WASHINGTON, Jan. 15 (UPI) -- The conversation began with a rumbling of voices. A stirring of sounds -- feet shuffling, pots clattering, a woman calling to a child who's not listening -- reaches the telephone receiver while a family member searches for Mundela Tchimanga. Suddenly the low, almost inaudible voice of a man emanates, as if he'd been holding the phone the whole time: "Hello?"
Tchimanga, political adviser and Washington spokesman for the Union for Democracy and Social Progress party in the Congo, is at home Tuesday to recuperate from adenoid surgery. He apologizes for the faint quality of his voice, but said he is always willing give his views on donor funding in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
"You must understand that this isn't an issue of partisanship. It is one of straight logic: Funding to a contested government is a mockery of democratic process," said Tchimanga, his voice rising from feeble to emphatic.
It has been almost a year since Joseph Kabila assumed interim presidency of the DRC after the assassination of his father Laurent Kabila. And despite the political and economic reforms that have earned Kabila praise from Western donors, including a $108 million pledge of developmental aid from the European Union last week, the Congo's opposition party views the funding as the dividends of "cheap political seduction."
The political druthers of the UDPS, Kinshasa's leading opposition, have deeper historical roots than the successive Kabila regimes. Since its formation in 1982 by parliament members seeking reforms under Mobutu Sese Seko's dictatorship, the UDPS (Union pour la democratie et le progres social) has been the largest non-violent movement in Kinshasa's politics.
Their political battle has been longer and every bit as real as the country's 3-1/2 war. The foundation of the party was met with harassment and jailings under Mobutu. And though public polls in the first six months of Laurent Kabila's regime favored UDPS leader Etienne Tshisekedi, Kabila banned political parties and Tshisekedi spent much the past several years in exile.
In May of last year, Joseph Kabila lifted the ban on party politics. But according to Tchimanga, the move was a diplomatic tactic designed to circumnavigate certain provisions of the 1999 Lusaka Agreement. The Lusaka Agreement, signed by Laurent Kabila and the DRC's warring parties in Lusaka, Zambia, called for "a new political dispensation" to be implemented in Kinshasa's government.
"According to the [Lusaka] Agreement, the UDPS and Joseph Kabila's government are equals until otherwise decided. It has been a year, and the UDPS has yet to see any progress on this front," said Herbert F. Weiss, emeritus professor and research scholar at Columbia University's Institute for African Studies.
The primary fear for the UDPS is that the momentum gained by Kabila's international profile will obfuscate the need for the political terms of the Lusaka Agreement. During a New Year message to the nation, Tshisekedi "categorically denounced" the EU's disbursement of the $108 million developmental aid package. He also called for adherence "to a new political order and national reconciliation that is the key to endowing our country with lasting peace," according to the U.N. Integrated Regional Information Network. But a few days later the aid package was committed.
"Why can't they channel this kind of money to the Lusaka peace process?" asks Tchimanga.
At the same time that the UDPS was making these pleas, the facilitator the Congo's peace talks, former Botswana President Ketumile Masire, was calling for assistance in funding the next round of the talks, set to take place in South Africa.
"Now Masire is asking for only $8 million to fund the talks in South Africa. This amount is peanuts compared to the EU's aid package," said Tchimanga.
Last October, peace negotiations held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, failed because Rwanda and Uganda refused to withdraw their forces from the Congo until a legitimate government was installed in Kinshasa, according to a statement made by observers from the International Crisis Group.
Confidence in Kabila's leadership seems to depend on how much control he exerts over the entirety of the DRC, a country one-third the size of the United States, which in turn depends on the course of the conflict, which involves at least three internal rebel militias and five other African countries.
According to Weiss, who traveled to the DRC last year to conduct field research, the situation isn't looking secure.
"Joseph Kabila is good at public relations abroad, but is he sincere about the peace process?" he asks. "I can assure you that a force of at least 50,000 Hutu interhamwe militia has been armed and mobilized through the cease-fire line and to the borders of Burundi and Rwanda."
The Hutu interahamwe is the exiled militia group responsible for carrying out the 1994 Rwandan genocide which claimed up to 800,000 lives. Laurent Kabila was often accused of arming the interahamwe, whose presence in the East is one of the justifications for Uganda and Rwanda's military involvement in the DRC.
But whether the international community shares these concerns is debatable. Stephen Hayes, president of the Washington, DC-based Corporate Council on Africa acknowledged that corporate U.S. investment in the DRC is more concerned with the short term.
"The DRC presents a wealth of opportunity in oil, telecom and mining operations. Kabila's government has a long way to go to insure transparency and security. For now, investors are dealing with government in the short-term, and with the opportunities that exist," he said.
Following the international donor convention in Brussels last December, Onno Ruhl, World Bank country manager to the DRC, held a two-hour closed-door convention with members of the country's political opposition and civic leaders.
"Our intention was to demystify understandings about World Bank policies. We also discussed such things as the role of women in development, and infrastructural measures. Even though the World Bank ultimately has to deal with the existing government, you can't have effective policies without meetings of this nature," he said.
Ruhl was formerly involved in reconstruction policies in the Balkans before coming to Africa.
Tchimanga remains distrustful of the current Kinshasa regime.
"Personally, I look at it from the perspective of a businessman," he said.
Before moving to the United States eight years ago, Tchimanga took advantage of the vacuum left by the crumbling Mobutu regime and started a joint mining venture in the Congo with U.S. and Canadian investors. When Laurent Kabila came to power in 1997, the new Ministry of Mines demanded significant assets from Tchimanga's business, saying that the money would contribute to federal development funds. But sensing that the money might actually go to arming the Hutu militias in the east, Tchimanga refused.
"I'm from the Congo and I know my people. I could see this coming from miles away," he said.
His business was subsequently confiscated. Now that Tchimanga has seen his country from the United States, he measures his personal economic trials with that of the international donor community.
"Change is part of the process of life. But change without knowing where people come from is useless," he said.
