President of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) Joseph Kabila has one of the most daunting challenges facing any African leader – how to end ongoing armed violence, achieve political stability and work through the trauma caused by a five-year war that is estimated to have claimed the lives of more than three million people.
This job falls to a 34-year-old whose own father, Laurent-Desire Kabila, was assassinated during the almost ceaseless turmoil that befell the country following the overthrow by the elder Kabila of the Mobutu Sese Seko regime in 1997. Even now the country has not escaped from the threat of renewed war with ongoing violence in the east, threats of invasion from Rwanda, coup attempts in the capital Kinshasa and a faction-ridden and precarious transitional government.
Planned elections to cement the peace pact to end the war have been delayed from the original June 2005 schedule. However, the country’s first polls do promise a new beginning for the DRC and its recent ruinous foreign relations with neighbouring Rwanda and Uganda.
Mr Kabila has the world community on his side with debt relief and sustained aid flows in the pipeline. The IMF and the World Bank are providing a steadying hand and have been supportive of his move to incorporate members of opposition groups Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD) and Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC) in the transitional government since 2003.
Mr Kabila has already shown some ability at leading the faction-ridden transitional government. He has won additional approval from potential lenders by sacking leading ministers at the end of last year after a parliamentary investigation found widespread corruption in government departments. The economy is also starting to grow after the war that dragged in six regional armies, all vying for a slice of the DRC’s abundant mineral wealth.
Indeed, the DRC’s main engine of economic growth – its vast mineral resources of copper, cobalt, diamonds and tin to name just a few – is also slowly coming back to life with foreign investors such as AngloGold Ashanti prospecting in the country, despite Kinshasa’s less than firm control over major parts of the country.
