DRC neighbours eye run-off
2006-10-24 11:51
Kinshasa - The Democratic Republic of Congo's neighbours may have pulled their armies out of the vast mineral-rich territory, but they will be keeping a nervous eye out for vested interests in Sunday's presidential run-off.
The DRC's 1998-2003 war broke out after Rwanda and Uganda launched proxy rebel groups from eastern Congo in a bid to topple their former ally Laurent Kabila. At the war's height, six foreign armies fought over the DRC's resources.
A bodyguard shot father Kabila dead in 2001 but his ruling clique, heavily influenced by allies Angola and Zimbabwe, ensured his son Joseph slid into the seat of power.
Officials from various governments refused to be drawn on whether they favoured Joseph Kabila or former Ugandan-backed rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba in Sunday's run-off vote.
But, analysts said Kabila had more regional support.
Kabila 'not able to end the rot'
Ross Herbert, an analyst at the South African Institute of International Affairs, said: "I think the devil you know is sometimes less frightening than the one you don't.
"Kabila has not been able to demonstrate himself as a manager or to be able to end the rot ... But then, as for Bemba, there is no real sense of what the man is about. It's not entirely clear what his message is."
After a costly and fraught peace process, which still had to pacify militias in the DRC's lawless east, the greatest fear for many was a return to war should Sunday's loser refuse to accept the poll result - especially after Kabila and Bemba's soldiers fought in Kinshasa in August, killing more than 30.
Chileshe Mulenga, head of the Institute for Economic and Social Research, a Lusaka think-tank, warned investment might suffer: "Investors, especially those from Europe and Asia, don't isolate individual countries when looking at this region."
SA 'wants to invest in DRC'
Military analysts said Angolan troops had been training Kabila's forces in border areas, while other countries had expanded their economic interests in the DRC since the war.
Henri Boschoff of the Institute of Security Studies in Pretoria said: "South Africa would like to stabilise and then invest in the DRC. But, Angola considers the DRC as its own backyard. It will be interesting to see how these two powers accommodate each other in the Congo."
Even Rwanda, which fought the Kabilas for years, appeared to have accommodated Joseph Kabila after a series of peace deals.
Rosemary Museminari, Rwanda's state minister for cooperation, said: "We do not support any candidate. We want to work in peace with whoever wins." She said any electoral violence could send the region "back to the days of chaos".
Crucially for Rwanda, Museminari said both Kabila and Bemba had given assurances that if elected they would address the matter of the Rwanda Liberation Democratic Front (FDLR), which included ethnic Hutus who slaughtered more than 800 000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the 1994 genocide and fled into the DRC.