The South African presidency has given the fractious parties of the Congolese conflict until December 14 to get their acts together and bring the long drawn-out peace process to some sort of resolution. Thabo Mbeki wants to get the thing to the next hurdle before Christmas and, even more urgently, before the ruling party congress, which is to take place in Stellenbosch from the 16th to the 20th of this month. Whether the threat of an ultra-left conspiracy within the ranks of the African National Congress is real or imagined, the president will clearly have plenty on his mind in the run-up to the season of good cheer,
and doesn’t need the Congo to be nagging in the background.
The Congo being the Congo, however, his dreams of a few peaceful nights’ sleep before the rowdy congress among the vineyards will probably remain unrequited. His personal intervention towards the end of the almost abortive Sun City dialogue in March and April produced some tentative results after the process had gone into extra time, but the issues are far from resolved. Which is why some of the rival factions are gathered in Pretoria once more to try to hammer out more compromises. And in the meantime, in spite of the much-heralded withdrawal of foreign African forces from the arena of conflict, the war rages on, and the ordinary Congolese in the street continue to suffer and die.
Those groupings that have been fortunate enough to be accredited to the Pretoria talks are already too numerous to mention. Their complex interrelationships, where many are splinter factions of previous organisations (now blessed with brand new names and, in some cases, surnames too) is often difficult to unravel. The Congolese politicians themselves seem to have no trouble with keeping track of this proliferation of belligerent family subgroups. But this does suggest that, for most of them, the eye is not on the real prize — that is, stability and a decent way of life for the country’s huge and far-flung population.
The main wrangling in Pretoria is about who should get what position in the envisioned transitional government and parliament.
Lest we forget: the present situation is that a transitional government and parliament already exist. But they are not recognised internally by anyone other than themselves.
The government is headed up by the youthful Major General Joseph Kabila, who took power (or was thrust into it) after the assassination of his father in what looked suspiciously like a carefully executed palace coup. No finger has ever been convincingly pointed at young Joseph as the mastermind behind his own father’s elimination, but at the same time he has never objected to being thrust to the forefront of Kinshasa politics by the cabal that took control of events in the aftermath of that putsch.
The elder Kabila had also set up a parliament of sorts in the distant southern city of Lubumbashi, seeking to show at least some sort of lip service to the idea of a separation of powers — all power in the past having been centred in Kinshasa. That parliament is currently in limbo, with its grateful parliamentarians (handpicked by Kabila I) free to return to their hang-outs in the relative splendour of gaudy Kinshasa, rather than having to cool their heels in run-down Lubumbashi.
The most recent peace process, a key initiative of Mbeki’s New Partnership for Africa’s Development, has had some success — a limited agreement between some of the participants at Sun City, and the apparent withdrawal of Rwandan and Ugandan troops from Congolese soil, where they had been taking sides with rival internal parties to devastating effect.
The trouble is that these foreign armies appeared to withdraw by the front door only to return by the back door. The Rwandan forces in particular had been observed returning to Congolese soil by a circuitous route to make a critical intervention in the renewed battle for key towns in the eastern part of the country.
So while uncontrolled fighting continues among countless groups of belligerents on the ground, the leading movements are in Pretoria wrangling for positions in a transitional administration.
Everyone (including the South African presidency) seems to be in agreement that Joseph Kabila should hold on to his unelected position of state president during the transition. What is at stake is who will fill the various strategic vice-presidencies and other key cabinet positions under him.
It seems somewhat like putting the cart before the horse to have all these factions jockeying for cabinet positions while the country burns around them. But that is the nature of Congolese politics. Whether this “crabs-in-a-basket” style, where the animals would rather pull each other down into their common hell than let more intrepid personalities escape, will magically vanish with the advent of a supposed post-transition democracy is yet to be seen. And what form that supposed democracy will take is apparently not yet even under discussion.
There is a joke doing the e-mail rounds these days.
George W Bush, the Queen of England and Joseph Kabila all find themselves in hell after their premature demise.
Boy George is the first to ask if he can make a phone call so that he can see what Osama bin Laden has been up to in his absence. The Devil charges him $3-million for his two-minute call.
The Queen makes a five-minute call to find out whether the kingdom has been sold to Mohammed al Fayed, for which she is charged $10-million.
When it comes to Kabila’s turn, the news from home is so complicated that he stays on the line for six hours. He cannot believe his own ears when the Devil charges him a mere $3,50, so he asks how come.
“Ah,” says the Devil, “a call from hell to hell is charged as a local call.”
That probably just about sums it up.
John Matshikiza is a fellow of the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research
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