MADD - for African Direct Democracy / Africain...

Victoria Dimandja

A legacy of failure

At this very moment we must acknowledge that all the money and work invested in security and democracy in Congo has resulted in a very limited sustainable impact. We happily believed that we had contributed to the rehabilitation of the Congolese state, but neither two elections (2006 and 2011) nor years of army reforms have allowed it to arise from the ashes.

The West was very ambiguous about democracy. On the one hand, we found elections very important, but on the other we went very far in accepting the undemocratic way they were organized.

The 'International community' invested in an army, but after all these years the FARDC has remained much more a part of the problem then a part of the solution. Programs and policies meant to reinforce democracy and security were designed and implemented by people in offices far away from the complex realities on the ground, by people with very limited understanding of them.

A lot of these policies were based on a rather superficial analysis of the problems in the region. We imposed on Congo a standard package of post-conflict measures and their accompaniments, not taking into account the fact that the conflict in Central Africa never really finished. Cruel wars and dreadful, unworkable peace agreements were the result, and now we are reaping what we sow.

In the eyes of the Congolese population, the West has lost all its credibility. Despite lip service being paid to democracy, the people haven't seen real commitment.

The big challenges weren't addressed: bad governance and poverty are endemic, the land issue remains a time bomb, the Congolese state is still very fragile and cannot rehabilitate the instruments it needs to guarantee the rule of law. This will not change whilst support is limited to the technical dimension of these problems.

If we really want to be loyal to the Congolese population, we have to understand the quality of the security and the democracy to which we contribute. This can only be achieved through open dialogue with the Congolese leadership, which will enable us to define with them clear bench marks which allow progress to be measured. We also badly need better insight in to the way local, provincial and national levels of government influence each other.

On top of all this comes the regional context. We already mentioned that Rwanda supports M23 in many ways. We suspected this since the very beginning and we have known it to be true since June, when the UN Expert Panel published its provisional report. Rwanda has made little effort to hide this, even if it has continued to deny it.

If Rwanda gets away with this, we will have to accept that future generations of Congolese will be stuck in a vicious circle of wars and dreadful, ineffective peace agreements.
Kris Berwouts

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