The voting for a new president in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is one of Africa’s most significant elections for many years. The result will affect not only the DRC but surrounding countries as well. Nine African states border the DRC and all have been affected by its civil war that killed four million people. The conflict is the bloodiest since World War II from 1939-1945.
The five bloody years of the DRC’s civil war ended in 2003. Yesterday’s election, the DRC’s first fully democratic one since independence in 1960, is intended to crown the peace process. Much of the chance for long-term peace, however, depends on how the loser takes defeat. Under the deal which ended the conflict, the various warring factions joined a power-sharing government but they are now fiercely opposed to one another in the elections. Three days of clashes which killed at least 23 people followed the results of the first round in the summer which pitted those loyal to President Joseph Kabila with others supporting his rival Jean-Pierre Bemba. Neither candidate is democratic. Kabila can ill-afford to sit back and congratulate himself on past achievements. His main problem is that he is not popular in his capital city — a sprawling metropolis of seven million. Bemba, on the other hand, is a former rebel leader who, should he be defeated, might launch a battle of revenge.
The Congolese are roughly divided into two general groups: Easterners who by and large favor Kabila and Westerners who back Bemba. The country teeters dangerously between the two, this being the very political fissure that led to the country’s devastating civil war. Both candidates have promised to urge their supporters not to resort to violence and to abide by election rules. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called on the two candidates to ensure that the election is peaceful but in a country where violence is so common, conflict is far from being an impossibility.
People in the DRC are dying of hunger, violence and disease at an astonishing rate of possibly 1,200 every day. Such humanitarian chaos is paradoxical in a country awash with untapped reserves of copper, cobalt, diamonds, gold, nickel, and coltan, a metal used in mobile phones.
With the Congolese people finally choosing their leader for the first time since independence in 1960, the hope is that all these riches will now at last be used for their benefit. That would be a welcome change from the decades of plundering and looting of the country’s wealth by both and locals. It is not unreasonable to claim that the destiny of the DRC could shape the future of Africa. UN officials themselves say the elections are the most important on the continent since the 1994 election of Nelson Mandela which ended apartheid in South Africa. The outcome could thus impact the future of much of the continent. Turning the DRC around would provide a massive boost to that country, to many African nations and to millions of ordinary Africans who would see hope for their countries and themselves.
