Family members of Christian Malanga who launched a futile coup to unseat Congo Democratic Republic President Felix Tshisekedi last Sunday, have been mourning his death in Utah, USA.
Malanga, a naturalised US citizen, was gunned down in front of the Congo DR Presidential Palace after he and his fellow coup plotters were rounded up by the Congolese army. The other two Americans involved were a convicted marijuana trafficker and Malanga’s 21-year-old son, Marcel.
Congo‘s army spokesman Brig. Gen. Sylvain Ekenge said Tuesday a third American, Taylor Thomson, was involved in the foiled coup plot in Kinshasa.
Authorities were still trying to untangle how Marcel Malanga went from playing high school football in Utah to allegedly trying to unseat the leader of one of Africa’s largest countries.
“My son is innocent,” his mother, Brittney Sawyer, wrote in an email to The Associated Press on Monday, declining to elaborate.
Sawyer had regularly posted proud family photos on social media, including one in December showing Marcel, a young sister and a toddler hugging in matching Christmas pajamas. In 2020, she posted photos of Marcel lifting weights and dancing during COVID lockdown.
In a Facebook post early Monday, Sawyer angrily wrote that her son had followed his father. “This was an innocent boy following his father. I’m so tired of all the videos being posted all over and being sent to me. God will take care of you people!”
One video that circulated on social media over the weekend showed her son alongside a bloodied white man, whose identity was unclear, both covered in dust and surrounded by Congolese soldiers. Marcel has his hands raised and a frightened look on his face.
On Monday, at the West Jordan home of Malanga’s mother, Chantal Malanga, relatives gathered to mourn the deceased leader. A steady flow of friends dropped by with plates of food and to offer condolences.
Sydney, a cousin of Christian Malanga’s who answered the door, told AP the family was feeling “heartbroken” and “so raw” after learning of his death. They were discussing plans for a possible funeral in Utah, she said, without giving further details.
It wasn’t clear how Malanga had recruited the other Americans for his ill-fated attack on the Congolese state. His connection to Benjamin Reuben Zalman-Polun, who in 2015 pleaded guilty to trafficking marijuana, appeared to be through a gold mining company that was set up in Mozambique in 2022, according to an official journal published by Mozambique’s government, and a report by Africa Intelligence newsletter.
American businessman Cole Ducey, also named as an official in the mining company in the Mozambique journal, said he met Christian Malanga when the two were introduced by a mutual acquaintance a few years ago and briefly explored investing together in mining concessions in Mozambique. Ducey said he also met Zalman-Polun, whom Malanga had met in Washington, D.C.
Ducey said they never discussed the political situation in Congo or Malanga’s desire to be part of the government there. Ducey said he eventually decided not to go into business with the two men.
“We simply viewed a couple mining concessions in Mozambique,” Ducey said of Malanga. “I didn’t know him very well but from what I gathered he wasn’t very intelligent.”
He said he had no contact with Malanga and Zalman-Polun in about two years and was shocked to read about their alleged involvement in a violent coup attempt.
“I had nothing to do with this and was not involved in any way,” said Ducey, who was in Eswatini on Monday, referring to reports in the Congolese media naming him among the attackers.
The alleged coup attempt began at the Kinshasa residence of Vital Kamerhe, a federal legislator and a candidate for speaker of the National Assembly of Congo. His guards killed the attackers, officials said.
Malanga, meanwhile, was live-streaming video from the presidential palace in which he is seen surrounded by several people in military uniforms wandering around in the middle of the night. He was later killed while resisting arrest, Congolese authorities said. AP
Malanga and son Marcel