DR Congo raids on ex-president's properties: family says

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Kinshasa, DR Congo | AFP

DR Congo security services have raided properties belonging to former president Joseph Kabila, who has said he will return to the country in its conflict-stricken eastern region, a family spokesperson said on Thursday.

Current leader President Felix Tshisekedi has accused Kabila of preparing "an insurrection" and backing an alliance that includes the M23 armed group that is fighting government forces in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

Security services told the manager of Kabila's main property, Kingakati farm, about 80 kilometres (50 miles) east of Kinshasa, that "a raid was planned," said Adam Shemisi, spokesman for Kabila's wife, Marie-Olive Lembe Kabila.

Security services also staged raids at a compound belonging to the Kabila family in Kinshasa, the spokesman added.

According to Shemisi, investigators said they were looking for "stolen or hidden" military materiel, but nothing was found.

Kabila was president for 18 years up to 2019 when he stepped down in the face of protests.

The spokesman said Kabila, 53, left DR Congo before the country's last presidential election in 2023.

But last week, in a message released by staff, he would soon return through the eastern region because the country was "in peril". No date was given, however, and it was not known if he would pass through territory now controlled by M23.

The armed group is at the centre of a new surge in conflict in eastern DR Congo, having taken the key cities of Goma and Bukavu. UN experts and several international powers have said M23 is backed by Rwanda, which has denied the charges.

In February, hit out at his successor, saying the bad governance of his successor, President Felix Tshisekedi, had a leading role in intensifying the conflict in the east of the country.

The unrest could not solely be blamed on the advances of the Rwanda-backed M23 armed movement or tensions between Kinshasa and Kigali, Kabila wrote in an opinion piece in South Africa's Sunday Times newspaper.

M23 fighters have made rapid gains in the past weeks to now control large swathes of the resource-rich eastern DRC, with fears that the conflict could spill across the borders.

Since Tshisekedi took over in 2019 after winning the previous year's election, the situation in the DRC had deteriorated to the point at which it was "close to imploding," Kabila wrote.

The December 2023 elections that handed Tshisekedi a second term by a landslide were a "sham", he said, accusing the government of muzzling political opposition with the head of state becoming the "absolute master of the country."

"Intimidation, arbitrary arrest, summary and extrajudicial executions, as well as the forced exile of politicians, journalists and opinion leaders, including church leaders, are among the main characteristics of Tshisekedi’s governance," he said.

"The innumerable violations of the constitution and human rights, as well as repeated massacres of the Congolese population by Tshisekedi’s police and military forces will not end after the successful conclusion of negotiations between the DRC and Rwanda, or the military defeat of M23," Kabila said.

Failure to address this aspect of the turmoil by focusing only on the M23 would lead to continued political turmoil and armed conflict, and even civil war, he said.

"Any attempt to find a solution to this crisis that ignores its root causes — at the top of which lies the governance of the DRC by its current leadership — will not bring lasting peace. "

The M23, which says it is fighting to protect the rights of the DRC's minority Tutsi people, resumed fighting in 2021, two years after Tshisekedi came to power.

South Africa has more than 1,000 soldiers in the DRC as part of a mission by the 16-country southern African grouping SADC to support the government and stabilise the region. Fourteen South African soldiers were killed in the conflict last month.