The people of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) flickered the lights last week, telling President Joseph Kabila that the party was nearly over.
It was a warning that he might soon be facing his own Compaore moment if he did start packing up.
The DRC constitution says Kabila must step down from office in 2016 after the maximum of two terms in office. Violent protests erupted in the capital, Kinshasa, and other cities over, a government bill which the National Assembly had just passed that would require a new census to be conducted – the first since 1984 – before new presidential and legislative elections could be held.
The demonstrators feared, probably rightly, that this was a ruse by Kabila to extend his stay in office, possibly indefinitely, because conducting a census in DRC, with its dismal transport system, weak bureaucracy and a continuing war in the east, would take just about for ever.
Kabila’s government reacted to the street demonstrations with excessive force. Police and soldiers killed anywhere between two and scores of demonstrators, depending on who you believe.
The government also arrested some opposition leaders and restricted SMS transmissions and the internet, to present the protest gathering unstoppable moment via social media.
Obvious comparisons have been made with Blaise Compaore, then president of Burkina Faso, who was forced to flee for his life last year from violent demonstrators when he tried to amend his country’s constitution to lift presidential term limits.
It takes a lot for Congolese to take to the streets to demonstrate against their government, as Stephanie Wolters, DRC expert at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in Pretoria, pointed out in an article last week.
The government has responded violently to previous protests and so the demonstrators knew what to expect.
That they went ahead anyway was a measure of the strength of their feeling that Kabila has reached his sell-by date.
As Wolters points out, the disenchantment with him runs deep into the establishment. The US, France and the European Union and the influential DRC Catholic Church have criticised the move, as expected.
But she notes that even in Katanga province where Kabila’s father and predecessor Laurent Kabila came from and which his son has always regarded as a political stronghold, the leadership has also turned against him because they feel he has not delivered for the province.
The depth of the divisions became glaringly obvious on Friday when the Senate passed a different version of the bill which would not require a new census to be held before elections.
The two houses of Parliament now have to try to reconcile their bills, though the Assembly has the final say if they cannot.
South Africa has a lot riding on the outcome of this drama. Pretoria has arguably been the main international driver of the transition to democracy since the fall of the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997.
It now has considerable political, economic and military interests in DRC, including a large stake in a vast expansion of the Inga hydroelectric power station on the Congo River, significant mining investments, and a contingent of about 1 300 troops fighting armed rebels in the east under the UN flag.
But is President Jacob Zuma, realising too late that he has invested too much in Kabila personally, especially in 2011 when South Africa heartily endorsed his re-election for a second term in a poll that was otherwise widely deemed to have been highly flawed?
Last week Pretoria declined to comment on the upheaval in the DRC, saying it was “an internal matter”.
It’s hard to imagine though that Zuma has not been having very urgent phone calls with Kabila. What he might be saying, though, would be fascinating to discover.
It’s been pretty obvious for some time that Kabila has been manoeuvring to overstay his welcome. Has South Africa been using its considerable leverage in that time to dissuade him from that dangerous course of action?
Judging by last week’s events, it would appear not.
Daily News Foreign Service