Congo election hit by voting delays as opposition seeks to oust Tshisekedi

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Voting in the Democratic Republic of Congo began with delays and accusations of irregularities as opposition candidates hoped to thwart President Félix Tshisekedi’s efforts to secure a second five-year term.

Martin Fayulu, a former ExxonMobil executive who was the legitimate winner of the 2018 election according to a Financial Times investigation, told reporters in Kinshasa on Wednesday that many polling stations had opened hours late and some had not received voting materials.

“In the interior of the country it’s total chaos,” Fayulu said, adding that even in the capital there had been problems.

In the east of Congo, where several million people have been displaced by a plethora of rebel groups, many were unable to register to vote and others have found it difficult to travel safely to polling stations, according to various reports from newswires and opposition parties.

Some of the few roads in the mineral-rich central African country have turned to mud in the rainy season, leading to election materials being delivered to remote regions by boat, helicopter and plane. Congo is six times the size of Germany and has more than 70,000 polling stations.

“If not everyone can vote in the polling stations designated by the electoral commission, we will not accept these elections,” said Fayulu, adding that all 44mn registered voters should be given the chance to cast their ballot.

In Ngaba, a working-class district in the south of Kinshasa, a city of 17mn people, the FT observed that none of the five designated polling stations had opened by 8am — two hours after voting was meant to have started.

Some people waiting in line expressed concern that their names were not on voter lists. “I am still having trouble finding my name and yet I registered here,” said Peter Pambu, 45.

Tshisekedi, who became president five years ago after much-disputed results, is hoping to consolidate power, with his chances of winning improved by a disunited opposition.

He faces no fewer than 18 presidential hopefuls, including Moïse Katumbi, a millionaire businessman and former governor of Katanga province, and Denis Mukwege, a gynaecologist and Pentecostal pastor who won the 2018 Nobel Peace prize.

Congo has remained desperately poor since independence in 1960 despite sitting on some of the continent’s richest mineral reserves, including many of the critical minerals needed for the global transition to net zero.

The country, whose eastern provinces bordering on Rwanda and Uganda have been plagued by decades of armed insurgency, has become the site of strategic rivalry between China, the US and other nations hoping to secure greater access to its cobalt and copper as well as other minerals such as gold and tantalum.

Washington has grown increasingly concerned that Congo’s most important minerals, particularly cobalt, are being exported to China, according to Jason Stearns, an author and Congo expert.

Judd Devermont, senior director for African Affairs at the National Security Council in Washington, told the FT that the US had committed $250mn to the Lobito transportation corridor, a rail link connecting the copper and mineral belts of Zambia and Congo to the Atlantic seaboard.

“The elections are free,” Tshisekedi told the FT in an interview this month, insisting that talk of corruption was “noise”.

Congo’s Catholic and Protestant churches, among the most trusted institutions in a country where the government in Kinshasa is often regarded as distant and unreliable, are expected to deploy tens of thousands of electoral observers to monitor voting.

The East African Community, an intergovernmental organisation to which Congo belongs, said it would not be sending observers and cited obstruction from Tshisekedi’s administration.

Donatien Nshole, secretary-general of the National Episcopal Conference of Congo, urged the electoral commission to announce contingency plans for polling stations that had not opened on time. “If we spread the vote over several days, this will have an impact on the integrity of the vote,” he said.

The final election result is not expected to be announced until December 31.