President Laurent Kabila's son Joseph took power in Democratic Republic of Congo yesterday as officials gave conflicting reports on whether his father was alive or dead in Zimbabwe after being shot 24 hours earlier.
Mr Kabila's own ambassador to Zimbabwe said the President was alive but in critical condition. "As we speak there is a team of Congolese doctors who are attending to him. Obviously he is in a very critical condition but he has not passed away yet," Ambassador Kikaya bien Karubi said in remarks broadcast live on Zimbabwe state television.
But a key aide to Mr Kabila, who held power in the former Zaire for four years, the Defence Minister, Mr Godefroid Tchamlesso, said the President of the vast, turbulent country was dead. "We rushed him to a hospital in central Kinshasa where he died. He lost much blood and fought death for about two hours before he died," the minister told the Libyan leader, Col Muammar Gaddafi, through a translator.
The conversation between Col Gaddafi and the visiting Congolese minister was broadcast by Libyan television.
"He [Mr Kabila] was shot by one of his bodyguards according to what they said," the minister said, without giving more details.
Earlier, the Zimbabwean Defence Minister, Mr Moven Mahachi, had said Mr Kabila was dead. "President Kabila has died. It was a pure assassination," Mr Mahachi, whose country has been Mr Kabila's main ally during nearly four years of civil war, told the state news agency Ziana.
Political sources in Harare said that authorities in the Democratic Republic of Congo capital of Kinshasa were delaying an announcement of Mr Kabila's death while they set security arrangements in place to avoid a collapse into anarchy.
Zimbabwe's Minister of State for Information and Publicity, Mr Jonathan Moyo, said his government would issue a statement today based on the medical report by Congolese doctors "who have been attending to President Kabila".
Foreign governments, including the former colonial power Belgium, said Mr Kabila had died after being shot by one of his own soldiers on Tuesday.
The Belgian Foreign Minister, Mr Louis Michel, said Mr Kabila died on Tuesday after being shot in the back and the leg, apparently while meeting a group of army generals he had dismissed.
In Kinshasa, the Information Minister, Mr Dominique Sakombi, told state radio Mr Kabila had been flown abroad for medical treatment and announced that his son had taken charge. "The government of public salvation met in a special session . . . and decided to entrust the running of the government and military command to Maj Gen Joseph Kabila," Mr Sakombi told state radio.
Joseph, already the army commander, fought beside his father in the rebellion that toppled the veteran dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, in 1997 and made Mr Kabila ruler of the vast, mineral-rich territory at the heart of Africa.
Mr Sakombi also said that the government was reopening borders and airports shut on Tuesday and relaxing an overnight curfew to 10 p.m. to 5 a.m.
The capital Kinshasa was quiet yesterday, a holiday in remembrance of the abduction and murder of the independence prime minister, Patrice Lumumba.
Roads were mostly deserted except for patrolling army vehicles. The soldiers inside had little to do, passing small groups discussing Mr Kabila's fate and the latest news from foreign radio stations, the main source of information since Tuesday.
"We may not like him very much but ending this way is saddening," said Mr Louis Kalonji, a man standing with one such group in the Lingala district.