Corrupt African Leaders Pt. 2

This new month sees us looking at another villain of the month winner: DRC President Joseph Kabila. UK's Guardian recently wrote about the business networks that are directly linked to President Kabila and members of his family.

The fact that Kabila was supposed to have stepped down as President of the DRC last year is now part of the reason why these recent revelations carry more weight, it seems the main reason Kabila refuses to step down as President is just so he can continue implementing his criminal plan to steal as much as he can from the coffers of his country and use the resources available to him as President to hide his ill gotten wealth in the eventuality of when a new DRC Government starts an investigation into his time in office.

The Guardian article referenced a public report entitled "All the President's wealth" which detailed the various connections and business links of Kabila and his family. Follow the link of the report to get more details as we would only list some specifics on this site. These are some of the claims highlighted in the report:

• That Kabila owns 71,000 hectares of farmland both directly and with his children
• That his twin sister holds a sizeable stake in the state telecoms company
• That his younger brother has business interests that range from mining and construction to a stake in the Nando’s fast-food chain
• That two family companies have diamond mining permits for 450km of the country’s southern border

Along with the claims highlighted above, it is claimed that Kabila together with his family owns more than 80 companies in the DRC and abroad either wholly or partially. In a country where the majority of his fellow countrymen and women earn less than $1 a day, that he and his family have managed to siphon off the DRC's government coffers for their own benefit is both sickening and a symptom of years of corruption under Kabila's immoral Presidency. The fact that most of the Kabila family wealth is kept in the country shows that he (Kabila) has no intention of stepping down anytime in the near future.

We would say it again as we have said before: "it's time for Africans to start tasking their leaders on the need to ensure that proper democratic norms are being adhered to so as to restore confidence and give credibility to the democratic process".