Radio-Trottoir: On Dialogue & on Dissembler-in-chief Paul Kagame

(PHOTO: Prez Paul Kagame in Addis Ababa, Sunday, February 24, 2013)



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Growing anger is palpable in the streets and among radical

oppositionists in Kinshasa following the signing in Addis Ababa,

Ethiopia, on Sunday, February 24, of the so-called "Peace, Security

and Cooperation Framework for the DRC and the Region."



The mood was already deleterious when Speaker Aubin Minaku started

holding talks with various political players and civil society

stakeholders in preparation of the consultations billed as the

"national dialogue against balkanization" called two months ago by

President Joseph Kabila.



Some in the opposition misconstrued this dialogue as yet another

platform where new modalities of power-sharing between the ruling

majority and the opposition would be defined.



This group insisted that Kabila couldn't possibly chair or facilitate

such a dialogue as he was one among other stakeholders who were his

peers. They were advocating instead that the venue of the dialogue be

moved to the right bank of the Congo River, to Brazzaville, with

Congo-Brazzaville President Denis Sassou Nguesso as facilitator.



A non-starter for stalwarts in Kabila camp, who are also frowning on

the new-found friendship between Sassou Nguesso and President Paul

Kagame.



UDPS leader and self-proclaimed president is right now abroad, in

South Africa, for what is rumored to be health reasons. But through

spokespersons, UDPS has set impossible prerequisites for its

participation, including the acknowledgement by Kabila that he didn't

win the November 2011 presidential election.



Then came the signing in Addis of the Framework, which many feel here

that it has short-changed the Congolese.



"Why doesn't the Framework single out Rwanda and Uganda namely as the

aggressors of the DRC?" is a mantra one hears in the streets or in

particularly heated exchanges in political TV shows.



Then there is the "issue," according to some, or the "insult,"

according to others, of the statement, strewn with falsehoods and

outright lies, made by Kagame prior to his signing the Framework.



Kinois are at a loss to understand why Kabila didn't just walk out of

the room when Kagame--moniker "Dissembler-in-Chief"-- proffered these

two shocking lies:



1) "We are all here to pursue one objective: to see security,

stability and peace emerge in DRC and our region."



If this has been Kagame's objective all along, why has he created M23

to begin with? Why has he sent Rwandan troops in reinforcement to M23

back in November 2012 to seize the city of Goma?



This amounts to adding insult to injury, as it were.



2) "[T]he framework recognizes that a holistic approach that addresses

the multi-faceted root causes is the only way to end instability."



This remark is interpreted as the de facto concretization of the

much-dreaded "balkanization" of the DRC.



Are the M23 part of this "holistic approach" to end instability in

North Kivu Province? Though the government insists that M23 is a

"negative force" bound to be dismantled one way or the other, why are

Kampala talks with M23 still ongoing?



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PHOTO: Paul Kagame Flickr Photo Stream.

No Comment: Zapiro writes the Blade Runner under erasure

A botched Wonga Coup masterminded by a nutcase with moniker of Etienne Kabila

(PHOTO: 46-year-old Etienne Kiza aka Etienne Taratibu Kabila,

self-proclaimed oldest son of Mzee Laurent-Désiré Kabila. He claims to

be the rightful heir to the DRC presidency)



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As the DRC still reels from the Rwandan-backed M23's military

occupation of vast swaths of North Kivu Province, Congolese were

shocked to learn about the arrest in early February in the northern

South African province of Limpompo of 19 Congolese coup d'etat

plotters.



The 19 men, who were training in weapons handling and tactics, were

being monitored for quite some time by the Hawks, an elite South

African intelligence unit.



The arsenal found in their possession is quite impressive: 5, 000

AK47s, 1,000 grenades, suface-to-air and surface-to surface missiles.

Enough firepower to cause havoc and mayhem in Kinshasa--for the

Congolese capital appears to have been their objective.



Calling itself the Democratic Union of Nationalists for Renewal

(acronymed UDNR in French), the group was planning nothing less than a

sudden regime-change event in Kinshasa.



Makhosini Nkosi, the spokesman of the South African National

Prosecuting Authority described the objective of the 19 compadres as

follows:



"The grouping's objective was to receive specialized military related

training to overthrow the current DRC government, under the leadership

of President Joseph Kabila."



It also emerged since then that the outfit was seeking support from

multinationals in exchange of lucrative mining contracts in the event

that the coup succeeded. Another botched Wonga Coup, as it were.



Well, so far, no eye-popping news for the residents of a republic of

these boondocks of the third world, where Rwanda and Uganda could kill

for profit with impunity millions of Congolese while the rest of the

world enjoys the spectacle.



But it was the surrender to the Cape Town police of the purported

ringleader of the bandits on Friday, February 15, that firstcraised

eyebrows and then triggeted guffaws in the streets of Kinshasa.



The ringleader arrested in Cape Town is a crook who goes by the

moniker of Etienne Taratibu Kabila.



He claims to be the only "legitimate" son of Mzee Kabila.



Well let's grant him that, goes the conventional wisdom, and let's

assume he's the son of the assassinated president, so what?



By the way, DRC Communication Minister Lambert Mende rightly points to

the "surrreal" situation where "Mzee Laurent-Désiré Kabila, who'd be

better than anyone else to know his own children, has never introduced

Master Etienne Kiza as such while [Mzee] was still alive."



Master Etienne Kiza?



As it turns out, the man's real name is Etienne Kiza. He is not

related to the Kabilas and his sole merit is to have perfected the art

of Nigerian Internet scammers.



By the way, even if Kiza were Mzee Kabila's only son, what natural

entitlement does he have to the presidency of the DRC?



To be sure, in 2001, the current DRC Prez was propelled to the

presidency in the wake of his father's assassination, but this took

place when the fledgling revolutionary regime in the Congo was

threatened with extinction by the predatory regimes of Rwanda and

Uganda. It had to come up with a viable scenario of survival.



In other wotds, that was a single freak event that took place at an

extraordinary moment of the national history of the Congo.



Be that as it may, the 19 men and their identity-thief leader are

facing stiff charges in Pretoria under South Africa's Foreign Military

Assistance Act.



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PHOTO CREDITS: bbc.co.uk