/ 30 August 2004

Mbeki visits DRC amid political crisis

South African President Thabo Mbeki visited the Democratic Republic of Congo on Monday amid a spiraling political crisis threatening a peace process largely brokered by South Africa to end the DRC’s five-year war.

DRC President Joseph Kabila gave an airport welcome to Mbeki, who played a key role in helping to end the 1998-2003 conflict and launch a national-unity government, which was boycotted last week by one of the main wartime rebel groups.

Vice-president Azarias Ruberwa, leading the walkout over claims the peace process was stymied amid ethnic killings, nonetheless joined the welcoming ceremony at the airport in Kinshasa’s capital, Kinshasa.

”We’re continuing our boycott, but we came to meet President Thabo Mbeki as a mediator in the Congolese crisis with the hope of advancing things,” said Ruberwa, one of four vice-presidents in the Kabila-led transitional government meant to arrange 2005 elections.

Neither Kabila nor Mbeki addressed reporters before heading into meetings. Mbeki is expected to stay in the DRC for two days.

Ruberwa announced the boycott on August 23, saying genocide was being committed against his ethnic Tutsi kinsmen in DRC’s eastern borderlands and questioning the success of peace accords ending the country’s war.

Ruberwa, a leader of the former rebel Congolese Rally for Democracy, insisted he had not permanently withdrawn from the government, but refused to say when — or if — he would return to his post.

The boycott was prompted by the recent massacre of Congolese Tutsi refugees at a United Nations camp in neighbouring Burundi, Ruberwa said.

At least 163 Tutsi refugees were killed in raid on August 13 on a camp just over the DRC’s eastern border with Burundi — an attack that Ruberwa said shows the DRC’s central government, army and security forces cannot provide security in the vast nation.

The ex-rebel walkout follows two reported attempts to overthrow Kabila this year, as well as a brief military takeover of an eastern city by renegade soldiers once allied with Ruberwa.

The DRC, a country the size of western Europe, has known little but war, military uprisings and corrupt governance since its 1960 independence from Belgium.

The country’s latest conflict began in 1998, eventually becoming a war fought by six African countries in which an estimated 3,5-million people died, most through war-induced hunger and disease. – Sapa-AP