On May 20, 2025, a top court in the Democratic Republic of Congo convicted former Prime Minister Augustin Matata Ponyo Mapon of corruption and sentenced him to ten years of forced labour in jail.
The Congolese Constitutional Court in Kinshasa found him guilty of embezzling $245 million from a failed agricultural project, alongside Deogratias Mutombo, the former governor of the DR Congo’s Central Bank, and Christo Grobler, a South African businessman. However, Mutombo and Grobler were each handed five years of forced labour. The court also barred Ponyo and Mutombo from public service for five years upon serving their jail terms.
None of the three was in custody and all were tried in absentia. There was a lull after the court ruling. None of the convicts was heard of or seen in public. Until Saturday, August 2, 2025 when Actualite broke the story that Matata Ponyo –who heads the opposition Leadership and Governance for Development party (LGD)- had fled to exile. He served as prime minister from 2012-2016 under then-President Joseph Kabila.
Headlining the story under ‘Matata Ponyo officially “in exile”, two months after his disappearance’, the publication quoted Francklin Tshamala, LGD’s secretary general as saying that Matata Ponyo was “alive and well and safe” and “has been forced into exile by the authorities in violation of Article 30, paragraph 2 of the Constitution.” Claiming to have had a telephone conversation with Matata Ponyo, the LGD official added: “”When the time comes, we will tell you where he has chosen to settle.” The story had no mention of the whereabouts of Matata Ponyo or details on the allegedly abused constitutional provisions. Neither did it disclose those in authority who had forced the former premier out of the country.
Instead, Actualite rumbled on with a catalogue of claims by Tshamala, including that the court ruling was unconstitutional, inapplicable, and a disgrace for the Congolese justice system, “which has become an appendage of the executive power.” Also, that the government had embezzled $2 million from Matata Ponyo’s consulting firm, poisoned him, then barred him from seeking treatment abroad. The Directorate General of Migration was accused of confiscating the passport of Matata Ponyo’s daughter on May 30, when she was due to travel to the United States for her studies, and of prohibiting his wife from leaving the country. If it is true that the LGD official made the grave allegations at a press conference, it’s baffling that the reporters covering the event (including Actualite’s) never pushed him for pieces of evidence.
Actualite crowned its goofs by failing to provide a number of crucial contextual details to the story. One, the publication never mentioned that Matata Ponyo wasn’t convicted alone (there were two others) in the case since the country’s Inspectorate General of Finance reported the theft from the Bukanga-Lonzo Agro-Industrial Park in 2020.
Two, that the industrial park, which included a giant corn farm 260km southeast of Kinshasa, was touted as the first of 22 huge agricultural projects to be opened under the then-President Kabila, but collapsed in 2017, three years after production began. The South African company hired to run it left the country, saying it had not been paid by the government. The case was opened in 2021 after investigators appointed by Tshisekedi began digging into the conduct of the previous government.
Three, that during campaigns for DRC’s presidential election in 2023, Matata Ponyo dropped out of the race to back former provincial governor Moise Katumbi in the hopes of unseating Tshisekedi, accusing his government of preparing “massive electoral fraud.” On assuming office, President Tshisekedi vowed to make tackling corruption a priority of his presidency. Several allies of his predecessor Kabila and political nemesis Katumbi have been jailed.
Lesson learnt? In cases of unproven allegations, contextual details lend reports the crucial three-legged stool on which to sit. On this matter of the whereabouts (and the status of implementation of the court ruling) of Matata Ponyo and co-convicts, Actualite applied the inadequate ‘One-Happy-Accident’ approach, thereby denying readers the valid aspects for opinion-forming.
