A final round of talks beginning Tuesday aim to bring democracy to war-scarred Democratic Republic of Congo, but many doubt the government and rebels will manage to work together for peace.
The two days of negotiations at the South African resort of Sun City should pave the way for the first free elections in the vast central African country since those on independence from Belgium four decades ago.
”For as long as the rebels continue to have an aggressive attitude, of which the people are the first victims, we will not have peace,” said the head of a civil society group from the troubled northeastern DRC region of Ituri.
”We have come to Sun City to celebrate a high mass to flatter (South African) President Thabo Mbeki, facilitator (Ketumile) Masire and UN mediator Moustapha Niasse. But this has fooled no one — nothing has been truly resolved and everyone knows this,” said a cleric who asked not to be named.
As recently as Monday, observers in the east and northeast of the DRC reported vast movements of heavily armed troops.
The head of the UN mission in the DRC, known as Monuc, has maintained the troops are ”uniformed men from the Congolese Rally for Democracy” (RCD) rebel group, backed by Rwanda.
Under two earlier peace pacts, Rwanda withdrew some 20 000 of its own soldiers from the eastern DRC last autumn.
Kigali sent troops into its large western neighbour in 1998 to back a rebellion against the regime of then president Laurent Kabila. Uganda also sent in troops to support rebels in the north, while Angola, Zimbabwe, Namibia, and, briefly, Chad, threw their military weight behind the Kinshasa government.
”We’re told the country has been reunified, that there is no longer any reason to make war, that the soldiers should go back to barracks,” said Marie-Ange, who works at a currency exchange office in Kinshasa.
But like many of the 365 DRC delegates at Sun City, she dares not believe that Kinshasa and DRC rebel movements will be able to work together in harmony once they sign an agreement here on April 2, or four days later once President Joseph Kabila has ratified the country’s new constitution.
Key to their cynicism is a lingering dispute on crucial issues such as who should head the army of a united DRC, or who should oversee the integration of rebels into the armed forces.
The people of mineral-rich DRC, meanwhile, want just one thing: an end to the war which, according to the United Nations, has killed some 2,5-million people, either directly in combat or indirectly through disease and malnutrition.
”We want our children to be able to eat their fill. We want to be reunited with our families in the east, from whom we have been separated for four years,” said a woman selling goods at one of Kinshasa’s markets. – Sapa-AFP