Kinshasa, May 25th, 2025 (CPA) -Sounding, monotonous, bland, insipid… The superlatives continue to rain down in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on former president Joseph Kabila Kabange’s message to the Congolese on Friday evening. The man had decided, once again, to take the unjustified risk of provoking. He got what he paid for and is now biting his fingers off. Clearly, the ‘University of Kara’, about which the Congolese are so ironic, should have remained closed. Alas, the unfortunate choice made by the former President of the Republic has instead opened the gates of hell.
The outcry is so terrible and the disapproval so great that he can only blame himself, wondering what stung him.
Selective reading of history
In reality, the Congolese do not understand this selective reading of their country’s recent history. The former president has forgotten, by some miracle, that when the Mobutu regime fell, it was the AFDL that imported the war, armies from several countries and, at the same time, the Rwandan soldiers that moved in at the same time as it installed the ‘commanders’ regime; that if there is one Constitution that has divided the country and reinstalled the provincettes, their kinglets and the ideology of tribalism as the driving force behind the conquest of power and the advent of the dictatorship of ‘minorities’, it is the one that came out of Sun City. Kabila has forgotten, or pretended to forget, that his army, on the basis of the agreement steered by the eternal and irremovable Olesegun Obasanjo, had as its foundation the mixing and mingling that brought to the DRC all the stateless, plunderers and rapacious people from all over the world. The selective memory of the former Head of State supported him in the equivocal exercise of concealing the fact that it was not rumour but his own close relations who had announced his arrival in Goma and welcomed it; that tribalism and nepotism had ended up installing in the lexicon of the Congolese people expressions such as ‘voisin muzuri’, ‘umukamate’, ‘unafuanya erreur moya y’a grave’. These are all bestsellers that have caused frustration and wounds in the hearts of the Congolese people that time, the best ally of truth according to King, has not yet managed to erase. Finally, according to the man from Kingakati, despite the reading of the international bodies and the relevant reports by UN experts, Rwanda, which the former head of state is careful not to mention as if it were the apple of his eye, has nothing to do with the crisis in the east of the DRC. It is this fanciful logic that allows him to exonerate Rwanda and the M23 and, at the same time, to despise and insult the Wazalendo, whom his particular lexicon has transformed into a mystico-religious sect and blamed for the whole tragedy in the east of the DRC, while taking liberties with the Bundu dia Kongo and Kamuina Nsapu massacres, and the murders of Rossy Mukendi, Armand Tungulu and Thérèse Kapangala, to name but a few.
General outcry
Laurent-Desiré Kabila’s son has once again failed in an exercise that never works for him. The outcry is widespread in Congolese opinion, which wonders by what magic a former head of state is still unable to detach himself from power in order to preach wisdom and role models, but believes himself to be invested with some divine mission to always remind the Congolese people of him in an unpleasant way. For the rest, the less sarcastic Congolese share the conviction that, in reality, Kabila has failed once again in his attempt to launch his message, which can be summed up as follows: I am the moral authority of the aggression. Then, I am available for talks. Then, I have conditions, and as you are not going to accept them, I am going to go to Goma to unite the rebel movements in a sort of revised and corrected AFDL to wage war on this country that I claim to love but which does not love me back. Those Congolese who still had scales on their eyes have seen the masks fall off. The brutal truths that emerge from this speech are there to help everyone make the historic leap. These brutal truths include the fact that the President of the PPRD ignores the presence of the Rwandan army in the DRC, but asks his so-called country to drive out its partners. He relays and amplifies the claims of Rwanda and the M23, whose spokesman he makes himself in order to justify and whitewash their crimes on Congolese territory. He sympathized with the officers who were complicit in the treachery and claimed their loyalty to the man who had recruited and trained them. He calls on the military to disobey, pretending that in his time he paid them better. At the same time, he flattered the bishops by accusing the current regime of refusing to engage in the dialogue it so earnestly seeks in order to return to the political game, by positioning himself as the leader of the opposition. Finally, while revealing his cowardice by refusing to take responsibility for his recent visit to Goma, he also and above all sent a key message to the people of the East by failing to condemn the massacres in Goma and Bukavu by Rwandan special forces and their auxiliaries. This is the man who wanted to present himself as the saviour of the Congolese people, but who only succeeded in the sad feat of presenting himself as the moral authority of the aggression. The Auditor General of the FARDC now has additional material at his disposal.ACP/