Luc Nkulula died on June 10th
THE fire took hold at around midnight. It was so fierce and sudden in the wooden house in Himbi, outside Goma, in eastern Congo, that Luc Nkulula could not get through the lounge to the main door. Nor could he climb out of his bedroom window, which was barred against thieves. He managed to stuff his laptop and some papers through, the most important things. Then the blazing curtain fell on his back, and he could not fight it off.
His sister Amen, coming in from the outside privy, heard a noise like an explosion and saw him burning. After an hour, firemen came; by then, the house was ashes. Investigations by a state procurator blamed an overheated battery, but Mr Nkulula’s friends were sure he had been killed by the government in Kinshasa.
It seemed obvious why. As a founder-member of Lutte pour le Changement (Struggle for Change), Lucha for short, he had campaigned since 2012 for democracy in Congo, for proper elections and alternation in government, instead of the relentlessly...