Congo, a country in little more than name, is Africa’s bleeding and broken heart. This vast land, four times the size of France, has natural riches beyond compare. That wealth has been Congo’s curse. Repeatedly, it has been fought over and plundered: first under the murderous colonial regime instituted by King Leopold II of Belgium; then, five blood-soaked years after it won independence, by the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, the most shameless of Africa’s kleptocrats; and most recently in a vicious five-year “civil war” joined by six neighbouring states that financed their interventions by further pillage.

Countless millions of Congolese, four million between 1998 and 2003 alone, have died of wounds or of starvation, millions more have been forc-ibly displaced, and, so abject is the general poverty, normal life for the 60 million survivors of these decades of carnage and misrule is almost everywhere unimaginably wretched. Despite the presence of 17,600 United Nations peacekeepers, in an operation scarred by the uncovering of prostitution rackets in some units, the peace brokered between rival militias in 2003 is precarious in the extreme. Rebels are still active in the eastern provinces and the half-formed national army is so notorious for indiscipline and looting that it is almost equally feared by the villagers.

There could hardly be a more depressing backdrop for the most costly and complex experiment in democracy ever mounted by the international community. Yet there is no mistaking the enthusiasm and excitement with which Congo’s freshly registered 26 million voters are approaching next week’s presidential and parliamentary elections. They have not had their unfettered say for 45 years. “Elections” under President Mobutu, were exercises in mass intimidation. And there is an extraordinary, countrywide, belief that these elections will “change everything”.

That they will not do. A ballot can only be a beginning of what will be a long, hard haul. In chaotic conditions, it will be a miracle if the elections are even approximately free and fair; ballot papers will have to reach all 46,693 polling stations, many accessible only by mule or foot, and a largely illiterate electorate must then choose from 33 presidential contenders, and 9,500 candidates for 500 parliamentary seats.

The campaign has hardly been exemplary. Even with thousands of outsiders holding the ring, police have brutally broken up demonstrations, gunmen have attacked election rallies and bribes have been offered and accepted. The front-runner, Joseph Kabila, is the son of the assassinated rebel leader Laurent Kabila who overthrew Mobutu and renamed Congo a “democratic republic”, only to turn dictator. Much could go wrong and, if it does, popular anger could reignite Congo’s conflicts. Yet, as in Liberia, faith in democracy’s power to heal can act as a salve. Congo may not get a brilliant government. But it might, at least and at last, get a semblance of the peace that, before all else, its people desperately desire and deserve.