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.

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No Comment: Zapiro writes the Blade Runner under erasure

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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.



***

PHOTO CREDITS: bbc.co.uk

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Donnybrook at Kinshasa University

(Scorched patch of grass at Kinshasa University where cops burned academic gowns and caps used by students for banned commencement on Saturday, January 12, 2013)
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There is no other waycto look at the small donnybrook that pitted Kinshasa University students against heavily-armed cops and anti-riot police on Saturday, January 12: both academic authorities and students couldn't have stooped lower.

In contention was the commencement for the 2012 class.

I just wrote an oddity: commencement in January!

Traditionally, the academic year in the Congo used to be uniform countrywide: starting in mid-October and ending by the end of July.

Several factors have contributed to obtain the bizarre multiform calendar now referred to in the new Congolese academic speak as the sagging "elastic academic year": years of university mismanagement; non-compliance with academic calendar by politically-connected professors while some other professors--to make ends meet--would be in the faculty of several universities at once.

To be sure, the new higher education minister, Bonaventure Chelo Lotshima, has vowed to standardize the academic calendar nationwide and to get back to the old October-July system.

On top of this calendar chaos, there's the traditional rule of only organizing one commencement for students who would have passed the so-called "first session exams"--and not for those who would have later taken remedial "second-session" exams.

Another layer of complication was added by Minister Chelo, who simply ordered all commencements cancelled nationwide till the completion of the academic standardization.

A measure which is at odds with the Congolese cultural practice of celebrating graduations in the most roaring and wild ways.

Families would incur extreme expenses to celebrate graduations while the graduates themselves, clad in academic gowns and caps, would recklessly drive throughout the city sitting on the hoods or clinging to the windows of vehicles--amid honking and whistle shrills.

The minister's decision was therefore a non-starter for the 2012 graduating class.

If official commencement was banned, conventiinal wisdom among students and their families went, then why deprive us of our parties?

Fine, Kinshasa university academic officials retorted, then go somewhere else to have your wild parties!

And to back the ban, authorities called on cops who went throughout the campus ground disrupting fake commencement at faculties, tearing gowns and burning them to ashes.

It's a miracle the melee didn't escalate into full-blown confrontation and riots... By mid-afternoon, when cops left, calm had be restored on campus.

***
PHOTO: Alex Engwete

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Enter South African National Defence Force... where François Hollande mocked Africa!

(PHOTO: "South African Soldiers during a two-week leadership

continuation training exercise called Revelation II, held at the Touws

River Training Area in February 2010.")



***



For the life of me, I never understood the rationale French so-called

"normal" President François Hollande had, in response to frantic calls

for help from beleaguered Central African Republic (CAR) President

François Bozizé, in blurting out to French journos on December 26,

2012:



"If we are present [in CAR], it's not for protecting a regime, it's

for protecting our citizens and our interests and under no

circumstances for intervening in the internal affairs of a country,

namely Central Africa."



"That time [of France meddling into African affairs]," insisted

Hollande, "has ended!"



Who the hell is this French fairy?



As well-armed, better clad, and mostly Muslim Sudan-backet rebels were

advancing on Bangui to the distress of hundreds of thousands of

civilians, the reckless statement by Hollande sounded like a clarion

call to all the murderous, pillaging, and raping bands in the region

to gang together and destroy lives and civil society in the region.



To be sure, the Lord's Resistance Army, already pushed to exhaustion

but still active in CAR, no doubt might have interpreted Hollande's

call as much needed breathing room.



The advancing hordes of rebels, potential brethren in arms of the LRA,

through the enduring chaos they'd have triggered in the CAR, would

have allowed Kony's mass murderers to once more loose themselves upon

northern DRC and beyond.



And a brutal regime change in the CAR would have justified outfits of

the likes of M23 to continue wreaking havoc upon the entire subregion.



Hollande's explanation for the presence of the 250-strong French force

(since reinforced) in Bangui smacked of paternalism and arbitrariness

of Empire whose perception the French president was attempting to

allay.



What are those "interests" that France is protecting, ex nihilo as it

were, on sovereign foreign land? Were those troops stationed there

without the express authority of the CAR government? Or is it simply

that Hollande, desperate for the bleak growth of France in the

foreseeable future, resents that Bozizé has given the Chinese free

rein on the prospection and future exploitation of CAR sizeable oil

potentials?



Yeah! There I said it! I think Hollande's undiplomatic outburst has

everything to do with the untapped oil reserves of CAR. And uranium.

And diamonds! For I don't see France deploying troops in any other

banana republic where 1,200 French citizens happen to be residing.



Hollande might therefore be arguably in cahoots with those armed bandits!...



But beyond the insult to Bozizé and the lack of concern for Central

African residents whose lives are disrupted by these armed plunderous

hordes, Hollande's callous statement evinced a total contempt for

Africa and Africans.



Fortunately for CAR citizens and Africans at large, enter South Africa

and Jacob Zuma, whose intervention will be hailed in the years to come

as the watershed in new African responsibility and leadership.



The South African National Defence Force (SANDF) has entered the fray

in CAR and Zuma wants them to stay there till 2018!



France could still attempt to hang around, but the wrath expressed by

Central Africans these past weeks against it has clearly shown it that

it is no longer welcome in that neighborhood.



South Africa and Zuma are now leading the way and showing the world

that Africa could protect its own interests and its citizens without

begging the likes of France and Hollande!



***

PHOTO CREDITS: 25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_makwcxTCW91qdzr9to1_1280.jpg

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How DRC Military Intelligence nabbed the three murderers of Gen. Bikweto "Biki" Tuyinabo

(A Belgian army issue Browning handgun similar to the one Gen. Bikweto

used to shoot and wound one of his murderers)



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It was a sad today in Kinshasa for those of us, alumni of the 10th

Promition of the then Belgian-organized Ecole de Formation d'Officers

(EFO), at Kananga, in the Orientale Kasai Province; and the relatives

and friends of Gen. Bikweto "Biki" Tuyinabo, cowardly gunned down on

Christmas Eve.



After laying in state at the proving ground of FARDC Centre Supérieur

Militaire in the Binza Commune of Kinshasa in mid-morning, the remains

of Gen. Bikweto "Biki" Tuyinabo, who was gunned down on Christmas Eve

in the Kinshasa western neighborhood of Jamaïque, were laid to rest at

the Mbeseke-Futi cemetery this afternoon.



(I knew Gen. Bikweto when he was a mere first lieutenant, my Promotion

commander, when I was a cadet at EFO. My former colleagues at the

Academy present in Kinshasa, most of whom have the rank of colonel,

attended the grim pageant.)



In the night of Chistmas Eve, Gen. Bikweto, freshly appointed second

in command of the Kitona Military Base in the Bas-Congo Province, was

having a beer at his regular watering hole, a sidewalk bar some 50

yards from his residence at the western Kinshasa neighborhood of

Jamaïque.



Though in civilian garbs, Gen. Biki was packing heat--a Belgian

military issue Browning GP.



As he was sipping his beer, Gen. Biki was suddenly told by the

bartender that there was a heist in progress nearby. It so happened

that three hoodlums, armed with AK-47s, were mugging neighborhood

money-changers.



A veteran of the two "Shaba Wars" and "Africa World War," Gen. Biki

was no man to shy away from confrontation--bare-handed or armed!



He immediately sprang into action.



According to eyewitnesses, the following was the short exchange Gen.

Biki had with the bandits before shots rang out in the night.



"Hey you!" Biki yelled as he approached the gangsters. "What the fuck

you think you're doing?"



"And who the fuck are you?" one of the bandits shot back.



"I'm an army general, asshole, and I am gonna--"



As he was pulling his handgun from his waistband, one of the bandits

shot Biki in the leg.



As he fell down, Biki was nonetheless able to pull out his handgun and

discharge it at the assailants--hitting one of them in the upper leg.



Then all hell broke loose....



By the time Biki's bodyguards arrived on the scene, the bandits had

fled after carjacking a vehicle and the general lay dead of multiple

gunshot wounds on the pavement.



When investigators of the Détection Militaire des Activitês

Anti-Patrie (DEMIAP)--the Congolese military intelligence--arrived at

the crime scene, it quickly emerged that one of the perpretators had

been badly wounded by the general.



DEMIAP then sent word to all Kinshasa hospitals to report any gunshot wound.



Two days later, the three perps brought to the "Sanatorium" Hospital

of Selembao Commune their buddy whose wound by that time was

festering.



The physicians admitted the wounded patient and wrote a very long

prescription of medicines in order to send the accomplices on a fool's

errand.



Sana Hospital physicians then phoned DEMIAP whose agents swiftly came

to nab the three murderers.



It turns out that the three bandits are rogue FARDC soldiers of

Kinshasa corps of military engineers.



"We didn't know the guy was a general!" the wounded bandit was heard

whimpering in the military ambulance that was taking him to custody...

***

PHOTO CREDITS: Wikipedia

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Rogue MP Roger Lumbala materializes in Kampala as Vice-President of M23 delegation

(PHOTO: Rogue MP and M23 wannabe Roger Lumbala)



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Rogue MP Roger Lumbala, who was arrested in Bujumbura back in early

September of last year as he was deplaning from a flight from Kigali

on suspicion of collaboration with M23, has finally materialized in

Kampala as the so-called "vice-president" of the M23 delegation in the

talks between the DRC government and the Rwandan insurgent stooges

wreaking havoc in North Kivu.



This eerie reapperance of Lumbala, one of the staunchest supporters of

veteran oppositionist Etienne Tshisekedi, stunned, then angered the

Congolese opposition in Kinshasa.



Lumbala had fooled at the time Congolese oppposionists and a huge

number of "residents of the Republic," by denying that he'd gone to

Kigali and by claiming he'd never been in cahoots with M23.



Lumbala, a warlord during Africa World War is a kleptocrat devoid of

political conscience and ideology.



A member of the Luba ethnic group of eastern Kasai, he is being used

as a figurehead in a Rwandophone-dominated military entrepreneurial

venture in the hope of getting a lucrative position in the event of

Kinshasa caving in to the diktats of Rwanda.



About a month ago, when the Congolese Parliament was debating

stripping him of his immunity, he wrote a lengthy and incoherent

letter to the National Assembly in which he was once again denying any

involvement with M23.



The mood in Kinshasa, even among Lumbala's erstwhile supporters, is

that this time around he pushed his adventurism a bit too far, staking

his fate, as one Kinois put it, with a "murderous adventure that has

no future in the Congo."



***

PHOTO CREDITS: Crédits Photo: afriqueredaction . com

Via: radiookapi .net

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