And the elections saga continues...

Election posters in Kinshasa, there were close
 to 19,000 parliamentary cadidates for 500 seats

It is now just over three weeks since DR Congo’s Presidential election, but my god it feels a lot longer than that. It is just dragging on and on and on. Every week, people (from both sides of the emphatic political divide) say “there will be a big demonstration this week, a lot of people will die, but we are fighting for our freedom”…and then nothing happens.

We have known for a while now, since the day of the elections, that mass “irregularities” took place. It is possible that Kabila won the elections, albeit by a very narrow margin. It is also very possible that Tshisekedi won. We just don’t know, and the Congolese people deserve better than that.

Congo is an immensely wealthy country in terms of natural resources: diamonds, copper, gold and the metal you find in mobile phones. But they have lacked a government to turn this wealth into something tangible for the people, who currently languish at the bottom of the UN’s human development index. If demonstrations do occur, they can’t last long because people need to buy food for their families almost daily, as they can’t afford refrigeration or to stockpile for emergencies.  Rather than providing their people with, say free primary education, Congo’s leaders have tended to buy villas in Spain. Who knows how much better Tshisikedi would be, but Kabila has been in power for 11 years, and he doesn’t seem to have done much.

Kabila is an odd character. Rumors swirl around Kinshasa that his real mother is Rwandan, and that he isn’t Congolese at all (sound familiar?). Born in a rebel training camp in the East, Kabila speaks Swahili and English, and only began to learn French when he took up the presidency on his father’s assassination. He can’t speak Lingala, the dominant language in Kinshasa. He also fears public gatherings, so hasn’t been able to build up the cult of personality like Mobutu.  People in Kinshasa see him as an outsider, and they don’t trust him. Of course, Kinshasa is not Congo.

But getting back to the elections. Whether or not Tshisikedi won the elections, what is clear is that enough” irregularities” (such as the loss of opposition ballots, the filling in of multiple ballots by Kabila supporters etc etc) took place to throw the result in doubt. There has been some international media attention, and this year, in the context of the Arab Spring, may be the time for people to take to the streets and get enough international eyes on them to make a change. But the opposition waited. Even though we knew the results would be rigged, the opposition waited for the official results to be announced, assumingly due to international pressure. Similarly, the leader of one opposition party (Vital Kamerhe) submitted a legal challenge to the results via the Supreme Court, even though it is stacked with pro-Kabila judges. Again, it is likely the International Community was behind this too.

When all the other candidates had to take their posters
 down the day before the election, Kabila continued to
stare down on the city

Kabila was officially sworn in as President yesterday, and only head of state to attend the ceremony was Robert Mugabe.  Tshisikedi is in a bind: he can’t prove that he won the elections, even though several international observers have cited problems with the election. But it is difficult to call supporters into the streets, or even leave his own home, as opposition neighbourhoods are surrounded by tanks. Literally, Tshisikedi’s home compound is under the gun. Unlike the 2006 presidential challenger, Bemba, Tshi doesn’t have a rebel army behind him (thank god) to declare war in the streets. SMS systems are still deactivated, and all opposition broadcasters have been pulled off air. Young, pro-opposition men are also reported to be disappearing: bundled into police cars, they haven’t been heard from since. The government has made it clear it is ready to use force, and it has. Finally, the ICC has made it clear that they are watching the Congo elections, ready to pounce on political leaders inciting violence. Bemba is in the dock now, and although he is charged with war crimes committed in CAR, it sets an important example.  After several inflammatory statements before the elections, Tshi has reigned in, carefully wording each statement to call for non-violent demonstrations.

But will these demonstrations ever come? I hope so. Even if the man in power doesn’t change, people need a chance to be heard, and it is their right. If there is no release of pent up anger now, it could erupt later. And the stage is set: early 2012 will see Congo’s second democratic local elections, tensions left unresolved now could spill over then.

Currently, the international community seems content to leave Congo to fester. As long as there is only limited violence on the street (over 20 people have been killed so far in election violence), we seem content to sit back, the nightly news is glued to elections in Egypt, and we just don’t seem to have the energy for Congo. Congo has seen two wars in the last twenty years, wars that destabilized the entire region. But real, transparent democracy is not only important in Congo for the regional ramifications any enduring unrest could have, it is important because the Congolese people deserve to know who they chose to lead the country, whichever political party they come from.

Tshisikedi has called for a new demonstration this Friday to inaugurate himself President of the DRC, assuming he can leave his house. Most of me wants an outpouring of people in the streets, a crowd too large to be easily brushed aside with threats of government violence. Not because they think Tshisikedi should be president, but because they want free, transparent and fair elections, and because in a democracy, they have the right to protest. Most of me wants this, and the sooner the better while DRC is still somewhat on the global news desk radar. However, after so many delays already, a part of me asks, does the demonstration really have to be Friday? That’s the day I am supposed to be flying out on holiday, and surely one more delay won’t make a difference?

Mbote!

Which means hello in Lingala, the local language in Kinshasa. This blog has taken me quite a while to get together - about three months in all, the time I have been in the country. I have been writing the whole time, this is only my second time in Africa, so I wanted to capture all my first impressions before everything seemed "routine" and "normal", but the thought of putting everything on the internet, to make it public, is a bit intimidating. I admit that the title sounds a little Kim Kardashian, but it was the best I could come up with on the fly!

It has been the elections that made me finally open up this account - seeing how Congo is represented to the world, and the English-speaking world in particular. I'll be posting some of the stuff I have already written over the next few weeks (the internet is REALLY slow here!), so the timeline might be a bit out of whack, but hopefully it will give you an idea of what it is like to live in Kinshasa, a place that is both frustrating and incredibly warm and the same time.

Elections Lockdown

11 December 2011

I am so very, very bored. I have heard the sayings ‘only boring people get bored’ and ‘the only cure for boredom is curiosity’ but I don’t think those people have ever had to sit through six days of lockdown. There isn’t that much happening here; terrible to say, I know, of a contested presidential election where over twenty people have been killed. In my friend’s neighbourhood, Limite, there has been sporadic shooting, close enough to drive her and her family under the bed for protection. But that is over the other side of the city from me. I am holed up in my boss’ compound, right on the river overlooking the Brazzaville banks, and where young men come to fish in their dug out canoes. I feel far from the action, and check the international news sites almost hourly: the New York Times to find out what might be happening outside my own front door. Reliable Congolese news is sporadic, and even the UN-supported Radio Okapi only gives two-minute hourly updates, with nothing in the way of commentary or analysis. Contrast this with the US, with hours dedicated daily to which candidate did what and what that might mean, a year before Election Day.

Drowned dragonfly - but is it artsy?

I am bored. I have: read high-minded history books, low-brow detective novels, every online newspaper under the sun. I have watched al-Jazeera, France 24, and BBC Lifestyle, as well as dozens of films and TV series on my computer. I am sick of looking at screens. I have walked around the compound, done a bit of yoga, gone swimming in the pool, and taken ‘artistic’ photos of bugs who had drowned in said pool.

I was actually looking forward to lockdown: a chance to watch marathons of seriously bad TV with the excuse that there is little else to do. But my intellectual boss has sort of stymied this. Obviously thinking I was only watching “My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding” because there was nothing more engaging on the tele, she has suggested I go through her books, films (the sort that really are ‘films’, not ‘movies’) and historical television series to find something more stimulating. As this is the woman who signs my paychecks, I am a little loath to tell her that, rather than expanding my mind with French literature, I just want to see what happens when plastic surgery goes wrong.

Of course, these are first world problems. I have the means to get out of the country if need be, and we are not yet the target of either side, although this could change if the Congolese don’t feel that the International Community is supporting them. But it feels like the frog boiling on the stove. You can feel the tension, and there is a massive weight in the center of my chest. It is the waiting that, for me, is stressful. I just want whatever is going to happen to just happen already. And then I feel guilty. It won’t be my friends and family who are hurt should there be protests, and should those protests turn violent. Whatever happens I’ll have moved on next year when my contract ends.

We are venturing out tomorrow, going into the office, seeing a different set of four walls. Apparently Kabila and Tshikedi are negotiating, and the streets of Kinshasa are poised for Tshi to give the word to protest. And until he does, the waiting continues.

UPDATE: A week later, and I'm back in lockdown. Last night, the Supreme Court upheld Kabila’s Presidential win, and we don't know how the opposition will react.