US offers DRC top-level reassurances after US citizens arrested over coup attempt

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken walks alongside the Democratic Republic of Congo’s President Felix Tshisekedi at Cite de l’OUA in Kinshasa on 9 August 2022. (Andrew Harnik / POOL / AFP

• US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken spoke to DRC President Felix Tshisekedi directly to offer help after the weekend coup attempt.
• Three Americans were captured after they apparently tried to flee the DRC by swimming across the Congo River.
• US and DRC relations have strengthened in the last decade through increasing aid and investment.

United States President Joe Biden’s most senior cabinet minister, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, made a call of reassurance to the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) President Felix Tshisekedi after a foiled putsch that allegedly involved American citizens.

So far, it has emerged that Christian Malanga, 41, a naturalised American citizen, his Utah-born 21-year-old son Marcel, with his high school friend Tyler Thompson, 21, and Benjamin Zalman-Polun, 37, from Maryland were allegedly part of the attempt on Sunday.

Of the four, Malanga died, and the rest were captured as they tried to swim across the Congo River into Brazzaville, DRC authorities said.

In a statement, the DRC presidency said that during the call with Blinken, “the USA promised to collaborate with the Congolese authorities regarding the participation of alleged American citizens”.

READ | Aid and abet: DRC government sniffs out alleged infiltrators and coup enablers among its own ranks

Blinken’s office also confirmed the telephone call with Tshisekedi and “condemned the attack on political leaders and institutions in Gombe”.

Gombe is in downtown Kinshasa, where the coup was attempted. 

Blinken “offered US support for the government’s investigation into the attack.”

The US says its relations with DRC are “strong” and Washington’s foreign policy is focused on helping the country become a nation that is stable and democratic, at peace with its neighbours, extends state authority across its territory, and provides for the basic needs of its citizens.

A coup attempt involving Americans is especially unwelcome now that the US is at the centre of public infrastructure development in the DRC through the reconstruction of the Lobito Corridor, which cuts into Zambia and Angola to reach the Atlantic Ocean, for smooth transportation of resources to the West.

Some of the key exports to the US from DRC are minerals such as copper, niobium, tantalum, vanadium, and zirconium ores.

The US is also at the centre of facilitating a joint lithium battery-making project between the DRC and Zambia.

Over the past 10 years, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has provided over R110 billion to the DRC.

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