They did not deliver the signed agreement that President Thabo Mbeki urged them to produce, but delegates to the Congolese peace talks in Pretoria ratcheted up their process a few notches last weekend and arrived at ”an understanding”.
They agreed to form a transitional government that will lead the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo to its first democratic elections since independence in 1969.
Technical committees from the eight groups involved in the Inter-Congolese Dialogue started working on Thursday, poring over what United Nations special envoy Moustapha Niasse called the final 15% of the global and inclusive agreement that is their goal.
Niasse, who dismissed Mbeki’s aggressive deadline for the round of talks between November 15 and 29, was nevertheless upbeat about the progress made. Mbeki’s sense of urgency is understandable in the light of the Sun City talks earlier this year.
Scheduled to last for 45 days, they ran for 80 days and ended inconclusively with a short-lived stitched-up deal between President Joseph Kabila and Jean-Pierre Bemba, leader of the Ugandan-backed Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC).
The issues thatremain unresolved are: the composition of the armed forces; the security of Kinshasa when all the political players move to the capital from their provincial strongholds; doling out the political appointments down to provincial level; and dividing up state enterprises.
The committees are supposed to complete their work by December 6 so that the facilitation team can do the necessary paperwork in time for the resumption of the talks in Pretoria three days later. Delegates from the government, the MLC, the Rwandan-backed Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD) led by Adolphe Onusumba and a grouping of two smaller armed groups and the country’s unarmed oppositions and civil society face another deadline of December 12.
They will be urged to follow the precedent set by the Mozambique process that integrated the military and allowed the opposition to operate safely within Maputo.
The sharing of political posts will take some deft footwork as the MLC has become shaky on the principle agreed on at the start of November of allowing Kabila to retain the transitional presidency with one vice-president coming from government and one each from the three other groups.
Bemba now claims that this so-called one-plus-four formula warps the executive in favour of the government and the RCD. To even things out, he says, his party should get the presidency of the National Assembly.
Sharing out the provincial governments should not test the negotiating skills of delegates too far since the vast country is already divided de facto into zones of control and influence.
The slicing up of the parastatals remains the most contentious issue. Kabila’s ambassador to South Africa, Bene M’Poko, had described this as ”official looting” and ruled it out.
Nevertheless, when delegates returned for consultations with their respective leadership they accepted that the technical committee dealing with this issue should look at ensuring that state enterprises benefited no individual party.
Delegates isolated at the presidential guesthouse complained of an air of unreality as they thrashed out the details in bilateral contacts with the facilitation team that included Minister of Provincial and Local Government Sydney Mufamadi and presidential legal adviser Mujanko Gumbi.
Perhaps this isolation has actually been the salvation of the process.
Congo is no longer Africa’s theatre of ”world war” with Angola, Burundi, Namibia, Rwanda and Zimbabwe all sucked into the latest conflict that started with a rebellion in 1998.
But fighting persists, particularly in the dangerous vacuums created by the withdrawing foreign troops.
In the middle of the negotiations in Pretoria, an incident in Kinshasa illustrated how close the fuse remains to the Congolese powder keg.
On November 21 Bemba appeared on his TV station, accusing Kabila of carrying most of the guilt for the exploitation of Congo’s natural resources. This incensed the president, who has suspended three of his ministers named in a UN report on this plunder.
Troops closed down the station. Bemba responded by threatening to pull out of negotiations. Mbeki and the facilitators then spoke to Kabila and the station went back on air.
Throughout this, the negotiations barely missed a beat.