According to him, those behind coups are often “people who feel frustrated, who feel that the cake is shared between a small elite, a small group, and the majority has no access.”
“To avoid the coup d’état,” Cardinal Ambongo argued, “we must return to a system of equitable redistribution of the wealth of our continent,” and to “the exercise of a power that watches over the rights of one and the other in a fair and just way.”
According to the Congolese Cardinal, political life in many countries has become dominated by the quest for power and wealth.
“We have the impression that more and more in our African countries… only the will of power matters today,” he said.
The Local Ordinary of Kinshasa Archdiocese, who also serves as President of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM) added, “The powerful impose their will on the smallest. The only thing that matters is wealth.”
Cardinal Ambongo lamented that the pursuit of wealth often comes at the expense of the majority of the population.
“We are ready to go and get this wealth by resorting to any method,” he said, adding that once obtained, it is used “first for ourselves, for the people of our family, for the people of our group, and the majority of the population is abandoned.”
This situation, he explained, has created “a kind of imbalance, of inequality between those who have, and those who have in Africa are generally those who are in power.”
Those without power, the Cardinal said, are “thrown into misery, into poverty,” a reality he described as “at the origin of many conflicts today in Africa.”
The Congolese member of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin (OFM Cap) also addressed the issue of natural resources, noting that Africa is often seen by external powers as a source of raw materials.