Armed gangs of ‘Zulus’ and ‘Khoikhois’ roam the streets fighting for the control of Brazzaville, reports Dalal Magan
GANGS of armed youths roam the rutted streets. Some as young as 12, who can barely handle their automatic rifles, engage in sporadic fighting for the control of Brazzaville. As the battle rages, travellers who have managed to escape the mayhem speak of alleys strewn with decomposing bodies, many of them innocents, women and children caught in the crossfire.
The armed youths are the dispossessed urchins of Congo, who for personal and political survival have become pawns in the power game of the adults. They belong to the Ninjas, the Cobras, the Zulus, the Khoikhois, or some other yet to be named faction or militia group.
Brazzaville is the new Mogadishu. It already has its own south and north divide, a green line, and a perilious Bermuda triangle – a no man’s land roamed by different gangs.
Congo is no stranger to violent take-overs and bloody power struggles. Since its ascent to nationhood 37 years ago, it has had a dozen coup d’etats, aborted coups and a miniature civil war, eight presidents – four of whom were overthrown, one assassinated and another executed.
In 1992, Pascal Lissouba was elected president in the country’s first democratic elections, ending Denis Sassou Nguessou’s 13-year military rule. Lissouba’s victory promised a fresh political start and a bright economic future. But that was not to be.
The new political parties did not have any major ideological differences. Instead they appealed to ethnic and regional sentiments, and manipulated public opinion by turning one group against the other in competition for power. Parochial interests prevailed and ethnic chauvinism triumphed.
In 1993, supporters of President Lissouba’s Pan-African Union for Social Democracy, and Bernard Kolela, leader of the opposition Congolese Movement for Democracy and Development, engaged in fierce clashes in the capital city. After much bloodletting and massive destruction of infrastructure, and a protracted mediation, the two finally reconciled. Kolela, considered the Etienne Tshisikedi of Congo-Brazzaville, is now the mayor of the divided city.
Despite Lissouba’s economic reforms, the majority of the people are still waiting to reap the dividends. And his massive privatisation programme has forced thousands of job losses. His policies have generated fierce resentment and resistance.
Nguessou and his Congolese Workers’ Party appear to be the main beneficiaries of this growing opposition to the government. Tension began to rise in the run-up to the July presidential and parliamentary elections.
In a bid to finish his arch-rival Nguessou, Lissouba opted for a military solution. Ten days ago, he sent the Congolese army to arrest the former ruler and disable his heavily armed Cobra militias.
Lissouba’s miscalculated move back-fired. Out-gunned by the Cobras his army and militia fled in disarray. Nguessou was backed by the new president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Laurent Kabila, and by President Eduardo dos Santos of Angola.
Lissouba’s ill-fated decision is a massive blow to Jonas Savimbi’s Unita movement and the Cabinda separatists whose strongest backing, since the fall of Mobutu, came from Brazzaville.
The action triggered a violent backlash that poses grave consequences not only for Lissouba but also for the fragile Congolese state. Within hours, Brazzaville had turned into a dangerous and chaotic place of gang warfare, fiefdoms and marauding freelance gunmen.
Law and order has broken down completely, the rump of what used to be the national army fractured into ethnic-based factions loyal to regional warlords. Congo has taken the road to anarchy.
The only hope of breaking the lethal logjam building up in Brazzaville appears to lie outside; but after the Somalia fiasco foreign intervention, even by the French, has become a dirty word.
What is more likely is that Congo will take its place among the growing club of failed states.
* The UN’s secretary general, Kofi Annan, this week expressed the fear that the instability and violence in some African countries, unless checked, could easily have a domino effect throughout the continent.