Former rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba, a convicted people-trafficker whose rebel group is accused of war crimes, was Thursday sworn in as a vice president in a peace-making government in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Bemba’s backers were the noisiest at the swearing in ceremony in Kinshasa’s People’s Palace, shouting slogans of the People’s Revolution Movement of long-time dictator of then Zaire, Mobutu Sese Seko.
Bemba was born in 1962 in the northern province of Equateur to a wealthy businessman who was close to Mobutu. He was educated in Belgium, the former colonial power, eventually graduating with a business degree. He kicked off his business career in Kinshasa with investments in mobile phones and air cargo before launching two private television channels.
But he left Kinshasa in 1997 when Mobutu’s regime was overthrown and later joined the rebellion against the country’s new strongman, Laurent Kabila, father of current President Joseph Kabila, under whom Bemba will serve in the transition government.
The insurgency plunged DRC into a deadly and complex war, which at its height drew in half a dozen African countries.
Bemba led the Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC), a rebel group backed by Uganda which took control in July 1999 of the northwestern town of Gbadolite — Mobutu’s former fiefdom — and spread its tentacles to ensnare most of northern DRC.
Bemba enjoys moderate popular support in Equateur province and has many contacts in Europe, particularly Belgium where his wife and five children live.
Confident, dynamic and media-savvy, Bemba in private does excellent impressions of his political opponents, who often accuse him of being excessively ambitious, authoritarian and fickle.
Constantly one one of his satellite telephones, he is known to hold three conversations at once in three different languages.
The United Nations and non-governmental organisations have accused MLC fighters of serious human rights violations, including cannibalism, in parts of northern DRC, notably in the Ituri region which is still wracked by warfare.
On Wednesday the chief prosecutor of the new International Criminal Court (ICC) said he was looking into allegations of war crimes in the region as the first case to be tackled by the tribunal since it was set up a year ago.
Bemba’s name also figured on a list published by the United Nations late last year of people implicated in the pillaging of DRC’s natural resources.
In addition, the Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights Leagues (FIDH) holds Bemba responsible for atrocities committed by his troops in the neighbouring Central African Republic, where they were sent in October to prop up the tottering regime of then president Ange-Felix Patasse after a bid to oust him.
Bemba was also found guilty of bringing two domestic servants into Belgium illegally in the late 1990s when he lived in the country.
Despite the allegations, which Bemba denies, the MLC nominated him as their vice president in the DRC’s new transitional government. The government was created under a peace pact finalised last month that is designed to end the country’s five-year war. – Sapa-AFP