Goma and Bukavu are Congolese, and every Congolese has the right to travel there
To force Moïse Katumbi Chapwe or Matata Ponyo to seek Kinshasa's permission to travel to Goma, in their own country, to meet Joseph Kabila Kabange, their fellow Congolese, is bewildering, unlawful and an arbitrary act of intimidation.
“In a media appearance, Congolese opposition figure Moïse Katumbi Chapwe, a former governor of Katanga, said that the C64 coalition would send a delegation to Goma, in North Kivu, to meet President Joseph Kabila Kabange, who leads the Front for the Refoundation of the Nation (FRN), a Congolese political-military movement.”
One of the FRN's vice-presidents, Corneille Nangaa, recently said the C64 delegation is welcome in Goma and will be received with full honours. He was, however, emphatic on one point: "There can be no compromise between the Constitution and those who violate it!"
“Some slippages are so subtle that they end up looking like renunciations, like resignation. And some renunciations wound all the more deeply when they come from those in whom a people had placed what little hope it had left.”
In the beginning, the C64 had a mission of an almost austere clarity, written into the very article from which it takes its name: 'Defend the Constitution'. A Constitution for which Congolese have died, and are still dying, under truncheons and tear gas on the streets of Kinshasa, Lubumbashi, Kindu and Kisangani. Then, imperceptibly, the words shifted. Defending the Constitution became inclusive dialogue; dialogue became mediation." End of quote.
The threats and intimidation from Jacquemain Shabani, Deputy Prime Minister for the Interior in the Kinshasa government, are baseless. Goma, Bukavu, Rutshuru and Masisi are Congolese territories, inhabited by Congolese and governed by Congolese.
“To force Moïse Katumbi Chapwe or Matata Ponyo to seek Kinshasa's permission to travel to Goma, in their own country, to meet Joseph Kabila Kabange, their fellow Congolese, is bewildering, unlawful and an arbitrary act of intimidation.”
It should also be noted that the C64 counts among its ranks figures who are pro-Tshisekedi and anti-Tutsi, such as Martin Fayulu, who has never hidden his hatred of Rwanda and its people, and who peddles the same rhetoric of so-called Rwandan aggression, even though our country, the DRC, has been gnawed at by recurrent internal crises since 1960.
“Moïse Katumbi Chapwe will come to Goma, to his own home, yes, his own home, in the DRC. Goma is administered by Congolese, among them Congolese Tutsi. Kinshasa's baseness, in passing off every native of the DRC as a Rwandan, is nothing short of ridiculous, utterly ridiculous. Besides, being Rwandan is no crime, but rather a source of pride.”
“Goma and Bukavu are not governed by Rwanda, as Kinshasa's slanderous narrative claims, but by Congolese political and military actors who control these areas for legitimate reasons and causes.”
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