Joseph Kabila

Joseph Kabila (2014)

Joseph Kabila Kabange (born June 4, 1971 in Hewa Bora, Sud-Kivu ) was President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from January 26, 2001 to January 24, 2019 .

Life

identity

According to official information, Kabila was born as the son of Laurent Kabila and his wife Mahanya Sifa Kabila as the second of nine children in the rebel headquarters Hewa Bora II and comes from the Luba Bantu ethnic group . However, there are always doubts and reports that Kabila is not the biological son of Laurent, but the son of another father or completely different parents, who was adopted by Kabila . A widespread version used for political propaganda says that his parents were Tutsi from Rwanda and that Kabila was therefore an instrument for exercising Rwandan influence in the countryDemocratic Republic of the Congo . The former intelligence chief of Zaire , Honoré Ngbanda Zambo ko Atumba , claimed that Joseph Kabila the son of Rwandan opposition members Christopher Kanambe and Marcelline Mukambukuje was.

Career

Kabila accompanied his father, the later rebel leader Laurent Kabila, into exile in Tanzania at the age of five . As a result of his long stays in English-speaking countries, Kabila now speaks better English and Kiswahili than French and the Congolese Lingála , the national language widespread in the west of the country and thus also in the capital. He attended elementary and secondary schools in Fizi , whose territory includes Hewa Bora , as well as in Dar-es-Salaam and Mbeya in Tanzania. He then began a military career in Tanzania and received military training in Uganda and Rwanda . In 1996 he joined his father's forces and was in command of the First Congo War . After a seven-month struggle by Kabila's troops, which moved from the east towards Kinshasa, his father was able to end the 32-year-old dictatorship of Mobutu on May 17, 1997 with the capture of Kinshasa. His father was then President of the Congo from 1997 to 2001. Joseph Kabila graduated from the National Defense College in Beijing in 1998 and subsequently became a major general and a member of the Army General Staff. In 2000 he became Army Chief of Staff .

Presidency 2001–2019

Seizure of power in 2001

After the assassination of Laurent Kabila on January 16, 2001, Joseph Kabila assumed the office of President on January 26, 2001 . The then 29-year-old was largely unknown to the population. He tried to add some stability to the civil war-torn country by reducing the presence of foreign troops, especially from Rwanda and Uganda. He let United Nations peacekeepers , MONUC , enter the country to oversee the fronts between rebels, local troops and foreign troops. A peace agreement was signed between the rebels and the government in December 2002, and an all-party government was formed under his leadership in July . This had the task of preparing free elections . On April 28, 2004, a coup against Kabila, which was probably organized by old supporters of the former President Mobutu Sese Seko , failed .

Kabila commands the Garde Spéciale de Sécurité Présidentielle (GSSP, Presidential Guard ), which consists of 15,000 elite soldiers. Since, contrary to the peace treaty agreed in 2002, no national army was formed, he has sole military control of the capital Kinshasa - similar to the warlords ruling with him in other regions. Kabila maintains other GSSP units in Lubumbashi and Kisangani .

Elected President 2006

In 2006, elaborate elections funded by the EU, the USA and the UN took place, the first free multi-party elections in the country's history since independence. Kabila was committed to democracy, transparency and the rule of law and was favored by the US and the EU. Its political base was mainly in the east of the country. But neither Kabila nor the opposing candidate Jean-Pierre Bemba , related by marriage to the Mobutu family, dwelt on political programs. The Social Democratic opposition party UDPS of Etienne Tshisekedi , one of the parties with the greatest opportunities and a political program, Kabila accused also claims to have signed their own parties under the name of the UDPS in the election to the participation of the UDPS to prevent in the election, and then boycotted the election. In the election on July 30, 2006, Kabila received the most votes, but not an absolute majority, which is why on October 29, 2006 there was a runoff between him and Bemba. Kabila won this runoff election with 58.05% of the vote and was sworn in as the new president on December 6, 2006.

During the election campaign, Kabila was accused of selling off the raw materials of the country where his family earned money. He sold mining assets at controversial low prices. In the British Parliament, 59 offshore companies trading in assets were publicized, 47 of them based in the British Virgin Islands .

Since re-election in 2011

In 2011, Kabila was able to confirm his position in a controversial election . He had tanks deployed in the Congolese capital to forestall possible protests.

One of his key advisors was Augustin Katumba Mwanke , who played a major role in the plundering of the Congo's raw materials and who was killed in a plane accident in 2012.

According to the constitution, Kabila's second term as President of the DR Congo ended on December 19, 2016 without a successor: his election, which was actually scheduled for November 2016, had been postponed to 2018 (see also: New Year's Eve Agreement ). Kabila announced that he still wanted to remain in office. Despite a ban on demonstrations, protests broke out in various parts of the country. Several cell phone and Internet service providers blocked access to Facebook , Twitter and other social media by order of the government .

After the end of the presidency

In the presidential election on December 30, 2018, Kabila favored his party friend Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary , who however lost the election. On January 24, 2019, Félix Tshisekedi was sworn in as Kabila's successor in a controversial decision. According to observers, the Kabila opponent Martin Fayulu received around 60% of the vote. After the election, Kabila was “Senator for life” and thus protected from possible criminal prosecution. His party alliance also won the parliamentary election, which took place at the same time, with an overwhelming majority, while Tshisekedi's alliance allegedly received less than ten percent of the seats.

family

In June 2006, Kabila married his long-time partner Olive Lembe , with whom he has had a daughter since 2001. The Kabila family - like Joseph Kabila's twin sister Jeanette (Jaynet) and his mother - are financed through the "lucrative business with government mining concessions".

Web links

Commons : Joseph Kabila  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

• Lutz Herden: Volcanic area in Africa
• Bored in front of the pile of broken glass , FAZ, November 22, 2012

Individual evidence

1. ^ BAZ : Congolese President promises reconstruction ( memento of September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) , July 28, 2006
2. ↑ How Africa's dictator died at the hands of his boy soldiers, The Guardian, February 11, 2001
3. ↑ http://www.kas.de/kongo/de/pages/804/
4. ↑ ^{a b} DW : Election campaign without content in the Congo , July 28, 2006
5. ↑ Der Spiegel : Shooting shortly before the end , August 20, 2006
6. ^ The suicide of a favored party , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , July 21, 2006
7. ↑ Christof Münger: How the wealth of the Congo is sold , Tagesanzeiger, December 22, 2011
8. ↑ Christoph Titz: Kabila, get off Spiegel Online, December 19, 2016, accessed on the same day
9. ↑ Andrea Böhm: Our climate protection is their misery. zeit.de from February 3, 2019, accessed on February 5, 2019
10. ↑ Federal Agency for Civic Education: Who is available for election? ( Memento from May 5, 2009 in the Internet Archive )