Tshisekedi’s militia will sink DRC into Mobutu’s ‘débrouillez vous’ era

Author: Lindah Uwase

• 2022-12-18 05:15:00

A video emerged, recently, on social media showing over 10,000 recruits paraded in front of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) President Félix Tshisekedi. The new recruits were picked from different parts of the country.

Majority if not all, were jobless and, in November, when Tshisekedi called on the youth to join vigilante war groups to defend their country against perceived enemies, the jobless youth saw an opportunity not to miss. They registered in big numbers.

In the video, the newly untrained recruits are heard chanting loudly, asking Tshisekedi for guns to attack their country’s perceived enemies.

Before getting into the danger of recruiting 10,000 plus unskilled and illiterate young men, let’s look at what it would take to shelter all of them and train them. There has, most likely, not been such a massive recruitment since World War II.

What happens when one puts 10,000 men in a single place that has no toilets? There is the likelihood of a Cholera outbreak and, most likely, half of them would be wiped out before they embarked on massaging Tshisekedi’s fantasies.

But assume they survive that and any other possible natural disasters, what will be their fate afterwards?

Fast forward. The presumed enemy happens to be the M23 rebels and, going by the latest developments, the DRC government seems to be bowing down to the rebellion’s demands following their recent meeting with some FARDC officers.

If an agreement is reached,  or fails, and M23 advances and takes over a much vast area, what will be the fate of Tshisekedi’s newly created militia?

Tshisekedi grew up in the times of former President, Mobutu Sese Seko, and has since adopted a Mobutuism style of leadership. During his rule, in the 1980s, Mobutu who had failed to create a balance in the country initiated what has since been dubbed as “Article quinze…débrouillez-vous,” (French for; Article fifteen... figure it out ), a well-known idiom in the country. The fictional Article 15 of the DRC’s constitution is a catch-all expression implying “you’re on your own, do what you need to do.”  

These were the youthful days of Tshisekedi. He grew up in a system where Mobutu urged citizens and state officials to fend for themselves.  Up to now, Article 15 is still frequently called upon to justify the predatory behaviour and self-interested opportunism in all spheres of life. This is part of what Tshisekedi inherited and deliberately carried on, in addition to a dysfunctional army, and generally, clown-like security forces.

Tshisekedi knows that his army cannot restore normalcy in eastern DRC and yet he recruits another disaster of a vigilante group.

Again, one has to factor in the fate of this newly recruited force the moment the M23 rebels will no longer be a threat. What will the illiterate and poorly trained youths do with the guns in their possession?

Remember these are lazy youths that failed to work and saw a window for a quick grab without pain, by joining the army. They will definitely apply the ‘débrouillez-vous’ article. They will need to catch up with the lost time by getting rich quick and it’s only a gun that can give them that.

And that is when real chaos will unravel.

Tshisekedi may have sought a shortcut to bigger wins but he treaded in dangerous ground. He has created a problem that will take DRC decades to fix, proving yet how he farther sunk the country deeper into chaos when he opted for the disastrous Mobutu style of governance.

His new militia will want to become self-financing in salaries and operational costs and will dwell on illegal taxation, corruption, and extortion of the general public, all of which was legitimatised Mobutu and now resurrected by Tshisekedi, in 2022.