Tunnel Vision: Koffi Olomide's new album "Abracadabra" draws fire from pro-Tshisekedi goons

If soukouss star Koffi Olomide thought his new album aptly titled "Abracadabra" would be "an incantation used to ward off calamity" (Webster's), he has since no doubt put paid to that goosey notion. Pro-Tshisekedi goons are irked--nay, maddened--by Olomide for joining the presidential PPRD party and for his campaign hit song on behalf of Joseph Kabila.

On January 7, the date of the release of "Abracadabra" in Paris, pro-Tshisekedi supporters threatened to burn down the entire city block housing African music shops if these dared to put on their shelves the accursed CD.

In Kinshasa, where the launch of the album was preceded by a costly massive citywide billboard campaign, the official release of the album took place on Saturday, January 14, at the "Salon Congo" of the Grand Hôtel, with Olomide's press conference. Even at this secure venue, Olomide had to weather a vicious verbal assault by a reporter from the opposition press who went through a litany of the musician's alleged malfeasance: his "flight" from France to avoid a criminal investigation, and more importantly, his "flattery" of Kabila!

All these incidents evince the parlous state of democratic practice in the Congo. How, for instance, these supposed personal woes of Olomide are correlated with the artistic merits of "Abracadabra" could only be explained by a misunderstanding of politics in the damaged minds of pro-Tshisekedi's hoidlums. In which tunnel vision is well entrenched: either you are with Jean-Pierre Bemba (2006)/Tshisekedi (now) or we beat allegiance out of you!! Politics engaging the total being: either you are with us or you die!