General strike called by opposition affects DR Congo’s main cities
A general strike called by the opposition to force Congolese President Joseph Kabila to share power has slowed business activities in the country's four biggest cities.
"We've followed the call ... because we are suffering greatly. Let him (Kabila) quit power, he has finished his mandate, we want no more of him," Mamie Biamba, a resident of the capital Kinshasa, told AFP on Monday.
The central square -- Place Victoria -- in the usually teeming city of more than 10 million people was almost empty in early morning, with police posted on key arteries.
The strike also hit the Democratic Republic of Congo's second city, Lubumbashi, as well as eastern Goma and the central cities of Mbuji-Mayi and Kananga. But it was business as usual in Kisangani in the northeast and Mbandaka in the northwest.
An umbrella alliance of parties, known as the Rassemblement (Rally), had urged people to stop work in protest at Kabila's failure to implement a power-sharing deal signed on December 31 and to appoint a prime minister from the opposition.
The president's constitutional mandate expired last year at the end of his second five-year term.
His unwillingness to enable elections and step down led to protests in September that left some 50 people dead.
At 8:00 am (0700 GMT), shops and service stations remained closed in Kinshasa and public transport was scarce, with people walking from their homes in eastern working-class districts to their workplaces in the city center.
The situation was similar in distant Lubumbashi, according to witnesses in the country's mining capital, about 1,570 kilometers southeast of Kinshasa.
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