Pope Francis is visiting the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Tuesday, January 31, a country in central Africa where around 40% of the population is Catholic. Jason Stearns, director of the Congo Study Group describes the central role historically played by the Church, including in the political space, a few months before the presidential election scheduled for the country at the end of December.
Symbolically, it is very important. He will certainly talk about the misery of the Congolese people, the war and democracy in the DRC to the emergence of which the Church has contributed a lot. But will he express a specific request or a particular denunciation? Probably not. Regarding the electoral process in the DRC, I expect nothing more than a call for respect for transparency.
The current situation is very different from that which prevailed before the 2018 presidential election. At the time, a democratic crisis loomed on the horizon: the regime [that of President Joseph Kabila] did not want to cede power and was ready to undermine the foundation of democracy. The Church has mobilized in the street, at the diplomatic and political level to facilitate mediation between the opposition and power. She played a key role in preventing Joseph Kabila from changing the Constitution.
This year, President Félix Tshisekedi is aiming for a second term and the Constitution authorizes him to do so. The big fight will take place at the level of voting and counting operations. In 2018, the Catholic Church deployed the largest electoral observation mission in the DRC. It will probably be the same this time around. It will also put pressure on the electoral commission, the CENI, so that it keeps its promises, in particular the display of the results, polling station by polling station.
She was one of the key players in the emergence of democracy in the DRC: during independence in 1960, then against Mobutu [1965-1997], during the democratic opening of the 1990s and finally in the process democracy from the creation of the Third Republic in 2006. Inspired by liberation theology from Latin America, the Church calls on the faithful to get involved.
In the DRC, politics makes people suffer. The country, which is the world’s leading producer of cobalt, the largest copper producer in Africa, is badly governed. It’s no secret that it has been dominated since independence by a thin elite that serves its own interests without caring about the well-being of the people. It is for this reason that the Church participates in political life, sometimes against the advice of the leaders. Joseph Kabila had expressed this explicitly by saying that “it is not for the Church to meddle in politics”.
The Church makes a lot of declarations on the subject but mobilizes little, with the exception of a few marches or conferences for peace. The Congolese state has a great responsibility in the war in the East. How to understand that an army of more than 130,000 men cannot dismantle armed groups that do not exceed a few thousand soldiers?
We talk a lot about the M23, but there are about 120 armed groups in the east of the DRC. Through apathy, complacency or direct collusion, the Congolese state maintains a form of complicity with some of them. I do not think that the Church projects itself as a mediator in the conflict.
Since the creation of the Belgian Congo, the Church has been the main partner of the colonial state, especially in the field of education and health. This legacy is visible: even today, the State subcontracts part of education and health to the Catholic Church. It remains one of the main landowners in the DRC and it provides many services to the population.
If she pleads for the well-being of the population, the Church therefore also has interests to defend. For example, when Félix Tshisekedi decided to introduce free primary school in the DRC, he came into conflict with the Catholic Church because it posed financial problems for the institution.
This is a challenge for the Church. It is also to respond to this that we are witnessing the development of Catholic charismatic movements, closer to the faithful [than traditional structures]. But the added value of the Catholic Church is its involvement in the management of public affairs. A lot of Congolese criticize other obediences for confining religion to the private domain, for ignoring the management of the State and for enriching themselves.
Doctor Denis Mukwege, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018, no doubt hopes so. Very popular in the DRC, he is himself a pastor in a Protestant church close to Catholics and perceived as someone who has not dabbled in politics. But he has no party. If he speaks out, how will he be able to run an election campaign?
And then, the DRC is a semi-presidential regime, that is to say that the government comes from the largest coalition of the National Assembly. Without a party, no majority in Parliament. Those close to Denis Mukwege say he is counting on the Church, on the Churches, to mobilize potential voters and convince different political formations to support him. This is all quite hypothetical.
It is very complicated for the Church to come out in favor of such and such a candidate, but unofficially, its networks could play a key role in the campaign of some. However, the institution is not managed by a single person but by the Episcopal Conference within which there are many divisions. Divisions on which power plays to weaken the Church. And this does not stop given the electoral deadlines.
