17 02 14 African Arguments – Vital Kamerhe: Kabila’s public enemy number one?

The break from Kabila

I first met Vital Kamerhe in November 2009, eight months after he
resigned as the President of National Assembly and two years before the
pivotal 2011 elections. His position in Parliament had become untenable
after he openly criticized the government’s alliance with Rwanda which
included the integration of the CNDP in the national army and a joint military campaign (with Rwanda) against the FDLR (‘Umoja Wetu’). Vital Kamerhe did not believe that the alliance and campaign would bring sustainable peace.

He remained very quite after his departure. Both the international
crowd in Kinshasa and Congolese public opinion speculated whether
Kamerhe would decide to start a genuine opposition party. He told me he
would, but the time wasn’t yet ripe to make his plans public. He made
very few public appearances or statements but spent his time reading,
mainly focusing on two subjects. First, he wanted to deepen his
political vision (which I found very refreshing, in all those years of
talking with would be politicians, I hardly met any who bothered much
about political visions) and studied contemporary Latin American
left-wing populists (especially Lula). Kamerhe saw a lot of parallels
between Congo and Brazil. Second, he studied rhetoric and the great
speeches in history – Lumumba of course, but also Lincoln and Churchill.

Presidential candidate for the UNC

In mid December 2010 Kamerhe organised a press conference in Kinshasa to announce that he would run for the presidency as candidate of the Union pour la Nation Congolaise
(UNC). The next day he flew to Goma and then traveled to his hometown,
Bukavu. A huge and noisy crowd gathered at each of these three
occasions. That didn’t mean he would win the elections, but at least he
had made clear that the 2011 elections would be entirely different from
what we had seen in 2006. Kabila had won those elections because of
widespread support for him in the east. Now that his 2006 campaign
leader had decided to run against him things would never be the same
again.

Two weeks earlier (December 2010), on the other side of the country,
the old anti-Mobutu opposition icon, Etienne Tshisekedi, had made his
own Glorious Entry into Kinshasa after years of absence – the people had
gathered massively to welcome him. We seemed to be heading for
interesting elections – a confrontation of ideas with an unpredictable
outcome.

But this hope was shattered only one month later: in January 2011,
the Parliament reviewed the 2005 constitution at record pace and turned
the semi-presidential regime of the old Constitution into a more
centralist system with greater power for the head of state. One of the
implications was that the presidential elections would be decided over
one round. The winner would, even with less than 50% of the votes, be
sworn in as president. In practice, this meant that the opposition had
little chance of beating Kabila unless they united around a joint
candidate well before the first and only round. This narrowed down the
clash of ideas to an enervating game between big egos looking for the
best starting position.

Kabila eventually won with 48.9% of the vote, Tshisekedi obtained
32.3 % and Kamerhe was third with 7.7% . This result was so contested
that the country lived for weeks on the brink of implosion.

Walking on egg shells

We are now about halfway through the current legislature and
theoretically the third presidential election of the Third Republic
should take place at the end of 2016. 2013 was a tumultuous year in
Congo – not only was the country engaged in the war with M23, but the
leadership of the electoral commission (CENI) changed. Daniel Ngoy
Mulunda had chaired the CENI since 2011 but was held responsible for the
chaotic course of the last elections and for their negative
consequences for the regime’s legitimacy. In June 2013, he was replaced
by Abbé Apollinaire Malu Malu, who had organised the elections of 2006
which received much better marks from national and international
observers.

Not only does Malu Malu have to organise transparent national
elections in 2016, he also has to finalise the current election cycle.
Provincial elections haven’t been held since October 2006 and the local
elections were simply cancelled in 2006. To organise constitutionally
legitimate elections in 2016, the local and provincial elections of the
2006 electoral cycle should take place first.

Meanwhile, the regime seems to be struggling with its own internal
balance of power: the military victory in November 2013 against M23
​​brought the country, its citizens and its leaders into some kind of
winning mood, especially because it was facilitated by its own national
army. However, the assassination of the influential Colonel Mamadou Ndala on January 2^nd
was an indication of the continuing necessity for army reform. Best
evidence indicates that the colonel was slaughtered as the result of an
internal reckoning within the army itself. The fact that the FARDC has
achieved a major success does not necessarily imply that the country has
the unified, efficient and disciplined army that it needs. Achievement
of this will be a much more complex and slow process.

Electoral politicking

The regime also has to sort out two important questions. First, who
will be their candidate for the 2016 presidential election? President
Kabila, who succeeded his father as head of state in 2001, was president
during the transition from 2003 to 2006 and then was elected twice as
President of the Third Republic. Kabila wouldn’t be the first ruler in
the region to juggle with the constitution in order to eternalise his
regnum, but there are indeed indications that Kabila is serious about
preparing for his departure at the end of his current mandate. In that
case, a successor needs to be identified. Several people are now finding
themselves eligible for the job including the current president of
Parliament Aubin Minaku, his predecessor Evariste Boshab, the governor
of Katanga Moïse Katumbi, Prime Minister Augustin Matata Ponyo and even
his predecessor Alphone Muzito.

The second question concerns the balance between the regime’s
regional pillars. The strange and dramatic incidents around the
self-proclaimed prophet Joseph Mukungubila on December 30^th
2013 at least made one thing clear: some leaders of the Katanga
province, where the roots of the Kabila dynasty lie, are afraid of being
marginalised. This is quite remarkable in view of the fact that the
province has eight ministers and a deputy minister in the national
government, but it is also true that leading personalities from Katanga
such as John Numbi (ex-chief of police), Jean-Claude Masangu
(ex-governor of the Central Bank) and the already mentioned Mulunda Ngoy
(ex-chairman of the CENI) recently left very prominent offices. The
inner circle of power in Congo will have to negotiate the upcoming
months with great care and determination if they want to go to the 2016
elections with ranks closed.

The Opposition

Curiously, there seems to be little room in this picture for the
opposition. The UDPS, the party of Kabila’s main 2011 opponent, Etienne
Tshisekedi, has lost all cohesion. Immediately after the elections, the
party became divided over the question of whether the elected MPs should
or should not take up their mandate. In the two years since then, each
of the camps went through more internal divisions. At this moment, the
party lacks leadership able to bring the different factions of the party
back into one vision and plan.

The party of Kabila’s main opponent in 2006, Jean – Pierre Bemba, is
paralysed by the uncertain future of its leader, still held by the
International Criminal Court and waiting for the outcome of his trial
(he is accused of war crimes in the Central African Republic). His party
remains somewhat adrift, hesitating between genuine opposition and
trying to get on board in the next government reshuffle, announced in
September. The Constitution sees Bemba’s official function as leader of
the opposition, but this office has not been filled in since the
elections.

An inconvenient opponent

Within the landscape of political opposition, only Vital Kamerhe has
managed to keep his reputation intact. His faction in parliament
remained consistent and some of the new MPs with a civil society
background (like Kizito Mushizi from Bukavu and Juvenal Munubo from
Walikale) developed into hard-working and competent backbenchers. The
harassment of Kamerhe and his colleagues is an indication that the
regime fears that he might capitalise on its current unpopularity in
eastern Congo.

The defeat of the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels should also be seen as
part of the Framework Agreement which was signed a year ago in Addis
Ababa. But there is some more homework still to be done: Congo committed
itself in Addis to reforming the security sector, to democratising its
institutions and to establishing an efficient and transparent
administration. I am not sure how the harassment of Kamerhe fits into
this programme… At least the European Union did not consider it to be an
encouraging signal; they immediately released a statement expressing
worries about the travel restrictions that certain opposition leaders,
including Kamerhe, are facing.

But what is the impact of such statements, now that the immediate
threat of the war is over and now that the main donors (World Bank, EU,
UNDP) just signed off on their contributions for the coming years?

We might know more reasonably soon as it’s likely that Kamerhe will
present himself at the airport in another attempt to reach eastern Congo
and its electorate.

Kris Berwouts has, over the last 25 years, worked for a number of
different Belgian and international NGOs focused on building peace,
reconciliation, security and democratic processes. Until 2012, he was
the Director of EurAc, the network of European NGOs working for advocacy
on Central Africa. He now works as an independent expert on Central
Africa.

Kris’ current field research is made possible by a working grant of the Pascal Decroos Fund for Investigative Journalism.