Joseph Kabila, (born June 4, 1971, Sud-Kivu province, the Democratic Republic of the Congo), an army official and politician who was president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 2001.
Kabila, the son of Congolese rebel leader Laurent Kabila, was largely raised and educated in Tanzania. He fought as part of the rebel forces that helped his father depose Pres. Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire in 1997. Laurent then assumed the presidency and restored the country’s former name, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Joseph was sent to China for additional military training. Upon his return, he became head of the country’s armed forces, with the rank of major general.
The elder Kabila’s rule was soon challenged in 1998 with a small rebellion that later expanded and involved troops from several African countries. Shortly after Laurent was assassinated, Joseph was inaugurated as the country’s president on January 26, 2001. He inherited a country that was still engulfed in war and that, for the most part, was without a functioning government or basic services and whose economy had largely been ruined from years of conflict.
Little was known about Kabila, and the first assessment was that his father’s advisers had chosen him as a figurehead. During the following months, however, Kabila surprised many people by taking initiative and turning the policies of the government in a different direction. Less than a week after being sworn in, Kabila made his first trip abroad as president. He conferred with government leaders in France and Belgium and also traveled to the United States, where he met with Secretary of State Colin Powell and with officials of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations. While in the United States, he also met with Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda, who had been one of his father’s principal opponents. In a meeting in Zambia in February 2001, Kabila agreed to begin the implementation of a cease-fire agreement that had been signed in July 1999 but had not been honored. He held talks with rebel groups, and the governments of five countries—Rwanda, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Angola, and Namibia—that had troops in Congo agreed to begin their withdrawal. UN peacekeepers arrived at the end of March to monitor the cease-fire and the pullback of troops. In April Kabila dismissed the cabinet that had been held over from his father’s administration and named his own group of ministers. In December 2002 he signed an agreement with rebels to end the war and to form a power-sharing transitional government. The agreement was ratified in April 2003; later that year an interim government was formed that kept Kabila as president and named rebel leaders to vice president and cabinet posts.
Though Kabila made strides toward peace, his actions were not without opposition. In 2004 there were alleged coup attempts against him, but loyalist forces prevailed. Undeterred, Kabila continued in his attempts to unify the country. In 2006 a new constitution was promulgated and the country held its first multiparty elections in more than four decades. Kabila failed to secure a majority of the vote, but he easily defeated Jean-Pierre Bemba in the runoff held in October 2006. In early 2008 Kabila signed a peace agreement with more than 20 rebel groups who had been fighting in the eastern part of the country, but the truce unraveled later that year when some rebels resumed their attacks.
Kabila stood for reelection in 2011, facing 10 other candidates in the November 28 poll. His strongest challenger was former prime minister Étienne Tshisekedi. Kabila’s reelection bid was bolstered by his well-organized political campaign as well as a January 2011 constitutional amendment that eliminated the second round of voting in the presidential race, therefore allowing a candidate to win without necessarily having a majority of the vote. However, many Congolese were disgruntled over Kabila’s failure to keep all of his 2006 election campaign promises, and Tshisekedi was a popular opposition figure with considerable support. The climate leading up to the election was tense and punctuated with violence, because of tensions between the parties, as well as legitimate concerns that logistical challenges would interfere with voting in remote parts of the country. Still, the elections were held as scheduled, and provisional results showed that Kabila was the winner, with 49 percent of the vote; Tshisekedi followed, with 32 percent. Several international monitoring groups characterized the polls as being poorly organized and noted many irregularities, but the results were confirmed by the Supreme Court and Kabila was inaugurated on December 20, 2011.
In his new term, Kabila faced several challenges, including postelection disputes that persisted into the next year and ongoing violence throughout parts of the country from numerous militias fighting each other as well as attacking Congolese troops and civilians. He was pressured by the international community and opposition groups to promote reform in the areas of human rights and democracy.
Kabila was the target of protests when there were suspicions as early as 2013 that he would not step down at the end of his term in late 2016 and instead try to find a way to extend his time in office. These suspicions were bolstered after the Supreme Court ruled in May 2016 that in the event that elections were delayed, Kabila could remain in office until a successor could be elected and installed; months later the Constitutional Court granted a request from the electoral commission to postpone the 2016 elections.
A presidential election was eventually scheduled for December 23, 2018. After years of speculation about Kabila’s intentions, it was confirmed in August 2018 that he would not be standing in the election and would instead support the candidacy of Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary. Against the backdrop of security concerns and a mysterious fire that destroyed a considerable amount of voting materials only 10 days before the polls, on December 20 the electoral commission announced that the presidential election—along with legislative, provincial, and local elections also scheduled for December 23—would be postponed until December 30.