Congo’s Interim Leader to Continue Slain Father’s Policies

Joseph Kabila will soon be sworn in as president of Congo and is expected to reaffirm the political agenda of his assassinated father, an official said Friday.

Communications Minister Dominique Sakombi said the younger Kabila had been named the country’s interim leader while his father, Laurent, was alive but would now be permanently installed.

“We are entering a period of continuity, not a transitional period, both for the army and government,” Sakombi said in an interview. “Everything continues to function normally.”

The announcement dampened hopes of many Congolese that the death of Laurent Kabila would herald dramatic change, including a swift shift toward democracy, economic prosperity and an end to a civil war that has dragged on for more than two years.

The war has swelled into a regional conflict, with Rwanda and Uganda backing the renegades, and Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe supporting Kabila’s troops.

Congolese authorities confirmed Kabila’s death Thursday, two days after he was shot at his residence in Kinshasa, the capital.

Sakombi dismissed a widely held theory that disgruntled army generals had killed Kabila. He said a longtime bodyguard, whose name was given only as Rashidi, allegedly had shot the president in his office at close range--once in the neck and twice in the abdomen.

The suspect had pretended to whisper something in Kabila’s ear as he pulled the trigger, Sakombi said.

Kabila, who was at the time meeting with an economics advisor, had no reason to worry when Rashidi, who was off duty, came into his office to greet him, Sakombi said. “It was a man the president trusted,” Sakombi said, adding that the suspect was “very close to the president.”

Kabila’s body was lying in state Friday at an army barracks in the Zimbabwean capital, Harare, where he was ferried after the shooting. Sakombi said Kabila would be flown to his hometown of Lubumbashi today, then taken Sunday to Kinshasa, where people could pay homage, ahead of a state funeral Tuesday. The government has declared a 30-day national mourning period.

Cabinet officials thrust Joseph Kabila into power Wednesday to fill a power vacuum and prevent anarchy. The younger Kabila, 31, who has made no public statements since being named interim president, was head of the country’s armed forces even before the attack on his father.

Born during his father’s long exile in East Africa, he helped fight in the rebellion that ousted dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in May 1997. After military training in China, Joseph returned as army chief of staff but soon was promoted to major general.

“We needed someone of high rank,” Sakombi said. “We are at war and, therefore, we need a military man. [Joseph] is young. He is open. He’s got a consensual approach, which permits the continuity of government policy. And he is trusted by both civilians and military.”

But his ascension to the presidency has angered some residents of Kinshasa, a hotbed of opposition politics, who say that Kabila’s replacement by his son is illegal.

Others believe that the younger Kabila is half-Tutsi, the ethnic group that now dominates the government in neighboring Rwanda, Congo’s archenemy. The fact that his main languages are English and Kiswahili, which is widely spoken in the country’s east, and not French and Lingala, the most common language in western Congo, also makes him unpopular with some capital residents.

People “know nothing about him except that he is a military man and son of the [deceased] president,” said Moise Musangana, managing director of Le Potentiel, a popular opposition newspaper. “There are even doubts about his military capacity because he only did three months’ training.”

Many residents were skeptical that conditions in this troubled, mineral-rich nation of 50 million people would improve.

“All leaders and their families eat the wealth,” said Phillip Litanda, 21, an economics student. “They don’t care about this society. They are all the same.”

Sakombi said the priority of the new president would be to secure the withdrawal of foreign troops from Congo’s territory, launch a national dialogue and hold a referendum on a new constitution. Presidential elections would follow much later.

He warned Western powers not to underestimate the younger Kabila.

“Now that President Kabila is dead, they think things will change,” Sakombi said. “They think this young man will be frightened, afraid; that he won’t be a strong personality; that he doesn’t have experience. They think he is not as strong as Kabila. But we will protect, advise him, [and] the army is here.”

Foreign diplomats, who were invited Wednesday to meet Joseph Kabila, expressed optimism that he might extend a conciliatory hand to the warring factions and relaunch serious negotiations.

Said Kamel Morjane, the United Nations secretary-general’s special representative to Congo: “Our position is to give him a sort of good faith and judge accordingly, with the hope that he will be fully cooperative with the U.N. and those who want peace in the country, that he will encourage the Congolese peace process to resume.”