Bernard Kolélas

Congolese Movement for Democracy and Integral Development (MCDDI) Liberalism and republicanism Congo - Brazzaville Congo-Brazzaville 1933–2009 ○ Natural death

The opposition leader from Pool who ended one-party rule

On 7 November 1988 and 20 November 1989 he wrote to President Sassou Nguesso proposing a national round table on the country's problems.

A Congolese politician from Mboloki in Kinkala District, Pool, who founded the Congolese Movement for Democracy and Integral Development (MCDDI) and pressed for a multiparty system while the one-party state still stood. At the 1991 sovereign national conference he opened the parties' addresses and backed André Milongo's election as transitional prime minister, making him a key opposition figure of the democratic transition. He lost the 1992 presidential runoff to Lissouba and, appointed Lissouba's prime minister of national unity during the 1997 civil war, was ousted by Sassou Nguesso's loyalists and went into exile.

Also known as: Bernard Bakana Kolélas

Activities and affiliations

Career Timeline

Related historical events

The Ninja militia, the 1993-1994 armed confrontation, and the war after exile

The dispute over the May-June 1993 parliamentary election escalated into armed clashes between Kolélas's Ninja militia and Lissouba's camp. Having lost the 1992 presidential runoff to Lissouba, Kolélas led the Union for Democratic Renewal (URD) into an alliance with the Congolese Labour Party (PCT), which he had previously opposed, and fought the Lissouba government. French-language accounts state that the Ninjas, citing fraud in those parliamentary elections, launched a civil war alongside the Cobras against the Cocoye militia, and that the conflict left 2,000 dead and many more displaced. How the violence is described varies by source. French Wikipedia says each camp carried out looting, destruction and killings in areas it controlled, with the Ninjas active in the Pool Region and the Bacongo and Makélékélé quarters of Brazzaville, and Lissouba's militias in the Niari, Lekoumou and Bouenza regions. English Wikipedia records only that about 2,000 people were killed in political violence from 1993 to 1994, so the figure spans the actions of both camps rather than one.

In January 1994 the army blockaded the Bacongo district, the stronghold of Kolélas's forces, and attacked the Ninjas with heavy weaponry; an agreement on 30 January 1994 reduced the violence. Kolélas and Lissouba publicly reconciled in June 1994, and Kolélas was elected Mayor of Brazzaville in July 1994, holding the office until 1997. Compromise in which armed confrontation and the distribution of offices were intertwined was, in short, the form Congolese politics took in this period.

When Sassou Nguesso's forces captured Brazzaville in October 1997, Kolélas was ousted with Lissouba and went into exile, but the Ninja units loyal to him kept fighting. In November 1998 Kolélas spurned a government offer of dialogue, and in December 1998 pro-Kolélas forces unsuccessfully tried to seize Brazzaville. Kolélas, then in the United States, claimed his forces effectively controlled the city and suggested he might return to lead the country; the government rejected the claim and said the army had the upper hand. A few days later Kolélas described the rebellion as an uprising of the youth and said it had been defeated only by the intervention of Angolan troops on the government's side. The outcome was sustained government offensives against the Ninjas, and the armed confrontation drew in further organizations, including the Lari-dominated Ntsiloulou militia formed in 1998.