Moïse Katumbi is one of the most powerful people in the Democratic Republic of Congo – a man whose presidential ambitions were never in doubt. Yet numerous obstacles had blocked him in the past, including a jail sentence, death threats and exile.
Now the multi-millionaire mining magnate and popular football boss hopes 2023 will be the year he finally lands the top job.
Mr Katumbi says his prior success in boosting infrastructure and education while governor of the country’s richest province, Kantanga, was “the pilot programme for Congo”.
If he wins the 20 December presidential election, he is also promising to overhaul security and steer eastern DR Congo towards long-awaited peace.
The charismatic 58-year-old leader of the “Together for the Republic” party is considered a front-runner – and so far four other opposition candidates have pulled out to throw their support behind him.
But Mr Katumbi’s critics question his record on transparency and accuse him of using politics to advance his personal business interests – something he has always denied.
The recent, unsolved murder of his party spokesman Chérubin Okende, plus a ban on opposition leaders protesting against the electoral body’s chaotic preparation for the polls, mean the stakes going into next week’s general election could hardly feel higher.
He was born on 28 December 1964 in the village of Kashobwe near the Ugandan border. His Greek-Jewish father Nissim Soriano had fled Rhodes for central Africa after surviving the Holocaust and married Virginie Katumbi, a Congolese Kazembe-Lunda woman of royal birth.
The family is said to have dropped the Soriano surname in the years when DR Congo was called Zaire and ruled by Mobutu Sese Seko, adopting the more African-sounding surname of Katumbi from his mother’s side instead.
Young Moïse spent his childhood near Lake Mweru in the southern province of Katanga, which he would one day go on to govern. His father ran a booming fishing business, and Mr Katumbi himself is said to have sold fish to DR Congo’s state-owned mining giant Gécamines while still a teenager.
His business education came courtesy of his elder half-brother, Raphaël Soriano, with whom he went on to become a sole supplier of rations to Gécamines miners. The pair also ran an import-export business in neighbouring Zambia.
Some of these earnings were funnelled into restoring a much-loved football club to its former glory. TP Mazembe (the initials are short for “Tout Puissant” or “All Powerful”) was founded by Benedictine monks. It became one of sub-Saharan Africa’s most successful teams during Raphaël Soriano’s two decades as president, and has kept that distinction since Moïse Katumbi took the reins 26 years ago.
TP Mazembe have won the Caf Champions League three times since Mr Katumbi took over in 1997
Mr Katumbi’s total fortune is not known, but he is believed to have made the bulk of it in mining. He founded the subcontracting firm Mining Company of Katanga (MCK) in 1997, which in 2004 joined forces with controversial Canadian firm Anvil to become AMCK Mining.
Anvil had been accused of backing a deadly Congolese army mission near one of its mines that resulted in at least 70 civilians being killed. Mr Katumbi insisted that his company “was not involved and as far as I know, Anvil had not been convicted by the courts”.
As a close ally of President Joseph Kabila, Mr Katumbi was given his blessing to stand as governor in DR Congo’s economic powerhouse Katanga. His election in 2007 was a shoo-in, given his popularity as TP Mazembe’s boss and the fact that the other two candidates dropped out.
Despite his influence across sport, mining and later politics, Mr Katumbi has long denied any conflicts of interest.
“I never mix politics and business,” he told the BBC in 2016. “I was born in a family where there was business, I entered in politics [when] I was already a businessman. I stopped this work – you don’t have to mix.”
Image source, AFPImage caption,
The father of six left DR Congo in 2016 after he was accused of hiring mercenaries – the charges were later dropped
Mr Katumbi’s plans to stand for president in 2016 were dashed after he was sentenced in absentia for hiring US and foreign mercenaries, forcing him to leave the country for three years.
He said the charges were politically motivated, coming a year after he quit President Kabila’s PPRD party and the governorship, and accused Mr Kabila of planning an unconstitutional third term. The charges were later dropped.
Rumours swirled of death threats and Mr Katumbi accused the Congolese government of trying to poison him, which they dismissed. “Their plan was to kill me,” Mr Katumbi insisted at the time, “because they are scared about my popularity”.
In October this year a court case that suggested Mr Katumbi was a dual national because of his late father – and therefore not eligible to run for president – was thrown out. His supporters called it yet another attempt to derail him.