Nairobi – Former president Joseph Kabila rallied opponents of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s current government in Kenya’s capital on Wednesday, announcing a new movement to “save” his crisis-hit country.
Kabila, who ruled the DRC for nearly two decades until 2019, was sentenced to death in absentia for “treason” by a military court last month.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, the ex-leader convened a conclave of prominent Congolese opposition figures in Nairobi, including former Prime Minister Augustin Matata Ponyo, who was sentenced in May to ten years of hard labour.
Together they announced a “Save the DRC” movement, denouncing President Felix Tshisekedi’s “inability” to respond to multiple crises and calling on people to “stand up and resist the dictatorship”, according to a statement seen by AFP.
They also slammed the “arbitrary detention of political leaders… as well as all the unfair judgments handed down by courts and tribunals against opposition leaders” and critics.
ROW: ex-Congolese President Joseph Kabila, recently sentenced to death for war crimes, has resurfaced in Nairobi to meet opposition figures, a move likely to trigger a diplomatic protest from Kinshasa and reignite Kenya–DRC tensions. pic.twitter.com/LsZTmVsFoK
— Mwangi (@MwangiMaina_) October 14, 2025
Speaking from Washington, Congolese Communications Minister and government spokesman Patrick Muyaya dismissed the meeting of “fugitives and convicts” as born of nostalgia for lost privileges”.
The Kenyan capital was becoming a “capital of conspiracy against the DRC”, he said.
Kabila, 54, who was neither present nor represented at the trial in the capital, Kinshasa, was found guilty of complicity with the M23 anti-government armed group, which has seized swathes of the resource-rich Congolese east with Rwandan help.
He left the vast central African country in 2023 and briefly reappeared in M23-occupied Goma in the volatile east in May, causing disquiet in Kinshasa.
Observers say the death sentence aimed to prevent him from uniting opposition forces within the country and attempting a return to power.
Kabila ruled the DRC between 2001 and 2019, taking power following the assassination of his father Laurent-Desire Kabila, a former rebel who toppled dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997.
The meeting in Nairobi came as the Congolese government signed an agreement with the M23 in Doha to establish a ceasefire monitoring mechanism.
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Source: AFP
