Voters in Congo, the world’s least-developed nation, are bracing themselves for further unrest following an election most believe has been rigged in favour of leader Joseph Kabila
THE VIEW FROM the street outside Pascal and Virginie’s shaded home is as good as it gets in Kinshasa, the sprawling megacity of more than 10 million inhabitants that serves as the Democratic Republic of Congo’s capital. From this perch on a hill in the city’s southern reaches, it is possible to trace Kinshasa’s topography, from its pulsating hardscrabble neighbourhoods, all tightly packed shacks and rutted roads, to the smoothly tarred arteries of its commercial and diplomatic enclaves, studded with glass and metal towers and other tentative signs of a country beginning to find its feet after years of war, and finally, to the banks of the mighty, churning river that shares this vast country’s name.
Pascal and Virginie do not fall within Congo’s thin sliver of elite, nor are they among the tens of millions of Congolese who struggle every day to eke out a precarious existence – according to UN estimates, less than 10 per cent of people of working age have formal jobs.
Instead, the retired civil servant and his wife, whose adult children live in Europe, occupy the space in between. That means living in a modest house in a quartier where the power supply often fails, leaving them reliant on torches and candles, and running water can be nonexistent for days on end.
On November 28th, Pascal and Virginie walked to the polling station set up in a nearby school to cast their votes in only the second elections since the end, in 2002, of a vicious war that claimed the lives of more than five million people, in a country of 72 million, in Congo’s troubled eastern flank. Both wanted change after a decade of Joseph Kabila, the man propelled to power at the age of 30 after his father, Laurent, was assassinated, in 2001, and so Pascal and Virginie voted for the incumbent’s main challenger, a septuagenarian named Etienne Tshisekedi.
Neither of the two was impressed with Kabila’s flashy campaign. For weeks Kinshasa’s main thoroughfares have been lined with huge billboards featuring Kabila’s beaming face along with images of promised road and rail projects – many of them part of an opaque multibillion-dollar deal with China involving minerals for infrastructure – and the slogan “100 percent with the president”.
Instead, the couple warmed to Tshisekedi, an elder-statesman-like figure whose fiery rhetoric in the run-up to polling day was denounced by critics as inflammatory. Some younger voters consider Tshisekedi too old; others baulk at his approach. “I’m no fan of Kabila, but Tshisekedi wants to take us back to the village,” said one Kinshasa resident. “He’s a rabble-rouser.”
Pascal and Virginie beg to differ. “Tshisekedi is an honest man, and that is what our country needs,” Pascal said over a dinner of chicken, plantains and greens on election night. “We have seen little improvement under Kabila. A tiny majority has become richer, but most Congolese continue to find life a real struggle. It doesn’t make sense when you consider our mineral wealth as a country.” Last month, Congo earned the ignominious distinction of being the least-developed nation in the world despite its $24 trillion of known mineral deposits, making it one of the richest in terms of its wealth in natural resources.
The UN put Congo at the bottom of 187 nations in its human-development index, based on criteria including life expectancy, personal income, health and education. A mere 9 per cent of Congolese have access, intermittently, to electricity, and GDP per person is today half of what it was when the country became independent, in 1960. “It’s not surprising that people are frustrated and angry,” says Pascal.
This evening he and Virginie will sit down for what has become a nightly ritual since they cast their ballots: anxious hours spent flicking through Congolese, pan-African and French TV channels to glean information about what has turned out to be a dangerously shambolic election. The logistical challenge of organising an election in a country two-thirds the size of western Europe was always going to be daunting. About 35 million ballot papers and 186,000 Chinese-made ballot boxes were due for distribution to 63,000 polling stations, many of them reachable only by helicopter, by canoe or by foot, given Congo’s lack of basic infrastructure – the country has less than 2,900km of paved roads.
Eleven hopefuls ran for the presidency, including the son of the former dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, while more than 18,800 parliamentary candidates vied for seats in 500 constituencies. In one area of Kinshasa, 1,700 candidates battled for 15 seats in a contest that required a 53-page ballot paper resembling a newspaper, which was described by election officials as the biggest voting slip in the world.
But what transpired on election day and afterwards was enough to reinforce the fears of those already convinced that Kabila was set on stealing the ballot. Voting, which took place amid heavy rains and often chaotic circumstances, with reports of clashes in some parts of the country, was extended by two days as ballot papers arrived late and names were discovered to be missing from voter lists. International observers, including some from the EU, reported widespread irregularities in a ballot overseen by an election commission headed by a close ally of Kabila. The counting process has also proved calamitous, and repeated delays in announcing the final tally has heightened suspicions and tensions, particularly in Kinshasa, many of whose choked neighbourhoods have long been opposition strongholds.
“It is clear that there has been fraud; the question is, how much, for whom, and was it enough to make a difference in the final tally,” says Jason Stearns, an analyst and former co-ordinator of the United Nations Group of Experts on the Congo.
Preliminary results from some areas that appear to put Kabila in the lead have been rejected by Tshisekedi’s camp. The sense of foreboding is palpable on the largely deserted streets of the capital’s heart, where riot police dressed like Robocop carry gas masks as they ride around on the back of trucks, and troop reinforcements arrive. In the days leading up to the elections, a crackdown by security forces against opposition protesters left 18 dead and more than 100 injured.
“None of the opposition candidates is linked to an armed group, so there is little immediate risk of civil war or armed violence breaking out if, as expected, Joseph Kabila is declared winner,” says Stearns. “However, there is a high likelihood of urban unrest in opposition strongholds, in particular Kinshasa, as security forces clash with Tshisekedi supporters.”
Some Congolese have decided not to wait around to see what happens. Thousands have crossed the River Congo into neighbouring Brazzaville. Last weekend Bishop Nicolas Djombo described the situation as a “train running into the wall”.
Some of Tshisekedi’s supporters have been muttering darkly of the consequences of a rigged vote for some time. On election day, a knot of men gathered at a cafe raised the prospect of strikes and serious disturbances. “We know Tshisekedi has the support of the majority,” one said above Congolese pop music blaring from loudspeakers. “If he is not allowed to win in a free election, there will be trouble.” One of his companions nodded: “The people will take to the streets and that kind of situation will be difficult to control.” Another referred to the toppling of leaders in north Africa this year. “If Kabila wins, we will do what the people of Libya, Tunisia and Egypt did. We will bring him down.”
The sight of Laurent Gbagbo, the former president of Ivory Coast, at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague this week, also sent a powerful message. Gbagbo faces four charges of crimes against humanity related to the months of violence that erupted, claiming about 3,000 lives, after he refused to concede defeat in elections last year. In a statement urging calm in Congo, the ICC’s chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, alluded to the example of Gbagbo. “Electoral violence is no longer a ticket to power, I assure you,” he said. “It is a ticket to The Hague.”
Concerns are not limited just to the risk of unrest in the days or weeks to come. “Beyond the immediate danger of results being rejected and violence escalating, a president with an illegitimate mandate poses a grave threat to the country’s peace and security,” warned the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. “Only a leader that Congolese believe has been elected freely can possibly resolve the country’s multiple problems. Losers unfairly excluded from the political system may easily take up arms.”
Africa’s second-largest and third-most-populous country, Congo sits at the crossroads of the continent, nestling between nine other states, including Angola, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda. The tremors of whatever happens here can be felt well beyond Congo’s borders, as its turbulent history has shown. Frantz Fanon, the philosopher and activist who died 50 years ago this week, once famously observed that Africa is shaped like a revolver, with Congo as its trigger.
“We want to look forward, not back,” said one young voter in Kinshasa. “We deserve fair and clean politics, not more violence.”
This article was supported by a grant from the Simon Cumbers Media Challenge Fund
