DRC: Tshisekedi fools opposition to support his dangerous political game for 2023

Author: Matiya Mulumba

• 2022-12-17 05:38:00

The Democratic Republic of Congo is expected to hold presidential elections in December 2023, which is not far away given that different political actors have to start political campaigns in a few months to come.

The incumbent, President Felix Tshisekedi, has set a trap for the opposition which they have willingly fallen into. He has exploited the war with M23 rebels in the east of the country as an opportunity to rally the opposition against ‘a common enemy.’

The opposition and civil society have been fooled and distracted from their opposition agenda by organizing demonstrations in different parts of the country hence supporting Tshisekedi’s diversionary political game.

Although Kinshasa knows very well that the M23 rebels are Congolese citizens with genuine grievances that can be solved through political dialogue, the political lie fed to the Congolese people is that their country is at war with Rwanda. This lie has fooled the opposition not to demand accountability for Tshisekedi’s failure to bring peace and development as he promised during his campaigns five years ago.

According to the World Bank, most Congolese live on less than $2 a day. Tshisekedi’s government has done nothing to ensure that the country’s vast natural resource wealth benefits majority Congolese citizens who are poverty-striken. Although DRC is endowed with vast mineral resources, the country remains one of the five poorest countries in the world. In 2021, nearly 64 % of Congolese, just under 60 million people, lived on less than $2.15 a day. About one out of six people living in extreme poverty in sub-Saharan African lives in the poverty-stricken nation.

Tshisekedi has managed to manipulate and contain the opposition on a populist agenda of fighting “a war against foreign aggression” and this has worked for him as he positions himself for re-election in 2023.

If the sleeping pill Tshisekedi gave to the unsuspecting opposition and civil society lasts, they will wake up to another five years of dysfunctional government, increased poverty and chronic insecurity especially in the east of the country.

The genocide dimension

Tshisekedi’s political game plan has also taken a dangerous dimension of perpetrating genocide against the Kinyarwanda speaking Congolese Tutsi community. Government officials, religious leaders, and opposition politicians have all joined the sinister government plot of instigating hate speech, violence and killing of people they call “enemies, traitors, infiltrators, unwanted foreigners” in reference to the Tutsi.

Worse still, the FDLR, a terrorist militia group founded by remnants of the mass murderers who committed the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, are now openly working with government forces. The latter coalition has been spreading genocide ideology in eastern DRC and getting involved in acts of genocide against Congolese Kinyarwanda speaking communities. Several FDLR fighters have been captured on the frontline by the M23 rebels, wearing FARDC uniform.

More intriguing though, is the silence of the international community on acts of genocide against Congolese Tutsi taking place in eastern DRC. Rwanda’s Ambassador to New York, Claver Gatete, while addressing the UN Security Council on the crisis in DRC, pointed out that, “we are appalled by the silence of the Council on the hate speech, xenophobia, and killings targeting the Congolese Tutsi population which has escalated.”

Gatete reminded the UNSC that 28 years ago, only three elected members of the of the Council;  the Czech Republic, New Zealand and Nigeria, condemned the then on-going genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda while most Security Council members remained silent avoiding to anger the genocidal regime.

The international community is once again silently avoiding condemning Kinshasa because of their interests probably fearing to lose mining concessions that are more profitable to them than the lives of innocent people being killed.

 “This Council  should never again allow itself to reproduce the silence of the Council 28 years ago, which passively watched the rapid, systematic and most widely broadcasted Genocide that took over one million human lives in Rwanda,” Gatete said.

By deception, Tshisekedi managed to fool the opposition and civil society actors to dance to his tune of dangerous populist political maneuvers by scapegoating Rwanda for his failure to bring peace in eastern DRC.

Tshisekedi is instigating hate against the Rwandophones. And this is likely to escalate into genocide if the international community remains indifferent.

After four years in power and with a new round of elections looming in 2023, socio-economic conditions have worsened for the ordinary population. Conditions are even worse for rural populations, where even a semblance of state presence does not exist.

According to political analysts, the main cause of the DRC’s socio-economic and political problems is the crisis of the state, or the country’s governance deficit.

Endemic corruption and a culture of impunity have made the state of affairs so bad that Congolese have no hope for a better future. Politicians know this and, they always find scapegoats for their gross failures.