The international community this week said that all members of the Congolese army must be cantoned in order to prevent renewed violence around the presidential run-off, now scheduled for October 29.
The International Committee to Accompany the Transition Process (Ciat), a 14-nation advisory body set up to monitor the transition process, stated that in order for the electoral campaign and the elections to be held in a “climate of peace, calm and security, the billeting of all units of the FARDC [Congolese army] on the whole national territory [is required]”.
A total of 23 people were killed during fighting between President Joseph Kabila’s presidential guard and Vice-President Jean-Pierre Bemba’s personal guard, following the announcement of results from the first round of elections.
In late August, Congolese Minister of Defence Adolphe Onusumba estimated that Kabila’s presidential guard numbered more than 6 500 troops, while Bemba’s personal guard stood at 630. Only a handful of these troops have begun participating in the country’s much-delayed military integration programme.
The Ciat placed particular emphasis on the cantonment of the two presidential rivals’ personal guards, saying that the United Nations Mission in the DRC (Monuc) and the European Union Force (Eufor) will manage the “reduction and the billeting of the protection forces of the two candidates, and their substitution with Monuc and Eufor troops as protection, until the end of the transition”.
Fears persist that the second round, which must yield a definitive winner, will spark even greater violence as the loser contests the results.
“It does not matter who wins, there will be some sort of violence. If Bemba wins, then there may be problems in Katanga, and if Kabila wins there will be problems in Kinshasa and possibly Equateur province,” said one Congolese political analyst.
Relations between Kabila and Bemba have remained tense since the announcement of the results from the first round of elections sparked the fighting. Kabila won 44,8% of the vote and Bemba garnered 20,3%.
The stakes for the Congolese leadership were raised even higher when it emerged this week that neither Kabila nor Bemba’s political parties won a majority in the parliamentary elections. Kabila’s political platform, the Alliance for the Presidential Majority, has won 111 seats and Bemba’s Grouping of Congolese Nationalists has won 64 of the 500 seats. The remaining 325 seats are distributed between 130 different groups and individuals. According to the Congolese constitution, the opposition party with the majority in Parliament appoints the country’s prime minister.
There have been ongoing attempts to reconcile Bemba and Kabila; this week South African President Thabo Mbeki flew to Kinshasa to meet with the two men, as did Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign minister. Bemba has not been attending government meetings for the past few weeks, in spite of the fact that he remains the vice-president in charge of economic affairs in the transition government, which remains in place.
Both parties are now actively courting Antoine Gizenga, the president of the Unified Lumumbist Party (Palu), who came in third place in the presidential elections and whose party won more than 30 parliamentary seats.
Gizenga, who served as deputy prime minister in the Congo’s first post-independence government, led by Patrice Lumumba, is widely believed to be leaning towards an endorsement of Kabila. This is attributed, at least in part, to the historical affinity between Gizenga and the late Laurent Kabila, both of whom participated in Lumumbist rebel movements following Lumumba’s assassination in January 1961.
However, Gizenga hails from the western part of the DRC where Kabila is unpopular, and analysts have wondered whether Palu supporters would heed Gizenga’s call to vote for Kabila over Bemba.
Bemba’s support is also concentrated in the western part of the country, in particular in Equateur and Bandundu provinces and the capital, Kinshasa.
“The feeling is that Gizenga will endorse Kabila because he is also a Lumumbist, but the question everyone asks is whether people will follow his lead. Kabila is not popular in these areas and people may nonetheless vote for Bemba,” said the analyst.
Bemba and Kabila met face to face for the first time this week. A spokesperson for Bemba told the Mail & Guardian that the two were discussing the modalities of implementing Ciat’s call for their troops to be confined to the barracks.