Rival political groups clashed outside the Democratic Republic of Congo’s parliament in Kinshasa on Friday, after police fired tear gas to break up a demonstration organised by the opposition coalition C64. The rally was called to protest a proposed bill that could allow President Félix Tshisekedi to remain in office beyond his constitutionally mandated two-term limit. Opposition leader Martin Fayulu was filmed with blood around his eyes; fellow opposition figure Prince Epenge was also injured. The confrontation came as the DRC faces compounding crises: an active Ebola outbreak spreading into new areas, a decades-long conflict with Rwanda-backed M23 rebels who have controlled large parts of the country’s east since seizing Goma in early 2025, and now a constitutional crisis over whether Tshisekedi — whose second term ends in 2028 — can use a “major dysfunction” clause to trigger a referendum and override the prohibition on amending term limits.
The received wisdom
The progressive and human rights reading of this situation is straightforward and largely accurate: constitutional term limits are one of the few institutional guardrails that have functioned, however imperfectly, in sub-Saharan African democracies over the past three decades. Their removal — almost always justified by incumbents through appeals to stability, national unity, or emergency circumstances — has a near-perfect historical correlation with authoritarianism. The DRC’s own constitutional history is grim: Mobutu Sese Seko ruled for 32 years; Laurent Kabila governed by decree after a civil war; Joseph Kabila clung to power two years beyond his term limit before eventually yielding to Tshisekedi in 2019. The opposition’s C64 coalition is right to treat the proposed amendment as a “serious threat” to stability, and the international community is right to watch it with concern. Tshisekedi’s framing — that he would govern a third term “if the people wish it” — is precisely the language that leaders who have already decided use to dress up fait accompli as democratic mandate.
A different read
All of that is correct. And yet there is a harder question that the straightforward condemnation tends to skip: in a country where armed groups control significant territory, where the elected government’s writ extends imperfectly even into its own capital, and where M23 rebels — backed, according to UN experts, by up to 7,000 Rwandan troops — are embedded in eastern economic infrastructure, what does constitutional democracy actually require to survive?
This is not a rhetorical question and it does not have a comfortable answer. The institutions that make constitutional democracy meaningful — independent courts, a free press, a professional civil service, a functioning tax base — are precisely the institutions most hollowed out by prolonged conflict. The DRC’s judicial system cannot credibly adjudicate a constitutional dispute when it cannot protect opposition leaders from being beaten outside parliament. The electoral commission that would run a referendum on term limits is the same commission whose 2018 result was widely questioned. The constitutional prohibition on amending term limits is admirable in text; in practice, it depends on institutions that barely exist.
None of this validates Tshisekedi’s manoeuvre, which is transparently self-serving. What it should do is redirect Western attention from the constitutional symptom to the structural causes. The DRC’s democracy problem is inseparable from its M23 problem, its Ebola problem, and — as Global Witness documented this week — its coltan supply-chain problem. M23 earns an estimated £600,000 per month taxing the Rubaya mines in North Kivu, which hold 15 percent of the world’s coltan. That revenue funds an armed group that displaces civilians, commits atrocities, and has effectively rendered the eastern DRC ungovernable. And the coltan — refined in China and Kazakhstan, embedded in capacitors, and distributed through supply chains to Amazon, Sony, Microsoft, Nvidia, and others — ends up in the devices that Western consumers use daily.
The term-limit crisis is, in part, a downstream consequence of the resource war. A president who cannot exert authority over the eastern third of his country has strong incentives to seek extended tenure to eventually restore that authority — or at least to maintain personal power while the attempt is made. The incentive structure for Tshisekedi is not unlike that of other leaders in resource-rich conflict states: the state’s weakness becomes the justification for the consolidation of personal power that further weakens the state.
Western governments and multilateral institutions have repeatedly made the mistake of treating DRC’s governance crisis as separable from its security and economic crises. They are not. Democracy promotion that does not address the M23 occupation, the coltan revenue stream, and Rwanda’s enabling role is democracy promotion in a void. The clashes outside parliament on Friday are the visible tip of a much deeper structural failure — and one that Western consumers, investors, and policymakers are more implicated in than they typically acknowledge.
What to watch
- The National Assembly vote on the “major dysfunction” bill: If it passes, watch whether Tshisekedi moves quickly to schedule a referendum. Speed would indicate a consolidated political strategy rather than exploratory positioning.
- International response: The African Union has historically been reluctant to intervene in member states’ constitutional arrangements. Whether the AU takes a stronger line this time — particularly given the Ebola and M23 complications — will be a significant signal.
- Rwanda’s posture: Peter Magyar’s Hungary removing the EU veto on Ukraine accession shows that entrenched vetoes can dissolve quickly. The more important veto in the DRC context is Rwanda’s military support for M23. Whether the broader international community is willing to apply serious pressure on Kigali will shape the DRC’s medium-term trajectory.
- Coltan supply chain pressure: Following the Global Witness report, watch whether any major electronics company suspends Rwandan coltan sourcing. Consumer pressure has shifted supply chains before; whether it can here, in a category this essential, is an open question.
— J