MP Roger Lumbala, former warlord and chair of RCD/N, sought for
questioning by Kinshasa prosecutors on suspicion of high treason and
war-mongering)
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It was bound to happen.
The government has finally cut off radio and TV signals of Radio Télé
Lisanga (RLTV), a media group belonging to MP Roger Lumbala, former
warlord and current chair of the party RCD/N.
Radio Okapi reports that RLTV lost its signals Thursday, September 6,
three days after MP Lumbala had fled to the South African Embassy in
Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi.
MP Lumbala was nabbed by Burundian military intelligence spooks upon
deplaning from an inbound flight from Kigali, Rwanda.
Sources in Bujumbura, Kigali, and Kinshasa tell me that Rwandan
authorities were particularly irked by the unsolicited and clamoring
offer of MP Lumbala to join M23 leadership.
Rwandan authorities feared a double-cross on the part of the Congolese
mercurial politician at a time when it was getting worldwide incoming
flak over its alleged backing of M23 insurgency.
Worse still, MP Lumbala is alleged to have stunned Rwandan
intelligence operatives by boasting to have already taken concrete
steps domestically.
MP Lumbala told the flabbergasted Rwandan spooks he'd instructed his
brother-in-law and former member of his rebel outfit, Col. John
Tshibangu, FARDC second-in-command of the FARDC 4th Military Region in
western Kasai, to defect, recruit combatants, and march to North Kivu
to join M23.
Rwandan spooks are quite familiar with MP Lumbala and till his sudden
appearance in Kigali there seemed to have been no love lost between
them.
In fact, Rwandan officials have sheer contempt for MP Lumbala for his
terminal opportunism motivated by greed.
During Africa's World War, MP Lumbala was in the leadership of the
Rwandan-backed Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD).
The RCD soon splintered into 3 main groups, with MP Roger Lumbula
taking charge of RCD/National wing, based in the diamond- and
gold-rich district of Bafwasende, Orientale Province.
This was clearly a move against the interests of Rwanda, which
continued to back RCD/Goma.
During the post-conflict transitional phase, MP Lumbala transformed
his military outfit into a political party.
He rechristened it "Rassemblement Congolais des Démocrates
Nationalistes" (Congelese Rally of Nationalist Democrats), thus
keeping the same RCDN acronym--minus the forward slash.
He was an unsuccessful presidential candidate in 2006; and in the
November 2011 elections, he was elected MP in his native constituency
in eastern Kasai.
He's recently emerged as one of the most vocal pro-Tshisekedi
opposition pols, and his TV station, RLTV, gave a tribune to the
radical opposition.
It was in a political show hosted by RLTV anchor Eliezer Thambwe that
Etienne Tshisekedi, who was then in South Africa, proclaimed himself
president-elect of the DRC in a phone interview.
In any event, Rwandan intelligence tipped off Burundian security
services on the uncanny errands of MP Lumbala in the Rwandan capital.
In turn, Burundian intelligence tipped off DEMIAP (Military Detection
of Anti-Homeland Activities), the Congolese military intelligence.
DEMIAP then chartered a non-commercial Bujumbura-bound flight with a
view to the rendition of MP Lumbala to Kinshasa.
Now, as it turns out, MP Lumbala has a mistress in Bujumbura, Ms.
A.W., who's a member of a prominent business family in the Burundian
capital.
It was to her custody that Burundian intelligence placed MP Lumbala
and his bodyguard under unsupervised house arrest after questioning
the pair on Saturday, September 1--summoning them to appear in the
morning of Monday, September 3 for further questioning.
But the rendition plan was leaked to Ms. A.W. late Sunday night, September 2.
MP Lumbala then decided to flee along his bodyguard to the Bujumbura
South African embassy as soon as the gates of the diplomatic mission
were opened Monday, September 3.
The Congolese rendition aircraft idled at Bujumbura airport till
Tuesday, September 4 when it departed for Kinshasa, Radio France
Internationale (RFI) reported.
Acting dumb, reporter, TV host and anchor Eliezer Thambwe, who also
doubles as deputy CEO of RTLV, told Radio Okapi he didn't know why the
signals of RLTV were cut off.
Said Thambwe:
"The day the signal was cut off, we called our partner Télé Consult to
ask what was going on.
"They answered us it was a technical problem.
"It was only the next day around midday that the management of Télé
will end up telling us it was instructed to withdraw our signal."
Ratcheting up his act, Thambwe went to see the chief of staff of Media
Minister Lambert Mende.
Acting dumber than Thambwe, Mende's chief of staff claimed to have no
knowledge whatsoever about the loss of the signals of RLTV.
He suggested that Thambwe go and query officials at the Audiovisual
and Communication High Council (CSAC), the media overlord that has the
authority to censor and cut off radio and TV signals.
Those CSAC officials pretended to be more baffled than Thambwe himself
by the unexplained and unexplainable loss of the signal of RLTV, and
advised him to query the Interior Minister.
Said Thambwe:
"We talked to the deputy chief of staff of the [interior] minister.
The latter told us he had to talk to the minister so as to secure the
permission to liaise with ANR to have the measure lifted."
(The "Agence Nationale de Renseignements," acronymed ANR, is the
Congolese intelligence agency.)
Stupid is what stupid does, once famously quipped Forrest Gump.
And stupid is the bafflement of Thambwe, who told Radio Okapi:
"We're wondering whether this cutoff is linked to the political
activities of Roger Lumbala."
Duh!!!
(Source: radiookapi.net/actualite/2012/09/09/media-la-television-de-lopposant-roger-lumbala-nemet-plus-depuis-trois-jours/)
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PHOTO CREDITS: John Bompengo/radiookapi.net
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