Former Congolese President Joseph Kabila made his first public appearance on Wednesday since being sentenced to death in absentia for treason and war crimes. The former leader resurfaced in Nairobi, Kenya, where he joined several Congolese opposition figures to unveil a new political alliance challenging President Felix Tshisekedi’s administration.
A video from the Kenyan capital showed Kabila attending a ceremony alongside about a dozen opposition leaders. The gathering reportedly ended in the signing of a declaration to form a political movement they said was devoted to rescuing Congo’s democracy. According to the group, their mission is to unite “all Congolese people opposed to the dictatorship” and “end the tyranny, restore state authority, reestablish democracy and promote national reconciliation.”
Kabila’s presence in Kenya is expected to spark a diplomatic backlash from Congo, where officials have repeatedly accused Kenya of sympathizing with the M23 rebel group, a Rwanda-backed force that recently seized several towns in eastern Congo’s resource-rich region.
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The Congolese government alleges that Kabila has been working with Rwanda and the M23 rebels to destabilize the country. In September, a military court in Kinshasa handed him a death sentence, which his former political party, the People’s Party for Reconstruction and Democracy (PPRD), condemned as a politically motivated attempt to silence him.
Although Kabila has consistently denied collaborating with the rebels, he previously expressed sympathy for their grievances in a February opinion piece published in South Africa’s Sunday Times.
Kabila rose to power in 2001 at just 29 years old, following the assassination of his father, Laurent Kabila, who was then president. After leading the country for nearly two decades, Kabila delayed elections beyond his constitutional term limit in 2017, triggering mass unrest before eventually stepping down.
President Felix Tshisekedi’s victory in the 2019 election marked Congo’s first peaceful transfer of power since independence from Belgium in 1960. However, the fragile political alliance between Tshisekedi and Kabila’s camp quickly disintegrated, culminating in Kabila’s departure from the country earlier this year.
