On 15 March, the Republic of Congo staged its fifth presidential election since Denis Sassou Nguesso reclaimed power after the 1997 civil war. Few citizens bothered to participate. He was declared victor on 17 March with 94.82% of the vote, despite his long record of corruption, economic mismanagement, and human rights abuses.
When his new term expires in 2031, he will have ruled Congo for some 47 years. He first seized power in a 1979 coup, was forced to convene a Sovereign National Conference in 1991 after mass protests, lost the 1992 election in a landslide, and reclaimed power after the 1997 civil war. The new term will be dominated by the problem of succession. He will again confront term limits that prevent him from competing in the 2031 presidential election, as he did before the October 2015 constitutional referendum permitted him to compete in the March 2016 election.
A History of Violence
Sassou Nguesso has a history of amplifying repression in the run-up to presidential elections. By broadcasting the regime’s capacity for violence, he now aims to intimidate citizens into accepting the massive electoral fraud.
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Between April and September 2014, just over a year before the October 2015 constitutional referendum, his government deported as many as 250,000 citizens of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in many cases using brutal means. Dubbed Operation ‘Smack of the Elders,’ immediately afterwards the government began targeting independent journalists such as Elie Smith and Sadio Morel-Kanté, who were critical of the constitutional referendum.
In 2020, the regime’s show of force was different. After dissidents started a fire at the government’s administrative headquarters in Makélékélé, Brazzaville on 4 April 2016, Sassou Nguesso ordered a brutal military assault on the surrounding Pool region which has long opposed the regime. Since the government denied humanitarian organizations access to Pool, the number of fatalities remains unclear. Civil society groups estimated that 15,000 citizens died and perhaps 100,000 were displaced. Dozens of villages were razed. The assault was facilitated, in part, by a massive influx of weapons from Azerbaijan. Claudine Munari, a onetime Sassou Nguesso minister who joined the opposition in protest, called it a ‘genocide.’ As the assault dragged on, the courts – packed with Sassou Nguesso loyalists – convicted his two leading rivals in the 2016 election – General Jean-Marie Michel Mokoko and André Okombi Salissa – of ‘undermining state security’ and sentenced them to 20 years in prison.
During the 2026 election cycle, his show of force was dubbed Operation Zéro Kuluna. The bébés noirs – often referred to as kulunas in the local Lingala – are a loosely organised group of young men that has committed burglaries and other forms of crime for years. In September 2025, Sassou Nguesso ordered the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Présidentielle (DGSP) – the group responsible for his personal security – to undertake a crackdown. Since then, Congo’s leading human rights organization, the Centre d’Actions pour le Développement (CAD), has documented at least 200 extrajudicial executions by the DGSP. The regime razed the homes of parents of suspected bébés noirs and sent text messages encouraging people to denounce them. The crackdown created a climate of fear across Brazzaville. Some of the regime’s social media influencers even accused the CAD’s director, Tresor Nzila, of being a bébés noirs leader.
Operation Zéro Kuluna was fuelled by weapons from Russia. In November 2025, Russia began work on an oil pipeline connecting Pointe-Noire and Brazzaville. Russia will have a 90 percent stake; Congo will have a 10 percent stake. The pipeline will give Russia a sanctions-resistant energy supply network. It will give Congo a more reliable source of fuel for Brazzaville and a potential market in DRC and CAR. As part of the agreement, Moscow also agreed to expand military cooperation. Within Brazzaville, there were rumours of a $900 million increase in the presidential budget to accommodate the new agreement.
The Candidates
As in 2021, the election was remarkable mostly for the lack of enthusiasm it inspired among citizens. Officially, there were seven candidates. Four are widely suspected to have been puppets paid by Sassou Nguesso to compete, recognize his victory, and give the election a veneer of legitimacy. Joseph Kignoumbi kia Mboungou and Anguios Nganguia-Engambé have participated in every election since 2009. Dave Mafoula competed in the 2021 election. Vivian Manangou, a law professor at Marien Ngouabi University, was a first-time candidate.
Destin Gavet and Mabio Mavoungou Zinga were the two legitimate opposition candidates.
Mavoungou Zinga, from Pointe-Noire, is a longtime politician. He served in the National Assembly between 2002 and 2007, and again between 2012 and 2017. He announced his intention to run in 2021, but the Constitutional Court declined to validate it, without offering a reason. An ally of André Okombi Salissa, in 2019 he released his ‘Pointe-Noire Manifesto for National Compromise,’ a 10-page document that, among other things, called for the immediate release of General Mokoko and Okombi Salissa (see above).
Gavet’s candidacy was arguably more interesting. A native of Dolisie, in the southern Niari region, Gavet founded a political association for young people in 2014, when it became clear that Sassou Nguesso would seek a constitutional referendum to remove term limits. He turned his youth group into a political party, the Republican Movement (MR), in 2017. In 2020, he declared he would be a candidate for the 2021 election, but in February endorsed Guy-Brice Parfait Kolélas.
He emerged as among Sassou Nguesso’s fiercest critics. ‘Sassou Nguesso’s candidacy,’ he declared in February, ‘is a mascarade.’ Gavet invested heavily in expanding his party’s footprint across Congo’s northern regions. He appealed directly to the youth, advocating for new public universities across Congo. Gavet joined Mavoungou Zinga’s calls for the release of General Mokoko and Okombi Salissa.
The election was boycotted by the most prominent opposition parties. The Patriotic for National Renewal (UPRN), led by Mathias Dzon, called it ‘simulated.’ The Congolese Opposition Front (FOC), of General Mokoko and Okombi Salissa belong, called it a ‘mascarade.’ The National Council of Republicans (CNR), led by Frédéric Bintsamou (alias Pastor Ntoumi), declared that ‘the conditions for a free and transparent election have not been realized.’ The Pan-African Union for Social Democracy (UAPDS), the party of Pascal Tsaty Mabiala and Pascal Lissouba, the only legitimately elected president in Congo’s history, issued similar statements.
The Campaign
Sassou Nguesso’s campaign appointments raised eyebrows. The finance director for Gamboma, Armel Silvère Dongou, was the subject of an arrest warrant for public embezzlement issued by the public prosecutor’s office in April 2025. He fled Congo hours before he was legally barred from doing so. His case was dropped in August, reportedly after Sassou Nguesso family members intervened. In Pointe-Noire, two brothers of the prime minister, Anatole Collinet Makosso, were appointed to prominent – and potentially lucrative – campaign roles as well.
The campaign began officially on 28 February, although Sassou Nguesso had spent the preceding weeks touring the handful of infrastructure projects that, to varying degrees of success, the government had recently undertaken. On February 21, his son and heir apparent, Denis Christel, presided over an event at Brazzaville’s Hilton Hotel to mark the publication of Les Leviers du Développement du Congo. He also announced the creation of a new NGO, Elikia, that he claimed would help bring the book’s recommendations to fruition. The new NGO would be one of many that the Sassou Nguesso family operates to claim personal credit for the sorts of public goods that are ordinarily provided by governments.
Sassou Nguesso’s first campaign event was in Pointe-Noire. Attendees were promised about $5 to attend; those who didn’t receive payment burned Sassou Nguesso’s blue campaign t-shirts in the street that evening. Afterwards, videos circulated of white men patrolling nearby rooftops with mounted sniper rifles, presumably Russian. The next day, residents of Pointe-Noire tore down Sassou Nguesso’s campaign posters at a prominent roundabout. In response, the mayor of the arrondissement, Romuald Moubenda, who fought on Sassou Nguesso’s behalf in the 1997 war, forbade vendors from selling in the area. Attendees of other campaign events were given coupons for 25 liters of gas at state-owned filling stations or bags of rice with Sassou Nguesso’s image. At one campaign event, Destiné Hermella Doukaga, a National Assembly deputy and occasional minister, publicly called for Sassou Nguesso to remain president for life.
His final campaign rally in Brazzaville provoked widespread outrage. ‘We must make public service more ethical,’ he declared. ‘Shame on the thieves, shame on the corrupters, and shame on the corrupt.’ Days before, at a campaign event in Gamboma, a Sassou Nguesso grandson, Hugues Henry Ngouélondélé, was photographed wearing a Richard Mille watch, valued at around $250,000.
On election day, the government shut down the internet and blocked text messaging. The electoral results were remarkable only for their absurdity. The government claimed that 84.65% of eligible voters cast ballots, even though most polling stations across the country appeared to be empty. Sassou Nguesso, the government announced, won 94.82% of the vote, which many in the opposition, as in 2021, when he claimed 88.4%, denounced as ‘Stalin-esque.’
The Years to Come
This victory gives Sassou Nguesso his third term under the January 2016 constitution. When his term expires in March 2031 he will be constitutionally required to step down. He can do so and anoint a successor, or he can attempt another constitutional revision, which would let him pursue yet another presidential term. His upcoming mandate will be defined by how he negotiates this decision.
Each course is fraught with danger. Although Sassou Nguesso has contemplated several potential successors since reclaiming power in 1997, he has always returned to his single acknowledged son, Denis Christel. Long atop the oil apparatus, Denis Christel’s political career began in 2012, when he claimed a seat in the National Assembly from Oyo with 99.88 percent of the vote. Denis Christel has long been viewed as unacceptable: by citizens, who viewed him as widely corrupt; by the multilateral creditors who, in 2010, made debt relief conditional on his removal; by Sassou Nguesso’s new partners in Beijing and Moscow, who were uncertain whether he could maintain his father’s coalition; and even by other senior members of the regime, many of whom had their other preferred successors. Sassou Nguesso’s earlier efforts to position his son for succession were blocked by internal power struggles.
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Pursuing a new constitutional revision is no less fraught. If he chooses this course, it would probably succeed, as it did in October 2015. The opposition has been so weakened and the population so intimidated by state violence that a Burkinabé-style revolutionary uprising seems unlikely. He would probably model the process on Togo’s Faure Gnassingbé, who, in 2019, had his National Assembly approve a similar constitutional revision by vote. The risk, rather, is his age. At 82, Sassou Nguesso’s age is showing. He speaks slower, occasionally fumbles his words, and walks more gingerly. In 2031, he will be 87.
Cognitive impairment is a dangerous condition for Africa’s autocrats. With the wave of coups across the Sahel, it can be easy to forget that three coup attempts since 2019 – two in Gabon, one in Zimbabwe – have been launched by military officers who saw a cognitively impaired dictator and a nuclear ruling family that was exercising power for itself.
Andrea Ngombet is a civil society leader and founder of the Sassoufit Collective, which advocates for democracy and the rule of law in the Republic of the Congo. He is a member of the International Coalition for Democratic Renewal and has been recognized as a Reagan-Fascell Fellow, Stanford Draper Hill Fellow, and McCain Global Leader Fellow. Ngombet holds a Bachelor’s degree in History from Sorbonne Paris IV University. His recent work includes an essay titled “Congo-Brazzaville’s Chinese Roulette” and a self-published book titled Toxic Ideology: How China is shaping the modern Republic of the Congo, both of which highlight how China facilitates Congo-Brazzaville’s deeply kleptocratic regime. Brett L. Carter is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Southern California, a Hoover Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and a Faculty Affiliate at Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. He received a Ph.D. from Harvard University, where he was a fellow at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. He is the author of Propaganda in Autocracies: Institutions, Information, and the Politics of Belief (Cambridge University Press, 2023), which received the William Riker Prize for the Best Book in Political Economy from the American Political Science Association. He is currently finishing a book about politics in Africa’s autocracies.
