If you enjoy action novels and have by chance read Panic in Zaire, the 52nd installment in the legendary SAS series by Gérard de Villiers, you have a good idea the chaos that’s long plagued the Congo.
Published in 1978 the novel captured the Cold War picture of Mobutu’s Zaire, a failed state where spies, mercenaries, and petty warlords ran the show. Nearly 50 years later, that dystopian fiction has become the documentary of Tshisekedi’s DRC.
In a viral video the minister of rural “development”, one Muhindo Nzangi, standing on a boat deep in Congo’s interior, openly calls for the assassination of former President Joseph Kabila. His urges the Wazalendo militia, still camped in Goma, to murder Kabila. No legal consequences have followed.
This is the DRC under Tshisekedi: mob rule.
The Wazalendo are bandits, ex-cons, and former highway robbers. Their benefactor, Nzangi, is a political chameleon who jumped from Moïse Katumbi’s camp to the Sacred Union and quickly became Tshisekedi’s darling. Leveraging his influence in the far north of Kivu, Nzangi has taken over the logistics of the Mai Mai networks once managed by Mbusa Nyamwisi. With a nod from the presidency, he now oversees funding, arms, and operations for these proxy militias.
Every month, tens of millions of dollars are siphoned from the national treasury to bankroll the chaos, ostensibly for the FARDC, FDLR, Wazalendo, and other armed gangs. But as a Mai Mai commander recently lamented, these funds rarely reach the frontlines. Ministers like Nzangi are buying villas, parading with bodyguards, and enriching themselves off the blood of eastern Congolese civilians.
The war has become a business. Tshisekedi’s regime has lost control. He is surrounded by kleptocrats and warlords. The Wazalendo answer to the highest bidder.
Tshisekedi has no more moves to play. As in Panic in Zaire, the villains are not hiding in shadows. They are in power. And the country is bleeding because of it.