Bemba back home in DRC
After more than 11 years abroad – a decade of it behind bars – former DR Congo warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba returned home on Wednesday to huge crowds and police firing teargas, reflecting the country’s high-voltage political mood.
Bemba, 55, throwing down the gauntlet to his rival, President Joseph Kabila, has vowed to contest twice-delayed elections due on December 23.
He landed at Kinshasa from Belgium aboard a private plane after the International Criminal Court (ICC) acquitted him of war-crimes charges in June.
Tens of thousands of people gathered along the city’s main highway, prompting police to fire teargas to try to make a path for his open-topped car.
Analysts say that Bemba’s return throws even more uncertainty into an already volatile election.
The DRC has never known a peaceful transition of power since independence from Belgium in 1960 – and some experts fear the current crisis may lead to bloodshed.
Two wars unfolded from 1996-97 and from 1998-2003 that sucked in other countries.
Smaller, but still bloody, conflicts dog the centre and east of the vast country today.
Kabila, 47, took over from his father, Laurent-Desire Kabila, after he was assassinated by a bodyguard in 2001.
Kabila was scheduled to stand down at the end of 2016 after his second elected term, technically the last permitted under the constitution, but he has stayed in office, invoking a constitutional clause.
Dozens have died in antiKabila protests amid the mounting political uncertainty.
Another rival to Kabila – tycoon Moise Katumbi, 53, a former governor of the mineralrich province of Katanga – plans to return home on Friday from self-imposed exile abroad.
The third big opposition figure is Felix Tshisekedi of the Union for Democracy and Social Progress, headed by former prime minister Etienne Tshisekedi until his death last year.