Too close for comfort

Yesterday I received an e-mail from a friend of mine living in Sri Lanka. He’s just been offered a job in Kinshasa and was asking whether it was safe. I wrote back saying that despite the occasional spark of tension, the security situation has been pretty stable on the whole, particularly since the elections. Famous last words.

First sign of trouble today mid-morning: we witnessed people fleeing en masse down our road towards the ‘cité’, where most of them live. When the Congolese traders leave their post, it’s a sure sign something is amiss. The shooting started at 12.45, just as I was about to leave the house for a meeting, having received the green light from Security (I won’t say whose). Instead, we took cover in our corridor, the only space in our house without windows, and spent the next 5 hours crouched on the floor, listening to heavy gunfire outside, juggling radios and mobile phones in a frantic attempt to quench our voracious thirst for information.

Note to self: Never again rent a house that shares a wall with the police HQ lest it come under attack.

If I’m totally honest, I will hesitantly admit that I was ever-so-slightly disappointed that we’d ‘missed all the fun’ in the last three shoot-outs in August and November – the first two times because we were out of the country, and the third time because we were safely ensconced in the embassy compound. I was a nincompoop and I take it all away. It’s terrifying. Fred recorded some of it for Extra Extra.

The 6pm ceasefire appears to be respected, more or less, and the fireworks have reduced to just a few sporadic and distant bursts. Negotiations start first thing tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

We’ve been here before. The issue remains that opposition leader Jean-Pierre Bemba refuses to disband his personal militia, despite a government order to do so by 15 March. He understandably feels that the mere 12 policemen planned by decree for his protection are not enough. President Kabila understandably feels that allowing a few hundred armed men who respond to his rival reside smack in the centre of town is unacceptable. So he sent in the military. But rumour has it that the Seventh Integrated Brigade mutinied and joined forces with Bemba, which would explain why his men seem to have taken so much of Gombe (the downtown area where we live). And then there’s the mysterious story of the motorcyclist who may or may not have tried to kill Prime Minister Gizenga today, an event which is said to have sparked the clashes. More tomorrow.