Some thoughts and facts about the ongoing crisis in the DRC (Part 1) 7 Feb

Some thoughts and facts about the ongoing crisis in the DRC (Part 1)

Trouble in Katanga ……………
Nothing seems very logic in the DRC: the soft boiling Congolese kettle of small scale wars in the east and in the south of the country, of the ongoing political gossip and corruption in Kinshasa and the ongoing exploitation of minerals in the south was suddenly boiling on the 30-st of December of last when several targets in the country where attacked by the followers of a certain Paul Joseph Mukungubila. A couple of days later colonel Mamadou Ndala, the newborn national hero of the war against the M-23 rebels, was killed in an ambush in Beni. But this was not all: behind the thick curtains of Kabila’s palaces in Kinshasa and in Lubumbashi a real power struggle broke out between Kabila himself and some of his closest generals. Today this struggle is still ongoing. In fact there are lots of other things happening in the country: the war against ADF-Nalu is still raging, several Mayi Mayi groups are fighting the FARDC in Katanga, other militia’s want to give up their struggle and others won’t. In Kinshasa people are disappearing and a new repression apparatus is put in place to control the opposition.
The situation in the country is indeed very complex. Diplomats in Kinshasa, UN-officials and NGO-staffers are very well informed about the ongoing problems but keep quit. A lot of the protagonists have a double nationality and want to leave a door open to Europe of the US in case things are getting bad for them in the DRC, so they pass on a lot of information. Also to people like me. In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is the king !
I was in the DRC the last couple of months and I wrote down everything I heard and experienced. And I talked to a lot of people. I might be wrong about some smaller details – in the DRC one can never be completely sure about a source – and some of these thoughts are rather personal. I’m already working and living in the African Great Lakes Region for more than 25 years. So I think that my ideas might contribute to a better understanding of the ongoing trouble in the country. I hereby also want to apologize for my bad writing skills in English. I’m a Belgian free-lancer and I don’t have the cash to have my writings checked up by a corrector.
The attacks of the 30th of december
The attacks on the RTNC-tower in Kinshasa on the 30th of December and the fighting that erupted in and around the airport of Ndjili and in Lubumbashi smashed to pieces the last hopes of a revival of the Kabila regime. This might be a harsh statement but I can guarantee You that several other Congo watchers are sharing this opinion. Kabila had just regained a bit of confidence and trust of the outside world with the victory on the M23-rebels.
According to the Congolese Minister of Information Lambert Mende the attacks on the 30st were the work of a renegade and completely crazy Congolese politician-preacher, Paul Joseph Mukungubila. But although Mukungubila might have been involved in the clashes nobody believes that theory. People who have been following up on the situation see two possibilities. The first one is the most obvious one: the attacks were planned by followers of John Numbi, the former commander of the Congolese police and a close collaborator of Kabila. The position of Numbi became compromised after the killing of human rights activist Floribert Chebeya of which Numbi had been accused in the foreign media (it was the Belgian journalist Thierry Michel who scooped the story). The word was out that Numbi felt betrayed by Kabila and was looking for revenge. In Katanga Numbi would have found an ally in the person of former governor Kyungu Wa Kumwanza, a man known to have eaten already from all kinds of sausages. In the other scenario Kabila created these problems himself to justify his position as the president of the country. He is already in his second term as the president of Congo and according to the constitution he can’t be re-elected for a third term. If he manages to convince the outside world that the constitution has to be changed he might be in for a third term. So he might want to profile himself as a strong leader that can lead the country I difficult days…. He might also be scared to end up in the International Tribunal in The Hague when he looses his job. I personally think that this second option is less probable… Several confidential reports and conversations show us that the first option is the more likely one. Not everything that happened that day has been put on paper yet and You might have to be a Congolese to understand well these rather contradicting facts.
According to my sources the attacks on the 30th started in Lubumbashi. Several followers of Mukungubila gathered in a church during the night to pan an attack on Kabila’s residence-palace in town, the Kamanyola palace. But Kabila would have been tipped off about this by informers. This might also be the reason why he arrived in Lubumbashi on the 29th, to organize a counter attack. Some of my sources told me that when Kabila arrived in Lubumbashi and he found out what was going to happen he started panicking. According to my sources he jumped in his car and tried to flee to Zambia. His body guards had a lot of trouble to convince him to stay on his post. Kabila’s troops stormed the church at five o’clock in the morning. Most of the defenders were shot down on the spot but some could flee. After that there was heavy shooting in the so called ‘Golf area’ in Lubumbashi where Kabila’s forces found a safe house of Mukungubila. According to officials several dozens of so called rebels, but also women and children, were killed during these attacks.
The attack on the RTNC tower in Kinshasa started at 7h30 in the morning. And around that time the first shots were also fired at Ndjili airport, in Kindu (Maniema province) and in Kolwezi. If Mukungubila would have been the master mind and the coordinator of these events the attackers in Kinshasa would have know already that their friends in Lubumbashi were already on the run. The strange and unwritten part of this story is that Kabila’s Presidential Guards were engaged in a gun battle for more than half an hour with FARDC troops loyal to the ex commander in chief of the FARDC ‘Tango Four’ (general Amisi) at the RTNC towers. The situation was very confuse, some of the attackers could flee and the battle raged on in other parts of Kinshasa. In Kitambo a hotel where some Banyamulenge officers were lodged was machine gunned. As strange as this might sound all of these scenario’s have one thing in common: they were all organized by the Katangese strongmen of the regime.
While lots of articles have been written about the strange ‘pasteur’ and renegade politician Mukungubila nothing has been heard ever since about the true perpetrators of the attacks on the 30st. Numbi’s houses and depots in Katanga have been searched by security forces while Numbi himself was hiding in his farm outside of Lubumbashi. But the man himself has not been bothered yet. According to my sources he’s in Kinshasa now where he can move around freely. This again can have two possible explanations: Numbi might not have organized the problems on the 30th and Kabila just used him as a scapegoat to cover his own intentions. Or he did it anyway and Kabila wants to bake sweet cakes with him to soften his stand. It is sometimes very difficult for outsiders to verify with what kind of vegetables this ‘bouillabaise à la Congolaise’ (soup) is being cooked !
The Mayi Mayi debacle in Katanga
The atmosphere in the Katanga province was very tense the last couple of weeks because the city of Katanga and its surrounding were under threat of an imminent attack of Mayi Mayi rebels. During the past days and weeks several villages have been burned down by the FARDC, thousands of people fled their villages because of the violence and hundreds of innocent people died in the fighting between the FARDC and rebels.
There are several Mayi Mayi groups active in the province. Most of them were equipped en formed during the period that the province was under threat of the Rwandan army and when the pro Rwandan RCD-Goma was fighting against the father of Joseph Kabila in the Pweto and the Moba area. After the Rwandans left the area these militia’s were kept alive by the authorities in Kinshasa for other purposes: to keep the pressure high on the very popular and charismatic governor of Katanga Moïse Katumbi and to maintain a force that could create trouble in Katanga whenever needed when the Katangese strongmen in Kinshasa wanted to create a diversion to cover up problems in the rest of the country. Moïse Katumbi is the darling of many diplomats: this soft spoken rich businessman is intelligent and could be an ideal presidential candidate. Therefore he has always been a thorn in the eye of the Balubakat strongmen in Kinshasa. Katumbi is a Bemba from the south who knows how to deal with foreign investors – especially Americans, Belgians, English – who are in competition with the Chinese to exploit the rich mineral-belt of Katanga. This belt is situated in the south of the province, in an area that is mostly populated by the Bemba-, the Rund- and the Tsjokwe-tribe. The Balubakat-strongholders – people like Kabila, Numbi, Kyungu and others – are originating from the poorer north of the province where no minerals can be found. A couple of years ago, when the first cracks in the collaboration between Kabila and Katumbi occurred, stirring up the Mayi Mayi activities was a good way to illustrate Katumbi’s inability run the province in a decent way. Governor Katumbi can count on the support of people of the south and also of the thousands of Kasaïens (citizens of the Kasai province) who live in the copper belt. In the 90ties the previous governor of Katanga, Kyungu (a Muluba) expelled thousands of Kasaïens from the province and put them on trains to send them back to the Kasaï province. Hundreds of them died during this unfortunate exodus.
Insiders agree on the fact that the entire Mayi Mayi – scene in Katanga was orchestrated out of Kinshasa by people like John Numbi, ex governor Kyungu and Kabila himself. One of the biggest Mayi Mayi groups in the province is known under the name of Bakata Katanga. Several months ago they walked into Lubumbashi to surrender but they were machine gunned by the Presidential Guards. But the whole Mayi Mayi set up changed on the 30st of December of last year. That day the former wing-adjudant of president Joseph Kabila went rogue on his boss because the latter had put him aside and replaced him at the top of the Congolese police by the Rwandophone general Charles Bisengimana. That day Kabila lost the control over the Katangese Mayi Mayi and the militia became the tool by ‘excellence’ of his Balubakat opponents to put pressure on their former boss. This theory is the most plausible one. A couple of weeks ago reports reached Lubumbashi that the Mayi Mayi forces around the city had received weapons that were stolen in FARDC depots (according to my sources Numbi also has followers in the army), the Mayi Mayi killed several villagers, looted cows and crop from farmers and the army responded with the burning over several villages and the killing of hundreds of innocent villagers. In the Pweto-, Manono- and Moba-region thousands of villagers fled the violence and the fighting between the army and the Mayi Mayi. Nobody knows for sure how many people died and s always the local press is not in a very good position to report correctly about these events. Lots of the burnings and killings were done by the so called ‘regiment 811’, a loose collection of ex-CNDP fighters and other militia members who were reintegrated into the FARDC when Laurent Nkunda was put under house arrest in Rwanda. Journalists who speak out about these events face harsh jail sentences. Others just disappear. Radio Okapi, the official radio station of the UN, seems to have just one concern: not to tell the complete truth in order to let the outside world believe that everything is still under control. In the meanwhile the prices of vegetables and meat in Lubumbashi are rising by the day because farmers can’t work on their fields anymore because of the problems.
According to our sources Olive Kabila was also harassed a couple of months ago by followers of the ex governor Kyungu when she was on her way from the center of Lubumbashi to the Kabila farm outside town. One of her body guards was killed during this event and Olive herself was rescued out of this situation by some members of the Presidential Guards who were following the cortege. If this is true this shows clearly that the Kabila family is not very popular anymore in the Katanga province. Rumors are even circulating that Kabila himself was attacked by the Bakata Katanga in his farm outside town.
My latest information about John Numbi is that he’s in Kinshasa. This is strange because until recently Numbi barricaded himself with a number of well armed followers in his luxurious farm, outside Lubumbashi. As I already told You this can mean two things: the possibility that Numbi is being pampered again by Kabila to cool him down. Or the possibility that it was not Numbi who was behind the attacks on the 30th. I hope the near future will shed more light on that ! Today the situation in Katanga seems to be rather quit again. And that’s a very good thing for the local population and the thousands of foreign workers who were not allowed to leave their plants for weeks.
The possibile resurgence of the Katangese Tigers
The last hot Katangese patato is the fact that that the Katangese Tigers are recruiting actively again in the region around Likasi, Lububmbashi and Kolwezi. Young members of the Bemba-, Rund- and Tsjokwe-tribes are being lured into this militia by recruiters that operate out of Angola, under the umbrella of the Angolan army. This is a fact: last year I travelled trough the region and the villagers told me that most of the young men left to Angola to join the Tigers. Last month some of our contacts in the region intercepted a document of the ANR (‘Agence Nationale de Renseignement’) in which a detailed summary was given about the activities of the Tigers. According to this document about 2000 Katangese Tigers should already have been infiltrated in the region from Angola. According to this report they would plan an attack on the FARDC barracks in Kamina from where they would declare the independence of Katanga. Even when this figure might be exaggerated and knowing that the ANR is known for its amateurism this can be interpreted as a sign on the wall that the Tigers are moving themselves into more strategic position. The Angolans might keep them as a stick behind the door to put pressure on Kabila. Everybody knows that the Angolans are digging up every years kilo’s of diamonds out of the Congolese soil and nearly half of the Angolan oil is believed to originate from Congolese territorial waters (Kabila’s father gave them these concessions in exchange for support to fight the Rwandans in the east of the country). The possibility that these Tigers will move into action in the region might add some extra vegetables and spices to the already hard boiling Congolese ‘bouillabaise’.
Another dark cloud that is currently hanging over Katanga is the fact that the government has failed so far to deliver the necessary electricity to the big mining companies that are exploiting the mineral rich soil. So most of the companies are forced to produce their own electricity (huge diesel generators that consume tons of fuel can do this job) and the Congolese government is forcing them to produce the copper plates on the spot. Former president Laurent Kabila distributed lots of pieces of mineral rich land to local diggers and smaller companies in the Kolwezi area. Most of them are selling their minerals to Chinese companies that are bribing their way trough the Congolese bureaucracy. This is a thorn in the eye of the bigger companies who are forced to respect the local mining codes. The IMF froze most of its support to the DRC because of the ongoing corruption and the rehabilitation of the Inga-dam in Bas-Congo (when this dam would work it could provide electricity to a big part of Africa) and this leaves the big mining companies on their hunger to produce cheaper and to be more competitive on the world markets. Some of my contacts even claim that the current political impasse in Katanga is serving the government well to force the IMF to review its decision to cut the sponsoring of the DRC. I’m not an economist but this element could be very interesting for further research.

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