In less than a month our Congolese neighbors will head to the polls and vote for their president. The incumbent, Felix Tshisekedi, is on one side and on the other side you find a myriad of opposition politicians including Nobel Peace Prize winner, Dennis Mukwege, former Katanga governor, Moise Katumbi and Martin Fayulu, the hothead who most likely won the last election (which Felix 'won').
Beyond a morbid curiosity to find out whether this election would yield another unexpected winner, I took a keen interest in the process leading up to the elections because I suspected that the majority of the candidates, particularly Tshisekedi, would utilize anti-Rwanda and anti-Rwandophone rhetoric to whip up electoral support. My suspicion proved correct.
In response to a question about relations with Rwanda, posed by Le Soir journalist Colette Braeckman, Tshisekedi went on a long-winded rant, accusing Rwanda of all sorts of things.
I noted the most dangerous charges that he laid at Rwanda's doorstep ('ve taken the liberty of translating his words from French to English).
Accusing Rwanda of 'stealing' minerals from Congo, he said that it took him time, "and perspective to understand that Rwanda lived off the product of the plundering of our country's resources. This is how Rwanda sustained its economy".
Then jumping on the myth that Rwanda wanted to balkanize the DRC, he announced that Rwanda wanted "to redraw the map, annex the territories of Masisi and Rutshuru, review the borders inherited from colonization".
In an attempt to justify why his army had been unable so far to defeat its much smaller and less equipped M23 foe, he swore that his army was coming up against the RDF. According to him, our president was "the true leader of the M23 rebel movement, it is his (President Kagame's) army that is fighting here; thousands of Rwandan soldiers are in our country, we have proof, images, and we found corpses".
Dismissing the threat posed by genocidal forces that have been armed and financed (as noted in the latest UN Group of Experts Report on the DRC) by his military, Tshisekedi said that "if" (emphasis mine) FDLR still exists after thirty years, "they have aged".
He then wondered why "their presence would justify a punitive expedition to the Congo". To him, the FDLR was a "pretext put forward by Kigali".
Regarding the Rwandophone Congolese Tutsis, he didn't even deny discrimination. What he did was justify the discrimination saying that the rapes, murders and instances of cannibalism "resulted less from government policy than from the fallout from all these crises and attacks coming from Rwanda".
Concluding that particular tirade, he declared that his army was infiltrated by, you guessed it, Rwandans, who then "weakened it from within".
Reading the article, with its headline 'Félix Tshisekedi: « C'est l'armée de Kagame qui se bat chez nous,' I noted a couple of things. Firstly, I observed Colette Braeckman's total refusal to challenge anything he said.
I'd have expected such poor journalism from a junior staffer of Le Soir, not from her, the 'doyenne' of Central African francophone media. That made me suspect that money exchanged hands to let such drivel pass (it wouldn't be the first time that a corrupt government paid for positive headlines)
Second, I noted that Tshisekedi used every single election 'talking point' in the interview. Rwanda growing because it is looting the DRC? Check. Rwanda wants to split the DRC into different parts? Check. M23 is actually RDF? Check.
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FDLR is a largely harmless force that threatens Congolese much more than it threatens Rwanda? Check. Congolese Rwandophones were the cause of their own demise? Check.
I quickly realized that his audience was obviously not Le Soir's Belgian readers, but its readers back in Kinshasa.
Evidently in election mode, he was presenting his case for re-election. His case being that if it wasn't for those horrible 'Rwanda-backed' M23 rebels in North Kivu, he'd have turned DRC around (never mind that he failed to improve lives in the 25 other DRC provinces that the M23 don't operate in).
To be honest, I'd expected this blame game. Why? Because blaming others and finger pointing has become his governance model. What I am really interested in is finding out whether or not the Congolese people can see beyond this tactic. If they cannot, then another wasted presidential term is upon them.
The writer is a socio-political commentator.
