Domestic Politics

The year in Congolese politics was marked by Sassou Nguesso’s efforts to prepare for the March 2021 presidential election. He began early. In January, his Republican Guard received more than 100 tons of weapons from the government of Azerbaijan, including 775 mortar shells and over 400 cases of rockets. The Republican Guard, composed almost entirely of Sassou Nguesso’s Mbochi co-ethnics, is directly responsible for his personal security. The shipment went through the Turkish port of Derince. He also continued his efforts to position his son, Denis Christel, as his successor. Long atop the oil apparatus, Denis Christel began his political career in 2012, when he claimed a seat in the national assembly representing Oyo with 99.88% of the vote. As before, Sassou Nguesso confronted opposition from within the senior ranks of the security apparatus, which, like the international community and most Congolese citizens, regarded Denis Christel as profoundly corrupt. Opposition within the presidential palace culminated in an aborted bid to force Sassou Nguesso from power in mid-March. This, and not simply the emergence of Covid-19, compelled Sassou Nguesso to impose a nightly curfew, ban gatherings of more than 50 people, and close Congo’s borders.

These power struggles within the presidential palace were also the best explanation for an otherwise shocking prosecution for public corruption which marked the first half of the year. In February, the mayor of Brazzaville, Christian Roger Okemba, was accused by other elected municipal officials of having embezzled more than $ 2 m from the city’s treasury. He was suspended and, shortly thereafter, arrested by security forces on charges of public corruption. In July, Okemba was sentenced to five years in prison; his wife was sentenced to three years in prison. They were also fined roughly $ 320,000. Given the Sassou Nguesso family’s long record of corruption – and the extent to which public corruption has effectively been permitted for high-level appointees – the legal proceedings shocked most citizens. The prosecution appears to have been the outcome of a power struggle between rival sides of the Sassou Nguesso family. Elected in 2017, Okemba was supported by Edgar Nguesso, who is Sassou Nguesso’s nephew, director of the presidential domain, and a one-time rival of Denis Christel as successor. Okemba’s candidacy was opposed by the president’s daughter Claudia Sassou Nguesso, who, as the full biological sister of Denis Christel, was also his close ally. It is most likely that Edgar was implicated in the power struggles within the presidential palace and that Okemba’s conviction was intended as a signal to Edgar and others within the regime who might consider opposing Denis Christel’s claims to succession.

Amid a persistent financial crisis – which, among other things, compelled former employees of the post office to protest the non-payment of their pensions in February – Sassou Nguesso needed to raise money for his 2021 election campaign. To do so, in August, he imposed a new tax on all Very Large Crude Oil Carriers (vlcc) and Suez Max oil tankers loading at Congo’s Djeno oil terminal. The $ 84,000 tax, branded as a ‘safety watch fee’, would be paid to Congolaise des Prestations Maritimes (copremar), a firm owned by Wilfried Nguesso, Sassou Nguesso’s nephew. As of September, copremar enjoyed a monopoly on towing operations at the Djeno terminal. The $ 84,000 tax, according to British ngo Global Witness, was between six and nine times more expensive than similar taxes levied at other regional ports. The move was estimated to yield Sassou Nguesso nearly $ 10 m per year.

Sassou Nguesso also rebuffed calls to release political prisoners. General Jean-Marie Michel Mokoko and André Okombi Salissa, Sassou Nguesso’s two leading rivals in the 2016 election, remained in prison throughout the year, each having been sentenced to 20 years in prison for ‘undermining state security’. General Mokoko nevertheless remained an active presence in Congolese politics. On 2 July, he was hospitalised in Brazzaville’s military hospital. As his condition reportedly deteriorated, the Sassou Nguesso government refused to let him seek emergency medical care in France. In response, on 17 July, two human rights groups, the Observatoire Congolaise des Droits de l’Homme (ocdh) and Ras-le-Bol, planned a protest march to demand his evacuation. The government dispatched its security forces to block the march, though it cited ‘risks of coronavirus infections’ as justification. On 30 July, the Sassou Nguesso government was sufficiently scared that General Mokoko might die in custody that it arranged for him to be evacuated to Ankara, Turkey. The evacuation was shocking in part because of the destination. When members of the Congolese elite seek medical care abroad, they go overwhelmingly to France, in part because of the shared language. That the Sassou Nguesso government evacuated General Mokoko to Turkey suggests it wanted to conceal his condition from the French government, which, on several occasions, has pushed for his release. General Mokoko finally returned to his Brazzaville prison cell on 30 August.

Civil society groups called for the release of other political prisoners as well, most notably Celeste Nlemvo Makela, Parfait Mabiala, Franck Donald Saboukoulou, Guil Ossebi, and Meldry Dissavoulou. These five activists, all relatively young, were arrested between 23 November and 22 December 2019. They were accused of organising anti-regime protests and interrogated about their links to Andrea Ngombet, another young opposition activist based in Paris. Ngombet, who coordinates the ‘SassouFit’ collective, was among the first to announce his candidacy for the March 2021 presidential election. In March, Trésor Nzila Kendet, executive director of the ocdh, described the activists as ‘prisoners of conscience’. They were released in December, after a year in custody. ocdh called on the Sassou Nguesso government to cease its use of torture, which contravened its obligations under the United Nations Convention.

With widespread repression in Brazzaville, opposition activists took their struggle for political change to France. On 15 March, two young activists set fire to one of Sassou Nguesso’s several mansions in France, located in Yvelines, a suburb of Paris. One of the mansion’s walls was spray-painted with ‘sassou assassin’. Five vehicles on the property were set aflame as well. French investigators had made no arrests by the end of the year.

The year witnessed the death of two former presidents. On 30 March, Jacques Joaquim Yhombi Opango died in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, a casualty of Covid-19. Yhombi Opango had ascended to power in 1977 after the assassination of Captain Marien Ngouabi, Congo’s first military dictator of northern descent. He was deposed in 1979 by Sassou Nguesso, incarcerated, freed in 1985, incarcerated again in 1987, and freed just before the National Conference of 1991. Yhombi Opango went into exile after the 1997 civil war, and was finally permitted to return in 2007. In August, Pascal Lissouba died at 88 years old, still exiled in Perpignan, France. Lissouba was elected in 1992 and deposed by Sassou Nguesso following the 1997 civil war. A southerner, Lissouba remains the only president in Congolese history to be elected in free and fair elections. Lissouba’s death was largely ignored by the government-dominated media. ‘Les Dépêches de Brazzaville’, Sassou Nguesso’s chief propaganda newspaper, marked Lissouba’s passing by blaming him for the 1997 civil war, thus obscuring Sassou Nguesso’s role in provoking it. The war, ‘Les Dépêches’ wrote, was a ‘consequence of the disorganisation of the public administration and social services’.

The political year concluded in mid-December with three notable events. On 17 December, the government announced that it had cancelled a production permit for the Nabeba iron mine held by Sundance, an Australian mining firm that, in 2016, made international headlines for ceding a 30% stake of Nabeba’s profits to a shell company owned by Denis Christel. Sassou Nguesso awarded the contract to Sangha Mining Development, a company owned by a single shareholder and domiciled in Hong Kong. Many observers speculated that the shareholder was either Denis Christel or someone closely linked to him, possibly with Chinese backing. Sassou Nguesso also awarded Sangha Mining Development two other permits: one for the Avima iron ore project, previously held by Core Mining, and an exploration licence for the Badondo iron ore project, previously held by Equatorial Resources. Strikingly, there were no records of Sangha Mining Development prior to these awards. On 21 December, Sundance announced that it would seek $ 8.76 bn in damages from the government. On 23 December, when Sassou Nguesso delivered his state of the nation address before parliament, he announced that the 2021 presidential election would be held on 21 March. Though he was widely expected to run, by year’s end he had yet to announce his candidacy. Most of the emergency restrictions remained in place. Land and river borders were closed. Gatherings of more than 50 people were banned. Brazzaville and Pointe-Noire were subject to a night-time curfew. All non-essential businesses remained closed.

Foreign Affairs

Sassou Nguesso’s foreign policy continued to be dominated by the country’s persistent financial crisis. In January, Global Witness reported that the government’s debt was some 30% greater than it had disclosed during debt relief negotiations with the imf in 2019. With public debt likely exceeding $ 12.5 bn, the government’s debt-to-gdp ratio was estimated at 102%. Between 2012 and 2018, according to Global Witness, the state-run Société Nationale des Pétroles du Congo (snpc) reported only $ 123 m in profits despite $ 5.7 bn worth of sales, amounting to a yield of less than 3%. This revelation emerged at a particularly damaging moment. In July 2019, the imf had approved $ 449 m in the framework of a three-year lending programme to help prop up the Congolese economy, but it had conditioned the loans on the government rescheduling its debt to Glencore, Trafigura, and the Chinese government. In January, just as the Global Witness revelations appeared, the government’s talks with Glencore and Trafigura to restructure its $ 1.7 bn debt broke down, jeopardising more than $ 400 m in imf loans and another $ 900 m from the World Bank, AfDB, and the French government. The impasse was resolved in April, when the government announced that Glencore and Trafigura had agreed to a 30% debt ‘haircut’, with payments to resume in October.

In May, just weeks after the government resolved its impasse with Glencore and Trafigura, Sassou Nguesso announced that his government had requested another $ 500 m from the imf, this time to insulate the economy from the devastation of Covid-19. Congo is Africa’s third leading oil producer, but the government projected that the average price of crude oil would halve, from $ 50 per barrel to $ 25. Accordingly, the parliament was forced to approve a revised budget that halved government expenditure. The imf refused the request, citing Sassou Nguesso’s persistent economic mismanagement and its 2010 debt forgiveness agreement under the hipc initiative. The only additional support that the government received in 2020 was from the wfp, which provided $ 1 m to help the 83,000 citizens who were affected by flooding in the Likouala region in December. Reflecting its perilous financial position, Standard and Poor’s downgraded Congolese government bonds to a ccc+/c rating in September.

Sassou Nguesso’s foreign policy was also oriented by his lengthy record of corruption and human rights abuses. In February, two separate French newspapers reported that Denis Christel had been indicted in Paris in December 2019 as part of the ongoing ‘biens mal acquis’ investigation. In addition, French authorities seized two apartments and one mansion owned by Denis Christel. A week later, Denis Christel’s lawyers denied that he was currently under indictment. In June, the US government moved to seize a Miami penthouse condo worth some $ 3 m, purchased by Denis Christel’s wife. Federal prosecutors alleged that the money for the purchase was embezzled from the snpc, the state-run oil company, which Denis Christel has long controlled. Federal prosecutors worked throughout the year to bring a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (rico) case against him. In July, the French government reopened its investigation into the attempted assassination of Ferdinand Mbaou, a senior military official in the Lissouba regime and opposition activist. As if to underscore the regime’s frustration with the French government, in April a gendarme in Pointe-Noire shot at an Air France plane that was evacuating French citizens due to Covid-19.

To reduce his vulnerability to international sanctions, Sassou Nguesso has long sought to diversify his alliance portfolio, focusing in particular on the Chinese and Russian governments. The weapons shipments from Azerbaijan in January underscored that Sassou Nguesso has also cultivated bilateral relationships with the Saudi and Turkish governments. The weapons shipments listed the Saudi government as the ‘sponsoring party’, suggesting that it paid for either the weapons or the cargo delivery. Several similar weapons shipments, also sponsored by the Saudi government, were delivered between 2015 and 2018, as the Sassou Nguesso government sought Saudi support to join opec.

Socioeconomic Developments

Covid-19 devastated Congolese society. Official statistics were widely regarded as unreliable. Still, by the end of the year, Congo had experienced 7,107 confirmed cases and 108 deaths. Among these deaths were two of the society’s most respected artists. In March, Aurélien Miatsonama died in Paris, 67 years old. Better known as Aurlus Mabélé, Miatsonama was regarded as among the founding fathers of soukous, a style of music derived from rumba. In June, Edouard Nganga died in Brazzaville, 87 years old. Nganga was a jazz icon in Central Africa, having founded three major ensembles: Negro Jazz in 1954, ok Jazz in 1956, and Bantous de la Capitale in 1959. Regarded as a father of rumba, Nganga remained active until 2019, when he performed at the Institut Franҫais du Congo to celebrate the ensemble’s 60th anniversary. His career was the subject of a 2019 documentary by Paul Soni Benga, one of Congo’s most respected journalists.

The government announced a nationwide lockdown on 31 March, with markets in Brazzaville and Pointe-Noire open only three days per week. This had two major effects. First, citizens who relied on markets to sell textiles and agricultural products lost income. Second, because supply chains for both local and imported foods were disrupted, prices rose dramatically. The wfp estimated that between late April and early May alone, food prices rose by 10%. In turn, the number of people in Congo’s urban areas who needed food assistance doubled, from 150,000 to 300,000. The lockdown had a range of other effects as well. With little disposable income left to purchase newspapers, for instance, many of Congo’s independent media outlets – already struggling due to government suppression – stopped publishing. With citizens overwhelmingly at home, they were vulnerable to failures of the electric grid. In April, 20 people were killed when a lightning strike damaged a power line in Kintele, a suburb of Brazzaville that is governed by Stella Mensah Sassou Nguesso, one of the president’s younger daughters.

The government’s response to Covid-19 was otherwise rather tepid. With no additional financial support from the imf, Sassou Nguesso advertised that his government had accepted a donation from the government of Madagascar of Covid-Organics, a herbal mix that Andry Rajoelina’s government had claimed was a cure, despite the lack of any evidence. Sassou Nguesso’s decision was opposed by scientists around the world, who expressed concern that the use of Covid-Organics could fuel a drug-resistant strain of malaria. Covid-Organics’ chief ingredient is reportedly sweet wormwood, which is the basis for the anti-malarial drug artemisinin.

These shocks to both the national spirit and society’s living standards compelled major frustration across the country. The government responded by repressing citizens who spoke out. In May, journalist Rocil Otouna, who worked for Télé Congo, a state-run television station, was fired for asking questions of the minister of justice, Aimé Wilfrid Bininga, that were deemed too critical of the government’s response. Otouna’s firing was even criticised by the Conseil Supérieur de la Liberté de Communication (cslc), a constitutional body appointed by Sassou Nguesso that routinely justifies government sanctions against independent news outlets. The Ministry of Communication, overseen by Thierry Moungalla, later accused another Sassou Nguesso propaganda platform, Vox tv, of participating in a ‘smear campaign’ against the government. The irony was lost on few Congolese citizens: the government and its propaganda apparatus were criticising each other. The government’s response to Covid-19 also occasioned a series of human rights abuses against citizens. Throughout the year, citizens disseminated videos that documented the regime’s security forces beating citizens for failing to wear masks in public. In September, a 23-year-old woman in Nkayi died following injuries she sustained during one such beating.