Rwanda is currently grappling with a crackdown on excessive alcohol consumption, among other “indecent” pleasures deemed to undermine national development. The Government’s removal of illicit alcohol has been generally applauded, spurring encouraging discourse across the region, with some neighbouring populations urging their own governments to follow suit, and with cause. But speaking of the region, drinking is far from the only “social ailment” that should concern us. This brought me back to a piece I wrote last year on the seven social evils: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, and politics without principle. I wondered then about their particular prevalence in our region. Recent events have offered reason to revisit the subject. Sin through a political lens I don’t, all things considered, think the Government of Rwanda’s #TunyweLess and #HeheNicyuma campaigns have ever been only about alcohol, health concerns notwithstanding. Across history, legal restrictions on alcohol, such as prohibition, religious teachings against intoxication, and even the doctrines underpinning addiction rehabilitation programmes have often reflected a broader concern: the relationship between excessive consumption and the social vices and moral failures it can enable. The idea that self-indulgence causes harm is neither particularly religious nor niche. It appears plainly in patterns of failed governance too. Enter Congo. Leadership failure usually exposes one of two deficits: will or capacity. Kinshasa’s sweeping accusations against Rwanda seek only to conceal that the DR Congo remains anchored by both these burdens. Domestic dysfunction is systematically exported, while the ruling establishment’s greed, corruption and appetite for ethnic violence evade the scrutiny they deserve. As the DR Congo’s leading family multiplies scandals involving misappropriated NGO funds, first-family offspring shooting up nightclubs, and mine wealth landing in in-laws’ accounts, la jouissance inconsciente of Kinshasa’s powerful sneers at the misery beneath it. It demonstrates that self-indulgence always becomes tyrannical, and that the number of its sufferers increases with the power of the self-indulgent. This, perhaps, is where the argument moves beyond the bottle. For individuals and governments alike, few pleasures rival finding someone else to blame for one’s own inadequacies. Pleasure without conscience Occasionally, it seems only neighbourly to reciprocate the extraordinary “interest” Kinshasa’s government and its following take in Rwanda, particularly while attributing their own ills to our existence. In September 2025, former Justice Minister Constant Mutamba was convicted of diverting $19 million allocated to build a prison in Kisangani. For perspective, with over three quarters of Congolese living on less than $3 a day, that sum equals roughly 6.3 million days of subsistence, or a year’s livelihood for about 17,000 people. Sadly, no plausible route to blaming Rwanda for its disappearance has yet emerged, or Patrick Muyaya might have secured his umpteenth promotion of the year. Kisangani was hardly the first scandal of such scale. Under Tshisekedi’s flagship 100-day programme, his then chief of staff Vital Kamerhe was convicted in 2020 over the diversion of nearly $49 million intended for public works and social housing. The obscenity is measured in what disappears with the money: medicine never purchased, roads left impassable, soldiers unpaid, children hungry and, lo and behold, a prison left unbuilt. There is a grim circularity to corruption: when money meant to dismantle crime disappears, criminals are left freer to indulge darker appetites still—and indulge they do. Felix-Antoine Tshisekedi: An ode to King Leopold 2 The DR Congo Presidential family’s reported Belgian residence is gorgeous, unfortunately in the grand colonial style (French Norman) of an era when Belgian wealth was built, quite literally, on severed Congolese limbs. Belgian press reports described Félix Tshisekedi and Denise Nyakeru as tenants of the approximately 860-square-metre villa in Uccle, Brussels, reportedly rented for $ 23,000 or 53,216,000 Congolese francs a month. The presidency denied that the couple had purchased the property, clarifying that they were tenants, but did not dispute the reported rent. The property’s owner was also identified as the president of a major Congolese bank. There is something painfully symbolic about the arrangement. A government that periodically invokes Belgium’s colonial exploitation of Congo ought, to retain an ounce of credibility, to explain why its Presidency should spend sums unimaginable to most Congolese, to inhabit one of its former colonial master’s wealthiest neighbourhoods. Colonial exploitation deserves its place in any serious account of Congo’s tragedy indeed. But it cannot endlessly excavate the crimes of yesterday to distract from the insatiable appetites of today. Patronage can also be a form of indulgence The appointment of Grâce Emie Kutino as Minister of Youth and Patriotic Awakening provides a different, and perhaps more subtle, illustration. Her age, 25 at the time of her appointment, should not disqualify her. Neither should being a woman, a pastor, charismatic, attractive or unconventional. Online allegations that she received the post for serving as Tshisekedi’s mistress are low-hanging fruit. The legitimate question is competence. When she was appointed in August 2025, even sympathetic Congolese coverage acknowledged public questions about her experience in public administration. Kutino herself stated that she had never previously been involved in politics. Her public biography centres heavily on pastoral leadership, speaking and youth ministry. Unfortunately, her account of her university qualifications itself became the subject of public controversy, and the provable truth has yet to be ascertained. Again, we should not jump on our high horses just yet. It is true that, often, when academic achievements cannot be proven—particularly in the case of someone born post-Windows 98—it is because they are falsified. But perhaps things operate differently in the DRC, and citizens are merely not entitled to clarification or certainty about their leaders’ qualifications, profiles or pasts. Shortly after her appointment, Kutino became a prominent government advocate for constitutional reform. Her August 2026 “Oui, je le veux” campaign explicitly mobilises Congolese youth behind changing the Constitution and has called young people into the streets in support of that project, ultimately with the likely aim of granting Félix Tshisekedi a third term. The pleasure here need not be salacious. It is the political convenience of hiring someone young, attractive and questionably qualified (therefore likely exceedingly grateful), with public funds of all things, to sell an increasingly superficial youth the appeal, perhaps even glamour, of serving one corrupt individual’s political interests. Governments, too, can intoxicate themselves with patronage, slogans, appointments and constitutional projects, each indulgence briefly masking the mediocrity beneath. Hatred has its pleasures too This is bleak, but hatred can also be a form of self-indulgence; one that can be socially intoxicating. It facilitates belonging without the need for connection or shared achievement. It makes one’s superiority a “given” and self-introspection unnecessary. And, of course, it offers an ever-applicable explanation for failure. Stereotyping an outgroup works the same way, especially as a precursor to hate speech (walk with me for a specific illustration further down). For an incompetent leader facing an unconvinced crowd or electorate, the discovery that contempt for another people can manufacture claps or votes must inebriate rapidly and potently. This matters enormously in the Rwanda-DRC conflict. A man who, all things considered, might otherwise have struggled to command such devotion is now reaching for a third mandate. During his 2023 electoral campaign, President Tshisekedi threatened to seek parliamentary authorisation to declare war on Rwanda at the “moindre escarmouche”. Months later, he acknowledged that diplomacy had required him to restrain those belligerent impulses. The Washington Accords make the irresponsibility of such inflammatory rhetoric considerably more serious. The peace architecture signed by Rwanda and the DRC commits the parties to peaceful relations, mutual respect, security cooperation, the neutralisation of the FDLR, disengagement measures and regional economic integration. Subsequent Joint Oversight Committee statements have repeatedly and explicitly required both governments to refrain from “hostile rhetoric”, including political attacks and language capable of undermining implementation. Every cheap applause-seeking line against Rwanda must now be measured against that obligation. But whether this fact is known by the mediators or sanction-givers who initially claimed to wish to dissolve the conflict peacefully, is another matter altogether.
