“Congo has always served interests of others” - Kabila

Addressing a Namibian state banquet hosted in his honour in Windhoek on Tuesday evening, DRC President Joseph Kabila lamented that his country, although well-endowed with many resources, has had no peace since the 1960s. “The Congo has always served the interests of others, either international or national, and now it is divided in half and it is backward,” he was quoted as saying by Namibian news agency NAMPA on Thursday. Kabila, who is on his first, three-day state visit to Namibia, noted that since independence, the DRC has gone from crisis to crisis, starting with the death of its first Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, who served only six months in office before he died under mysterious circumstances, then followed by the regime of late President Mobutu Sese Seko “who ruled the country like his own property,” according to Kabila, NAMPA reported.

Nevertheless, Kabila remained optimistic that with peace, the country can prosper. “The inter-Congolese dialogue is a struggle to bring people together and to focus our minds on one objective. We are ready to go all the way to find a solution and peace for the Congo and the region as a whole,” NAMPA reported Kabila as saying.