South African President Thabo Mbeki acted as midwife to the DRC peace deal signed on Tuesday despite initial resistance from the Kinshasa government, which regarded him as too close to the rebels.
After numerous summits following the outbreak of civil war in 1988, which at its height involved troops from seven other African nations, belligerents signed a peace pact in Lusaka in July 1999 in which Mbeki had a major input, but it failed to halt the fighting.
An ”inter-Congolese dialogue” began in Addis Ababa on October 15, 2001, but broke up shortly afterwards, with participants unable to reach any basis of agreement. In February 2002 the dialogue resumed at the South African resort of Sun City, grouping representatives of the Kinshasa government, the two main rebel groups, opposition politicians and civil society.
It got off to a rocky start, with Jean-Pierre Bemba, the head of the Ugandan-backed Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC) boycotting the opening session. The facilitator there was former Botswanan president Sir Ketumile Masire, who came under criticism from some participants because he does not speak French.
He dropped out as mediator after the Sun City talks ended in April, with the Pretoria talks, which started in October, mediated by UN special envoy Moustapha Niasse of Senegal and South African Provincial Affairs Minister Sydney Mufamadi.
In Sun City, the talks reached stalemate, on April 8 Mbeki arrived and held private talks with each delegation. The MLC abandoned a demand that Kabila step down, and Mbeki put forward an eight-point peace plan, with a ”Council of State”,
including rebel representation, to oversee the government. When that was rejected, he quickly produced another plan, under which the two main rebel movements would each be awarded a vice presidency.
The Sun City talks ended abruptly with a sidelines agreement between the government and the MLC — excluding the RCD — under which MLC leader Jean-Pierre Bemba would become prime minister under Kabila.
That agreement disintegrated, however, and low-level fighting continued as other African nations involved in the war announced plans to withdraw their troops.
South Africa meanwhile sent 200 troops to join the UN observer force in DRC, and has now offered to send 2 000 soldiers to Kinshasa to protect rebel leaders, according to sources close to the Pretoria talks.
South African troops are performing the same function in Bujumbura after a similar peace agreeement mediated there by former South African president Nelson Mandela.
In July, at the inaugural summit of the African Union in Durban, on South Africa’s east coast, Mbeki brought DRC President Joseph Kabila and Rwandan President Paul Kagame together.
What they said remained confidential, but those talks were followed by five days of negotiation between the DRC and Rwanda in Pretoria, and the two leaders signed an agreement in the South African capital at the end of that month under which Kigali agreed to withdraw its 20 000 troops from DRC in return for the rounding-up and repatriation of Rwandan Hutu rebels in DRC who had been involved in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
Mbeki attended a summit on DRC in Lusaka in May, and the following month visited Kinshasa for talks with Kabila. In November, Mbeki told delegates to the Pretoria talks: ”All of us will be acclaimed by the Congolese people as heroes and heroines
if we do reach agreement that gives hope to the Congolese people”.
”None of us wants the Congolese people to brand us as villains because we blocked progress to peace, democracy and development,” he added.
In Pretoria, Mbeki was instrumental in crafting the formula under which four vice presidents will be appointed, sources close to the talks said.
”We have been at this for a very long time and it is important for the Democratic Republic of Congo and the continent as a whole.
I’be be very happy if they do it,” Mbeki declared on Monday shortly before the signature. – Sapa-AFP