Congo Wanted an Election. This Isn’t What It Meant.

MBENZALE, Democratic Republic of the Congo—The road that stretches through Mbenzale is unusual for this country: Not only is it paved, but it’s smooth, not a pothole in sight. The village has the good fortune of lying along the route from the capital to President Joseph Kabila’s personal ranch. But the benefits of this location don’t extend to reliable electricity, so when election commission officials arrived in August on the wide, flat road for a demonstration of the voting machines set to be used in Congo’s upcoming election, they also brought another crucial piece of equipment: a generator.

Residents waited in red, yellow, and blue plastic chairs arranged in a semicircle under a sprawling mango tree. An electrical extension cord snaked through the sand from the generator to a plastic table where the officials placed the voting machine, a large-screened tablet propped up on a stand. Unripe mangos dangled overhead. The crowd watched intently as an official called up a volunteer to demonstrate the voting process. They waited as the machine malfunctioned and had to be restarted.

Finally, the man fed his paper ballot into a slot in the tablet, and a series of options appeared on the screen: provincial assembly, national assembly, and presidential candidates. He touched the image of his preferred candidate for each race, and the tablet spit out his marked ballot, which he deposited into a waist-high transparent plastic bin. As more would-be voters stepped up to try the machine, the election official reassured them that the machine was a safe way to vote. It was basically just a printer, he told them. But a din grew, and soon the crowd drowned him out with shouts. “We don’t want this machine! It’s a trick! Trick! Take it away! You’re thieves!”

The upcoming election, which on Thursday was pushed back again until at least Dec. 30, is theoretically a historic opportunity: since 1960, when Congo earned its independence from Belgium, the country has never transferred power through peaceful or democratic means. For the first time since, the country’s ruler is holding a vote in which he is not a candidate and has pledged to step aside for the winner. But there are deep doubts about the election’s credibility. Kabila, who accrued vast wealth during nearly 18 years in power, handpicked his former interior minister Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary as his preferred successor. Last week he invited a succession of journalists to his ranch and told them he might run for president again in 2023, raising suspicion he was planning to use Ramazani as a placeholder to circumvent term limits.The postponement—the electoral commission said it needed more time to print ballot papers—immediately enraged the opposition and ratcheted up the tension. There are broad indications of an uneven playing field: problems with the voter rolls, disqualified candidates, and attacks on opposition campaign events. And many are concerned by the sudden introduction of voting machines. As in Mbenzale, Congolese citizens across the country worry the tablets will be used to rig the vote, ensuring Ramazani’s victory and the continuation of Kabila’s regime.

That virtually guarantees a contested result, which risks unleashing wider conflict in a country where millions are already suffering from violence. Congo’s citizens have spent years demanding an election, but the upcoming vote is not what they asked for.