DRC voters hope for end of war
2006-10-30 07:40
Kinshasa - Congo's four-year post-war transition climaxed with a runoff election between a president and a rebel warlord, as voters held onto hope they would soon see the end of a decades-old cycle of war and despotism that had shadowed the heart of Africa.
Sunday's voting was largely peaceful, but there was no guarantee the violence was over.
Forces loyal to 35-year-old President Joseph Kabila and 44-year-old Jean-Pierre Bemba - a former rebel leader who was now a vice-president in a power-sharing government - battled with tanks and heavy weapons in the run-up, and at least two deaths were reported on Sunday.
Kabila and Bemba had promised a peaceful vote and pledged to accept the results.
'We live in fear'
Santos Kambale, a 42-year-old civil servant who spoke in the eastern town of Goma shortly after polls opened, said: "Our people are still suffering because of insecurity. We live in fear. We hope this vote will make our lives better."
In the northern town of Bumba, more than 200 Bemba supporters looted polling stations and burned ballots in reaction to rumours that officials were stuffing ballot boxes with votes for Kabila.
A police commissioner said a 15-year-old boy died and another person was wounded by stray bullets after troops guarding a station there fired into the air.
Elsewhere in the same province, a United Nations-supported radio station reported one person was killed and three injured after naval forces shot at pro-Bemba demonstrators who were protesting alleged ballot-stuffing in Lisala.
Anneke Van Woudenberg of New York-based Human Rights Watch said that thousands of people in the northeast were prevented from voting by blockades set up by soldiers demanding money for passage.
DRC 'one of the biggest countries'
Congolese were eager to see their tumultuous country take its place among the continent's modern democracies. Until a constitutional referendum last year, most people had never voted in their lives.
Mluleki George, South Africa's deputy defence minister and head of that country's observer mission for the vote, said: "If there's peace and stability here, you could have peace and stability in the whole Great Lakes region.
"This is one of the biggest countries in Africa. It can be the breadbasket for the whole central region." The DRC had instead been a vortex of conflict.
A 1998-2002 war pulled in armies from half a dozen African nations, including Rwanda, Uganda, Angola and Zimbabwe. Aid groups estimated that four million died during the conflict, most from hunger and disease that accompanied the fighting.
The post-war transition had been secured by the largest UN mission in the world, a 17 600-strong force backed up for the vote by 2 500 European Union troops in Congo and Gabon.
Pius Bukasa, a clothing store owner in Kinshasa, said: "We've only had a change of government through coups d'etat or force."
- AP