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Étienne Tshisekedi, Congo Opposition Leader for Decades, Dies at 84

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Étienne Tshisekedi, a cunning and relentless Congolese opposition leader who was a thorn in the side of his country’s big men for decades, died on Wednesday in Brussels.

He was 84.

His death, in a hospital, was announced by his party, the Union for Democracy and Social Progress. No cause was given. Confidants said he had diabetes and often flew to Brussels for treatment.

Mr. Tshisekedi (pronounced CHISH-sue-keh-dee) was the most powerful opposition figure still operating inside the Democratic Republic of Congo, a nation plagued by violence and staggering corruption. With a few angry words, he could send millions of his followers into the streets, often at their own peril.

He played a leading role in nearly every chapter of Congo’s messy politics, remaining a potent symbol of resistance, especially in the slums of Kinshasa, the capital, to the very end.

In the last month, Mr. Tshisekedi was helping to oversee a delicate political compromise to ease Congo’s current strongman, President Joseph Kabila, out of power. His allies said his death could not have come at a more inopportune time.

Étienne Tshisekedi, a cunning and relentless Congolese opposition leader who was a thorn in the side of his country’s big men for decades, died on Wednesday in Brussels. He was 84.

His death, in a hospital, was announced by his party, the Union for Democracy and Social Progress. No cause was given. Confidants said he had diabetes and often flew to Brussels for treatment.

Mr. Tshisekedi (pronounced CHISH-sue-keh-dee) was the most powerful opposition figure still operating inside the Democratic Republic of Congo, a nation plagued by violence and staggering corruption. With a few angry words, he could send millions of his followers into the streets, often at their own peril.

He played a leading role in nearly every chapter of Congo’s messy politics, remaining a potent symbol of resistance, especially in the slums of Kinshasa, the capital, to the very end.

In the last month, Mr. Tshisekedi was helping to oversee a delicate political compromise to ease Congo’s current strongman, President Joseph Kabila, out of power. His allies said his death could not have come at a more inopportune time.

Étienne Tshisekedi wa Mulumba was born on Dec. 14, 1932, in what was then Luluabourg (now Kananga), a colonial outpost in central Congo, the biggest country geographically in sub-Saharan Africa. He studied law and entered government service as a justice commissioner shortly after Congo gained independence from Belgium in 1960.

For years, he alternated between friend and foe of Mobutu Sese Seko, Congo’s notorious dictator during the Cold War. One day he was the interior minister; the next, it seemed, he was under house arrest and being slugged by soldiers. Mr. Mobutu made him an ambassador to Morocco; a few years later, he had him tortured.

Few doubted Mr. Tshisekedi’s intelligence, but he did not always use it in ways that helped most Congolese. For instance, he was one of the drafters of the 1967 Constitution that turned Congo into a one-party state, enabling Mr. Mobutu to rule ruthlessly for more than 30 years.

In the early 1990s, after the Cold War abruptly ended and the superpowers retreated from Africa — and Congo (then called Zaire) began its long slide down — Mr. Tshisekedi became prime minister. The idea, with intense pressure from the West, was to get Mr. Mobutu out of office and bring a spirit of democracy to Congo.

But Mr. Tshisekedi and Mr. Mobutu despised each other. Their two-headed government was paralyzed by poisonous mistrust. Mr. Tshisekedi called Mr. Mobutu the Zairian Caligula.

By the mid-1990s, Congo was too sick to heal. A small rebel movement, backed by neighboring Rwanda, overthrew Mr. Mobutu and installed as president Laurent Kabila, a longtime guerrilla fighter and second-tier smuggler.

Mr. Kabila soon arrested Mr. Tshisekedi, and he was tortured again.

After Mr. Kabila was assassinated by a bodyguard in 2001, Joseph Kabila, his son, took over. Mr. Tshisekedi boycotted Congo’s first post-war presidential election in 2006 and ran against Mr. Kabila in 2011. After losing, Mr. Tshisekedi said the election had been rigged. International observers agreed that it probably had been.

Since then, Mr. Tshisekedi had remained active in opposition politics as leader of the Union for Democracy and Social Progress, one of Congo’s biggest political parties. As a lightning rod, he was able to keep pressure on Mr. Kabila. Just the faintest hint of a demonstration could clear Kinshasa’s streets. If one of his protests did materialize, scores of demonstrators were often killed by the police. (His followers also engaged in looting and destruction.)

The only other Congolese politician wielding as much clout was Moïse Katumbi, a tycoon who owned a soccer team, but he fled into exile last year in Belgium.

That was why many analysts said Mr. Tshisekedi was so vital; he was able to continue to stoke the opposition fire from within the country. In his last days, he helped shepherd a compromise agreement between the opposition and Mr. Kabila under which Mr. Kabila would step down and hold free elections by the end of this year. Under the presidency’s term limits, he should have been out of office in December 2016.

With Mr. Tshisekedi now gone, many Congolese worry that Mr. Kabila will be even more inclined to drag out the transition or even try to wriggle out of his term limits. Analysts said Mr. Tshisekedi’s death amplified an already dangerous amount of uncertainty.

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In September, in an interview at his villa in Kinshasa, Mr. Tshisekedi insisted he was strong enough to be Congo’s next president. He sat behind a vast desk cluttered with papers, wood carvings and plastic flowers. Air-conditioners blasted and acolytes lined the walls of his office, soberly watching him.

Mr. Tshisekedi accused Mr. Kabila of being even worse than the “Zairian Caligula,” Mr. Mobutu.

“Mobutu had force,” he said. “Kabila has force and repression.”

Several guests came in and out. Though Mr. Tshisekedi did not look frail, never once did he stand up.

His final handshake was strong. But it seemed there might be something wrong with his legs. He waved off any suggestions that his eight decades were catching up to him.

“I am capable of doing anything,” he said.

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