PREVIEW
The ex-president takes command of a front committed to ousting Tshisekedi, turning an eastern insurgency into an explicit bid for national power
Joseph Kabila has abandoned the ambiguity surrounding his alliance with the Rwanda-backed rebellion. Announced in Goma on 12 October, his Front pour la Refondation de la Nation (FRN) puts the former president at the head of a politico-military coalition committed to removing President Félix Tshisekedi. Corneille Nangaa and the other Alliance du Fleuve Congo (AFC) - Mouvement du 23 Mars (M23) leaders become his deputies. The new hierarchy gives the insurgency a national figurehead. Kabila’s struggle with his successor is now an open fight for power.
The FRN will replace the AFC, which had been the political wing of the M23 militia group supported by Rwanda. AFC leaders Nangaa, who headed the electoral commission during Kabila’s final term, along with Bertrand Bisimwa, Freddy Kaniki and Sultani Makenga will take up senior posts in the new movement, according to its advisor, Claude Ibalanky.
Nangaa has long said his mission is to topple Tshisekedi but the M23/AFC also claimed it wanted a de facto independent state including Kivu-Nord and Kivu-Sud. In Goma, Kabila accused the Kinshasa government of corruption, and criticised its minerals deal with the United States. The FRN is also committed to armed struggle, describing itself as ‘resistance forces’ with an objective to end ‘tyranny’ in Congo-Kinshasa ‘by all means, including force’.
Last year, Kabila was recruited by Nangaa to be part of the AFC-M23 alliance in eastern Congo-K but had not publicly supported it. Nevertheless, he was handed a death sentence in absentia after being tried for treason in Kinshasa (AC Vol 66 No 20, Peace talks falter as M23 tightens its grip on the Kivus). In April, the US Treasury imposed sanctions on Kabila accusing him of ‘providing material support to armed groups’ (Dispatches 4/5/26, Washington turns on Kabila as Trump raises the cost for Rwanda in eastern Congo).
Embattled President Tshisekedi faces more troubles in Europe. On 14 October, Belgian police raided several houses occupied by his family in and around Brussels. Belgian officials said it was part of an investigation into money laundering by the First Family.
Tshisekedi and his wife rent a property in the Brussels neighbourhood of Uccle, with his five children enrolled in schools in Belgium. Nine members of his family, all of whom hold Belgian nationality, are under investigation in Belgium in a probe into the financial plundering of mines in Haut-Katanga and Lualaba.
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