Goma and Bukavu have just reminded Kinshasa that the Constitution is not a president's private property
You do not change the rules of the Republic to repair one man's failure or salvage his political career. An opinion piece by Sandra Nkulu Kyungu on the 28 July 2026 uprising in the two Kivus.
By Sandra Nkulu Kyungu, coordinator of PPRD/Diaspora
How can one not warmly congratulate the people of Goma and Bukavu who, on 28 July 2026, poured into the streets in their thousands to say NO to any constitutional manoeuvre liable to open the way to a third term for Félix Tshisekedi?
This demonstration is the cry of two cities that have paid, in their own flesh, the price of the failure of the state.
These citizens have lived through:
- War;
- Displacement;
- The collapse of the local economy;
- And, above all, punishment from Kinshasa, in the form of the closure of the banks.
Entire families have been swindled by the state: salaries for some, business capital for others.
While Kinshasa carried on with its empty speeches and its political calculations, the east had to negotiate, every morning, its elementary right to survive.
Goma has not forgotten 30 August 2023
On that day, a security-force operation against unarmed demonstrators left at least 56 people dead, according to Amnesty International.
Behind that figure were sons, fathers, brothers and Congolese citizens.
Lives were taken, then gradually buried beneath promises of inquiries, incomplete proceedings, commissions that led nowhere and political indifference.
That is why the NO of Goma and Bukavu carries a particular historic weight.
When a population wounded by its own government refuses to let the rules of power be changed, it is not merely defending a legal text. It is defending the last frontier between the Republic and the definitive confiscation of the state.
A government incapable of restoring peace cannot present the extension of its own power as a national emergency.
A regime that has not fully delivered justice for the dead cannot ask the survivors to grant it more time.
A government that has not guaranteed citizens normal access to their own savings cannot claim that Congo's main problem is its Constitution.
Our country's real problem is not term limits, it is the limitation of results
It is not the Constitution that abandoned Goma and Bukavu.
It is not article 220 that closed the banks.
It is not the limited number of terms that prevented the state from securing its territory.
It is not the constitutional text that stops those in power from protecting the Congolese, paying the soldiers properly, fighting corruption or delivering justice to the victims.
“The problem is a system of governance that is forever looking for a new story so as to avoid answering for its record.”
Let me say it clearly, as a fierce opponent of this government
- You do not change the rules of the Republic to repair one man's failure or salvage his political career.
- You do not turn a badly executed term into a right to an extension.
- You do not ask the people to sacrifice their Constitution to save a political career.
- You do not talk about a third term to a population that is still asking for peace, justice, access to its money and the return of the state.
When those in power no longer wish to hear the people, the people must speak loudly enough to bring their calculations down.
Bravo to my brothers and sisters in Goma, bravo to my brothers and sisters in Bukavu
Your NO reaches far beyond the borders of the east.
“It reminds the whole nation that a president passes, that a regime ends, but that the Republic and its rules must outlive the ambitions of individual men.”