11-06-2017, 10:24 PM
*** 7-Nov-17 World View -- Democratic Republic of Congo issues farcical call for elections in December 2018
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
****
**** Democratic Republic of Congo issues farcical call for elections in December 2018
****
![[Image: g171106b.jpg]](http://Media.GenerationalDynamics.com/ww2010/g171106b.jpg)
A family flees violence in Kasai province in Democratic Republic of Congo (UNHCR)
On Sunday, the electoral commission of the Democratic Republic of
Congo (DRC) announced that a presidential election will be held on
December 23, 2018. Unfortunately it's hard to see this announcement
as anything but a joke, although the same kind of joke seems to occur
in one African country after another.
DRC president Joseph Kabila was supposed to step down on December 19
of last year, but he pulled a stunt worthy of any African leader: He
did everything possible to prevent new elections from taking place,
and then refused to step down because there hadn't been any elections.
There was a threat of civil war in DRC, but the Catholic Church
intervened and brokered an agreement: Elections would be held in
December of 2017 to choose Kabila's successor, and this time Kabila
would really step down.
It was always obvious that the agreement was a farce, and that Kabila
would ignore the agreement. That has in fact happened, because once
again Kabila did all he could to prevent new elections from taking
place, and now with December 2017 upon us, there will be no elections.
So now Kabila's election commission has announced that the election
will take place in December 2018. So are we going to see another year
where Kabila prevents a new election, and then makes some new
agreement for an election in December 2019?
The norm for the leaders of many African countries is to refuse to
step down, to misappropriate huge amounts of money from the treasury
and from foreign aid to pay money to his political cronies and thugs
to buy their loyalty, to pay money to buy weapons to be used against
the political opposition, and then to target his political enemies
with mass slaughter, mass atrocities, mass rapes and mass torture, in
order to stay in power.
That's certainly what's happening in DRC. As we reported in July,
in the 16 years he's
been in office, he and his family and cronies have taken control of
dozens of business, and more than 71,000 hectares (175,444 acres) of
farmland, own diamond mines, a part of the country's largest mobile
phone network, companies that mine mineral deposits, gold and
limestone, a luxury hotel, stakes in an airline, a share of the
country's banks, and a fast-food franchise.
If he allowed an election to take place and the opposition won, then
he would undoubtedly begin to lose control of that vast wealth, and
might be thrown in jail for corruption. So we can be pretty certain
that Kabila will not allow an election in December 2018, or ever -- or
at least not a rigged election. However, the Trump administration has
told Kabila that an election must be held by December 2018, or
international aid will be cut off.
The opposition stronghold is the central province of Kasai, where more
than 3,000 people have been killed in escalating violence blamed on a
government-sponsored militia. The UN has identified more than 80 mass
graves and said it had found toddlers with limbs chopped off and
pregnant women with their bellies sliced open, their unborn babies
mutilated.
The violence has resulted in 3.9 million people forced to flee their
homes to escape the violence. Hundreds of thousands have fled to
Zambia, Angola and other neighboring countries as refugees, creating a
humanitarian disaster in those countries, and threatening to
destabilize the entire region. Deutsche Welle and
The Citizen (South Africa) and UN Human Rights Council (UNHCR)
Related Articles
****
**** Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe sacks the VP so that his wife can succeed him
****
![[Image: g171106c.jpg]](http://Media.GenerationalDynamics.com/ww2010/g171106c.jpg)
Robert and Grace Mugabe (AFP)
What Zimbabwe's president Robert Mugabe is doing is just a variation
of what Joseph Kabila is doing in DRC, but the intended outcome is
roughly the same.
Mugabe is 93 years old, and has used violence, rape and torture to
stay in power for 37 years, but even he knows that he can't be
president forever. Mugabe's wife, 52 year old Grace Ntombizodwa
Mugabe, said earlier this year that Mugabe would continue governing
from the grave:
<QUOTE>"One day when God decides that Mugabe dies, we will
have his corpse appear as a candidate on the ballot paper,
You will see people voting for Mugabe as a corpse. I am seriously
telling you — just to show people how people love their
president."<END QUOTE>
However, Grace now has another solution -- she will replace Mugabe as
president.
Grace Mugabe and the vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa have been
feuding, and recently he accused her of poisoning him. On Saturday,
Grace Mugabe called Mnangagwa the “root cause of factionalism," and
she accused the vice-president’s supporters of booing her while she
gave a speech. She said, "What if I get in [as vice-president]?
What’s wrong with that? Am I not in the party? If people know that I
work hard and they want to work with me, what is wrong with that?"
So on Sunday, Mugabe fired vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa, clearing
the way for his wife Grace to become vice president, and then succeed
him as president.
Mugabe is from the Shona tribe, and in the early 1980s, he launched a
massive genocide and ethnic cleansing campaign against his traditional
tribal enemies, the Ndebele tribe. During that campaign, known as
Operation Gukurahundi, accomplished with the help of training by North
Koreans, tens of thousands of people, mostly from the Ndebele tribe,
were raped, tortured and slaughtered.
In 1999, Mugabe adopted his "indigenization" program. At that time,
Zimbabwe was considered the breadbasket of Africa, second only to
Kenya in food production. Mugabe threw all the white farm owners out
of the country, and turned the farms over to his incompetent cronies
and thugs in the Shona tribe. By 2003, Zimbabwe was starving, and the
number of Zimbabweans dying of starvation continued to grow. By 2008,
the official rate of inflation was 231 million percent. ( "24-Feb-2014 World View -- Mass murderer Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has 90th birthday"
)
So Kabila and Mugabe are cut from the same cloth -- destroying the
economy with massive corruption and using massive slaughter, rape and
torture to stay in power. But whereas Kabila used the trick of
preventing elections in order to stay in power, Mugabe is using the
trick of getting his wife to replace him, and effectively rule the
country from his grave. Once again, it's hard to see this as anything
but a joke.
Unfortunately, we've seen the same sort of thing in one form or
another in other African countries, including South Sudan, Burundi,
Uganda, Rwanda, Cameroon, and Eritrea, as well as in non-African
countries, including Syria and Thailand. The methods vary, and the
levels of violence vary, but the outcomes are always the same -- to
keep the élites in power by any means possible. Reuters and Guardian (London) and The Herald (Zimbabwe) and AFP (18-Feb-2017)
Related Articles
KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC,
Joseph Kabila, Kasai, Zambia, Angola,
Robert Mugabe, Grace Ntombizodwa Mugabe,
Operation Gukurahundi, Shona, Ndebele, Emmerson Mnangagwa
Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal
John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
- Democratic Republic of Congo issues farcical call for elections in December 2018
- Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe sacks the VP so that his wife can succeed him
****
**** Democratic Republic of Congo issues farcical call for elections in December 2018
****
A family flees violence in Kasai province in Democratic Republic of Congo (UNHCR)
On Sunday, the electoral commission of the Democratic Republic of
Congo (DRC) announced that a presidential election will be held on
December 23, 2018. Unfortunately it's hard to see this announcement
as anything but a joke, although the same kind of joke seems to occur
in one African country after another.
DRC president Joseph Kabila was supposed to step down on December 19
of last year, but he pulled a stunt worthy of any African leader: He
did everything possible to prevent new elections from taking place,
and then refused to step down because there hadn't been any elections.
There was a threat of civil war in DRC, but the Catholic Church
intervened and brokered an agreement: Elections would be held in
December of 2017 to choose Kabila's successor, and this time Kabila
would really step down.
It was always obvious that the agreement was a farce, and that Kabila
would ignore the agreement. That has in fact happened, because once
again Kabila did all he could to prevent new elections from taking
place, and now with December 2017 upon us, there will be no elections.
So now Kabila's election commission has announced that the election
will take place in December 2018. So are we going to see another year
where Kabila prevents a new election, and then makes some new
agreement for an election in December 2019?
The norm for the leaders of many African countries is to refuse to
step down, to misappropriate huge amounts of money from the treasury
and from foreign aid to pay money to his political cronies and thugs
to buy their loyalty, to pay money to buy weapons to be used against
the political opposition, and then to target his political enemies
with mass slaughter, mass atrocities, mass rapes and mass torture, in
order to stay in power.
That's certainly what's happening in DRC. As we reported in July,
in the 16 years he's
been in office, he and his family and cronies have taken control of
dozens of business, and more than 71,000 hectares (175,444 acres) of
farmland, own diamond mines, a part of the country's largest mobile
phone network, companies that mine mineral deposits, gold and
limestone, a luxury hotel, stakes in an airline, a share of the
country's banks, and a fast-food franchise.
If he allowed an election to take place and the opposition won, then
he would undoubtedly begin to lose control of that vast wealth, and
might be thrown in jail for corruption. So we can be pretty certain
that Kabila will not allow an election in December 2018, or ever -- or
at least not a rigged election. However, the Trump administration has
told Kabila that an election must be held by December 2018, or
international aid will be cut off.
The opposition stronghold is the central province of Kasai, where more
than 3,000 people have been killed in escalating violence blamed on a
government-sponsored militia. The UN has identified more than 80 mass
graves and said it had found toddlers with limbs chopped off and
pregnant women with their bellies sliced open, their unborn babies
mutilated.
The violence has resulted in 3.9 million people forced to flee their
homes to escape the violence. Hundreds of thousands have fled to
Zambia, Angola and other neighboring countries as refugees, creating a
humanitarian disaster in those countries, and threatening to
destabilize the entire region. Deutsche Welle and
The Citizen (South Africa) and UN Human Rights Council (UNHCR)
Related Articles
- DR Congo's Joseph Kabila brings the art of power and corruption to new heights (24-Jul-2017)
- Massive government atrocities in DR Congo's Kasai threaten regional stability (21-Jun-2017)
****
**** Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe sacks the VP so that his wife can succeed him
****
Robert and Grace Mugabe (AFP)
What Zimbabwe's president Robert Mugabe is doing is just a variation
of what Joseph Kabila is doing in DRC, but the intended outcome is
roughly the same.
Mugabe is 93 years old, and has used violence, rape and torture to
stay in power for 37 years, but even he knows that he can't be
president forever. Mugabe's wife, 52 year old Grace Ntombizodwa
Mugabe, said earlier this year that Mugabe would continue governing
from the grave:
<QUOTE>"One day when God decides that Mugabe dies, we will
have his corpse appear as a candidate on the ballot paper,
You will see people voting for Mugabe as a corpse. I am seriously
telling you — just to show people how people love their
president."<END QUOTE>
However, Grace now has another solution -- she will replace Mugabe as
president.
Grace Mugabe and the vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa have been
feuding, and recently he accused her of poisoning him. On Saturday,
Grace Mugabe called Mnangagwa the “root cause of factionalism," and
she accused the vice-president’s supporters of booing her while she
gave a speech. She said, "What if I get in [as vice-president]?
What’s wrong with that? Am I not in the party? If people know that I
work hard and they want to work with me, what is wrong with that?"
So on Sunday, Mugabe fired vice-president Emmerson Mnangagwa, clearing
the way for his wife Grace to become vice president, and then succeed
him as president.
Mugabe is from the Shona tribe, and in the early 1980s, he launched a
massive genocide and ethnic cleansing campaign against his traditional
tribal enemies, the Ndebele tribe. During that campaign, known as
Operation Gukurahundi, accomplished with the help of training by North
Koreans, tens of thousands of people, mostly from the Ndebele tribe,
were raped, tortured and slaughtered.
In 1999, Mugabe adopted his "indigenization" program. At that time,
Zimbabwe was considered the breadbasket of Africa, second only to
Kenya in food production. Mugabe threw all the white farm owners out
of the country, and turned the farms over to his incompetent cronies
and thugs in the Shona tribe. By 2003, Zimbabwe was starving, and the
number of Zimbabweans dying of starvation continued to grow. By 2008,
the official rate of inflation was 231 million percent. ( "24-Feb-2014 World View -- Mass murderer Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has 90th birthday"
)
So Kabila and Mugabe are cut from the same cloth -- destroying the
economy with massive corruption and using massive slaughter, rape and
torture to stay in power. But whereas Kabila used the trick of
preventing elections in order to stay in power, Mugabe is using the
trick of getting his wife to replace him, and effectively rule the
country from his grave. Once again, it's hard to see this as anything
but a joke.
Unfortunately, we've seen the same sort of thing in one form or
another in other African countries, including South Sudan, Burundi,
Uganda, Rwanda, Cameroon, and Eritrea, as well as in non-African
countries, including Syria and Thailand. The methods vary, and the
levels of violence vary, but the outcomes are always the same -- to
keep the élites in power by any means possible. Reuters and Guardian (London) and The Herald (Zimbabwe) and AFP (18-Feb-2017)
Related Articles
- Zimbabwe bans food imports as new 'bond note' currency crashes (21-Oct-2017)
- Zimbabwe launching a Soviet style command agriculture program (20-Aug-2016)
- Mass murderer Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has 90th birthday (24-Feb-2014)
- Zimbabwe's 'Liberation Hero' president Robert Mugabe continues to destroy his country (04-May-2008)
KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC,
Joseph Kabila, Kasai, Zambia, Angola,
Robert Mugabe, Grace Ntombizodwa Mugabe,
Operation Gukurahundi, Shona, Ndebele, Emmerson Mnangagwa
Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal
John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe
