He was too nervous to give his name. It has all happened so quickly we just do not know. The machinery of an already paranoid, military-dependent state was in overdrive. Roadblocks stopped drivers within a couple of kilometres of the parliament building. The Memling, a smart Belgian hotel, has long doubled as a barometer of tension in the city.
Expatriates routinely move in when they fear trouble.
On Thursday night it did not have many spare rooms. Jittery government officials were at their desks in the vast concrete office block that houses the Information Ministry, guarded by soldiers backed up by armored vehicles. The officials were going about business diligently enough, staffing the country's infamous bureaucracy. Soldiers could also be seen in small camouflaged huddles, under a tree or in the shade of a building, deployed in full combat order with assault rifles, webbing and rations. Soldiers from Zimbabwe and Angola, stalwart supporters of the Kabila regime, were on the streets.