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Congo Page |
Welcome to ElectionInfo.com's pages on Congo
Official Name: Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)
Capital: Kinshasa
Area: 2,344,860 square kilometres (905,356 square miles)
Major cities (Population)
Kinshasa 4.2 million (1995 estimate)
Lubumbashi 739,082 (1991)
Kisangani 373,397 (1991)
Population: 43.9 million (1995 estimate)
Type of government: Government in transition
Independence: 30 June 1960 (from Belgium)
Constitution: A new constitution is to be drafted and submitted to a referendum by December 1998.
Voting Rights: Universal and compulsory at age 18
Government
The government of Congo (DRC) is in a state of transition. Laurent Kabila, who had himself sworn in as president in May 1997, announced that a new constitution would be drafted and put to a referendum by the end of 1998. Legislature and presidential elections were scheduled for April 1999. Kabila has given himself broad executive and legislative powers in the interim period.
Recent History
Sea of Political Support
In 1960 the country gained independence from Belgium, which had ruled the area since 1884. After independence, political stability was threatened by rebellion and military coups until 1965, when Joseph Mobutu, the army chief of staff, seized power. In 1971 he began a campaign of Africanization and renamed the country the Republic of Zaire, a variation of traditional African names for the Congo. He adopted the name Mobutu Sese Seko and ordered all place and personal names to be Africanized. The people were encouraged to reject foreign models and to draw upon their own heritage in shaping their nation’s future.
Mobutu ruled a one-party dictatorship through the Popular Movement of the Revolution (MPR) and amassed a vast personal fortune at the expense of his people. Under pressure in 1990, he lifted the ban on political parties and granted other freedoms that people thought might open the door for democracy.
Mobutu allowed a national political conference to open in 1991 with the purpose of establishing a framework for a transitional government and free elections. However, he refused to accept many of the conference’s decisions, including one to dissolve Mobutu’s parliament and another to abandon the name Zaire in favour of the country’s former name (from 1964 to 1969) of Democratic Republic of the Congo. He did initially agree to the appointment of his chief rival, Etienne Tshisekedi, as prime minister, but when Tshisekedi began challenging Mobutu’s authority, the two became locked in a power struggle. Mobutu attempted to replace Tshisekedi, who refused to leave office. Western governments demanded that Mobutu relinquish power, but he refused.
In 1993 Mobutu had Tshisekedi ejected from his office building, which led the country to have two governments and two constitutions for a few months. In January 1994 a transitional parliament was established, and in April of that year a Transitional Constitutional Act was promulgated to regulate the transition to democracy. In June, Kengo Wa Dondo was appointed prime minister after winning 72 per cent of a vote in parliament. Supporters of Tshisekedi objected on the grounds that he was still officially prime minister, because he had never stood down. The political scene remained unpredictable. Most foreigners left the country as a result of the power struggle. In many parts of the country law and order had broken down, public services had disintegrated or shut down, and supplies to remote areas had been interrupted or cut off.
In July 1994 refugees from Rwanda began streaming into Congo (DRC)—then Zaire—because of the outbreak of war in their country. More than 1 million Rwandans gathered in camps along the Congo (DRC) border. In 1995 the national government and the United Nations (UN) struggled to find a method of safely repatriating the refugees. Over a period of four days in August 1995, Mobutu’s government ordered that refugees be forcibly expelled from the camps. After approximately 15,000 refugees had been forced back into Rwanda, the government halted the operation in response to international pressure. However, in the latter part of 1996, hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Hutu refugees were forced out of eastern Congo (DRC) as they became targets of attacks by rebels, but they feared reprisals for the events of 1994 as they returned to Rwanda.
The rebellion in the east, led by Laurent Kabila, caused civil war to break out in September 1996. The rebels, with the aim of toppling the three-decade-old Mobutu regime, successfully controlled the eastern region and had moved unopposed into central and southern regions by early spring 1997, when they were believed to hold one-third of the country. Nevertheless, Mobutu, seriously ill with prostate cancer, continued to refuse to step down. By 18 May, two days after Mobutu had yielded power and fled the capital, the rebels had taken full control of Kinshasa. Kabila changed the name of the country back to Democratic Republic of the Congo. He gave himself sweeping powers to govern during the transition period that would precede the adoption of a new constitution and presidential and legislative elections. Kabila had himself sworn in as president on 29 May, and a growing number of foreign nations have officially recognized his government. Meanwhile, the UN Security Council called for an end to violence against
Rwandan Hutu refugees and demanded that Kabila permit a human rights team to investigate alleged massacres of the refugees.
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