Herve Ambroise Malonga:
he is a pro-democracy activist and a courageous lawyer, who is
frequently jailed for his positions that oscillates between pure legal matters
and political domains. Herve Amboise Malonga is a true lover and supporter of
real democracy and freedom of speech in Congo. He is among those fighting to
have an independent judiciary in Congo and for that; he is marginalized by the
current government. The current government doesn’t want to have an independent
justice system. His courage has forced him to stand as lawyer for
clients whose court cases are considered as lost, because the government is
always determine that free and fair trials are seldom held or rendered in her
courts , which are in reality kangaroo
courts. He has been a lawyer in many high profile cases in Congo. The well
known are: the beach massacre trial, known in French as “Les disparu du Beach”
and more recently, he was also amongst the group of lawyers defending Colonel
Marcel Nstourou. No matter how courageous and competent he is, Maitre Herve
Ambroise Malonga has his own short comings that, I have observed. As a person, he
seems excellent and easy going and as already mentioned, professionally, he is competent.
But my observations are that, sometimes he acts as though, he is not very sure
of himself and in other occasions, he seems very negligent. Perhaps it is
because of the pressure and physical as well as psychological persecutions that
he receives from the government that alters his professional outputs in some
courts cases that he handles. Hence, it
is believed or suspected that, in most cases or trials that he has lost, it is
not necessarily because the government wanted or intervened or does not want to
deliver honest verdict. While the Congolese
judiciary is not independent, it is
however honest to point out that, most of the time, when Herve Malonga loses a
court case, it is because, he seldom prepares his defenses properly, and the
primary reason being his addiction to alcoholism, while the secondary reason
can be attributed to government interventions to cause miscarriage of justice.
He is sometimes also unpredictable and at times incoherent.
It might also partly explain the reason why, he is no longer given lead role in
high profile court cases. The professional incoherence and absence of concentration
from the part of Malonga has not only made him to lose his luster, some of his
colleagues are even distancing themselves from him. One of such is Jean Martin Bemba. Mr Jean
Martin Bemba is a former justice minister of Congo and now an arch rival to the
president of the Republic. Jean Martin Bemba became the state enemy of because
he is opposed to President Denis Sassou Nguesso’s plans to change the January
20th 2002 constitution. Jean Martin Bemba,
once told me in french this :
Maitre Herve Ambroise Malonga est bon,
mais je ne lui faire plus de confiance, car il bois trop. Or in English: Lawyer Herve Ambroise
Malonga is an excellent lawyer, but I no longer have confidence in him, because
he drinks a lot. Whatever his sins, he is amongst the great Congolese
pro-democracy and human right activist, who have paid a heavy price for
standing up against the injustices of the current regime. He is therefore a
person worth of praise and also worth counting upon in Congo currently and in
the future. In order for democracy and the respect of rule of law to find a
foothold in Congo, people like Herve Amboise Malonga are indispensable in spite
their short comings.
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