NOTE:
This piece follows my October 2025 reflection, From Blood on the Streets to a Death Sentence, written when Joseph Kabila was first reported sentenced by a military court in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
When I wrote about Joseph Kabila being sentenced to death, part of me celebrated loudly. The other part whispered: he will never face this.
And now here we are.
He is still alive. Still free. Still untouched by the very justice that was announced with such finality.
That’s the part that feels embarrassing to admit: I saw the pattern. I knew the continent.I understood the script.
And yet I still allowed myself to believe the ending would be different.
Because when a leader is accused of bloodshed, of war-fuelled suffering, of turning a nation into a battlefield you want consequences to be real. You want courts to mean something. You want sentences to leave paper and enter reality.
But in Democratic Republic of the Congo, like in too many places, justice can be declared without ever being enforced.
A death sentence in absentia. A headline without handcuffs. Condemnation without capture.
And the world moves on.
I’ve even seen the rumors, explosions, assassinations, whispered endings. None confirmed. None real enough to close the story.
So the truth is simpler and heavier: powerful men can be condemned and still walk free.
This is not just about one former president.It is about a pattern that exhausts an entire continent — where accountability is announced but rarely delivered, and citizens learn to read verdicts with skepticism instead of relief.
I once wrote: finally, justice has spoken.
Today I write: justice spoke — and nothing happened.
And maybe the hardest part to admit is this: I wasn’t stupid for believing.
I was tired of seeing impunity win.
That kind of hope is not ignorance. It’s what people hold onto when they want their countries to heal.
But hope, in Africa, often lives beside realism. And realism was right this time.
Read:👇🏿
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