Tshisekedi’s venomous attack on the former Congolese President Joseph Kabila in Houston was no accident. It was the desperate reaction of a cornered man whose carefully constructed house of cards is collapsing, and the tremor began in Évian-les-Bains, France, at the most recent G7 summit.
According to sources close to the Kinshasa regime, Tshisekedi had been officially invited to address the summit on the DRC’s Ebola crisis. He was expected to explain his administration’s woefully inadequate response before it spiraled into a global health emergency. But that was only the public agenda.
Behind closed doors, Tshisekedi was informed that his unconstitutional bid to amend the constitution for a third term would be on the unofficial table. The G7 nations were unanimous in their opposition. They see his power grab as yet another destabilizing factor in a country already torn apart by civil war, hundreds of armed groups, and over seven million displaced souls.
Then came the trigger.
Tshisekedi learned that Joseph Kabila had also been invited to Évian as a voice of perspective on the perilous trajectory the DRC is on. The man Tshisekedi succeeded peacefully in 2018 was being treated as a credible statesman. The humiliation was unbearable for the Congolese despot, who didn’t show up to the G7 summit.
That is the real reason we heard the word “dog” from a sitting president. It was pure, unadulterated panic.
The panic itself is not surprising. Tshisekedi is cornered on every front. Regional African leaders, including Angola, have told him in no uncertain terms that he must accept negotiations with the AFC/M23. The unarmed opposition in Kinshasa is protesting vigorously. His military is suffering humiliating setbacks against AFC/M23 freedom fighters. And now the G7 has slammed the door on his third-term ambitions.
We may well be on the eve of a spectacular collapse of a regime that has made life miserable for every Congolese citizen. And in Évian, the first cracks appeared in the West’s support for Tshisekedi’s adventurism.