Renson Mwakandana
The 56,644 square kilometer province of North-Ubangi, which had nearly collapsed since the former president of then-Zaire left in 1997, will be governed by the 40-year-old Malo Ndimba Mobutu as new governor.
In DR Congo, his election is regarded as a milestone and a symbol. A Congolese of Mobutu’s ancestry has never before been democratically chosen for a top political position.
Legislators in the area chose Malo Mobutu, a descendant of a previous Congolese tyrant, to lead North-Ubangi Province. On 18 ballots, Mobutu Sese Seko’s grandson received 11 votes, beating out three other contenders who come from well-known Mobutu families.
According to a Kinshasa newspaper, Géopolis, it stated that: “In a way, it is a posthumous rehabilitation of Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, the second president of the republic of the independent Congo. But also, and above all, a possibility for the current generation to give this name (Mobutu) a bearable significance, different from his 32 years of dictatorship.”
The difficult responsibility of bringing North-Ubangi back to its former splendor falls to Malo Ndimba. The capital of the province, Gbadolite, was regarded as the second seat of government after Kinshasa because Mobutu frequently sought sanctuary there when Kinshasa became tense politically.
A magnificent presidential palace, a hydroelectric dam, an international airport, and a botanical and zoological garden were all constructed by the previous president; today, they are all nearly entirely robbed and abandoned.
Malo Ndimba served as a consultant for the Ministry of Territorial Development in Kinshasa before his election. Guy Loando Mboyo, the Minister of Land Management, supported him for the position of governor.
The young people of the Congo must now reconstruct the country, according to the next governor, who is awaiting President Félix Tshisekedi’s approval before taking office.
He wrote on his Twitter account, “I am the expression of a Congolese youth, of renewal, of dedication to the country. We are all responsible for this failure, and we have a moral obligation to leave to future generations a country that is more beautiful than before.”
