Few of Goma’s long-suffering residents imagined that life could get much worse after the fall of Zaire’s kleptomaniac president, Mobutu Sese Seko, who amassed billions while driving his people ever deeper into poverty and despair before he was toppled nearly a decade ago.
But the years since Mobutu’s overthrow by neighbouring Rwanda’s invading army have brought only war, death, rape and more suffering to the tiny border town that unwittingly became the crucible of a conflict estimated to have cost the lives of four million people in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.
So Goma’s voters go into the final round of the DRC’s presidential election on Sunday — the first free ballot since independence from Belgium in 1960 — with one collective desire: an end to bloodshed and fear.
”There’s only one issue here,” said Goma’s deputy mayor, Deograsias Katindi. ”It’s security. People are sick of invasions and rebels and war. People from the villages have filled up the town because they are afraid of being killed or raped. I am from Rutshuru [north of Goma]. All my life I travelled the road there without fear but now I am afraid every time I go on it. You can be killed by anyone. The army, the rebels, anybody.”
But far from unifying the DRC behind a common desire for peace, the election has divided the country between east and west amid bitter accusations over who is responsible for the bloody conflict and rising ethnic tensions that were long suppressed under Mobutu’s rule.
President Joseph Kabila is favourite to win after taking 45% of the vote in the first round in July. The runner-up, with 20%, was Jean-Pierre Bemba, a rebel leader who joined the government as a vice-president in 2003 under a truce made the year before. The two men are the only names on Sunday’s ballot.
Large numbers of people in the DRC’s capital, Kinshasa, and much of the Lingala-speaking west of the country, view Kabila as a foreign interloper. He speaks Swahili and English from his days in Tanzania with his exiled father, Laurent, who was installed in power by Rwanda but assassinated in 2001, and from whom he inherited the presidency.
In the Swahili-speaking east, which has suffered the most from the conflict, Bemba is widely regarded as a bloody warlord whose Movement for the Liberation of Congo was responsible for widespread killings and atrocities. About 90% of Goma’s voters backed Kabila in the first round of the presidential race.
There are few towns that have managed to endure as much as Goma has in the past 15 years. Mobutu’s soldiers looted the town during the early 1990s when they were not paid.
In 1994, more than a million Hutu refugees from Rwanda flooded in, accompanied by Hutu soldiers and militiamen responsible for the genocide of about 800 000 Tutsis.
The refugees died in their tens of thousands in and around Goma of cholera and diarrhoea. The Hutu army and militia sowed the seeds of Mobutu’s downfall with their continued war against Rwanda from the UN refugee camps in Goma.
Two years later, Rwanda invaded the town to drive the refugees home and kill the Hutu soldiers and militiamen. Rwanda’s army went on to overthrow Mobutu and install Laurent Kabila, Joseph’s father, in power but the two sides fell out and Rwanda again invaded the DRC through Goma in 1998, joined by Ugandan troops to back rebel allies. The Zimbabwean and Angolan armies fought for Kabila.
The foreign militaries and shady business interests set about plundering the DRC’s vast mineral wealth, establishing diamond mining concessions. Zimbabwean and Rwandan troops fought over control of supplies of coltan, a black mineral valuable as a component in cellphones.
The conflict caused the collapse of what remained of the DRC’s dilapidated infrastructure. Massacres of civilians by the rebels, foreign armies and DRC forces claimed tens or possibly hundreds of thousands of lives. But the majority of the estimated four million dead lost their lives through disease and starvation. Mass rape is also believed to have widely spread HIV.
Then in 2002, the Nyiragongo volcano on the edge of Goma erupted, spewing lava and ash that killed scores and destroyed much of the heart of the town.
”We have had everything in this town,” said Katindi (46). ”We haven’t had help here from the central government for years. There’s hardly ever any electricity in the town and so there’s no water. We have to get it from the lake.”
People in Goma principally blame the Rwandans for their misery and regard Bemba as being in the same camp. Kabila has won support in the town by projecting himself as the ”architect of peace” who was willing to compromise by bringing his enemies into the government.
Bemba has not visited Goma during the run-off. But his national campaign manager, Joseph Olenghankoy, was scaring up support in the town on Thursday with a rally on a wasteland of volcanic rock where a coffee factory once stood.
He criticised Kabila’s relative lack of height and accused him of spending too much time in nightclubs before settling on the favoured means of attack.
”We can’t leave the future of our country in the hands of one who doesn’t know the country,” he said. ”The land of Congo has been sold to foreigners. Security will return only if they leave.”
But Olenghankoy’s desperation in front of an indifferent crowd showed when he alleged that the yellow T-shirts and caps distributed by the Kabila campaign had been sent to Senegal for a curse to be put on them as part of a blood sacrifice to ensure victory in the election.
”Kabila wants you to die. If two million people die then he believes that will win him the election. All of you wearing those caps will die,” he told the crowd. No one took off their caps.
The tactics have raised fears that Bemba will refuse to accept defeat and will use his forces to continue to destabilise the east.
Katindi, Goma’s deputy mayor, says it makes him nostalgic for the days of Mobutu Sese Seko.
”When Mobutu was around I used to be able to travel anywhere with no problem. I was Zairean and nobody asked me anymore about myself,” he said. ”Now I’m Congolese there is a lot of tribalism. All this talk of who speaks Swahili. They look at the shape of my nose and want to know where I’m from and if I’m Hutu. We are no longer one nation.”
Heir v rebel
Two candidates are competing in Sunday’s run-off of the presidential election in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Joseph Kabila (35) is the DRC’s president who came to power after his father, Laurent, was assassinated in 2001. He is widely derided by his opponents as a foreigner because he was brought up in exile in Tanzania and speaks Swahili and English as his first languages. But he has won support by bringing rebels into government and holding free elections. He won 45% of the vote in the first round. Jean-Pierre Bemba (45) is a wealthy businessman, former aide to the late dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and rebel leader whose forces have been accused of war crimes. His troops were backed principally by Uganda and captured large parts of northern DRC. In 2003 he joined Kabila’s government as a vice-president under a peace deal. He won 20% of the vote in the first round. – Guardian Unlimited Â