Lambert Mende Omalanga wrote to Joseph Kabila (Open Letter)

Rémy RUGIRA

OPEN LETTER

Your communication, which casts doubt on the main actor in the devastation of our country since 1996, has plunged me into a kind of metaphysical nausea. I have the painful feeling of having been literally "ripped off" for years.

The despair in which the Congolese people are languishing compels me to address these few words to you in response to your message of May 23, 2025, followed by your return to the country via Goma in North Kivu.

It is with mixed feelings that I followed your message and your return to the country via a city under foreign military occupation.

Certainly, the need—emphasized in your communication and insistently reiterated by officials of your political party, the PPRD—to rebuild national unity, weakened by war and poor governance, is legitimate and laudable. But many of your compatriots are lost in conjecture about the route, which is at the very least singular and incompatible with this noble objective, that you have decided to follow for this purpose.

For more than a decade, I have been a privileged witness alongside you of the performance and underperformance of our country's public management. I cannot subscribe to the idea, echoed in your aforementioned message, that the current dramatic regression in the Democratic Republic of Congo is the sole responsibility of your successor, Félix-Antoine Tshisekedi. Such an assertion, suggesting that President Tshisekedi's departure would be enough for this country to return to prosperity, growth, and development, is untenable. Such an allegation would amount to ignoring a substantial body of the causes of the DRC's tragic backwardness. These include the apodictic and fundamental ones of the systemic plundering of our economic resources against the backdrop of a frenzied destabilization by Rwanda which has crossed the successive regimes of Presidents Mobutu, Laurent-Désiré Kabila and yours before subjugating that of Félix Tshisekedi who is trying as best he can to demystify his infamous and inhibiting legends.

Mr. President,

The inconsistency between certain passages of your remarks of May 23rd and the path you are taking gives me goosebumps. It contrasts with one of the favorite axioms of your father and predecessor in power, Mzee Laurent-Désiré Kabila of blessed memory, who liked to repeat that "what is said must be done."

In my subconscious, the memory of your incessant warnings against the maneuvers of international and African pirates, determined to keep our Congo in a state of exploitation ad vitam aeternam without compensation, has resonated with your silence on President Paul Kagame, who for nearly three decades has embodied these modern-day pirates.

Your statement, which dismisses the main actor in the devastation of our country since 1996, has plunged me into a kind of metaphysical nausea. I have the painful feeling of having been literally "ripped off" for years.

Without assuming the right to pass judgment on your decision to return to the country via Goma, I feel, having been for several years one of the sacrificial victims of "targeted" European sanctions for having passionately defended our national interests under your leadership, entitled to express my unease at the anxiety-inducing symbolism conveyed by your silence regarding the undeniable responsibility of Rwandan leaders and their mentors outside Africa.

My concern is all the more well-founded given that you are fueling the flames of the aggressor, whose factions involved in the heinous assassination of Mzee L-D. Kabila in 2001 still roam vast swathes of the national territory, sowing death and desolation.

In a letter published on X this Wednesday, Lambert Mende Omalanga, former Minister of Communication and long-time loyalist of Joseph Kabila, directly attacks the former president after his speech of May 23, 2025