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