allAfrica.com: Congo-Kinshasa: Building a State for the People (Page 1 of 7)

A pickup truck marked "Delta Protection" zooms around a corner on a main avenue in the heart of the Congolese capital, with two uniformed men in the cab and another standing on the back, swinging a mounted heavy machine gun back and forth. They wear sunglasses, though it is night. On another street, a minivan labeled "African Defence System" bounces along with more than a half-dozen armed personnel.

Such private security outfits are common in the main cities of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), hired mostly by foreign and local businesses to protect their property and keep crime at bay. They can be brutal. In front of one of Kinshasa's main banks, a uniformed guard clubs a woman trying to sell bread on the sidewalk.

The government is working to strengthen its regular police forces. But they are not yet able to guarantee public safety. All too often, undisciplined police and soldiers themselves commit abuses.

Across the country and in various activities, the Congolese state and its institutions are only minimally present or effective. Peace agreements ended much of the fighting that devastated the eastern half of this country for nearly a decade - but a number of armed groups continue to operate there, perpetuating insecurity, causing major population displacements and threatening to reignite a wider war (see box). National elections have put in office a government with some political legitimacy.

Yet reforms of key state organs - police, army, courts, civil administration, state enterprises, local government councils, tax agencies - have only just begun. So have efforts to get the government to open up to dialogue with ordinary citizens.

'A problem of the state'

For the United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC), overcoming such weaknesses in state authority is essential for preserving the country's hard-won peace. In addition to their peacekeeping duties, many of MONUC's 18,000 military and police personnel and 2,000 civilian staff are now engaged in helping Congolese build institutions that can manage the country's affairs over the long term, without reverting to crisis and chaos.

Presidential and legislative vote in 2006 brought in the Congo's first elected government in more than 40 years.

"The problem in the Congo is not only the problem of armed groups," observes UN Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs Haile Menkerios. "It is a problem of the state. It is a problem of nation-building.... Institutions do exist on paper right now, [but] in practical terms, they really need quite some time to strengthen." (When he spoke with Africa Renewal in Kinshasa, before his current appointment, Mr. Menkerios was the UN Secretary-General's deputy special representative in the DRC.)

Many Congolese share that opinion. "In most areas I visited, the existence of the state is doubtful," Senator Vincent de Paul Lunda Bululu told a Congolese journalist after touring his home region of Haut-Katanga in September. "Certainly, the state exists legally, but in reality it needs to be reborn."

According to Albert Yuma Mulimbi, national president of the Fédération des entreprises du Congo, businesspeople need a "climate of trust" before they will invest and create jobs. Unfortunately, the state is "still fragile." To ensure economic recovery from the ravages of war, says Mr. Yuma, it is important to "reconstruct a strong, impartial, effective state."

The goal is not simply "postwar reconstruction." It is to start building, often for the first time ever, institutions that will genuinely serve the interests of the country's citizens.

Ordinary Congolese often agree. In late June, civil society organizations and professional associations staged a march through the town of Beni, in the highly insecure province of North Kivu, to protest banditry, killings by rebels, rape and extortion. They submitted a memorandum to the interim mayor insisting that the authorities do more to reestablish order.

'Governance contract'

In their public speeches and declarations, the country's political leaders assign a high priority to building up the state's capacities and its public acceptance. Guiding all official actions, Minister of Planning Olivier Kamitatu told Africa Renewal, is a "governance contract that ties the government to the Congolese people."

The government, Mr. Kamitatu says, has pledged action on a variety of fronts. In addition to improving people's living conditions, these include reforming the army, police and courts, cleaning up the government's management of public funds, overhauling the civil service and state administration and carrying out "genuine decentralization" so that political and administrative authority is not concentrated excessively in Kinshasa. "We will be judged" on the basis of such actions, Mr. Kamitatu believes.

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