Policy Brief. Unlocking the democratic impasse in the DRC: The role of external actors. a focus on current issues. Fritz Nganje.

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "Policy Brief. Unlocking the democratic impasse in the DRC: The role of external actors. a focus on current issues. Fritz Nganje."

Lily Ford
5 years ago
Views:

INSTITUTE FOR GLOBAL DIALOGUE Issue 98/June 2012 a focus on current issues Policy Brief Unlocking the democratic impasse in the DRC: The role of external actors Fritz Nganje is a researcher at the

1 INSTITUTE FOR GLOBAL DIALOGUE Issue 98/June 2012 a focus on current issues Policy Brief Unlocking the democratic impasse in the DRC: The role of external actors Fritz Nganje is a researcher at the IGD. Fritz Nganje Introduction Global Insight aims to provide members of the policy community with concise but trenchant analyses of topical issues. Comments and suggestions are invited. Almost a decade after the major political forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) agreed to a programme to end years of dictatorship and civil strife, and start working together towards a democratic dispensation, the country is still struggling to distance itself from the state-in-transition label. As suggested by the political crisis that accompanied the November 2011 presidential and parliamentary elections, the process of political renewal to which the DRC s leadership committed itself in 2002 has failed to progress beyond the foundational phases, with a real possibility of regression. After holding two general elections, the DRC s governance institutions and dominant political culture demonstrate little progress in the way of the expected democratic transition. The socio-economic welfare of the majority of the people in the mineral-rich country also shows no signs of improvement, while recurrent armed attacks and insecurity in the eastern half of the country bring into sharp relief the continued threat of a general relapse into violence. This policy brief examines the democratic impasse in the DRC and highlights the role of the international community in safeguarding democracy in the country. Democratic transition in the DRC: An unending process The search for democratic governance in the DRC is an enduring struggle that has seen the country move from an armed rebellion to a forced political transition. The assassination of Laurent Kabila in January 2001 marked a defining moment in this

2 struggle. Three years earlier, Kabila had received the acclaim of the Congolese people in his capacity as leader of the armed alliance that brought an end to Mobutu Sese Seko s dictatorship in the then Zaire. Although Mobutu s ousting brought a sense of relief to the impoverished country, it was not long before Kabila dashed the hopes of Congolese for an inclusive and participatory system of governance with his own version of dictatorship. With foreign-sponsored armed groups occupying different parts of the country, the elimination of Kabila created a political vacuum in the capital, Kinshasa, which his son and successor, Joseph Kabila, appeared to be ill-prepared to fill. The conciliatory approach chosen by Kabila Junior to consolidate his hold on power resuscitated the democratic movement that was born in the dying days of Mobutu s regime, without necessarily doing away with the impediments that had derailed the Mobutu-era attempts at political reform. If anything, the dynamics of armed conflict added new dimensions to the balance of power in the DRC and made the quest for a democratic political system just one of many competing agendas that underpinned political negotiations to restore peace in the country. The Global and Inclusive Agreement (GIA) that came out of the Sun City and Pretoria Inter-Congolese Dialogues (ICD) not only committed Kabila s government and the different paramilitary groups to ending the armed conflict, but also outlined the framework for a two-year transitional process that would lay the foundation for a constitutional and democratic order in the DRC. In principle, the GIA suggested a collective commitment from the Congolese leadership to converge their energies in the interest of peace, democracy and development in the war-torn country. However, it became evident from the spirit and atmosphere at the ICD that for most of its principal signatories and their external sponsors, the accord was seen more as a means to secure influence in a post-war DRC than a roadmap to deliver on the democratic aspirations of the Congolese people. 1 Thus, although the transitional period mandated by the GIA formally came to an end in 2006 with the adoption of a new constitution and the establishment of new political institutions, functional democracy has remained elusive in the DRC. On the eve of the DRC s second general election in 2011, the state of democratisation and institutional reform in the country pointed to a stalled process that was gradually being reversed. As a 2010 report by OSISA concluded, since 2006 the constitutional and institutional guarantees for an effective democracy in the DRC have become vulnerable to attacks motivated by political convenience. 2 The country s new political institutions such as the parliament, the electoral commission and the judiciary were largely ineffective in discouraging the abuse of political power by an increasingly powerful executive and a Presidential majority in parliament. Under these conditions, popular participation and consensual politics, as envisaged in the new constitution, hardly manifested. As a result, a political climate of despondency and violence continues to prevail in the DRC. Three interlocking dynamics explain this. Unreformed nature of the political elite The challenge of democratic consolidation in the DRC cannot be dissociated from the country s long history of authoritarian rule. This entrenched a political culture and moulded a political class that have succeeded in outliving that epoch. Mobutu s patrimonial rule after 1965 evolved under a political leadership which neither shared a common vision nor was able to articulate a substantive political agenda for its development. This allowed the individual interests and aspirations of the ruling class to define the political game, while corruption, opportunism and materialism flourished. The line between Mobutu s government and those who opposed it was largely blurred in terms of the extent to which the conduct of the Congolese elite reflected the dominant political culture. 3 The 2003 transition failed to engender a corresponding shift in the attitude of Congolese politicians, many of whom continue to be active political players to this day, including 2011 presidential hopefuls Etienne Tshisekedi and Léon Kengo Wa Dondo. With very few legitimate economic opportunities in the country, the new class of political actors born out of war have also found it convenient to embrace the politics of personal enrichment and self-aggrandisement, thereby perpetuating the dysfunctional state of the DRC s political institutions. 2

3 A corollary of this political disposition, which is no less an obstacle to democratic progress in the DRC, is the intransigence of political actors like the leader of the main opposition party, Etienne Tshisekedi of the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS). While Tshisekedi enjoys an unparallel political reputation associated with his long years of opposition politics, which should have made him an asset for the democratic cause, his adversarial approach, cultivated during Mobutu s days, has proven inimical to dialogue, compromise and tolerance. This hard-line approach to politics only serves to close doors to opportunities for incremental reform that come with exercising the virtues of bridge-building and political compromise. The effect of a despondent citizenry and fractured civil society The legacy of long years of predatory rule and armed conflict, coupled with the disillusionment from what many see as a fruitless transition, has had disastrous effects on the capacity and will of the majority of the Congolese citizenry to develop and optimally exercise a democratic agency. Any nascent democracy needs an engaged citizenry to nurture it and guarantee its survival. This is more so in a country such as the DRC where, as argued above, the democratic discourse among the political class appears to be merely a smoke screen for promoting personal agendas. However, for most Congolese, the imperative to survive in a society of chronic poverty and very few economic opportunities is a sufficient disincentive to become actively engaged in political processes, which are seen only to reproduce the status quo. The highly discredited November 2011 polls, which were embraced by some as a window of opportunity to break the cycle of bad governance, can only have the effect of reinforcing this despondency and the tendency towards political passivity, giving the political elite a free reign in undermining the democratic agenda. Among certain segments of the population, the feeling of despondency and betrayal manifests itself not in political apathy, but in a very active, albeit antidemocratic involvement in political processes. This is the case with a good number of the Congolese youth, whose political agency, like that of the political elite, is for the most part conditioned by the struggle to chart, by any means possible, an alternative path to a life of poverty, unemployment and general despair. For this class of citizens, political participation is not a struggle to engender democratic governance, but a strategy to extract short-term financial and material benefits from politicians who rely on violence, intimidation and fraud to win elections. Perhaps more detrimental to the cause of democracy is the effect of this growing state of hopelessness on the integrity and operational capacity of civil society in the DRC. Although the DRC has one of the most congested civil society spaces in Africa, only a negligible number of civil society groups are truly committed to the cause of political transformation in the country. Similar to political parties, most civil society groups in the DRC owe their origins to the crafty attempt to escape the deprivation associated with the country s dire socioeconomic conditions, a practice that seems to have been institutionalised by the ICD. 4 Consequently, the same culture of opportunism and self-seeking that defines politics in the DRC is also reflected in the operations of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), the media and other sections of the civil society. Given the tendency of Congolese civil society groups to align themselves with specific political platforms, civil society is not only seen to lack integrity, autonomy and initiative, but is also devoid of the capacity to operate in a concerted and coordinated manner to fulfil its role as the bastion of democracy. The external dimension The international community played a crucial role in laying the foundation for democratic institutions in the DRC, most notably through its facilitation of the ICD and its support for the transitional period that culminated in the 2006 elections. However, official external support for the democratisation process in the DRC has waned over the years. In the context of the geo-strategic importance of the DRC and the abundance of highly sought after natural and mineral resources within its borders, national interest considerations have 3

4 turned out to be the primary motivation behind the involvement of leading global and regional powers in the DRC, overshadowing concerns about political reform in the country and in some instances encouraging antidemocratic tendencies in the system. No doubt, the DRC receives considerable financial and technical assistance from its traditional partners such as the US, France and Belgium, which is directed towards building state capacity and strengthening the country s institutions of governance. New partners like South Africa, China and Angola have also been very important contributors to post-conflict reconstruction efforts in the DRC. However, as Theodore Trefon argues in his analysis of the relationship between foreign aid and political reform in the DRC, there has been little political energy or commitment from the capitals of these countries to align support for post-conflict reconstruction with the democratic aspirations of the Congolese people. 5 This tendency remains detrimental to democratisation efforts in the DRC on at least two fronts. Firstly, by staying indifferent to the lack of progress in democratic reform in the DRC, as exemplified in the timid international response to the controversial 2011 elections, while at the same time providing financial and technical support to the government in Kinshasa, the DRC s external partners are tacitly endorsing and emboldening the Congolese political leadership in its anti-democratic disposition. Secondly, some forms of technical and economic cooperation with the DRC tend to have the unintended effect of perpetuating the corrupt and repressive culture inherent in the system. Such is the case with the security assistance provided by South Africa and Angola as elements of the DRC s police force trained by them are believed to form part of Kabila s security apparatus used to violently suppress opposition protests. The same could be said of some of the investment decisions of other partners such as China and the European Union, which have been criticised for reinforcing the web of corrupt links between foreign business and political patronage in the DRC. 6 Unblocking the democratic impasse Without discounting its merits, the wisdom dictating that the governance question in the DRC is a matter that can best be addressed by the Congolese people deserves some qualification. Given the fractured nature of Congolese society and the ever-expanding international interest in the country, the key to unlocking the prevailing impasse and unleashing the democratic energies in the DRC could very well lie in the collective resolve of the country s partners to engage with it in a more constructive way. The starting point is to acknowledge that the rapacious attitude of the Congolese political leadership has been encouraged to a large extent by the willingness of external actors to continue doing business with them while demonstrating reluctance to take a stand against the obstruction of democracy in the country. This continues to encourage anti-democratic forces to undermine the rise of an influential democratic constituency in the political system. Generating and sustaining sufficient momentum for political reform in the DRC therefore requires a commitment from regional and global powers to rethink the nature of their engagement in the DRC. In particular, there should be a conscious effort to reconfigure the delivery of development assistance, trade relations and investment decisions so that they become instruments for supporting rather than obstructing the process of democratisation in the country. This should be backed by a bold diplomatic drive, both at the bilateral and multilateral levels, to put pressure on Congolese politicians to work as a collective towards greater political reform in the country. Unlocking the democratic impasse would also require renewed commitment from external aid agencies and non-profit organisations, as well as the Congolese diaspora, towards supporting the development of an active democratic agency within the Congolese society. On the one hand, civil society organisations in the DRC need to be supported technically and financially to develop the capacity to operate as autonomous and dynamic agents of change, albeit in a coordinated manner. On the other hand, there is a need for sustained and coordinated external assistance to complement the efforts of local organisations in educating the masses on 4

5 civic and political matters, especially at the grassroots level. Given the appalling socio-economic indicators in the DRC, international support of this nature would be more effective if supplemented and harmonised with socio-economic programmes that address other needs of targeted populations. Policy considerations Donor countries Donor countries supporting post-conflict reconstruction efforts in the DRC, including the US, France, Belgium, China and South Africa, should take conscious and improved measures to align their support to the democratisation process, especially the aspirations of the Congolese people. Continuous financial support to the DRC government should be conditioned on its commitment to political reform. This would require greater coordination and unity of purpose among traditional and emerging donors assisting in the DRC s post-conflict reconstruction, thus sending a clear message to the government. The delivery of technical assistance, especially in the areas of training and capacity building for security services, should be reviewed to ensure that such support does not undermine the democratisation process in the country. Aid agencies There should be greater coordination among aid agencies and other organisations working in the DRC in order to align campaigns for political and civic education with broader post-conflict reconstruction programmes for socio-economic empowerment and upliftment, to help mitigate the adverse effects of socio-economic deprivation on efforts to develop the democratic agency of the Congolese populace. SADC The Southern African Development Community (SADC) should demonstrate greater political commitment and resolve in supporting the democratic process in the DRC by making the strengthening of democratic governance in the country one of its priorities. In line with its Strategic Indicative Plan, SADC s Organ on Politics, Defence and Security Cooperation (OPDSC) should assume a proactive role in ensuring that the Congolese government lives up to its commitment to uphold the principles of democracy and good governance. South Africa As a leading member of SADC and a contributor to post-conflict reconstruction efforts in the DRC, South Africa should spearhead diplomatic efforts to engage the Congolese political leadership in order to assist it to build consensus around a democratic political future for the country. The Congolese Diaspora The Congolese diaspora should consider focusing on grassroots lobbying as an alternative strategy to influencing the policies of their host countries towards the DRC. Given that policymakers may sometimes be unresponsive to direct high-level lobbying, they should work through sympathetic local communities and groups to achieve their goal. Notes 1 See Naidoo, Sagaren, The Inter-Congolese Dialogue: Negotiations for a Democratic State or formalization of a new scramble, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Occasional paper No.16, July 2002, p Ngoma-Binda, Phambu, Yahisule, Otemikongo & Mombo, Leslie, Democratic Republic of Congo, Democracy and political participation: An assessment of the first steps into the 3 rd Republic. Johannesburg OSISA, November 2010, p

6 3 Afoaku, Osita, The Politics of Democratic Transition in Congo (Zaire): Implications of the Kabila Revolution, Journal of Conflict Studies, Vol. 19, No.2, Fall See Whitman, Shelley, Balancing Act: An insider s view of the Inter-Congolese Dialogue, African Security Review, vol. 12, No. 4, See also Kabemba, Claude, Perspective on the role of key stakeholders in the DRC transition, EISA occasional paper no. 26, November 2004, pp Trefon, Theodore, 2011, Congo Masquerade: The Political Culture of Aid Inefficiency and Reform Failure. London: Zed Books. 6 See Michael Deibert, EU involvement in DRC mining project draws protest, Inter Press Service, 28 October 2008, available at [Accessed 15 May 2012]. See also China and Congo: Friends in Need, Global Witness, March 2011, available at friends_in_need_en_lr.pdf [Accessed 15 May 2012] 6

Policy Brief The IGD is an independent foreign policy think tank dedicated to the analysis of and dialogue on the evolving international political and economic

It advances a balanced, relevant and policy-oriented analysis, debate and documentation of South Africa s role in international relations and diplomacy.

interface on global dynamics that have an impact on South Africa and Africa.

7 Policy Brief The IGD is an independent foreign policy think tank dedicated to the analysis of and dialogue on the evolving international political and economic environment, and the role of Africa and South Africa. It advances a balanced, relevant and policy-oriented analysis, debate and documentation of South Africa s role in international relations and diplomacy. The IGD strives for a prosperous and peaceful Africa in a progressive global order through cutting edge policy research and analysis, catalytic dialogue and stakeholder interface on global dynamics that have an impact on South Africa and Africa. 3rd Floor UNISA Building 263 Skinner Street Pretoria South Africa PO Box The Tramshed, 0126 Pretoria South Africa info@igd.org.za All rights reserved. The material in this publication may not be reproduced, stored or transmitted without the prior permission of the copyright holder. Short extracts may be quoted, provided the source is acknowledged. 7

Assessing Policy Responses of African and International Actors on the Threats of Transnational Terrorism to Africa s Security and Stability

INSTITUTE FOR GLOBAL DIALOGUE Issue 128/May 2016 a focus on current issues Assessing Policy Responses of African and International Actors on the Threats of Transnational Terrorism to Africa s Security