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Drama expected at Kabila’s state visit today

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President Jacob Zuma with DRC President Joseph Kabila. Picture: Siyabulela Duda
President Jacob Zuma with DRC President Joseph Kabila. Picture: Siyabulela Duda

The Democratic Republic of the Congo President Joseph Kabila is set to pay a state visit to President Jacob Zuma in Pretoria today amid questions over the timing of the meeting and suspicions that private interests could feature.

While the two presidents were billed to discuss trade, cooperation in energy, infrastructure development, health, and transport as well as peace and security in particularly the Great Lakes Region, Kabila is facing a storm at home because he is perceived to be behind election delays in the DRC.

Kabila’s second and final term in office expired in December.

The United Nations Human Rights Commission also on Friday announced it would open an “international investigation” into alleged killings, mutilations and destruction of entire villages in the DRC’s southern Kasai provinces.

Stephanie Wolters from the Pretoria-based Institute for Security Studies said the visit would be an opportunity for Zuma to “send a very important message to Kabila” on stability in the DRC and getting parties to agree on an elections calendar.

Wolters, however, said South Africa suggested “a watered-down solution of some UN investigators” going to Kasai, instead of the independent commission the UN originally wanted. She said South Africa was “trying to protect [Kabila] from scrutiny when there’s evidence that his government is massacring its own citizens.”

More than 1.3 million people have been displaced in the conflict that broke out in August last year.

Lubumbashi-based human rights lawyer Hubert Masoka Tshiswaka said Kabila came to South Africa to buy time.

“This visit is one of internal legitimacy, as Europe and the USA are calling for sanctions and the UN Human Rights Commission to investigate mass killings in Kasai. He needs South Africa to be on his side, as Angola seems to be publicly distancing [itself] from him,” he said.

Angola, which shares 2 646 km of border and significant offshore oil deposits with the DRC, has been one of the country’s biggest allies, but the Kasai violence has caused Angola to criticise the DRC publicly.

Last month the Angolan government issued a rare public statement calling for an end to political violence and the start of a “serious and constructive dialogue … that will lead to a return of peace and stability”.

Tshiswaka said Angolan president Jose Eduardo dos Santos’s son-in-law, Lubumbashi-born art collector and businessman Sindika Dokolo, even sent food aid to Congolese people fleeing violence in Kasai.

Tshiswaka added that Zuma might not be in a position to pressure Kabila to allow elections “as [Zuma] is on a hot seat himself” politically. Tshiwaka, as well as Wolters, speculated that private business interests could feature in the meeting. Amongst others, Zuma’s nephew Khulubuse Zuma has oil concessions allegedly obtained following Zuma’s intervention during a 2009 state visit.

DRC ambassador in Pretoria, Bene M’Poko, however, said the annual Bi-National Council, which started on Saturday with a meeting between the respective foreign ministers, was business as usual. Those criticising it were in the minority.

“The relationship between the two countries is like a marriage, it is an ongoing relationship,” he said.

M’Poko said the DRC might again request South Africa’s Independent Electoral Commission to help with some of the logistics for organising elections, as it had done in 2006 and 2011. “We are going to hold those elections and we need South African experts to accompany us,” he said.

M’Poko, however, said the elections date was up to the DRC’s independent electoral body to decide. “They need to register 40 million voters, and they have already done 30 million,” he said, adding the body indicated the process would take until the end of July.

M’Poko said the DRC would not request any assistance from South Africa, which is already contributing troops to the United Nations’ Force Intervention Brigade in the east of the country. “The Kasai situation is calm,” he said. “Our troops are also today capable to handle those issues.”

Members of the Congolese community have, however, threatened to stage a protest today against Kabila’s visit.

Gauteng-based Congolese community leader Kazadi Ilunga Mpanga said “Kabila is already out of his constitutional mandate” and should for that reason not be received on state visits.

Efforts by the African Union and later also the Catholic Church to set up a timeline for elections have so far failed.

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