Bishop steers Congo toward peace

KINSHASA, Congo — After decades of civil war, Congo may have found its own peacemaker in the mold of Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Like the Nobel prize-winning South African archbishop, Bishop Jean-Luc Kuye-Ndondo wa Mulemera has been selected to head a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, aimed at uncovering crimes against humanity, and encouraging forgiveness between powerful gunmen and their victims.

But, with final results from last month's disputed presidential runoff due in days and armed factions still roaming the country, Kuye-Ndondo says his work of reconciliation is still as distant a dream as peace itself.

"Peace in Congo is still far away," says Kuye-Ndondo, a sturdy man in a grey suit, sitting in the musty office of a small Pentecostal church in Congo's capital, Kinshasa.

"At this stage, the power of the people is more powerful than the power of the gun," he says with a wry grin. "But at the present moment we are playing between the two."

Peace in Congo was never going to be easy. After a brutal 1998-2003 civil war in which an astonishing 4 million died, Congo has maintained a tenuous peace under a transitional government made up of the armed factions who had been enemies. Now that parliamentary and presidential elections have been held — and the final results of the presidential elections are expected to be released by Sunday — Congo is holding its collective breath to see if its many armed losers will accept the results quietly, or fight. Violent clashes grip the capital

In the past week, tensions have risen as tentative results show President Joseph Kabila well ahead of his opponent, Vice President Jean-Pierre Bemba. The country's electoral commission issued provisional results Monday from 156 out of 169 constituencies, giving Kabila 59.6 percent and 40.4 percent for Bemba.

But Bemba's supporters have cried foul. "According to our calculations, Kabila has 51 percent and we are at 48 percent, but if you take 12 percent in fraud cases, then you can see this changes the vote a lot," says Fidele Babala, the deputy head of Bemba's campaign. "If election commissioner Apollinaire Malu Malu doesn't fix these abnormalities, then we will reject the result. ... "

More ominously, trucks distributed leaflets last week throughout the capital, calling the vote a European "imposition" on Congo, and calling on Bemba supporters to reject the vote, with violence if necessary.

With street fighting this weekend between police and youths supporting Bemba, Kuye-Ndondo admits that the future is uncertain at best. But while he calls for international peacekeepers to remain in Congo to keep the peace process going, he says that Congolese themselves also bear responsibility for their future.

"We ourselves have to work with the political leaders to make the way for elections to take place, and prepare a solid arena where we can talk about peace," Kuye-Ndondo says.