at the same time South Africa’s security chief had gone up to see Kagame and banged his fist on the table.82 Pretoria was determined to save its Sun City agreement, and for that it was ready to issue threats at the highest level, implying possible war. In Kigali things started to get confused. Kagame wrote to the African Union saying that his troops “would need to stay only two weeks in the Congo” to root out the FDLR, while at the same time his special envoy Richard Sezibera denied that there were any Rwandese troops in the DRC.83
The Ugandan-Rwandese tension compounded matters further when Kampala and Kigali began to expel each other’s diplomats in what looked like a prelude to a diplomatic relations break while armed clashes took place on their common border.84 Fighting started in Kanyabayonga, at the limit of the two Kivus, the classical border between the Rwandese area of influence (South) and the Ugandan one (North). In a remarkable display of disingenuousness Richard Sezibera craftily declared, “The current fighting is all intra-Congolese.”85
But the various actors were slowly beginning to get a handle on the situation. Arguably the key factor was the South African threats, which Kagame took into account—after a decent interval.86 But in addition, Kinshasa transferred General Rwibasira out of the 8th Military Region while MONUC deployed troops in Kanyabayonga and Lubero, where the recent fighting had uprooted 150,000 people. The fighting receded, then stopped. The very official and diplomatic Comité International d’Accompagnement de la Transition (CIAT)87 came in a delegation to Goma to talk directly with the actors.88 On December 26 the European Union, by now persuaded of the need for a stronger, more resolute MONUC, called for its military force to be expanded up to sixteen thousand men. Moreover, it said that it was ready to support the troop increase financially.89 By Christmas Sezibera could comment off-handedly, “The FDLR no longer constitutes an immediate threat to our government but they are a security problem to people’s lives, property and to our economic growth.”90
Tottering forward in Kinshasa
What was the “transition” that the Rwandese (and in some measure the Ugandans) had tried to upset? It was something that the institutional international community (i.e., the UN, the World Bank, the various chanceries) was “ecstatic about”91 but that other, more seasoned observers disbelievingly looked upon as some kind of a monster.92
For a few months after the signing of the Sun City Agreement things had stagnated as the delegates to the Inter-Congolese Dialogue kept debating in Pretoria on how to turn the piece of paper they had signed into some kind of reality. On April 1, 2003, they finally adopted the draft constitution which had been presented to them on March 6, and they agreed on the outline of a transitional government.93
On April 7 Joseph Kabila was sworn in as transitional president for a period of two years. Two days later an African summit in Cape Town solemnly warned Rwanda and Uganda against going to war with each other. Everybody knew that if they did, it would be on Congolese territory.94 Slowly the “peace institutions” moved forward: the vice presidents were chosen95 and Joseph Kabila abolished the hated Cours d’Ordre Militaire, which had condemned so many people to death in dubious circumstances.96 On April 28 Azarias Ruberwa arrived in Kinshasa to take up his position, declaring an official end to the war, “which had lasted four years and nine months because the circumstances demanded it.”97 What exactly these circumstances were, apart from the need to propel him into a vice presidential seat, he declined to explain. The swearing in of the transitional government was postponed for several weeks because the various components of the potential cabinet could not agree on the military arrangements. Trust was in limited supply and everybody was looking over their shoulder. There were three types of problems. First, there was the question of sharing positions and of cross-checking the nominations for security. Thus the military commanders were rebels in government areas and government rebels in former rebel territories; they had to be flanked by commanders of the opposite camp to keep tabs on them. Second, there was the problem of some of the commanders picked by the RCD-G who, like Gabriel Amisi, were notorious war criminals. They refused to take up their positions in former government-held areas, saying that “their security was not guaranteed.”
MONUC strength was at 8,700 men and a recent UN resolution had decided to increase it to 10,800. Trade slowly restarted on the Congo River, mobile telephones arrived in Kisangani, and dribbles of food aid began (slowly and inadequately, but still to some degree) to answer the IDPs’ needs. The first cabinet was finally announced on July 1, and recently named commanders managed to take their positions without fighting. In late November 2003 South African President Thabo Mbeki organized the fourth Kinshasa-Kigali Peace Agreement review meeting in Pretoria. The atmosphere was subdued. Bill Swing was present to promote a revamped version of the Third Party Verification Mechanism, which had evolved from total irrelevancy to mediocre performance, a great leap forward. There was a grudging compliance with its existence and functioning.98 In Kinshasa the former foes eyed each other warily but without pulling the trigger.
Everything was moving desperately slowl
y. In January 2004 the CIAT expressed its concern over the delays in the transition schedule, pointing out that none of the five key commissions decided upon in Sun City had yet become operational.99 Provincial governors were finally appointed in May, re-creating an embryo regional administration,100 but the whole Rube Goldberg contraption still felt very weak, very provisional. There were periodically mini-coup atternpts,101 betraying the extreme fragility of the security situation. Hence the temptation for Rwanda to see what would happen if the house of cards was given a firm push.
Given the fact that Kigali politics are only slightly more transparent than Pyongyang’s, it is difficult to say who and what activated the whole eastern Congo crisis of the second half of 2004. On the Rwandese side there was no doubt an attempt at preempting the Kayumba Nyamwasa–Kabarebe faction from organizing a coup, and later, when the spotlights were off, Kayumba was sent as an ambassador to India and Patrick Karegeya was arrested. But who was responsible for activating the murderous gaggle of genocidal Hutu to hit Gatumba? Hard to say. The relations between the RPF and the former génocidaires had become very close by 2004. For example, when FDLR General Rwarakabije was welcomed back into Kigali in November 2003, he had allegedly been dealing in coltan with certain high Rwandese military officials for over a year.102 These links between the RPF Security and their “enemies” on the other side of the border facilitated a lot of things. But President Kagame’s desire to bring down the transition cannot be assumed. He is such an intelligent and wily operator that he might very well have engineered the crisis so that it would fail and discredit the hard-liners’ policy. One element that would militate for such a “sideways” strategy is the fact that soon after the destabilization failure of late 2004, Kagame’s own personal policies switched radically, from destabilization of the Congo to a developmentalist approach I will try to define further on.
In any case, partly by luck, partly because of resolute international support, and partly through fighting down what seemed to have been a dastardly but poorly organized plot, the transition had survived. Paradoxically, this close call had a cathartic effect on the transition’s sluggish process. Suddenly not only the diplomats but the ordinary public and the politicians who were its cynical actors—everybody, in short—started to wonder. The ailing baby had survived a dangerous bout of deadly sickness, so it was stronger than previously believed. Elections stopped being an abstraction and the population as well as the politicians began to factor them into their calculations. Belief was helping to create fact, and the ghost of the transition began to gain substance. The immediate result was to solve (or at least tone down) the problems of the east and to whip up new ones in the newly promoted focus of power: Kinshasa itself.
Slouching toward Bethlehem: the transition slowly turns into reality (January 2005–November 2006)
The pre-electoral struggles
Almost as soon as the elections began to acquire greater credibility, they were called into question. At the beginning of January 2005 Apollinaire Malu Malu, the tough priest who was the head of the Electoral Commission, announced that elections would very likely have to be postponed. In the new pro-election mood this immediately triggered strong reactions, and anti-postponement riots caused four deaths in Kinshasa. Malu Malu said that he was not to blame, that postponement was probable because of the delaying tactics of a number of transition politicians who were benefiting from the present state of affairs and did not want to end it too soon.103 The UDPS, which had boycotted the transition and was smarting in the wings,104 was accused of having triggered the riots; it denied this, saying that the riots were the result of popular exasperation with artificial delays in the process. CIAT, which had put up a budget of $280 million for the elections, discreetly concurred.105 On May 16, in the presence of visiting transition godfather President Thabo Mbeki, Kabila presented the new draft constitution, which was due to be submitted to popular referendum before the end of the year; he used the occasion to confirm the probability of a delay in the electoral calendar. Although he had taken the precaution to add that the process was now irreversible and that elections were indeed going to take place, this triggered new anti-postponement riots, killing two and wounding twelve.106 Because the population concurred with Malu Malu’s argument about the politicians’ delaying tactics, rioting spread very quickly, killing over thirty people across the country during the last week of June.107 The UDPS jumped into the fray and pushed for mass protests everywhere, but its agenda was incoherent since it both denounced the postponement and advocated boycotting the voters’ registration process. Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba did not make things any easier when he announced on his private radio stations that he was “ready to shoot those responsible for electoral sabotage.” But Monsignor Monsengwo, the veteran CNS politician, urged people to register without rioting, and the call of the Church slowly calmed things down.
The UDPS continued on its erratic course of criticizing the transition process while advocating boycotting it. But in spite of Tshisekedi’s prestige and earlier popularity, his calls fell on increasingly deaf ears, and at the closure of registration on December 10, 24,522,650 men and women had signed up. The old “Lion of Limete” persisted; he advocated boycotting the constitutional referendum, which was held on December 18; in spite of his instructions 62 percent of the electorate voted anyway. The results were interesting, since they anticipated the future electoral map of the coming elections:108
• In Kinshasa, the results were 50–50, reflecting the deep distrust of a tired and somewhat disenchanted electorate.
• In the two Kasais, the “yes” vote got 80 percent, but only 20 percent of the registered voters had bothered to vote, showing that Tshisekedi’s boycott call still worked in his home territory.
• In Katanga and the east, the war’s former theater of operations, the “yes” vote got over 90 percent, as Kabila was seen as the best way to keep Rwanda out.
• In Bas Congo and Bandundu, the “yes” vote got around 70 percent.
• In Equateur only 60 percent voted “yes,” showing that in spite of Jean-Pierre Bemba’s presence in the cabinet the old “Mobutuland” was not reconciled with the loss of its former symbolically privileged status.
All in all, 84.3 percent of the voters approved the proposed constitution, a resounding triumph for the transition process.
This success had an immediate impact on the now increasingly mercurial Tshisekedi, who changed his mind and announced that he wanted to contest the next elections.109 But he was in a bad position to run since many of his potential electors had obeyed his recommendation and neglected to register; he then started to agitate—ineffectively—for the voters’ rolls to be reopened.110 His confused strategy unfortunately marginalized the Kasai Baluba from the new political dispensation then taking shape, something that remains one of its weaknesses to this day.111 But with all its limitations and contradictions, a new shape was emerging on the political scene.
DDRRR, SSR, and assorted security headaches
The main national problem of the transition, beyond the vagaries of individual politicians, was—and remains—security. There were of course many other problems: facing the consequences of the dictatorship and the destructions of the war; conjugating national independence with what the Congo specialist Jean-Claude Willame has called, with perhaps a dash of exaggeration, “a state in receiver-ship”;112 the practical problems of organizing elections in a huge half-pacified country with hardly any roads; and the constant problems of poverty’s daily grind, of how to think constructively when disease, fear, and hunger remained the daily preoccupation of the vast majority of the people. But all these problems were lived under the shadow of another, bigger problem: how to reintegrate structures of often anomic destruction into new structures of controlled violence. If we recall that the classical definition of the state is an entity having the monopoly of legitimate violence over a certain territory, then, according to that definition, there was no state in the DRC even at t
he end of the transition. Thus, creating the conditions of national security during that period—a paid, professional, and disciplined army, honest and efficient police forces—was the primary task overshadowing all the others and whose success or failure could make them either productive or irrelevant.
The Sun City Power-Sharing Arrangement had largely been due to a military stalemate rather than to any kind of genuine desire for “peace.” The “rebels” were stuck in an endless position war, particularly after the end of the Clinton administration, which had supported, or at least tolerated, the invasion of the Congo between 1996 and 2000. On the other side the government was exhausted and fearful that the Angolan and Zimbabwean support, on which it desperately relied, might wear out over time and lead to the collapse of its own meager, undisciplined, and poorly equipped forces. The “rebels” were first and foremost armed movements without ideology, without any very large civilian constituency,113 and without any sort of unified cause apart from their hopes of profiting politically and economically from the dissolution of the former Zairian state. So when the new Bush administration cold-shouldered the invaders and when Luanda made it clear to Joseph Kabila that its support was about to end, the belligerents were pushed into peace by force of circumstances rather than by choice. Thus, in the absence of any genuine political consensus, the military arrangements of the Peace Agreement, which were essential for the country’s future, were botched and insufficient, and the consequences are still felt to this day.114 As a result of this oversight115 the parameters of DDRRR and SSR were (and remain) in a state of almost constant improvisation.116 What was the situation during the transition, and what is it today (since little has changed in terms of SSR during the past few years)?
Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe Page 45