1) WikiLeaks: US Kinshasa Embassy concerns over "Balkanization Conspiracy Theory" (2010)
The cable summary nails down what "balkanization" means in the Congo, all the while expressing the need for PD to confront head-on that strand of Congolese "conspiracy theory" :
"The term "balkanization" has its own special meaning in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where it refers to a conspiracy theory that foreign interests seek to divide the DRC into smaller client states in order to facilitate access to the country's vast mineral reserves. Many prominent Congolese are quick to assert that United States is among the foreign powers poised to "balkanize" the DRC, just as many Congolese appear to believe that the U.S. favors alleged Rwandan designs vis-a-vis the DRC. It is not clear how broad-based such views are or if they result primarily from government manipulation of public opinion. Regardless, addressing "balkanization" should be an important element of Mission outreach strategy."
As I just said, the cable provides fascinating reading--with one caveat: it should be clarified to the US Kinshasa embassy that what it calls "conspiracy theory" is "broad-based" and deeply held as indisputable truth by virtually all the Congolese. What's more, this belief is reinforced by insensitive remarks that some American officials make now and then about the Congo, such as the infamous comment by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during
Besides this cable, WikeLeaks released scores of other US Kinshasa cables from 1994 to 2010.
2) Common Opposition Candidate: "Squaring the Circle"
Opposition leaders meeting to preselect Tshisekedi as opposition common presidential candidate
August 24, 2011
Notre Dame de Fatima Parish conference hall, Gombe Commune, Kinshasa
Photo: John Bompengo/Radio Okapi
"Squaring the Circle"
"Squaring the Circle"
Twenty-four opposition political parties chose by acclamation Etienne Tshisekedi as their common presidential candidate on August 24, at a crowded and stormy meeting held at the conference hall of Notre Dame de Fatima Parish in downtown Kinshasa. The moderator of the meeting was MP Jean-Pierre Lisanga Bonganga, president of the party Convention Chrétienne pour la Démocratie (CCD), a die-hard "Tshisekedist."
Representatives of the Mouvement de Libération du Congo (MLC) and of Vital Kamerhe's Union pour la Nation Congolaise (UNC) walked out of the meeting. They said that the only point on the agenda was supposed to be a discussion on the response given by CENI to the opposition memorandum. Therefore, they went to say, adding at the eleventh hour the choice of Tshisekedi as the common candidate was nothing less than an entrapment.
The ever-vocal MLC deputy secretary general MP Jean-Lucien Busa didn't mince his words in criticizing the move by MP Jean-Pierre Lisanga Bonganga: "Is it at a meeting where we got to discuss the responses of CENI to the political opposition that we also have to discuss the issue of the common candidacy of the opposition? The MLC and the other political parties [that had walked out] aren't party to this schema!"
If anything, this shows that choosing a common candidate, quips the daily La Prospérité, amounts to the proverbial "squaring of the circle." For one, the 24 parties that chose Tshisekedi aren't significant enough in terms of membership and influence. Secondly, as if to further muddy the already murky waters of the opposition, Léon Kengo wa Dondo remarked that you don't preselect candidates by acclamation but the opposition should instead organize primaries!
3) Kisombe-gate: Demonstrating journos hit massive snag at National Assembly
Journos' "March of Wrath" against MP Yves Kisombe
Kinshasa, Friday, August 26, 2011
Photo: John Bompengo/Radio Okapi
More than two hundred Kinshasa journos took to the streets to vent their anger against MP Yves Kisombe, an MLC defector and a star of Kabila's cartel Majorité Présidentielle (MP), in a march appropriately billed as the "March of Wrath." This march was called after the MP Kisombe's audio of his sexist rant against RTVS1 anchor and reporter Eugénie Ntumba went viral in Congolese blogosphere.
MP Kisombe adamantly denies having ever uttered those insults, bold-facedly claiming that he was set up by his political enemies who made the audio montage, as he brazenly told a reporter of Radio Okapi on Wednesday, August 24: "I've never ever insulted that journalist.That tape recording is a gross montage!" It's pathetic to see an apparently sophisticated individual as MP Kisombe resort to the same infantile denial as the Soukouss singer Marie-José Méjé 30 who, when confronted in 2009 with the pictures of her intentional "wardrobe malfunction" at a concert in Kampala, claimed her images were photoshopped! In this case, the denials of MP Kisombe are simply untenable.
For obvious reasons.
Firstly, no such voice-changer software and know-how exist in Kinshasa; and even if they did, no one sees why MP Kisombe would have been singled out.
Secondly, just as he'd threatened in the taped phone monologue, MP Kisombe went down to the studios of RTVS1 studios where he insulted another female journalist, according to Clément Nzau, the CEO of RTVS1:
"The same day Yves Kisombe came to our offices. He didn't stop at squabbling with the journalist he found in there, he went into the studio. And with his phone, he redialed the number on his phone to make sure it was the same number he'd called [earlier]. Back in the offices, he insulted another female journalist who advised that he needed some restraints towards women"...
Anyway, the journos had planned that their March of Wrath would "culminate" at the National Assembly where they would submit a memorandum calling for MP Kisombe's impeachment. This plan ended in a "huge disillusionment," according to Le Potentiel. The journos hit a first snag at the gates of the National Assembly, where they were blocked by a squad of riot cops personally led by the fearsome Kinshasa commander of the unit, Col. Kanyama--nicknamed by students "Esprit-des-morts" (spirit of the dead), for allegedly not hesitating ordering riot cops to open fire on student demonstrators in the past. Still according to Le Potentiel: "At certain moments, one feared the worst, because law enforcement agents were threatening to open fire on this human sea that was keen on meeting the speaker of the National Assembly in person."
Col. Kanyama aka Esprit-des-morts
Commander of Kinshasa riot police corps
Video screen capture: Alex Engwete
Speaker Boshab interrupted the session he was presiding at the National Assembly to meet the journalists. But "without reading the memo," Speaker Boshab, who is also a tenured constitutional law professor at the Université de Kinshasa, then "behaved like a professor calling students to order, or as a party leader rising up his party members" (Le Potentiel).
Speaker Boshab told journalists he was amazed at their confusion about such elementary notion as the separation of powers in a democracy. Boshab then went on to say that if MP Kisombe is alleged to have engaged in insulting and libelous statements--and Speaker Boshab claimed not to have heard the audio tape--the proper course of action would be to seek the removal of the parliamentary immunity of the member of parliament by seizing the courts. And it is the General Prosecutor of the Republic who would inform the National Assembly about the necessity of the removal of the parliamentary immunity, which would then be voted in parliamentary plenary session.
Speaker Boshab then bemoaned the "intolerance" evinced by journalists, the very people whose chief mission is to "inform" and "educate" the public about tolerance at this critical juncture. This reaction of Speaker Boshab, who's also the secretary general of Kabila's PPRD, somewhat contradicts the earlier conciliatory stance adopted by his party earlier in the week when Emile Bongeli, erstwhile Deputy Prime Minister and PPRD national secretary in charge of communication, personally phoned Eugénie Ntumba to apologize in the name of his party and to let her know that the behavior of MP Kisombe should in no way, shape or fashion be misconstrued as the position of PPRD towards her or women. The ultimate irony of the soap opera Kinois journos have dubbed "Kisombe-gate" or "Kisombe Scandal" is that for all intents and purposes the name of MP Yves Kisombe continues to be mentioned in the press in spite of the 6-month ban or embargo decreed by the media.
In any event, at the auditorium of the National Assembly, without more ado, Speaker Boshab dispatched the two other remaining points in the journalists' memorandum:
1) As regards Godens Banza Tiefolo, the alleged fraudster on CSAC list of members, Speaker Boshab responded: "We'll have to compare the lists submitted by your guild and what has been published" in the presidential ordinance, before chastising journalists for jumping the gun by seizing the Supreme Court of Justice.
2) As for the security of journalists, Boshab said they should continue to do their job and avoid taking political positions!
Angered by what they perceived as the Speaker's haughty responses to their memo as well as his cavalier attitude, the journalists walked out on MP Boshab.
Speaker Evariste Boshab and Emile Bongeli (with mike in hand)
Friday, August 19, 2011
Opening of PPRD congress
Kinshasa, Stade des Martyrs
Photo: John Bompengo/Radio Okapi
(Credits)
Opening of PPRD congress
Kinshasa, Stade des Martyrs
Photo: John Bompengo/Radio Okapi
(Credits)
4) Bad blood still brewing between CENI and the opposition
Fidèle Sarassoro
Deputy UN Secretary General Special Representative in DRC
Photo: John Bompengo/Radio Okapi
It seems that bad blood is still flowing in torrents between the national independent electoral commission (CENI) and opposition leaders who, memo after memo and after an open letter to the Raïs, want to participate in the audit of the electoral list and in the management of CENI central server, which, according to Rev Mulunda, is in Kinshasa.
The latest attempt at forcing CENI to allow access of its central server to the opposition was made on Friday, August 26, by MP Jean-Pierre Lisanga Bonganga who went to see Deputy UN Secretary General Special Representative in DRC Fidèle Sarassoro to rehash the now quite well known opposition demands. Sarassoro assured MP Lisanga that it is in the interest of all stakeholders in the electoral process to maintain dialogue and that MONUSCO would strive to facilitate such dialogue.
The latest attempt at forcing CENI to allow access of its central server to the opposition was made on Friday, August 26, by MP Jean-Pierre Lisanga Bonganga who went to see Deputy UN Secretary General Special Representative in DRC Fidèle Sarassoro to rehash the now quite well known opposition demands. Sarassoro assured MP Lisanga that it is in the interest of all stakeholders in the electoral process to maintain dialogue and that MONUSCO would strive to facilitate such dialogue.
MP Jean-Pierre Lisanga Bonganga
Chairman of the Convention Chrétienne pour la Démocratie (CCD)
A die-hard "Tshisekedist"
The web portal of the Congolese e-zine LeSoftonline
Accessed on August 28, 2011 at 20:04 HRS EST
"Hacked by Cyuzuzo, Rwanda Hacker"
Screen copy by Alex Engwete
The hacking of LeSoftonline, though the e-zine is a private outfit whose portal is hosted by a European server, should also be a wake-up call to the Congolese government whose investment in cybersecurity an in IT training is non-existent. This lack of vision and proactive action in cybersecurity glaringly displayed by the Congolese government is particularly alarming as sensitive banking and government data are now online. In fact, the system of the DRC Central Bank was hacked in late September-early October 2010, and by October 7 it was "up and running at [only] 60% of its capacity after being crippled by [the] cyberattack." Maybe it was the resourceful Cyzuzo who had also attacked the Central Bank.
Cyuzuzo, the nom-de-guerre chosen by the Rwandan hacker, is a common Rwandan patronym. But it also stems from the verb "kuzuza" (to fill). Maybe the hacker took that moniker for the way his hacking is done by filling the articles' title banners of LeSoftonline.
MP Tryphon Kin-Kiey Mulumba
Chairman of the Parti pour l'Action (PA) and owner of LeSoftonline
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