The Truth, by Mr T

Privileged expatriates are often mocked for thinking that the views expressed by their drivers and household staff are representative of the views of the local working class. I don’t claim that the following represents anything other than the views of Mr T, therefore:

• Jean Pierre (Bemba) will win the election.
• If Jean Pierre doesn’t win, it will be because “les Blancs” want Joseph (Kabila) to win.
• But if Jean Pierre wins, investors will accrue to DRC by the thousands.
• Jean Pierre with the West behind him can make Congo take off for real.
• Jean Pierre is very rich so he won’t pillage the Congo.
• Joseph is not Congolese.
• Joseph is not Laurent Désiré Kabila’s son.
• Joseph’s mother had him and his twin sister with another man before she became Laurent Désiré’s concubine. This is why Joseph leaves his half-brothers and sisters to starve and sweat it out in the Cité when he could give them houses to live in.
• Joseph is Tanzanian and used to be a taxi driver.
• Joseph was part of the plot to kill his father, who is not his father. Otherwise he would have avenged Laurent Désiré’s death properly, not sent the killer to prison.
• MONUC (UN mission in Congo) was also part of the plot.
• Joseph is not very smart; he is selling Congolese uranium to Iraq for only $40,000.
• Joseph’s wife is smarter than he is.
• Joseph may have helped achieve peace, but he has done nothing else for the DRC in five years.
• The only reason Joseph held elections was because Bemba pressured him to do so.
• Mr T has seen results from the East, and Joseph is not doing so well.
• If Joseph does well in the East, it will be because half the people there are not Congolese.
• Joseph only did well in the first round because the Angolans and Rwandans smuggled boxes full of ballots pre-marked for Kabila into the Congo.
• The Congolese intelligence services have stopped such smuggling during the second round, but if Joseph wins then it will prove that some boxes got through anyway.
• Antoine Gizenga (the octogenarian candidate who came third place in the first round and aligned himself with Kabila for the second round) is not very wise. He told everyone that Joseph was a cockroach during the first round, and now he says that he is a human being after all.
• All of Kinshasa is behind Jean Pierre.
• Jean Pierre will win.
• If Jean Pierre doesn’t win, it will be because of cheating (“tricherie”) by “les Blancs”.