Into Africa

The man sitting behind a wooden desk in a squat, three-story office building on Highland Avenue in Needham is going to be the next president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It really doesn't matter that no one other than Oscar Kashala himself seems convinced of this. Those who dwell on the negatives—like the fact that Kashala hasn't lived in his native Congo for more than 20 years, or that his competition for the presidency includes men with their own private militias, or that no one can even say exactly when the elections will actually take place—miss the point entirely. Kashala is going to win. Debating this with him is like arguing that March will fail to follow February.
Kashala's vision came to him on a deserted mountain road in November 2004. He was driving across the Congo, headed for Kinshasa, the capital, to pitch an ambitious business plan to the government. Having long since established himself as a successful physician, researcher, and business executive in Boston, Kashala was now going to rebuild the Congo, yet another former African colony that has been ripped apart by murderous violence and corruption. He had formed the Asterko Holding Corporation to construct roads and bridges, provide medical care, and even offer security in a country where the peace is maintained only by the presence of the world's largest deployment of United Nations troops. The for-profit reconstruction effort was to be known as the Kashala Plan.

It was nearing 5 p.m. as Kashala and his traveling party stopped to rest, and the sun had begun to set, casting the valley below in brilliant red and orange. Looking out over the scene, Kashala swelled with pride, but there was melancholy, too. If the suffering had changed at all since he left his country, it was only for the worse—a point made clear by Kashala's sudden realization that the mountainside wasn't deserted at all. Groups of young children started emerging from the bushes, displaying the belly-protruding, feet-swollen signs of malnourishment. "They were carrying sticks and logs to make fires," he recalls. "But there wasn't any food." As his wife handed out the clothing and candy she had brought as presents for her family, Kashala noticed a young girl and her brother walking along the road. His rented truck had left only the narrowest passage along the edge of the mountain road. It was a long way down, and the girl, shirtless and perhaps 10 years old, carefully gripped her little brother's arm to steady him as he walked. "She was clenching her brother to try to protect him so he wouldn't fall into the valley," Kashala says. "I looked at this, and said, 'Kids in our country are taking care of other kids.' It just broke my heart."
Kashala realized his business plan could never work. The country was so devastated that there was no one left even to care for the children. It just so happened that the Congo was preparing for its first free elections in four decades. Kashala decided he would become president instead.
Slightly more than a year later, he's assembled his cabinet, a dozen or so other natives of the Congo, some of them respected academics and professionals who also live in New England. He's created a new political party. He's written his speeches. He's going to win. He keeps telling me that.

I first met Kashala in September, at his official campaign kickoff at the Harvard Faculty Club in Cambridge. He wasn't saying so, but the turnout that night was disappointing. Of the 50 or so people milling about the room, none was Mitt Romney. Nor had Tom Menino or Harvard president Lawrence Summers showed up. They'd all been mentioned in the news release as "invited guests." There wasn't much media to speak of, either, just me and the chief editor of a local website called CongoBoston.com. But Kashala was excited, shaking hands and smiling for photos while members of his staff affixed a large American flag to a pole. A Congolese flag was already in position, wedged into a fireplace grate. Nearly everyone in attendance was African, some outfitted in flowing, colorful robes. Half the conversations were in French, the Congo's official language.
Kashala was born in Lubumbashi in the Congo. Though 51, he has the trim, powerful build of a man 20 years younger. He keeps his thinning hair clipped close to his scalp, and favors expertly tailored pinstripe suits. He entered medical school at 20 and became president of a secret student association he says organized mass protests against the government. Despite this subversive moonlighting, he managed to graduate first in his class. Kashala left his country in 1984, seeking, as so many ambitious young men do, opportunity and fortune abroad. He spent three years of medical training in Geneva before arriving in Cambridge in 1987 to enroll in a postdoctoral program at Harvard, where he earned a doctor of science degree, specializing in cancer biology. From there, he joined Cambridge Biotech, where he helped develop drugs for cancer and infectious diseases. Today he serves as senior director of oncology at Millennium Pharmaceuticals in Cambridge. He's a big success, with a big family (five children of his own, and four relatives he's adopted), and a big house on 11 acres in Westborough. And now, standing before a roomful of supporters, he was about to announce his intention to risk it all because his country needed him.
Of course, that didn't mean there weren't reasons to be skeptical about his chances, starting with his long absence from the Congo. Edouard Bustin, a Boston University political science professor who specializes in Africa, describes Kashala as a "marginal" candidate. "I don't think the people in the Congo know his name," he tells me. "He may be a perfectly honorable man—but is that enough to get elected?" Franklin Katunda, chief editor of CongoBoston.com, gives Kashala a better chance, but not much. "On a scale of one to 10," he says, "probably a five."
Still, no one at the campaign kickoff seemed worried. Besides friends and colleagues, Kashala was surrounded by his small campaign staff and several members of his proposed cabinet. A few minutes past 6 p.m., Dr. Robert Baratz walked up to the lectern to introduce Kashala. "I got the call at 2:30 this afternoon to be here," he said, perhaps as apology for his rumpled khakis and sports jacket. "I was doing surgery." Baratz, an American who did medical work over a two-year period in the Congo, met Kashala in the late 1980s and now advises his campaign on healthcare issues. In 1989, he said, the country's total health expenditure was $34 million, less than $1 per person. "And it has gotten worse since then. There is nothing there." That's largely the result of a recent civil war and spillover from the genocide in neighboring Rwanda, leading to the deaths of more than 3 million people. Baratz described a country plagued by AIDS—about 1.1 million adults are HIV-infected—and corruption. "Good friends of mine—people are dead!" And here he squinted his eyes as though in pain, and it became apparent that he was crying. "We need this man," he said. "Oscar."
Kashala strode to the lectern, confident and poised. He is not the kind of man to weep in public. A strong and sober speaker, he relies on logic and reason to move his audience. He made remarks centered on improving the Congo's shattered healthcare system. His sister, he said, had recently bled to death after what should have been routine surgery. He sprinkled in a few somber statistics, noting the country's distressing infant mortality rate (about 10 percent) and extreme poverty. "We are seeing the disappearance of a country," he said. "Every child who dies in Congo creates a pain in the heart of their mother. The same pain should be felt by everyone who cares."
It was a good speech and the audience applauded warmly. But a guy in the back raised his hand. He said it wasn't realistic to think Kashala could win. "When I analyze the situation in Congo, I'm afraid we don't have the steps in place to have free elections," he said. "The people organizing the election will be the government thugs in place now. And the government has already proved how bad they are." The crowd eventually shouted him down, but it seemed to me that he was on to something.
Whether or not the elections will be fair—they're being overseen by the United Nations—no one can even say for sure when they'll be held. The date keeps changing (it now looks like June 30). Then there's the fact that the president and three vice presidents in the provisional government are running, and each has a private army. "These are people who have militias ready to fight in case they don't win," Katunda, the website editor, tells me. As for Kashala himself, he has almost no name recognition in the Congo, and, apart from the $120,000 of his own money he says he's already poured into his run, he has managed to raise only $150,000 of the $10 million he figures he needs to run an effective campaign. Plus, he isn't the only expatriate running. Candidates in Montreal and Washington—and even, at one point, another from Boston—have announced their intentions.
It all added up to a long shot. At least, that's how it looked to me. But I had to admit, there was something about this Kashala. He was impressive, and despite every opportunity to portray himself as a martyr for democracy, a heroic symbol of hope against hope, he refused. He was certain he was going to win.

The Congo has been an independent nation since 1960, but it hasn't had much luck since then.
Five years after independence, a military leader named Mobutu Sese Seko seized power and declared himself president. He ruled as a dictator until 1997, when he was overthrown.
Mobutu had allowed swarms of Hutu refugees fleeing the violence in Rwanda to settle in the Congo. Enraged, Rwanda's ruling Tutsi government propped up a Congolese rebel named Laurent Kabila, who deposed the dictator. Kabila named himself president, but he was essentially a puppet of neighboring Uganda and Rwanda.
Firmly in control of the Congo, the Rwandan army began hunting down Hutu rebels hiding there, slaughtering hundreds of thousands of refugees in the process. The massacre brought international scorn on Kabila. So in 1998, he tried to kick the Rwandans out of the country. In response, Rwanda did away with any pretense of an independent Congo. Together with Uganda, it mounted a full-scale invasion, seizing control of the eastern portion of the Congo. The two countries armed Congolese rebels and looted gold, diamonds, and other minerals. Under siege, Kabila reached out to several other African countries, which responded with troops of their own. A rickety cease-fire was announced the following year, but Kabila was assassinated in 2001. His son, Joseph Kabila, took his place as president. The current transitional government was put in place three years ago as a precursor to democratic elections. Today, Joseph Kabila shares power with four vice presidents, three from rebel groups.

Kashala is sensitive to suggestions that he's running his campaign from America. He doesn't want to be seen as an outsider in the country of his birth.
While it's true that he's spent most of the campaign in the States, he insists that his political operation in the Congo is vast and deeply connected. "If I call Kinshasa right now, you're going to see people in meetings," he says when I visit him one afternoon at his campaign headquarters in Needham. "There are people resigning from their parties to join our party." He won't reveal any details just yet, but insists his Union for the Rebuilding of Congo will soon announce alliances with other parties. He says his true campaign headquarters are in the Congo, that the Needham office is primarily for fundraising and public relations. And he does do a lot of his own PR. He's a frequent flier along the Northeast Corridor, giving speeches, raising money, and meeting with Washington politicians.
"I'm encouraged by what I'm hearing" at these meetings, he says, sitting behind a large wooden desk in the suite's corner office. "What we're telling people in Congress and the White House is that Congo is in a situation that will become explosive. Because of chaos and social misery in the country, people are going to be exposed to whoever comes and promises them money." Kashala looks straight at me. We both know what he's going to say next. "People may go to Al Qaeda or someone else, because they feed on this type of ground. Congo has some of the most strategic minerals, including uranium, and who knows where this will end up? If the United States wants to confine terrorism, Congo must be a factor."
It's a brilliant line, and it doesn't much matter whether it's true. Kashala may be a political neophyte, but he's learned enough to know that terrorism is the new communism, and the squeaky domino gets the grease—in this case, money and attention from Washington.
The threat of terrorism may be mere political posturing, but that's not to say that Kashala's campaign is without substance. Several Congolese observers told me his anticorruption platform and emphasis on healthcare, education, and economic development are exactly what the country needs. His chief of staff says the fact that Kashala has any plan at all already separates him from most of his opponents. "Some people will go and bring beer or music [to buy votes] but no message," says Nico Matabisi, a small, intense man who left a job with Citizens Bank to work full time on the Kashala campaign. "We're bringing a message." He points to Liberia, another war-torn African nation, as an example of democracy's potential on the continent. After years of suffering under military dictatorships, Liberians recently elected Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf as Africa's first woman head of state. "Many people doubted that it would work in Liberia," Matabisi says. "They thought the military would step in—like in Congo, people worry about that." Johnson-Sirleaf, incidentally, also studied at Harvard, and spent much of her life as an expatriate.
Kashala refuses to even consider the possibility that he might lose. He says he's invested more than $120,000 of his own money in the campaign. "I bought everything you see here, this suite you see here," he says. "I get people to come over from Africa, from Europe, to meet, to stay in a hotel." He dismisses concerns about his lack of recognition. "The name is not a problem, because in the Congo you just create the name overnight. You send T-shirts on the street, you put a band there, people will know who you are." Then he says something completely unexpected. He tells me it's a good thing that no one knows him yet. "This is what Congolese are expecting," he says. "A mystery leader. They are expecting a miracle. Political virginity for us is a plus."
Kashala's not just going to win the presidency. He says he's going to capture a quarter of the seats in the new parliament as well.

One evening in early December, I accompany Kashala on a trip to the Worcester suburb of Paxton, where he is speaking at a seminar on Africa hosted by Anna Maria College. While we ride in his Mercedes SUV, with Lionel Richie playing softly in the background, Kashala talks about the problems in the Congo. He is so engrossed in the subject, and in the constant ringing of his cell phone and two BlackBerries, that he drives right past his exit. "Oh," he says, "I had to go that way." The next exit will also work, he says, and continues talking. He's about to blow past the next off-ramp, too, when I finally say something, tensing up as we swerve across two lanes of traffic to make it.
Kashala looks unusually tired. He says his son has been admitted to the hospital with a respiratory problem. Everything is going to be okay, but he's been spending most nights at the hospital. It occurs to me that this is one of the few times the man has revealed to me anything not related to his campaign. He is, without fail, polite, informed, prepared, articulate. But I can't say for sure whether, having been swallowed by his dream, he's having any fun.
When we arrive at the conference, there are perhaps 50 people in the audience, almost all of them students. Of the four other Congolese there, two have come to make presentations of their own. It's not entirely clear why Kashala is here, or at least how his presence will benefit his campaign. But if he's disappointed, he shows no hint of it. He is, as ever, confident and optimistic.
While Kashala prepares for his speech, I talk with Willy Lukanga, a roundish Congolese with a warm smile. Lukanga runs a shipping business in the Worcester area and writes columns for CongoBoston.com. I ask him how Kashala is doing. Behind us, just a few feet away, Kashala is attaching cables to his laptop. "I have a little bit of concern because he doesn't have a lot of stuff going on around here," Lukanga says. "The community wants to know—After many years you just walk up and say, 'I want to run for the election'?" He predicts that Kabila, the acting president, will be elected easily. "Kabila's in touch with the community. He's trying to make himself accessible, even though he's not really smart," Lukanga explains. "Those who want to run from here, they have to get themselves more connected to the population." To Lukanga, Kashala is all intellect and diplomas, and not enough heart and populism. He's all policy and no chicken-in-every-pot.
Kashala delivers his usual effective speech but acknowledges during the car ride home that the night probably won't help the campaign much. I ask him about Lukanga's contention that Kabila already has the election won. He insists that Kabila is ripe for defeat. Then he stops talking for a moment, as though weighing just how much to reveal. "There are a number of things happening in the country as we speak," he says. "We are strategically positioned with a very huge alliance we have not announced yet."
He won't disclose anything else. Which is why Oscar Kashala is the only person who knows for sure that he's going to win. It's going to happen. The long wait of the Congolese people, so desperately anticipating their miracle, is finally over. I know this because Kashala keeps telling me.
"We will win the election," he says as he drops me off. "We're going to win the election. We will win it. We will win these elections."