On Friday, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kinshasa, became the site of bloody street clashes as thousands of opposition demonstrators gathered to protest a controversial constitutional overhaul that opponents warn would allow sitting President Félix Tshisekedi to run for a third term in office. The protest was organized by the newly unified opposition coalition C64, also called Coalition Article 64, which brought together Congo’s once-fractured main opposition parties back in May specifically to block the proposed changes.
The confrontation broke out outside the country’s Parliament building, where anti-reform protesters came face-to-face with supporters of the ruling administration. As violence escalated between the two groups, security forces moved in to disperse the crowd using tear gas. Among those wounded in the chaos was Martin Fayulu, a leading opposition figure and the runner-up in the 2018 presidential election. Footage posted to Fayulu’s official Facebook page showed the opposition leader with visible blood on his face and shirt collar, assisted away from the violence by his supporters.
Tshisekedi, 62, first took office in 2019 and is currently serving his second five-year presidential term, which is scheduled to conclude in 2028. Under current Congolese law, the constitution explicitly prohibits any revision of presidential term limits, which currently cap a president’s tenure at two terms. However, a draft bill now under debate in the National Assembly, Congo’s lower legislative chamber, would create a legal loophole: it would permit changes to term limit provisions if a “major dysfunction” is declared to have paralyzed state institutions, a change that would ultimately be put to voters in a public referendum. Tshisekedi has publicly stated he would only pursue a third term if the change is approved by Congolese voters.
Beyond the political crisis sparked by the proposed reforms, Congo is already grappling with multiple overlapping national crises. An ongoing Ebola outbreak has strained the country’s under-resourced public health system, while in eastern Congo, a decades-long internal conflict has intensified in recent years. The Rwandan-backed M23 rebel group is one of more than 100 armed factions fighting for territorial control in the region, displacing hundreds of thousands of civilians and fueling a major humanitarian emergency.
Opposition leaders warn that the push to rewrite term limits represents a direct threat to Congo’s fragile democratic institutions and overall national stability. The C64 coalition has framed the proposed changes as a deliberate power grab by Tshisekedi to hold onto the presidency beyond his constitutionally mandated time in office, turning a planned peaceful protest into a violent confrontation that has escalated the country’s political tensions.