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afrol.com / SARDC More than a million people lined the streets of Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo to pay their respects to the assassinated President Laurent-Desire Kabila, 62, who was shot to death by a lone personal bodyguard on 16 January 2001. He was buried after being flown to Zimbabwe and back, ostensibly for medical treatment, although most indications are that he was dead on arrival in Harare. An irony that was not lost on the mass demonstration of patriotic fervour in Kinshasa is that it was exactly 40 years ago that DRC's only elected leader, Patrice Lumumba, was murdered on 17 January 1961 under still-murky circumstances. The leadership around Kabila, who took power in 1997, moved quickly and in full consultation with his main allies, Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe, to fill the power vacuum by appointing Kabila's 31-year-old son, Joseph, who was head of Congo's armed forces. As a gun carriage bore the late president's body from the airport, thousands of people jogged behind as Joseph Kabila led the cortege while heavily armed Angolan and Zimbabwean soldiers guarded the city centre, along with the DRC troops. Some analysts say the outpouring of respect and the presence of DRC troops was an indication of which way the army would go in approving the new government. One of new president's first acts was to order payment of long-delayed salaries to the army and civil service. Sworn in as president - he had been appointed interim president when Laurent Kabila died - a few days after his father's burial, Joseph Kabila began a series of high-level meetings at home and abroad. He met in Kinshasa with the presidents of Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe who were his father's staunchest allies during the civil war against Ugandan and Rwandan-backed rebel movements, a war which has left more than a third of the huge and potentially wealthy country outside the control of Kinshasa.
The new President Kabila met with South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki shortly after taking the oath of office and just before leaving for talks in Paris, Washington and New York. He met President Jacques Chirac in France, attended a prayer breakfast with newly inaugurated President George W. Bush in Washington and met senior officials of that new administration including Secretary of State Colin Powell. Kabila was also to meet with top UN officials, including members of the Security Council in New York. The meetings are all critical, both for DRC and for the region. The rebels and their backers control much of the eastern part of the country and insist they will not pull out until a democratic government elected by all citizens of DRC is in place and Rwandan border security is guaranteed, especially from the Hutu militias that had committed the genocide of Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994. The UN has agreed to send about 5,500 mostly African peacekeepers to the DRC under the 1999 Lusaka Peace Accords which call for the withdrawal of foreign troops from DRC and an end to fighting. However, except for a handful of observers, the UN will not deploy the force until conditions for peacekeeping have improved. The senior Kabila had an ambivalent and often contradictory relationship with the UN and the Organization of African Unity's special representative, former Botswana president Ketumile Masire who was attempting to bring the various factions together in a political process and set a course for multi-party democracy. Indications are that the new DRC president, despite his youth and comparative inexperience, wants to revive the faltering Lusaka agreement, open the country to the UN forces when they are available and begin to work on the country's poverty-stricken economy. Laurent Kabila came to power in 1997 after Rwandan troops invaded DRC (then known as Zaire) with support from Uganda to track down the Hutu extremists. Kabila joined up with the invading armies to overthrow the long-time dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko after a 10-day campaign. After Mobutu fled, Kabila was installed as his successor and renamed the country the Democratic Republic of Congo, its original name. Not long after his triumphant return from exile, Kabila fell out with his Rwandan and Ugandan backers who promptly began assisting rebel groups from the east and another Congolese rebellion began in 1998. The rebels advanced across the country and threatened Kinshasa. Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe came to the late president's side and fought off the rebels. The low-level civil war ground on, flaring up and dying down as regional mediators sought to bring peace to the troubled country. But conflict degenerated into a war of attrition as the allied troops kept Kabila's enemies at bay. The Lusaka Accords of 1999 under the leadership of Zambia's President Frederick Chiluba and supported by SADC were signed by all parties to the conflict after months of tedious and frustrating negotiations with rebels, Uganda and Rwanda, the allies and the UN, as the potential peacekeepers. Rumours abound around the circumstances of the mercurial leader's death. The future depends on many factors, not least of which is the role the new president can play in consolidating his fractious and oft-interfered with nation. A peace settlement along the lines of the still-existing Lusaka Accords, a speedy response by the UN to improved conditions for peace-keeping and some steps to bring the undoubted wealth of the DRC to bear on the poverty of its long-suffering people. By Hugh McCullum, Southern African Research and Documentation Centre (SARDC)
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The allies have pledged to continue support for the new president but regional analysts point out that, despite their united front, the three countries have expended large sums of money in the three-year war and are looking for a peaceful end to the DRC woes as soon as possible. However, in the short term at least the allied troops are in position to stop any challenge to the new regime and keep up pressure to resolve the struggle which has cost thousands of lives and millions of dollars.
