Kabila & the Congo

[rowan]

DRC leader Joseph Kabila is refusing to step down at the end of his two-term mandate in December, instead attempting to postpone elections until 2018, sparking protests which killed 53 people last month, all but five of them by the armed forces and presidential guards. A further 143 people were injured, including women and children, while hundreds were arrested. The UN has adjudged excessive force was used, and in fact over 600 members of the nation's military and police force have been convicted of human rights violations since 2014 alone.

Kabila has actually been in power since 2001, taking office after his father's assassination. Laurent Kabila had seized power from long-standing dictator Mobutu in 1997, leading to six years of civil war which resulted in as many as six million deaths - approximately half of them children. In addition to this there were hundreds of thousands of rapes, used as a tactic to destroy communities, and it is estimated that tens of thousands of rapes continue to be carried out by soliders and rebels every year. The conflict was not strictly an internal affair either, with Rwanda and Uganda playing a major role, and Zimbabwe and Namibia sending troops at one stage.

Joseph Kabila has failed to bring an end to the crisis, instead running the central African nation of 70 million as a dictatorship and police state, enforced by an army of unruly thugs. But like his father and Mobutu before him, he has allowed the West to carry on exploiting the nation's vast natural resources, which include gold, copper, diamonds, cobalt and tungsten, and has therefore received the backing of both Western governments and mining companies, of course.

Meanwhile, Rwanda and Uganda have continued to raid and plunder, using the presence of Hutu rebels in the Congo as a pretext. Hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees have been killed, but almost certainly bore no connection to the rebels, with many of the victims being women and children. The US has been providing support, including weapons and training, while Rwanda remains a major beneficiary of US aid.

The US - and UK -also supported Mobutu, whose 32-year-long reign has been compared in terms of its brutality to Belgian rule under King Leopold II, who is credited with the murder of millions, while making a billion dollars off its ivory and rubber, then gold and diamonds, once they were discovered. The US was the first country in the world to recognize Leopold's claim to the territory.

The Congo gained its independence in 1960 and promising young independence leader Patrice Lumumba was elected its first prime minister. However, his attempts to nationalize its lucrative mineral industries and put an end to Western plundering rankled both Washington and Brussels and his pleas for support against rebels fell on deaf ears. Lumumba therefore approached the USSR, a fateful decision which resulted in his murder by those rebels, with CIA and Belgian backing. This has been described as the 'most important assassination of the 20th century;' sending shockwaves through the continent at the dawn of the post-colonial era.

[rowan]

Congolese reject an extension of Kabila's term in office:

Congolese overwhelmingly oppose changing the constitution to allow President Joseph Kabila to stand for a third term and believe he should step down at the end of his mandate in December, according to a opinion poll published on Tuesday.

http://pulse.ng/world/joseph-kabila-con ... 54336.html

[SerjeantWildgoose]

Joseph Kabila has failed to bring an end to the crisis, instead running the central African nation of 70 million as a dictatorship and police state, enforced by an army of unruly thugs. But like his father and Mobutu before him, he has allowed the West to carry on exploiting the nation's vast natural resources, which include gold, copper, diamonds, cobalt and tungsten, and has therefore received the backing of both Western governments and mining companies, of course.

Meanwhile, Rwanda and Uganda have continued to raid and plunder, using the presence of Hutu rebels in the Congo as a pretext. Hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees have been killed, but almost certainly bore no connection to the rebels, with many of the victims being women and children. The US has been providing support, including weapons and training, while Rwanda remains a major beneficiary of US aid.

I've served in the Congo.

1st things 1st, it is not a nation, few African countries are nation-states as we in the west understand them (Remembering that we in the west made them). The Congo is a vast territory, most of which is inaccessible and far beyond the control of any central government. Blaming Kabila for failing to bring an end to 'the crisis' is like blaming the king of Tonga for failing to bring a stop to the Second World War. The territory is inhabited by communities which tend towards family-based tribal loyalty first. Many of the so-called warring groups have sprung from local defence militias; not that this excuses their brutality, which is legion, but unruly thugery is not the exclusive preserve of the Congolese police or FARDC.

If the DCR were free to capture and use the full extent of its mineral riches, it would be as rich as any Gulf state. Not only does it have some of the richest reserves of copper, cobalt and tungsten, but it has the richest deposits of Coltan - you can't make a mobile phone without the stuff. It also has the richest deposits of Uranium (The stuff for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs was mined in the Congo), so you can understand why everyone wants to keep a lid on the place.

Pointless pointing the finger at Rwanda, Uganda and everyone of the other states that share a border - we've all been guilty of interfering in the place. It is an absolute mess, its president is a cunt and there are foul atrocities visited upon its population every day of the week by a myriad of other cunts.

And if I see a single discernible change in my lifetime, I'll die of the shock.

[kk67]

Are the Chinese also taking their share of the booty..?.

[rowan]

I think the Chinese are more interested in trading with the African nations than exploiting them through a Big Man 'dictatorship,' as the Europeans and Americans tend to do.

Good comments, Sarge, and I fully agree with you about that. But Kabila is undoubtedly a corrupt and authoratarian leader within his own domains and its good to see the referendum going against him on the extension to his term in office. What happens next is anybody's guess. Will he attempt to cling to power anyway (probably), or step down like a gentleman (not so likely)?

[rowan]

Meanwhile, I see that Gambia is following South Africa and Burundi out of the International Criminal Court, claiming it was mostly only prosecuting Africans., while ignoring the horrific war crimes of non-African leaders such as Tony Blair (their words, I would have included at least a dozen Americans, of course). Interestingly the African Criminal Court seemed to come of age this year with the conviction of Chadian butcher Hissene Habre, so perhaps that wil be their recourse for justice henceforth.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/10/g ... 36188.html

[kk67]

I think the Chinese are more interested in trading with the African nations than exploiting them through a Big Man 'dictatorship,' as the Europeans and Americans tend to do.

That's partly why I asked. DRC usually requires western interests to hire local militia which by proxy brutalizes and divides the country even further. Are the Chinese more conscientious or just more distant from the DRC's infrastructure.
When you say China is more interested in trading with African nations, that usually implies China helping with their infrastructure..?.

[kk67]

I suppose an ecological case could be made to the effect that the difficulty in providing a stable central government and road/rail links to remote areas does stop loss of habitat. The miners can be protected but you can't protect the loggers. They'd be sitting ducks.

I love wiki.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforesta ... _the_Congo

[SerjeantWildgoose]

It is said that the DRC is one of the few places on the planet where a child is less likely to see a car than his grandfather was. The place is going backwards.

The Chinese? On the surface they appear to be carrying out a very benevolent form of capitalism, investing in infrastructure (Roads, mainly) throughout Africa in order to promote trade. That this infrastructure is shoddy beyond imagination seems not to attract any attention at all. When I was working in DRC, I spent too much of my time in Kinshasa in the run up to the 50th anniversary of independence. The Chinese were rebuilding the main thoroughfare through the centre of the city, Boulevard Trente Juin. The Congolese are the most chaotic drivers I have ever encountered, and for 3-4 months Trente Juin became a death trap by virtue of the Chinese road-works (All the professional engineers employed on the project were shipped in from China, and not a single one of them had the first clue about how to manage the traffic around the works).

I remember that while this was going on, every security agency on the planet was tracking a container ship that was making its way down the west coast of Africa. Its manifest contained just about every bit of former-Soviet military hardware a discerning coup-commander could wish for. Betting was that it was bound for Sudan, but it hove-to in Luanda and the contents were put onto trains and low-loaders bound for Kinshasa. Kabila had decided to put on a show for the 50th Anniversary and had bought the kit to beef up the parade. At this point, the Chinese engineers decided to come clean and informed him that they had not built the Class 70 road that they had promised, but had essentially thrown down a few inches of sand and covered it with a layer of two of asphalt. Essentially they'd put down a couple of layers of shed roofing felt. It would have torn up under the tracks of the first T55, like a Murrayfield pitch with the nematodes at home.

Since the world and his aunt were invited to the parade, Kabila had to change the venue and it took place on the one bit of the concrete outer ring road that survived from the Belgians. This ran in front of the Stade Tata Raphael, scene of Ali and Foreman's Rumble in the Jungle. By way of an apology, the Chinese offered to refurbish the stadium, but all they ended up doing was opening it up for the looters to get in.

I can also remember standing on a dockside in Freetown talking to the Sierra Leonean Coast Guard officer who was responsible for trying to keep their few maritime craft in service. They had 3 US-provided in-shore patrol boats, 2 of which had been harvested of parts to keep 1 in the water, and a recently donated Second World War-vintage riverine patrol vessel 'generously' donated by the Chinese. Sierra Leone does not have a navigable river and the riverine patrol vessel was too unstable to get beyond the rip tides that play along the west African coast (Tits on a bull!). The Coast Guard officer was truly distraught as he knew that the Chinese fishing fleet was just over the maritime horizon, stripping Sierra Leone's territorial waters of fish stocks. They even had the audacity to have their factory fleet at anchor in the lagoon. A friend who was working down in Abuja did some work with the WFP and calculated that the Chinese were factory fishing stocks to the value of 30% of the combined GDP of all of the west African states from Dakar down to Lagos. They further calculated that the nutritional value of the protein that was being stolen would resolve all of the dietary-related diseases in the countries being stolen from.

One last story. When I was working in Monrovia, the main route from the airport to the city had been rebuilt by the Chinese. Most of the road was fine, but as it approaches Monrovia, it traversed some pretty difficult low-lying ground along the narrow isthmus between the Atlantic and the mangrove swamps and lagoon. Monrovia is the wettest capital city on earth because of the ferocity of the rainy season. The very first night of rain that came after the road had been completed washed away about 100m of the sand that the Chinese had used as the foundation . A chunk of the top cover broke away and was carried to the sea on a tide of flood water, destroying everything in its path. About 50 people were killed by it. In payment for this murderously crap work, the Chinese had received a concession to rebuild and bring back into service the port at Buchanan, with a connecting railway up to Yekepa, one of the richest remaining Iron ore deposits on the planet. Did they open up the port, railway and mines? Did they feck. They stripped all of them of any scrap metal and shipped it all off to China.

Still, its great to know that these feckers are being lined up to build nuclear power stations in Cumbria!

[kk67]

Hammy,...how do I pay subs'..?.

[rowan]

So far as I know the Chinese tend to work mostly with democratic governments, like SA, Zambia and Kenya (perhaps because the US and Europe have all the brutal dictatorships covered). There is also the language barrier, of course, as SW touched upon, with Chinese laborers generally unable to communicate in either English or French - the major lengua francas of the continent.

[Adder]

It is said that the DRC is one of the few places on the planet where a child is less likely to see a car than his grandfather was. The place is going backwards.

The Chinese? On the surface they appear to be carrying out a very benevolent form of capitalism, investing in infrastructure (Roads, mainly) throughout Africa in order to promote trade. That this infrastructure is shoddy beyond imagination seems not to attract any attention at all. When I was working in DRC, I spent too much of my time in Kinshasa in the run up to the 50th anniversary of independence. The Chinese were rebuilding the main thoroughfare through the centre of the city, Boulevard Trente Juin. The Congolese are the most chaotic drivers I have ever encountered, and for 3-4 months Trente Juin became a death trap by virtue of the Chinese road-works (All the professional engineers employed on the project were shipped in from China, and not a single one of them had the first clue about how to manage the traffic around the works).

I remember that while this was going on, every security agency on the planet was tracking a container ship that was making its way down the west coast of Africa. Its manifest contained just about every bit of former-Soviet military hardware a discerning coup-commander could wish for. Betting was that it was bound for Sudan, but it hove-to in Luanda and the contents were put onto trains and low-loaders bound for Kinshasa. Kabila had decided to put on a show for the 50th Anniversary and had bought the kit to beef up the parade. At this point, the Chinese engineers decided to come clean and informed him that they had not built the Class 70 road that they had promised, but had essentially thrown down a few inches of sand and covered it with a layer of two of asphalt. Essentially they'd put down a couple of layers of shed roofing felt. It would have torn up under the tracks of the first T55, like a Murrayfield pitch with the nematodes at home.

Since the world and his aunt were invited to the parade, Kabila had to change the venue and it took place on the one bit of the concrete outer ring road that survived from the Belgians. This ran in front of the Stade Tata Raphael, scene of Ali and Foreman's Rumble in the Jungle. By way of an apology, the Chinese offered to refurbish the stadium, but all they ended up doing was opening it up for the looters to get in.

I can also remember standing on a dockside in Freetown talking to the Sierra Leonean Coast Guard officer who was responsible for trying to keep their few maritime craft in service. They had 3 US-provided in-shore patrol boats, 2 of which had been harvested of parts to keep 1 in the water, and a recently donated Second World War-vintage riverine patrol vessel 'generously' donated by the Chinese. Sierra Leone does not have a navigable river and the riverine patrol vessel was too unstable to get beyond the rip tides that play along the west African coast (Tits on a bull!). The Coast Guard officer was truly distraught as he knew that the Chinese fishing fleet was just over the maritime horizon, stripping Sierra Leone's territorial waters of fish stocks. They even had the audacity to have their factory fleet at anchor in the lagoon. A friend who was working down in Abuja did some work with the WFP and calculated that the Chinese were factory fishing stocks to the value of 30% of the combined GDP of all of the west African states from Dakar down to Lagos. They further calculated that the nutritional value of the protein that was being stolen would resolve all of the dietary-related diseases in the countries being stolen from.

One last story. When I was working in Monrovia, the main route from the airport to the city had been rebuilt by the Chinese. Most of the road was fine, but as it approaches Monrovia, it traversed some pretty difficult low-lying ground along the narrow isthmus between the Atlantic and the mangrove swamps and lagoon. Monrovia is the wettest capital city on earth because of the ferocity of the rainy season. The very first night of rain that came after the road had been completed washed away about 100m of the sand that the Chinese had used as the foundation . A chunk of the top cover broke away and was carried to the sea on a tide of flood water, destroying everything in its path. About 50 people were killed by it. In payment for this murderously crap work, the Chinese had received a concession to rebuild and bring back into service the port at Buchanan, with a connecting railway up to Yekepa, one of the richest remaining Iron ore deposits on the planet. Did they open up the port, railway and mines? Did they feck. They stripped all of them of any scrap metal and shipped it all off to China.

Still, its great to know that these feckers are being lined up to build nuclear power stations in Cumbria!

What an interesting post! You seem to have travelled a fair bit!

[kk67]

UKH,...I wanna pay my subs.

[OptimisticJock]

Great post.

[rowan]

Meanwhile, I see that Gambia is following South Africa and Burundi out of the International Criminal Court, claiming it was mostly only prosecuting Africans., while ignoring the horrific war crimes of non-African leaders such as Tony Blair (their words, I would have included at least a dozen Americans, of course). Interestingly the African Criminal Court seemed to come of age this year with the conviction of Chadian butcher Hissene Habre, so perhaps that wil be their recourse for justice henceforth.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/10/g ... 36188.html

Mali, Congo, Central African Rep., Sudan, Kenya and Uganda could be set to join the exodus. The latter has described the ICC as a 'tool to target Africa,' while Gambia calls it a 'Caucasian Court' which has failed to prosecute NATO leaders for their war crimes. The ICC was formed in 2002 and has so far convicted 32 people, all but a few of them African, including a Malian who was sentenced to 9 years' imprisonment for destroying historic shrines. Now, I love historical shrines as much as everybody else does, but I don't think that quite compares to destroying entire nations and killing millions of people, somehow

[SerjeantWildgoose]

Rowan, I'm surprised that you take this position with Al Mahdi. Might I first point out that as a leading lieutenant of Ansar Dine, he was responsible for a lot more human suffering than the mere destruction of the treasures of an ancient civilisation in Tombouctou, but let's leave that to one side.

As one who has been vocal in condemning Israel's destruction of Palestinian heritage and history - and rightly so - you would seem to be showing, at the very least, a pretty hefty degree of inconsistency.

Al Mahdi is behind bars where he belongs, as are the others who have been convicted by the ICC. Just because you feel that Bush and Blair should be in the nick with him, does not make the ICC's conviction of the likes of Al Mahdi and Charles Taylor any less valid.

[rowan]

Rowan, I'm surprised that you take this position with Al Mahdi. Might I first point out that as a leading lieutenant of Ansar Dine, he was responsible for a lot more human suffering than the mere destruction of the treasures of an ancient civilisation in Tombouctou, but let's leave that to one side.

Undoubtedly, but I was commenting only on the conviction, and comparing it to the non-conviction (non-trial, in fact) of NATO leaders who have bombed countries to smithereens. As for his role within Ansar Dine, I'm not familiar with the details, only that NATO's destruction of Libya and the murder of Gaddaffi enabled the group to gain high-tech weaponry and become a major force.

As one who has been vocal in condemning Israel's destruction of Palestinian heritage and history - and rightly so - you would seem to be showing, at the very least, a pretty hefty degree of inconsistency.

Now this is a real strange comment, if you don't mind me saying. I've mostly expressed my outrage over the slaughter and inhumane treatment of Palestinian natives by Israel and devoted very little attention to their cultural heritage. That's not to say I disregard it, however; neither there nor in Mali nor anywhere else. I've already noted my aversion to the destruction of cultural heritage in Mali, but suggested it did not compare with the destruction of entire nations and the deaths of millions of people. You yourself referred in your first paragraph to the "mere" destruction of the treasures of an ancient civilization.



Al Mahdi is behind bars where he belongs, as are the others who have been convicted by the ICC. Just because you feel that Bush and Blair should be in the nick with him, does not make the ICC's conviction of the likes of Al Mahdi and Charles Taylor any less valid.

The validity of their convictions is clearly not the point. Of course they should be behind bars. The point is that non-African leaders guilty in some cases of even greater crimes are not being convicted. Instead they're wandering freely, is some cases making a fortune out of the military industrial complex - and in one about to be 'elected' president. That's why the African nations are starting to pull out of the ICC, and I'm 100% with them on that. Let an African court deal with African leaders. They've already made a good start with the conviction of former CIA-backed Chadian butcher Hissene Habre in Senegal earlier this year.

[rowan]

The US Justice Department last month fined a Wall Street hedge fund, Och-Ziff, for paying bribes to African ministers in exchange for mineral rights. The African countries involved included Libya, Guinea, Chad, Niger, and Congo, but the focus was on the latter, and in particular president Joseph Kabila himself. Given bribery is common practice within international politics, it can only be assumed Kabila has been targetted because he has been favoring Chinese investors over their American and British counterparts. In other words, the US Justice Department is enforcing the law when favourable to American interests, and is thereby a corrupt institution being used to bring down foreign leaders who refuse to play ball.

Incidentally, the London-based arm of Och-Ziff was involved in the BAE scandal. BAE Systems is a multi-national defence, security and aerospace company that narrowly escaped investigation by the UK Serious Fraud Office for corruption in the Al Yamamah Arms Deal a decade ago; the biggest arms deals in history with Saudi Arabia. Tony Blair put a stop to the investigation.

[switchskier]

It is said that the DRC is one of the few places on the planet where a child is less likely to see a car than his grandfather was. The place is going backwards.

The Chinese? On the surface they appear to be carrying out a very benevolent form of capitalism, investing in infrastructure (Roads, mainly) throughout Africa in order to promote trade. That this infrastructure is shoddy beyond imagination seems not to attract any attention at all. When I was working in DRC, I spent too much of my time in Kinshasa in the run up to the 50th anniversary of independence. The Chinese were rebuilding the main thoroughfare through the centre of the city, Boulevard Trente Juin. The Congolese are the most chaotic drivers I have ever encountered, and for 3-4 months Trente Juin became a death trap by virtue of the Chinese road-works (All the professional engineers employed on the project were shipped in from China, and not a single one of them had the first clue about how to manage the traffic around the works).

I remember that while this was going on, every security agency on the planet was tracking a container ship that was making its way down the west coast of Africa. Its manifest contained just about every bit of former-Soviet military hardware a discerning coup-commander could wish for. Betting was that it was bound for Sudan, but it hove-to in Luanda and the contents were put onto trains and low-loaders bound for Kinshasa. Kabila had decided to put on a show for the 50th Anniversary and had bought the kit to beef up the parade. At this point, the Chinese engineers decided to come clean and informed him that they had not built the Class 70 road that they had promised, but had essentially thrown down a few inches of sand and covered it with a layer of two of asphalt. Essentially they'd put down a couple of layers of shed roofing felt. It would have torn up under the tracks of the first T55, like a Murrayfield pitch with the nematodes at home.

Since the world and his aunt were invited to the parade, Kabila had to change the venue and it took place on the one bit of the concrete outer ring road that survived from the Belgians. This ran in front of the Stade Tata Raphael, scene of Ali and Foreman's Rumble in the Jungle. By way of an apology, the Chinese offered to refurbish the stadium, but all they ended up doing was opening it up for the looters to get in.

I can also remember standing on a dockside in Freetown talking to the Sierra Leonean Coast Guard officer who was responsible for trying to keep their few maritime craft in service. They had 3 US-provided in-shore patrol boats, 2 of which had been harvested of parts to keep 1 in the water, and a recently donated Second World War-vintage riverine patrol vessel 'generously' donated by the Chinese. Sierra Leone does not have a navigable river and the riverine patrol vessel was too unstable to get beyond the rip tides that play along the west African coast (Tits on a bull!). The Coast Guard officer was truly distraught as he knew that the Chinese fishing fleet was just over the maritime horizon, stripping Sierra Leone's territorial waters of fish stocks. They even had the audacity to have their factory fleet at anchor in the lagoon. A friend who was working down in Abuja did some work with the WFP and calculated that the Chinese were factory fishing stocks to the value of 30% of the combined GDP of all of the west African states from Dakar down to Lagos. They further calculated that the nutritional value of the protein that was being stolen would resolve all of the dietary-related diseases in the countries being stolen from.

One last story. When I was working in Monrovia, the main route from the airport to the city had been rebuilt by the Chinese. Most of the road was fine, but as it approaches Monrovia, it traversed some pretty difficult low-lying ground along the narrow isthmus between the Atlantic and the mangrove swamps and lagoon. Monrovia is the wettest capital city on earth because of the ferocity of the rainy season. The very first night of rain that came after the road had been completed washed away about 100m of the sand that the Chinese had used as the foundation . A chunk of the top cover broke away and was carried to the sea on a tide of flood water, destroying everything in its path. About 50 people were killed by it. In payment for this murderously crap work, the Chinese had received a concession to rebuild and bring back into service the port at Buchanan, with a connecting railway up to Yekepa, one of the richest remaining Iron ore deposits on the planet. Did they open up the port, railway and mines? Did they feck. They stripped all of them of any scrap metal and shipped it all off to China.

Still, its great to know that these feckers are being lined up to build nuclear power stations in Cumbria!

I've been to Monrovia, fascinating city. Despite the road distaster China has just agreed a $50m loan to revamp the airport (Air France stopped flying because the runway did so much damage to its planes that the maintenance costs made the route untenable). To put that in context $50m is probably more than 10% of the governments tax revenues for the year so in some instances it's not surprising that western contractors get outbid, though I haven't seen anything on the terms and conditions of the contract.

If you want the lower price then generally you compromise on quality and environmental concerns. In Lamu, Kenya there is a coal fired power plant being built that Beijing has banned from being built in China because of the pollution concerns. In fairness I should point out that Kenya is a world leader in geothermal energy.

The Chinese investment in Africa can be vastly overstated, though it's hard to know because there's no transparency about what is actually ever invested and where the money goes to. There are good headlines to be had from announcing a $60 billion dollar investment package but in reality only small fractions of that money ever appears. The best figures that I've seen were from the Brookings Institute that suggested that Chinese FDI in 2015 added up to about 3-5% of the total FDI on the continent.

[rowan]

Of course, if the ICC did try to prosecute any Americans, the US would simply invoke its 2002 'Netherlands Invasions Act' and bomb The Hague. Indeed, Congress passed a law enabling the US to do this the year the international war crimes tribunal was formed, in case any Americans should be brought before it. That's the world we live in, and that's why Africans are wanting out of the ICC.

[rowan]

Are the Chinese also taking their share of the booty..?.

Interesting report on that come up on CNN:

Increasing Chinese investment in everything from small food enterprises to massive railway projects across Africa has drawn criticism and warnings of a future dependency on Asia's superpower.

But what do Africans themselves think about Chinese investors? Turns out, they love them.
According to a recent report by Afrobarometer, almost two-thirds (63%) of Africans say China's influence is somewhat positive or very positive, while only 15% see it as somewhat or very negative.

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/03/afric ... index.html

[rowan]

Republic of Congo (not to be confused with Kabila's Democratic Republic of Congo) has followed SA, Burundi & Gambia out of the International Criminal Court. The Republic of Congo is a much small nation of about 4.5 million with its capital at Brazzaville.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-congo ... 2Z12C?il=0

[rowan]

Looks like Kabila is the Congolese Erdogan, changing the rules now to extend his rule beyond the mandate: http://www.herald.co.zw/hands-off-drc-kabila/

[kk67]

I can't contribute to the fund,..FFS...

[rowan]

Didn't quite understand that comment, sorry.

Meanwhile Kabila has appointed opposition politician Samy Badibanga prime minister in a power-sharing deal which has been widely ciriticized as a ploy to stay in power. Badibanga used to be a leading member of the main opposition group, the UDPS, before defying orders and setting up his own party. Therefore his nomination has been described as both a 'provocation' and a 'non-event.'