John Matshikiza
It seems that the tentative agreement reached among the majority of participants in the Inter-Congolese Dialogue at Sun City might have been a stitch-up after all. Over $5-million of South African tax revenue might have been spent on what was already a done deal between two of the major belligerents in the Congo’s 42-year reign of chaos.
By Thursday afternoon, the second deadline for consensus to be reached by the 400 or so delegates, no one was prepared to release an official statement. But the consensus was that Joseph Kabila’s unelected government in Kinshasa had settled on an agreement with Jean-Pierre Bemba’s Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC) that would confirm Kabila as interim president and head of an integrated army, and give Bemba the position of prime minister, with full powers to appoint an interim cabinet.
The agreement more or less pushed aside a series of compromise formulae proposed by South African President Thabo Mbeki, who has effectively cleared his diary in order to see a successful outcome of the talks. But many parties point out that the unlikely alliance between Kabila and Bemba has been under discussion between the two parties for some time possibly brokered by a shadowy background figure, a European businessman with close links to both parties, as well as to the South African presidency.
The Mbeki plan had proposed that Kabila should indeed hold the post of interim president, but had suggested that he be supported by a triumvirate of vice-presidents, chosen from the main armed groups, the MLC, the Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD) and a representative of civil society. This had failed to reach consensus largely because of the intense rivalry between the MLC and RCD, who did not care to be seen as equals.
Political parties representing civil society were also fearful of being dominated by the three large armed organisations that had been holding the country hostage for so long.
While a series of expensive negotiations in at least five different countries have foundered since the process was initiated by the Lusaka Declaration in 1999, it would seem that the Kabila and Bemba factions have been holding quiet talks on a private division of power for several months. The exhausting Sun City process could prove to have been a largely wasteful exercise, culminating in the rubber-stamping of a deal that had already been struck.
So great is the desperation for some sort of arrangement to end the debilitating war in the Congo that most members of Congolese civil society, as well as the main Mai Mai guerrilla groups operating independently throughout the country, were prepared to accept the proposal. After all these years of deadlock, at least a first base had been reached.
“If the only solution at the end of the Sun City process is a two-way deal that the rest of us can join in on in the near future, then let’s go for it,” said one key participant. “At least the various parties involved in the talks have now got to know each other for the first time, and have developed a dynamic which can lead to the emergence of a consensus.”
The one major group that, at time of going to press, was not prepared to play along was the RCD. It feels it has been outflanked by the MLC, and marginalised after two years of bitter but stalemated war against the Kinshasa government.
“What does this agreement mean?” asked Dr Bizima Karaha, a member of the RCD leadership. “It just means that one guy called Bemba will get a job. But we didn’t come to Sun City just to get jobs for people, we came here to find solutions.”
Unfortunately for the RCD, other delegations, and a wide range of public opinion inside the Congo, will be happy to see them sidelined. The RCD is widely regarded as not representing a truly Congolese constituency, but rather of being a proxy for the Rwandan army that has largely occupied the eastern Congo since 1994. Hatred for what is seen as an army of occupation has naturally rubbed off on the Goma-based movement, regarded as the instigator of the present war.
In Kinshasa, reaction to rumours of the deal between Kabila and Bemba ranged from jubilation to cautious optimism in Thursday’s press. “Miracle at Sun City!” exclaimed one headline. “Government and MLC sign accord behind back of RDC” proclaimed another. A third led with an editorial that warned: “Uncertainties still hang over our country.”
Yet as long as the RCD is kept out of the process, the country’s future will indeed remain uncertain. Although Karaha says that the party has no intention of resuming its armed conflict but will instead continue to fight through the political process, the threat of continued armed destabilisation is always there. Further consultations between Mbeki and the major protagonists continued deep into the night in an attempt to break this impasse.
The big question was how it was possible that this unlikely consensus should have been reached between Kabila and Bemba, who had also been intent on unseating him from power. But politics, especially Congolese politics, is a strange game of speak and double-speak, and contradictory actions and alliances.
According to a source in Kinshasa, Bemba’s key bargaining chip was the River Congo. While he had been shelling Kabila’s forces from the front, he had been quietly allowing traffic along the river that he effectively controlled to continue unmolested from the back. This meant that crucial food supplies were able to reach the besieged capital from the vast, fertile hinterland a critical consideration for both Kabila and Bemba in the battle for the hearts and minds (and stomachs) of the population of Kinshasa.
A delegate to Sun City summed up this tentative agreement thus: “Like all agreements, it can either collapse or grow. Most people in the Congo want to see it grow to embrace all parties. The Congolese people simply want to see an end to the war.”