Through the reinforced glass of his window, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s President, Joseph Kabila, watches the final touches being put to his murdered father’s mausoleum. No wonder he seems tense. ”Being a president,” Kabila says softly, ”you know, it’s a dangerous job.”
The job became his 18 months ago, on the day of former president Laurent Kabila’s funeral. During the ceremony African leaders and Western diplomats queued to see the corpse, but it was the 29-year-old sitting beside it who drew their gaze. Here was the world’s youngest head of state — a man with no experience of politics and not much education — charged with ending the world’s biggest war. Nobody gave him a prayer.
Almost immediately Kabila began convincing the doubters. He announced a ceasefire and invited the United Nations to police it. He agreed to hold peace talks with Congo’s rebel groups and legalised political opposition to encourage them. One by one, the six foreign armies fighting in the country pulled back or withdrew altogether.
In March Kabila and the rebels met in South Africa to try to piece their shattered country together. They failed because one rebel group — a front for Rwanda’s occupation of eastern Congo — refused to deal. But the rest agreed to share power with Kabila, putting 70% of the country under shaky government control. If he has not ended Congo’s civil war, Kabila has at least greatly simplified it.
”No one thought we would manage it, nobody thinks it will work,” he says of his impending transitional government. ”But I am always hopeful. If we want to get Congo out of its current crisis, together we will make it work.”
He has much to hope for: Congo’s infrastructure needs rebuilding, its corrupt ministries need cleaning, and its 50-million people need rescuing from dehumanising poverty. Nor are all the doubters convinced. Kabila has legalised political opposition and freed the press, but his government is still brutally intolerant of human rights. Arbitrary detention and torture of political prisoners continue. He admits: ”We’ve made a lot of corrections, but there’s a lot we still have to do.”
Some question his commitment: as a young army officer he had a reputation for brutality. Some observers suggest he has been little more than a client of other interests, notably Zimbabwe, his father’s old ally, which supplies the young president’s bodyguards. The Zimbabwean army is also crucial to upholding the regime.
But by replacing most of his father’s sycophants and cronies with high-powered technocrats, Kabila has found himself good advice. And diplomats cite a willingness to listen to it as his primary attribute.
He has a modest townhouse in Kinshasa, showing no sign of the penchant for jungle palaces shown by the kleptocratic former president, Mobutu Sese Seko. Nor has Kabila emulated his father’s personality cult, which littered the capital with hoardings, statuary, clothing and clocks in his image. ”The job is a responsibility like any other responsibility,” the president shrugs. ”I believe that is one of the reasons it has not gone to my head.”
It is not the first time that hope of an improvement in leadership has been raised in Africa. About 10 years ago a superior breed of ruler seized power in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Uganda and Rwanda and spoke of economic liberalisation and political reform. Excited Western donors called them ”the new leaders” of Africa. But eventually all stopped listening to critics and started locking them up. Why should Kabila be any different?
”Why must I not deliver what I promise?” he asks.
His pedigree is not reassuring. Kabila senior was an impetuous warmonger who beggared his people. He was also a lazy, drunken polygamist. Kabila junior, however, is thoughtful, industrious, content with the occasional drink and has only one common-law wife and child. Ask him about them and he frowns. ”I keep my life as private as possible,” he replies.
He shows other flashes of candour, or a reluctance to tell outright untruths. Asked if he is arming Rwanda’s enemies in eastern Congo — the militiamen responsible for the 1994 genocide — he says that he is ”basically not supplying them”.
Of Western governments he has this to say: ”Irrespective of their technology, their intelligence services, you get the impression they are not as well informed as they should be. That is why their foreign policies are always in a tangle, in contradiction with their people on the ground.”
It is a fair reading of Western bungling in Africa. But if Kabila can criticise the international community, he can also please it. Delighted with his economic reforms, the World Bank promised a $420-million loan last week. Individual donors are expected to follow suit.
”As soon as the Congo is reunified we will have elections,” Kabila says. ”The day we have elections, we will have been successful.” And will he stand? ”If you’re not sure of winning an election, don’t contest it,” he says.
Does he mean ”don’t hold it?” He enjoys the joke.
If he lost an election, he would happily step aside, he says. ”I’d really very much like to have a life after this. I could definitely go to the countryside; Congo needs people who can work on the ground.”
Might he serve as a local official there? ”No, not as an official.” As a businessman perhaps? ”I’m not a businessman.” A missionary then? ”Not as a missionary … as a man of the people.”
But there are other reasons to wonder whether the president will maintain the bright start he has made. The shy man has become increasingly bullish in command.
”Everyone has got one or two weaknesses, and I’m not an exception to that,” he says. ”But I’ve not yet discovered what those weaknesses are.” Similarly, he claims to relish criticism — ”It helps me a lot to change” — yet he cannot recall ever having been criticised. ”No, I don’t think so — at least, not in front of me.”
Even if Kabila can stick to his principles, he may fail to rebuild Congo. A system based, as he says, for 35 years on ”corruption, extortion, lies” will offer pernicious resistance to reform. Africa’s recent history suggests that he must be compromised and corrupted.
But then, 18 months ago, nobody would have predicted that he would have achieved so much already.