DRC declares 30 days of mourning for Kabila

Published Jan 18, 2001

Share

By Tom Tshibangu

Kinshasa - The government of Democratic Republic of Congo said on Thursday President Laurent Kabila was dead.

An announcement by Information Minister Dominique Sakombi on state television ended two days of confusion after Kabila was shot in his palace on Tuesday. Sakombi told the nation the president had died at 10am on Thursday. He did not say where.

"The government declares 30 days of national mourning throughout the territory of Democratic Republic of Congo," the minister said.

Kabila had been flown to the Zimbabwean capital Harare for treatment after being shot by one of his own soldiers in the Congolese capital Kinshasa.

Zimbabwean government officials said in Harare his body was likely to be flown from Zimbabwe to his home town of Lubumbashi on Friday.

"At the moment the plan is to take the body to Lubumbashi to lie in state and then to transfer it to Kinshasa for burial, but the official programme will be announced by the authorities in the DRC," one official said.

An official at the Information Ministry in Kinshasa, speaking before the government confirmation of Kabila's death, said the body would be brought back to Kinshasa on Sunday for burial there next Tuesday.

Officials from foreign governments, including former colonial power Belgium, had said as early as Tuesday that Kabila had died at his palace after being shot, or soon afterwards.

The government had maintained that he was alive and undergoing medical treatment, although on Wednesday it announced that his son, Joseph, already commander of the army, had been put in charge of the government and the armed forces.

State television said on Thursday that Joseph Kabila had taken over the functions of president "on an interim basis".

Political sources in Harare said the Kinshasa authorities had delayed the news of Kabila's death while they put security arrangements in place to avert a collapse into anarchy.

Kinshasa remained calm throughout, with people keen to hear one way or another if Kabila was dead but otherwise going about their normal business. Soldiers were deployed outside government buildings, the only outward sign of the unfolding drama.

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe returned home early on Thursday from Yaounde, Cameroon, where he had been due to attend a Franco-African summit, spokeswoman Betty Dimbi told Reuters.

Dimbi said Mugabe would meet his allies in the Congolese war in which Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola support the Kinshasa government against rebels backed by Uganda and Rwanda.

"What we now know is that there will be a meeting of the allies. What we don't know yet is when or where," Dimbi said.

Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel told a special session of parliament called to discuss the latest Congo crisis that the new government had assured Belgium peace was its priority.

"Contacts we had this morning with the Congolese authorities - to be more precise with government ministers - have shown that the new government intends to do everything to end the war, to proceed with economic and social reconstruction and promote democracy," Michel said.

He said he had asked the Belgian envoy to the United Nations to request a meeting of the Security Council to discuss reinforcing the Lusaka peace accord signed in 1999 that called for a withdrawal of all foreign troops from Congo.

State television in Kinshasa showed Joseph Kabila on Thursday meeting diplomats from France, Britain, the United States, Russia and China, plus the UN Secretary-General's representative in Kinshasa.

"I was received by the head of state and I expressed the condolences, the sympathy and the solidarity of the secretary-general," UN representative Kamel Morjane said.

"I assured him above all of the determination of the Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the United Nations to be always at the side of the Democratic Republic of Congo to guarantee the territorial integrity of the country and above all to assure the peace that Congolese people seek," he said.

Joseph Kabila, born during his father's long exile in East Africa, fought beside him in the rebellion backed by those countries that ousted veteran dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997.

Sent by his father to China for military training after Kabila became ruler in Kinshasa, Joseph returned with the rank of chief of staff and won promotion to major-general.

It was unclear whether Joseph was simply a stop-gap leader or if his promotion would be long-term after his father's death.

Late on Wednesday, Richard Holbrooke, US ambassador to the UN, told foreign armies not to take advantage of upheaval in Congo, and stay out of its internal politics.

"It is essential that the foreign forces who have invaded and occupy large parts of the Congo halt their offensive action," he told African ambassadors to the UN.

Kabila's four years in power were marked by little but conflict in Africa's third biggest country, which suffered decades of plunder under Mobutu that impoverished most of its people despite its diamonds, gold, copper and cobalt.

Kabila sprang from obscurity in 1996 at the head of a rebellion with Rwandan and Ugandan backing that fought its way across the country, then called Zaire, in barely eight months.

But he fell out with those backers and they turned against him, supporting rebels who have captured large parts of the north and east since 1998. - Reuters

Related Topics: