Washington, DC — United Nations troops have begun deploying in the Democratic Republic of Congo, offering what appears to be a glimmer of hope for peace in the war-torn east of the country.
But, at the same time, over the in the west, in the capital Kinshasa, DRC politicians and their parties are jockeying for position in case Joseph Kabila should loosen his grip on domestic politics.
"Political parties here, as well as in Europe, must be controlled," Joseph Kabila told a UN news agency this week. "We are in the process of studying in which context these political parties could resume their activities. We have about 150 political parties."
But he made it clear it was too early to free up the political environment. "I do not think one should get into irrelevant discussions at this time," he said, in response to a question about lifting the decree outlawing political activities.
In the United States, where some of these parties have been actively seeking support, there are differing views as to where the Congo should be headed.
Veteran opposition politician, Etienne Tshisekedi, leader of the Union pour la Democratie et le Progres Social (UDPS), wants to see a UN-supported transition back to elected government. Joseph Kabila's government is not legitimate, he argued, on a recent visit to Washington. It has "only deepened the juridical and political void and further reinforced the precariousness of power in Kinshasa."
In proposals he submitted to the Bush Administration, Tshisekedi called on the United States to pressure Kabila to lift the ban on political parties and to put its weight behind formation of a transitional government.
"Everybody knows the US is the only superpower in the world and nobody can remain indifferent to US pressure," he told allAfrica.com.
He has asked the Administration not to resume what he calls "structural cooperation" with the Kabila regime, i.e. bilateral loans and supporting investment.
Tshisekedi, a key figure in the Sovereign National Conference that was organized in 1991-1992 to negotiate a democratic transition with the late President Mobutu Sese Seko, also served in Mobutu's government for a time.
But for a younger generation of politicians, to which Jean Oscar Ngalamulume, Chairman of the Convention of Democratic and Social Institutions (CIDES) belongs, Tshisekedi is a politician whose time has passed.
"We can judge the old generation by the disastrous results we have now in a rich country like the Congo," Ngalamulume told allAfrica.com. "You can't tell me they are not responsible for some of it. We have seen them in action."
Such generational tensions play themselves out more strongly in the day-to-day politics inside Congo, a politics that is largely confined to the capital city, Kinshasa. Outside the capital, warring factions have created states or territories that are virtually independent of the center.
"I went out to dinner in Kasai one night," recalls Richard Dowden, Africa Editor of The Economist magazine in London, who has traveled extensively in the Congo: "The owner of the mine was there, the head of the local gendarmerie, various businessmen and other powerful people. I realized I was at a meeting of the governing cabinet."
"The bottom line in any consideration of the Congo's future," says Dowden, "is how do you give equal weight to guys with guns and to people like Tshisekedi. It's like Stalin asked, 'How many guns does the Pope have?'"
For over four decades, Congo has been a vast arena in which various powers have scrambled for advantage, forging temporary alliances of convenience inside the sprawling central African nation. The referee during most of this period was Joseph Mobutu, installed by the C.I.A. but soon demonstrating a brilliant ability to manipulate powers stronger than he, as well as lesser local constituencies.
Although Mobutu stole billions of dollars from the nation he ruled for more than a quarter of a century, opposition politicians and parties foundered, in part, because of their willingness to be bought off by him.
Great hope surrounded Mobutu's ouster by Joseph Kabila's father. But like his predecessor, Laurent Kabila chose to rule by decree and the public enthusiasm displayed at his takeover soon dissipated. The subsequent multi-sided conflict, involving the armies of six nations, continues to cloud the future.
The biggest cloud hanging over the Congo is whether it will can ever become a nation-state in the full sense of that term. Even Joseph Kabila, the current head of state, is hardly Congolese to many. He grew up in Tanzania and, according to some, is more fluent in the east African language of Swahili than in any Congolese language.
"A Congo state doesn't exist," says Richard Dowden, citing a "national" government that barely extends beyond the capital city of Kinshasa, and an infrastructure totally destroyed by years of armed conflict and neglect.
Rebels backed by Uganda and Rwanda fight government troops in the name of preempting a rebel threat against their own countries - in Rwanda's case, the so-called "Interahamwe," who carried out the Rwanda genocide in 1994 and then fled into the Congo.
The reasons are not quite as clear for Uganda which early allied itself with Rwanda's efforts. Perhaps as many as 15,000 Burundi rebels are also in Congo, many of them now fighting alongside the Congo army. Namibia and Zimbabwe are allied with the Kabila government, officially responding to a request for military assistance but with definite interests of their own at stake as well. Angola fears Congo-based UNITA rebels; Namibia has diamond-mining interests.
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Zimbabwe, too, was officially invited to provide military assistance. Zimbabwe generals now have extensive holdings in Congo's mines and with Zimbabwe boiling over with political tension, President Mugabe needs to keep them onside.
Bringing a halt to the fighting and getting all the parties to pull back to yet-to-be-agreed lines, while guaranteeing their continued security, will be the main task of the UN's peace mission.
But negotiating a way toward - and through - a democratic transition will be the task of the civilians in Kinshasa.
A viable state may not exist but the idea of being "Congolese" does, says Dowden, and that may yet provide some cohesion.
For most of the forty-one years since the end of Belgian colonialism, the Congo has seemed on the brink of total disintegration. But ironically, Dowden notes, even Mobutu's 'authenticité' or cultural nationalism, gave a lot of self-respect to the idea of Congo, even a fierce pride. "At [Joseph] Kabila's funeral...the feeling of being 'Congolese' (was evident), in the sense of the Congo's being screwed again by outsiders: a little xenophobia you could say."
