The head of the main rebel group in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has officially announced the end of his movement’s five-year war against the Kinshasa-based government, the rebel group said on Saturday.
Addressing a gathering of some 15 000 people in the eastern city of Goma, the headquarters of the Rwanda-backed rebel Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), Azarias Ruberwa vowed to ”work in a peaceful manner for the success of the transition in the DRC and to respect all the accords signed in line with the peace process,” said Crispin Kabasele Tshimanga, an RCD official in Goma.
The gathering had been called in Goma to allow Ruberwa to ”say goodbye to the people” of the city before leaving for Kinshasa on Tuesday to be sworn in as one of four vice presidents in an interim government.
Kabasele, who is one of the RCD’s delegates to the country’s new senate, said other senior officials from the rebel movement would travel to the capital on Sunday.
According to Kabasele, Rubwera said their departure ”consecrated the return of peace in DRC [because] the RCD as a political party, will participate in the management of public afffairs”.
Ruberwa added that the RCD’s days as a ”politico-military movement” were over and that it was now ”a political party like the others”.
As from Saturday, RCD forces ”were part of the new national army” Kabasele quoted Ruberwa as saying at the rally.
With backing from Rwanda and Uganda, the RCD took up arms against then president Laurent Kabila in August 1998.
Around three million people, mostly civilians, are estimated to have died during the ensuing war, either as a direct consequence of hostilities, or because of related sickness and malnutrition.
In June, the RCD and another rebel movement, the Congo Liberation Movement signed up to a national transitional government led by current president Joseph Kabila, who inherited the post on his father’s assassination in January 2001.
The government is tasked with taking DRC through to its first democratic elections since those held after indepedence from Belgium in 1960. – Sapa-AFP