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The Elections in DRC

The Elections in DRC

Junior D. Kannah/AFP/Getty Images

It is always worth remembering the elections are a necessary but not sufficient condition for the emergence of democratic states. The same can be said about the connection between elections and the twin pillars of freedom and stability that most of us desire for struggling nation states.

I’ve been thinking of these linkages as the election in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been playing out in recent days. The DRC, deeply troubled, ravaged with violence and instability, has nonetheless seen incremental progress in recent years. And so in the run-up to the presidential elections this past week observers wondered if a presidential vote would help to fuel stability or reveal the continuing fissures that exacerbate instability. We may not yet have our answer, but I’m leaning in the direction of the latter.

In the wake of violence at several (but, it should be noted, far from even a substantial minority) polling places the vote went on as scheduled Monday, and to try to address insufficient infrastructure, the polling continued into Tuesday. Violence, coupled with the almost inevitable accusations of fraud (as a sad rule of thumb the opposition in African elections almost always screams fraud), mean that the legitimacy of the outcome of the election is in doubt even if the majority seems to embrace the importance of the vote, and thus that going forward the election may contribute to a general sense of insecurity for the majority of people in the DRC for whom politics mater only inasmuch as governments ought to be able to provide security and infrastructure.

Officials declared that partial results will be announced sometime today in hopes of assuaging fears of post-election violence. The thought process seemed to be that delaying an announcement of results until Tuesday, which was the initial plan, will fuel instability. It seems to me, however, that releasing roughly ten-percent of the vote might heighten instability inasmuch as it will give those partisans inclined toward violence a running start toward mobilizing like thinkers. Those early results, containing an estimated 15% of the total and no Kinshasa precincts, indicate that incumbent Joseph Kabila holds a reasonably comfortable (and as of now perhaps higher than expected) lead, with nearly 52% support.

No panacea, these elections are nonetheless vitally important to the DRC going forward. The question, however, is whether their importance will be affirmative or negative, a moment in the country’s history when things continued to go right or a moment when they went the other way. This could be a fraught moment for a country familiar with fraught moments.

 

Author

Derek Catsam

Derek Catsam is a Professor of history and Kathlyn Cosper Dunagan Professor in the Humanities at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin. He is also Senior Research Associate at Rhodes University. Derek writes about race and politics in the United States and Africa, sports, and terrorism. He is currently working on books on bus boycotts in the United States and South Africa in the 1940s and 1950s and on the 1981 South African Springbok rugby team's tour to the US. He is the author of three books, dozens of scholarly articles and reviews, and has published widely on current affairs in African, American, and European publications. He has lived, worked, and travelled extensively throughout southern Africa. He writes about politics, sports, travel, pop culture, and just about anything else that comes to mind.

Areas of Focus:
Africa; Zimbabwe; South Africa; Apartheid

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