adminMany draped in yellow or blue T-shirts with a picture of a smiling president-elect, Joseph Kabila, and others printed “No. 3” or “Na Rais 100% sur” at the front and waving three finger-signs, they surge dangerously towards the speeding vehicles. Police details and soldiers work over time to prevent the happy crowd from interfering with the VIP convoy taking President Mugabe into the city centre from N’djili International Airport, 25km to the south-east.
Rickety Mercedes Benz 207D and 210D vans are the main mode of public transport on Kinshasa’s chaotic keep-well-right roads. They hurtle to the far right of the road as the motorcade whistles past. Just how such run-down relics can still move, and with passengers crammed on board, you wonder.
Kinshasa’s main Boulevard du 30 Juin, which runs from the central business district eastwards and which becomes Patrice Lumumba Boulevard as one drives further on to N’djili International Airport was commissioned only three weeks ago. Just five kilometres of the Chinese- built highway is tarred. That stretch of the road was named Boulevard du 30 Juin (Boulevard of 30th June). DRC attained independence from Belgium on June 30, 1960.
On the immediate eastern bank of the mighty Congo River, extremely tall perimeter walls of at least two metres run up and down the slopes. Comparatively better houses hide behind the fortress-like walls and roads are paved. Still on this better part of the city, there are half-built triple-storey structures, some seemingly destroyed by gunfire; a reminder of the DRC’s troubled past.
President Kabila (40) was number three on the ballot papers for the 28 November presidential election. So three is a popular number among some Congolese these days, which explains why many of his supporters wave three-finger signs all the time. “Na Rais 100% sur” was his campaign slogan. It is a French phrase which means President Kabila and his supporters were 100 percent sure he would win the election.
President Kabila indeed won thunderously, in the words of key ally, President Mugabe. He got 8 800 000 votes or 49 percent of the vote; his main opponent, Mr Etienne Tshisekedi (79) got 5 864 000 of 32 percent.
But the youthful president faces many enormous challenges as he officially started his second successive term in office after his inauguration on Tuesday. His country virtually has no infrastructure and the little there was, was destroyed in years of civil war and poor governance by the late Mobutu Sese Seko.
Kinshasa is a predominantly unplanned metropolis, so gravel roads run all over the city, people simply build shacks which are not served with running water and sanitation facilities. Roads are poor or non-existent in many parts of the countryside, the same applies to clinics, hospitals and schools. The economy does not manufacture much and imports most of its requirements from France, Belgium and some from South Africa. Kinshasa, a city of 13 million people, imports food worth around US$300 million per year.
“The challenges he (President Kabila) and his people face are many and daunting,” said a local respected journalist, a Frenchman who settled in Kinshasa in 1997 and launched an online publication.
“Number one, we need peace because if we don’t have it, we cannot develop. So that is his biggest challenge and I suppose it is every Congolese’s. Second, we need infrastructure to open up the country for deeper development. We need roads across the country, health, schools water and sanitation facilities and housing particularly for the town. Also industry must begin to work. A lot of work needs to be done in
Kinshasa. Another important challenge is for authorities to ensure that the Congolese people adopt a new mindset of working more seriously in unity. Instability does not develop communities.”
While some developments have been taking place since 2006, the general situation in Kinshasa suggests that large investments must be put in re-constructing — in many cases constructing from scratch — the mineral-rich country of 71 million people.
The country’s mineral wealth is estimated to be US$24 trillion, equivalent to the Gross Domestic Product of Europe and the United States combined. It has the world’s largest reserves of cobalt and significant quantities of the world’s diamonds, gold and copper. DRC is home to 80 percent of the world’s reserves of coltan, a mineral that is essential for the power-storing parts of cell phones, nuclear reactors, play stations and computer chips. Cobalt is used in the preparation of magnetic, wear-resistant and high-strength alloys. The country is also endowed with timber forests, fertile soils and receives good rainfall. It also has fish.
Thus potentially, the DRC is the richest country in the world.
But it appears the DRC’s astonishing mineral wealth is indeed a curse. The country has been plagued by socio-political instability and misrule, especially in the east since independence in 1960. International mining corporations have been accused of destabilising in the mineral-rich east, enabling them to loot rare, valuable ores like cobalt and coltan out of the country, mostly unnoticed by a poorly equipped government.
“You ask yourself whether Congolese people really need to have these precious minerals because of the instability and suffering they have caused,” said an African diplomat.
“Despite the occurrence of these precious minerals and other resources like timber, there are no roads to talk about here and poverty is everywhere. There is no industry to talk about, to beneficiate the cobalt and coltan and produce even basic commodities. The unspeakably degrading poverty Congolese people endure amid all the incredible mineral riches must rank as the world’s greatest injustice. It demands the
Congolese themselves to define and jealously defend their national interest. But they cannot stop the exploitation of their country without Africa and well-meaning countries helping them.”
Tutsaona, those little morsels of food just enough for one meal that were common in Zimbabwe in the 2007-8 economic crisis, rule on Kinshasa’s eastern roadsides. A tomato costs an equivalent of US$1, the same price for an onion.
In his inauguration speech, President Kabila spoke of the achievements his government scored since he became president in 2001, but noted many challenges. He said his government brought peace and economic stability. With the assistance of China, infrastructure like roads, hospitals, schools and others is being developed.
Seeing that the country’s mineral wealth was not benefiting his people meaningfully, he said a new mining code would be put in place to compel mining firms to beneficiate minerals locally before export. Industry must also be revived with locals playing a more central role in the economy.
Analysts commend President Kabila for stabilising the politics and economy of the country and hope the prevailing stability lasts.
Another journalist, who was covering President Kabila’s investiture on Tuesday expressed satisfaction with the president’s record, particularly ongoing infrastructural developments in the country, the prevailing peace and security, but recognised the enormity of the tasks the Congolese are facing.
“Congo is a vast country, so developments in one corner of the country may not be noticed that easily in another corner,” he said, sporting a blue bandana with the president’s portrait.
“But he (President Kabila) has been doing a lot in terms of infrastructural development since 2006. The Chinese built the Boulevard of June 30th. We are building the 400km Bas Congo. The road from Kisangani to Goma, which is 600km long, is being worked on. Work is also in progress on the Lubumbashi-Zambian border road, which is 250km. Many dams and bridges are also being built and a 500-bed hospital was opened in Kinshasa. Its opening coincided with our 50th independence anniversary in June.”
Long time presidential aspirant, Mr Tshisekedi, who spends most of his time in South Africa, has disputed the election result that gave President Kabila a fresh mandate.
Mr Tshisekedi argues that the presidential election was rigged.
Like many African opposition parties, his Union for Democracy and Social Progress party enjoys substantial support in Kinshasa. It is weaker in the countryside where President Kabila, who does not have a political party, dominates. When the first results on the voting in Kinshasa were announced, Mr Tshisekedi and his supporters started celebrating, thinking their leader had won nationally. However, when returns from
President Kabila’s rural strongholds were announced, the opposition leader started losing ground. Mr Tshisekedi then claimed vote rigging and declared himself president-elect. He had planned his own “inauguration” at Martyr’s Stadium in Kinshasa yesterday, but the government banned it.
Mr Tshisekedi has a chequered history. He led a secessionist movement in central Kasai region after independence in the 1960s and served as prime minister in the 1990s under Mobutu.
On the eve of President Kabila’s inauguration this week, Mr Tshisekedi made a potentially treasonous statement, calling on the armed forces to disobey the president.
But Mrs Marie Kasongo, a Congolese trader said:
“He is venturing into sensitive territory (by calling the army to disobey President Kabila). We have had a difficult history, so Congo does not want to hear this, it frightens us. There is a vast difference between eight million votes and five million; a difference of three million votes. How did Kabila give himself three million votes? The margin is too big to manipulate. But we know he (Mr Tshisekedi) is a treacherous character with a bad reputation since the Mobutu era. There is no way he could have beaten Kabange (President Kabila) with the work the president has done and the fact that Tshisekedi is only a visitor to his own country.”
As the DRC moves on, it is painful to accept that despite its plentiful resources, some minerals only found in that country, millions of Congolese in Kinshasa live one day at a time and in such squalor that Mbare and Makokoba look glamorous.
Online Reporter