The former leader of a small rebel movement in north-east Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) arrived in the capital Kinshasa on Tuesday to take up the post of trade minister in a new transition government.
Roger Lumbala, head of the Congolese Rally for Democracy – National (RCD-N), flew in from the rebel group’s headquarters town of Isiro, Orientale Province, aboard a Ugandan plane.
The RCD-N was allied during the four-and-a-half-year war in the former Zaire with the second largest rebel group, the Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC), which is backed by Uganda.
The United Nations Security Council in January accused the MLC and Lumbala’s rebel group of ”massacres and systematic violations of human rights” targeting mainly the Pygmies in north-eastern Ituri and Nord-Kivu provinces.
The accusations came after Monuc, the UN observer mission in the DRC, reported that witnesses had told them of acts of cannibalism, massacres, rape and looting committed by rebels in the northeast of the country.
A carload of supporters and a truck carrying a band accompanied Lumbala on the drive to his hotel in Kinshasa.
But some passersby shouted ”Murderer!” when they found out who was in the cavalcade, and said, ”Has he stopped eating people?”
DRC plunged into war in August 1998, when Uganda and Rwanda backed the MLC and the larger Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD) respectively, after they rose up to try to topple then president Laurent Kabila.
The new government, tasked with restoring peace in the vast central African country and paving the way for democratic elections, was set up under a December peace agreement with representatives from the four main parties to the DRC conflict — the two rebel groups, the Kinshasa government and the political opposition.
It is headed by President Joseph Kabila, who took over after the assassination of his father in January 2001.
The new ministers were due to take over from their predecessors on Monday, but their swearing-in was delayed, with no explanation or new date given by the authorities.
Late on Monday, the new environment minister, Anselme Enerunga, said he and his 33 colleagues would be sworn in at 3:00 pm (1400 GMT) Tuesday. – Sapa-AFP