Tear gas drifted through Kinshasa’s Limete interchange on the afternoon of 15 September. By nightfall, the death of a young security guard had turned a dispute over legal text into something far more raw.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is now several months into a slow-burning constitutional crisis. Opponents say it comes down to one question: Can President Félix Tshisekedi find a legal path to a third term?
The process makes no explicit mention of that possibility. For the opposition coalition leading the protests, that is precisely the problem.
Does Tshisekedi Want a Third Term?
Tshisekedi was elected in 2019 and re-elected in 2023. Under the current constitution, his second five-year term ends in 2028.
The document he swore to uphold is clear: presidents may serve two terms, not more. That limit is part of the constitution’s entrenched core, alongside provisions on national sovereignty and the republican form of the state, principles the text says cannot be changed by amendment.
Tshisekedi has never announced that he intends to seek a third term, but he has never ruled it out either.
At a rare press conference in May, he came closer than ever, telling reporters that if the Congolese people wanted him to serve again, he would accept. It was a carefully chosen formulation, an appeal to popular will rather than a declaration of personal ambition.
But it is precisely the line his opponents keep quoting, because it confirms what they had already suspected: the constitutional manoeuvring now under way is not abstract legal housekeeping; it is preparation.
What DRC Parliament Passed
The issue at the centre of the dispute is not a conventional constitutional amendment bill. It is a law setting out how a referendum on constitutional change could be held, a framework for making changes, rather than the changes themselves.
The DRC’s parliament passed the bill in June, opening the door to constitutional changes by referendum.
Members of Tshisekedi’s coalition have also supported changes that would let him remain in office.
His bloc has a strong majority in both chambers, so there was little doubt the bill would pass. The real dispute is over what it could make possible.
Two provisions have drawn particular criticism. The first would allow the president to propose constitutional changes through a constituent assembly and referendum if state institutions were considered to be suffering from “major dysfunction.”
The phrase is vague enough to leave considerable room for interpretation. The second provision may be broader still: it would let the head of state call a referendum on any issue considered to be of “fundamental” importance to the nation, without clearly explaining who gets to decide what qualifies.
Opposition figures say the two provisions could offer Tshisekedi a legal route to reset the constitutional clock.
He could present a new constitution to voters, they argue, effectively wiping his two existing terms from the record and allowing him to run again as if starting from scratch.
Their concern is that a referendum framed as a response to institutional crisis, combined with such a broad trigger, could make that possible.
That is the reasoning behind the alarm, but it remains an interpretation, not a provision that explicitly says the president may serve a third term.
The government rejects that reading. It says the process is about updating a document written amid the upheaval of the mid-2000s, one that, in its view, is overdue for modernisation.
The Court Setback
The next stage of the process played out in the Constitutional Court, where the opposition suffered a setback.
In a ruling delivered in late July, the court’s president, Dieudonné Kamuleta Badibanga, announced on state television that the referendum law was compatible with the constitution.
The court upheld clauses that could allow the president to amend the constitution through a constituent assembly and then a referendum if a “major dysfunction” affected state institutions.
But the judges raised concerns about other provisions, including the “fundamental importance” clause that has drawn the strongest criticism.
Those concerns were more than a formality. The court said specific provisions had to be deleted, replaced or rewritten before the law could stand.
In August, Tshisekedi wrote to the presidents of the National Assembly and Senate, asking them to reconsider the legislation in light of the ruling.
A new deliberation, incorporating the court’s requirements, was scheduled for the September parliamentary session.
In other words, when tear gas was fired, the law the opposition was protesting was still technically being revised.
That distinction matters legally, even if it has done little to ease tensions in the streets: no referendum can be called until the revised law passes through Parliament again and receives presidential assent.
Only then would a date and a question be set. So far, nobody has said what that question would be. Critics have also questioned whether the court can be trusted to arbitrate the dispute impartially.
They point to years of perceived politicisation of the judiciary and ask how a court whose independence is already in doubt can be relied upon to oversee a process that could strengthen the position of the president who appoints its members.
Article 64
The opposition has rallied under a banner that makes its case before anyone says a word: C64, named after Article 64 of the constitution, which gives citizens the right to resist an unconstitutional seizure of power.
Formed in May, the coalition brings together figures representing much of the country’s serious opposition to Tshisekedi: former presidential candidates Martin Fayulu of ECiDé, Moïse Katumbi of Ensemble pour la République, Jean-Marc Kabund of Alliance pour le Changement, Augustin Matata Ponyo of LGD and Delly Sesanga of Envol.
Their message is plain. Lamuka spokesperson Prince Epenge said the amendment serves one man’s interests, and that he wants a third term, at a cost the country cannot justify while scarce public funds are spent keeping him in power.
Nobel laureate Denis Mukwege has cast the objection in constitutional rather than personal terms. A country facing a declared international public health emergency and a war in which foreign-backed forces occupy part of its territory, he argues, is precisely where the constitution’s safeguards should prevent an amendment, not enable one.
Over the months, the coalition’s central demand has shifted from “abandon the reform” to calls for Tshisekedi to resign.
It has repeatedly organised demonstrations to make its case: some were postponed after regional leaders offered to mediate, while others went ahead despite bans and heavy security deployments.
The Deadly Protests
The 15 September protests marked the coalition’s biggest push yet. Rather than a single rally in Kinshasa, they were organised as a coordinated day of action, with demonstrations called in the capital, Lubumbashi, the southeastern copper-mining hub, and Uvira in the east, despite restrictions imposed by the authorities.
In Kinshasa, protesters gathered at several locations before setting off from the Limete interchange. As tensions mounted, police used tear gas and fired warning shots. Witnesses described clashes in which demonstrators and pro-government counter-protesters threw stones and brandished machetes.
Manassé Lomboto, a security officer working for opposition figure Prince Epenge, later died at Olympique Hospital in Kinshasa. His relatives said he had been injured during the march and blamed the police, along with members of Force du Progrès, a group affiliated with the ruling UDPS party.
The death was not the first linked to the standoff. The UN reported that at least one person was killed in clashes around a similar rally in July 2026, when authorities suppressed a demonstration and several opposition supporters were injured.
Lubumbashi saw the heaviest police response of the day. Authorities had banned the planned march, citing the need to maintain public order, but the C64 went ahead, arguing that the constitution protects the right to peaceful assembly.
Security forces moved to stop the march, arresting dozens of opposition supporters. The provincial government later said more than 30 people had been arrested in Lubumbashi and neighbouring Likasi combined, while opposition sources put the figure closer to 80. At least 10 people were arrested during confrontations in Kinshasa. The two sides also disputed whether the arrests took place as described.
Mohamed Eyenga of the opposition party Envol, a senior C64 figure, said afterwards that many coalition activists had been arbitrarily detained.
Eyenga said organisers were taken aback by the scale of the army and police deployment sent to stop what he described as a peaceful demonstration.
Lubumbashi’s provincial police commander, General Blaise Kilimbalimba, gave a sharply different account, insisting that peaceful demonstrators had not been arrested at all.
M23 Excluded From National Dialogue
Three weeks before the September protests, Tshisekedi announced plans for a national dialogue involving opposition parties, civil society groups and religious leaders. It was a gesture toward the negotiated settlement the opposition had been demanding for months. But there was a significant caveat: M23 and other rebel groups controlling territory in the east would be excluded. That left the country’s most pressing ongoing crisis outside the very forum intended to address its problems. The omission has fueled a wider complaint, voiced most forcefully by civil society groups rather than opposition parties.
In the days after the protests, correspondents reporting from Kinshasa described growing calls for the government to reset its priorities: focus first on the security crisis in Ituri and the eastern provinces, and on the Ebola outbreak, rather than treating constitutional reform as the state’s most urgent task.
The issues being asked to wait are substantial. The Ebola epidemic has surpassed 7,000 cases, making it the largest outbreak on record.
Ebola is spreading through remote, conflict-affected areas where the state has little presence and health infrastructure is barely in place.
In the east, M23, which Kinshasa accuses Rwanda of supporting, a charge Kigali denies, has held large areas of territory since renewing its offensive in 2024. Officials from both governments were due to return to Geneva the day after the Kinshasa protests to see whether the 2025 Washington Accords peace process could still move forward.
Civil society representatives have, in effect, asked the government why rewriting a referendum law took precedence over either emergency. They have yet to receive a persuasive answer.
Influence of The Catholic Church
If there is one institution capable of shifting Congolese public opinion on this question, it may not be the opposition parties at all.
The Catholic Church claims the loyalty of a large share of the population in Africa’s most populous Catholic nation, and its bishops’ conference, CENCO, has positioned itself firmly against the reform, describing the country in one communiqué as a “nation in peril” and warning explicitly against any attempt to alter or rewrite the constitution.
CENCO’s argument centres on Article 220, the clause entrenching term limits against amendment, which the bishops have called a genuine safeguard against dictatorship and the privatisation of the state.
They have accused unnamed advocates of the reform of no longer bothering to disguise their real aim, securing the president another cycle in office and have warned that tampering with the “Republican Pact” struck after years of conflict risks reopening old wounds.
Addressing Tshisekedi directly, the bishops have called on him to honour the oath he took on assuming office, warning that acting otherwise would engage his personal and historical responsibility, and they have urged clergy to help “awaken” the conscience of the faithful and resist manipulation.
It’s a notable intervention from an institution that has historically avoided being drawn too far into partisan politics, and the government has not welcomed it. But the Church’s reach, through its schools, its parishes and its long institutional memory of the country’s past turmoil, gives its warnings a weight that opposition press conferences alone cannot match.
2028 Uncertainty
Nothing in the current dispute guarantees Tshisekedi a third term, but nothing rules one out either. That uncertainty is precisely what both sides are fighting over.
The redrafted referendum law must still pass through Parliament a second time, with the changes required by the Constitutional Court, before anyone can even discuss a date for a vote. It is also unclear how much public support there is for the exercise. Turnout in the 2023 election was just 43 per cent.
Researchers have linked low political engagement to wider distrust of the political elite and to more immediate concerns, like feeding a family, in a country where two-thirds of the population live below the poverty line despite its mineral wealth.
One thing seems more certain: the standoff is unlikely to fade quietly. The opposition has shown that it can organise protests in three cities at once and hold together a coalition of figures who are genuine political rivals, a feat Congolese opposition movements have rarely managed for long.
The government, meanwhile, has given no sign that it will abandon the referendum framework, though it has agreed to revise the wording under pressure from the courts. The Church is now openly opposed, civil society is urging the state to focus its attention elsewhere, and the protest movement has already been blamed for a death.
As 2028 approaches, the path forward looks less like a settled legal timetable and more like a test of which side runs out of steam first.
