Banned, blamed and always bleeding By Eze Ogbu

In the world of politics, banning an entire party is the equivalent of sweeping dirt under a rug and pretending the stench won’t rise. This week, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) took such a dramatic step, banning the political party of former President Joseph Kabila, the once untouchable figure who governed for nearly two decades with the ease of a man rearranging chess pieces rather than leading a nation. The accusation? Cozying up to the M23 rebel group, a militia outfit that’s become a cruel and bloodstained punctuation mark in the DRC’s eastern narrative.

But here's the uncomfortable truth: banning a man’s party doesn’t stop bullets. It doesn’t feed a child. It doesn’t stop the malaria mosquito or the choking dust of poverty. And it certainly doesn’t wipe the tears from the eyes of mothers burying their sons in Goma, Bukavu, or Rutshuru.

Kabila is an easy scapegoat. He’s the political ghost that still haunts Congolese power corridors, never truly gone, always lingering like a shadow behind a tattered curtain. Blaming him for links to M23 feels tidy, politically useful, and perhaps even justifiable given the group’s sudden territorial appetite. But governance is not a game of finger-pointing. While Kinshasa shouts, “It’s him!” the eastern provinces are silently screaming for help. And nobody seems to be listening.

The reality is Congo has long been a nation with too many enemies and too few friends. Rebels, minerals, multinational interests, and historical traumas all dance in a morbid conga line, with the Congolese people always forced to pick up the pieces. M23 is just one ghost in the graveyard of many: ADF, Mai-Mai, FDLR. Pick a letter, and there’s a group ready to burn a village under it.

Let’s assume for a moment that Kabila is the puppet master behind M23. Even then, what does a ban actually achieve in real terms? Does it dismantle rebel camps in the Virunga hills? Does it drain the black-market veins of conflict minerals funding warlords? Does it bring healthcare, clean water, or schools to places where children only know the sound of drones and AK-47s?

Banning without building is as effective as dieting while sleeping in a bakery.

Political theatre is a luxury for countries not in a constant state of humanitarian freefall. In DRC, it becomes grotesque. While men in suits debate legality, reality delivers death in staggering numbers. Displacement camps are swelling like overripe fruit, ready to burst. Disease spreads faster than press releases. The economy? It limps if not crawls, under the weight of systemic rot and an international community that offers sympathy without solutions.

The DRC is not just bleeding; it has haemorrhaged for decades. First from colonial cruelty, then from Mobutu’s kleptocratic carnival, and later from wars so tangled that historians are still deciphering who betrayed whom. Joseph Kabila’s rule, for all its stagnation and alleged corruption, was at least a period where a fragile thread of unity held the country together. Now, even that thread is fraying. And blaming him while ignoring systemic failures is like blaming the rain for a leaking roof.

Where is the broader plan? Where are the policies that go beyond symbolic purging? How does one heal a country by banning ideas instead of debating them?

It’s worth remembering: rebel groups don’t grow in vacuums. They thrive in failed promises, abandoned regions, and behind government neglect. M23, for all its horror, is a symptom of a much bigger disease. And unless governance reaches the people, unless roads are built, taxes are fair, hospitals are functional, and soldiers are paid, M23 will be followed by M24, M25, and eventually a whole damn alphabet of tragedy.

So here we are: a banned party, a thousand press clippings, a dozen embassies "concerned." But the bodies keep falling. The UN issues reports, and Kinshasa tweets. Somewhere in North Kivu, a family flees another night of gunfire, carrying memories and little else.

Words like "democracy" and "sovereignty" echo in marble hallways. But in the villages of eastern Congo, those words are just ghosts like Kabila, like justice, like hope.

In the end, it’s not about who’s banned. It’s about who’s bleeding. And that answer has always been tragically clear.