Candidates to become the next president of the Democratic Republic of Congo turned music to political advantage in their campaigns for the election in end of October 2006, Reuters reports. But after tensions spilled over into violence between rival campaigners in several cities, the Congolese authorities have banned a number of songs and jingles on both sides.

In his report, Alistair Thomson describes the lyrics of one banned song which goes: "Ba wuta ba koma ko dondua na congo" -- "The foreigners are starting to take over in Congo," sung in Lingala, the language of western Congo and the capital where the candidate Bemba enjoys strong support and many distrust his rival candidate, Kabila.
Kabila struggles in Lingala and is more at ease in Swahili, the lingua franca of eastern Congo and East Africa, where he grew up in exile, largely in Tanzania, fuelling his opponents' jibes that he is a foreigner.
"Those who have come here have grown fat while we are dying of hunger," the song continues.