Kabila eager to rebuild DRC

KINSHASA – Joseph Kabila, a man tipped to stay at the helm after presidential elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo on October 29, wants a democratic mandate to go on rebuilding a devastated nation.

Kabila, who took office in 2001 and was Africa’s youngest head of state at 35, took 44,8% of the first round votes, campaigning on the strength of achievements including ending a war, reuniting the country and a “promise kept” to hold the first free elections in more than 40 years. His image of peacemaker was tarnished in August after bloody clashes erupted in Kinshasa, claiming 23 lives, and tanks of the presidential guard surrounded the home of his rival for the presidency, former rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba.Foreign diplomats posted to a nation that was at the heart of a regional war before a difficult three-year political transition had been alarmed to see the growth of Kabila’s military arsenal and by bellicose talk among some of his entourage.His political war machine, the Alliance of the Presidential Majority (AMP), had won more than 200 of 500 seats in the new parliament and gained critical backing in the presidential poll from the support of longtime opposition leader Antoine Gizenga.Kabila was a child of eastern DRC, many hundreds of kilometres from the capital.He was born in Lulenge in Sud-Kivu province, then a stronghold of his father Laurent-Desire Kabila, who was to oust the country’s kleptocratic ruler Mobutu Sese Seko and take power himself in May 1997.The boy went into exile in Tanzania at the age of five, grew up there and had military training in the east African country, then became a law student in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, in 1996.But, as soon as the rebel war to oust Mobutu broke out in September of that same year, Kabila joined his father, who presented the young officer as his military advisor.Nampa-AFPHis image of peacemaker was tarnished in August after bloody clashes erupted in Kinshasa, claiming 23 lives, and tanks of the presidential guard surrounded the home of his rival for the presidency, former rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba.Foreign diplomats posted to a nation that was at the heart of a regional war before a difficult three-year political transition had been alarmed to see the growth of Kabila’s military arsenal and by bellicose talk among some of his entourage.His political war machine, the Alliance of the Presidential Majority (AMP), had won more than 200 of 500 seats in the new parliament and gained critical backing in the presidential poll from the support of longtime opposition leader Antoine Gizenga.Kabila was a child of eastern DRC, many hundreds of kilometres from the capital.He was born in Lulenge in Sud-Kivu province, then a stronghold of his father Laurent-Desire Kabila, who was to oust the country’s kleptocratic ruler Mobutu Sese Seko and take power himself in May 1997.The boy went into exile in Tanzania at the age of five, grew up there and had military training in the east African country, then became a law student in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, in 1996.But, as soon as the rebel war to oust Mobutu broke out in September of that same year, Kabila joined his father, who presented the young officer as his military advisor.Nampa-AFP