Vital Kamerhe Subjugated The Congolese Diaspora of South Africa

“Vini, vidi, vici” (I came, I saw, I vanquished): this is Julius Caesar’s phrase wherewith he summarized his successful experience in the Roman conquest of Gaul. This equally is the experience of Mr. Vital Kamerhe, president of the Union for the Congolese Nation (UCN) and the third preferred personality of the people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo subsequently to the general elections held in November 28, 2011. The staunch opponent to the Joseph Kabila regime engaged in a conference-debate with the Congolese Diaspora of South Africa.

The event, which was organized by the Congolese civil society organizations in Nelson Mandela’s homeland, Namely the Congo Paradise Movement (a civic and spiritual movement that reclaims the human, civil and political rights of the nation of the DRC), CongoRenaissance (an associational movement of Congolese intellectuals devoted to the DRC’s takeoff) and AMAGEP (an NGO having in its mission multiple tasks, such as marketing, political and cultural analyses, human rights, and struggle against poverty and AIDS), took place on Friday, August 30, 2013, and was graced with the presence of a lot of Congolese people, and of national and international press. It was marked by a magisterial lecture delivered by this highly distinguished personality and a hot, intellectually elevated and continuously interested engagement of the Congolese public through questions.

Coming into play, Vital Kamerhe pointed out the genesis of the Congo’s current crisis and stigmatized errors committed by both the international Community (inter alia the decision to erect the Rwandan refugee camps in Kivu, close to the frontiers with Rwanda, and the accommodation with the cohabitation of the civilians with the interhamwe militia) and the DRC government since the starting point of the Congolese tragedy: the Rwandan genocide of 1994. President Mobutu had hoped to use the Rwandan refugees question to return to the international political scene. His successor Laurent-Desire Kabila had taken a brave but hurried decision to get rid of his Rwandan and Ugandan allies on the 27th of July 1998, and the latter counter-attacked with the fabrication of rebellions against his regime, thus plunging his country into the deadliest war since World War II. Joseph Kabila, succeeding his assassinated father, accepted to participate in the Inter-Congolese Dialogue of Sun City, South Africa, and consecutively, in the national union government (1+4 scheme) on the 1st of April 2003. Unfortunately, having been clothed with legitimacy in the aftermath of the 2006 presidential election, he indulged in being embarked into a dictatorial slide (armed fight against Jean-Pierre Bemba inside the very capital Kinshasa; massacre of the followers of the Bundu dia Kongo sect; assassination of the leading human rights activist Floribert Chebeya; arbitrary jailing of political opponents; Chinese contracts signed unilaterally and without transparency, i.e. without concerting with the Parliament, etc.). Still the last straw, which forced Kamerhe already overwhelmingly startled with patriotism to quit the power, was Kabila’s autocratic decision authorizing Rwandan troupes to invade the Congo, without the approval of the people’s representatives.

Besides, the former speaker of the National Assembly has identified the Congolese crisis in its current phase as a crisis of the legitimacy of the Kinshasa regime (resulting from the hopped up and non-transparent elections of 2011), which has gotten exacerbated by the determination of Rwanda to maintain the chaos in eastern Congo for malevolent non-admitted motives. To resolve it, the Addis Ababa Accord, concluded under the aegis of the United Nations and the African Union, recommended an inter-Congolese dialogue. Result: President Kabila has issued a decree summoning national discussions for the 4th of September 2013. Nonetheless Kamerhe hammered out that the UCN is not going to take part in the abovementioned discussions because of suspicious measures taken by the organizing power: the appointment by the Head of State of the members of the praesidium of the Discussions (Leon Kengo wa Dondo and Aubin Minaku) without prior discussion with the opposition; the fact that this national meeting is designated “discussions” is in flagrant contradiction with the Addis Ababa Accord, which points to the “national dialogue”—the concept of discussion underscoring a harmonization of views between two or several parties which have already agreed upon fundamental questions, whereas the concept of dialogue implies a conflict between parties upon essential challenges; the fact that the consensus, which is chosen as the mode of decision-making in the Discussions, is a mere smokescreen, thus allowing the presidential majority, shrewdly fabricated in the repartition of delegations, to influence the subsequent resolutions; and the absence of a juridical document (such as a presidential decree) that guarantees that the Discussions’ resolutions shall have legal binding force, i.e. they shall be sovereign, executory, and opposable to all—therefore granting to President Kabila the discretion to utilize them, for the better or the worse.

After all, Vital Kamerhe proposed some pathways to tackle both the current legitimacy crisis and the rampant war in eastern Congo. First of all, like other serious opposition parties (such as the Union for Democracy and Social Progress and Diomi Dongala’s Christian Democracy), the UCN is disposed to go to the national dialogue, provided that the power observes preliminary conditions, such as the running of the dialogue by special envoys appointed by the United Nations and the African union; the dialogue, which is to be inclusive and reconciling, is to re-establish the legitimacy, a sine qua non for national cohesion; and the juridical guarantee that the dialogue’s resolutions shall be sovereign, executory, and opposable to all. In case the power imposes its crisis-solving agenda (with the holding of the discussions, which apparently are a congress of the [President’s] People’s Party for Reconstruction and Democracy), Kamerhe warned to the delight of the audience that the UCN leader will form a bloc with Dr Etienne tshisekedi and Laurent Cardinal Monsengwo Pasinya to hamper the materialization of such an agenda. Second warning by the Head of State’s right-hand lieutenant: if, as it did in 2011 at Tshisekedi’s expense, Kabila’s political family tries to steal Vital Kamerhe’s victory in favor of the PPRD’s candidate to the 2016 presidential election, the orator, claiming to have the Maï-Maï blood [NDLR: warring reflexes], would counter-attack it and force it out of power.

On the other hand, as far as the war in eastern Congo is concerned, Kamerhe proposed the good-neighborly terms philosophy, which may allow the Congo to exploit located at the frontiers in joint-ventures with its nine neighboring countries, and to share its scandalously immense potential with Africa and the rest of the world. There is much more to gain with the Congo in peace than in war, he insisted. Therefore the African governments are invited, in conformity with the framework of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) and of the grand vision of African Renaissance, to erect pan-African infrastructures, with their core being the DRC, the trigger of the continental revolver. As for the international Community, it is invited to develop a win-win co-operation with the DRC: its access to the Congo’s massive resources ought to be proportional to its contribution in technology that leads the latter’s swift industrialization toward the qualitative uplifting of the living standards of its people. This pan-African and universal project, to which the Congo is to be associated, will be realized only with the end of Joseph Kabila’s predatory and criminal reign and the renewal of the Congolese State (implying a visionary leadership; a strong army; an impartial, suspicion-free justice; and an efficacious, efficient and incorruptible administration) of which the UCN wholeheartedly aspires to be the main architect.

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