It can never be divided. Congo is Africa's second largest country after Sudan, a third as big as the United States. By sheer size, location and potential for wealth, it is one of Africa's most important countries. But it barely ever existed as a state, either under Belgium's loose colonialism or under Mobutu's years of corruption and neglect. More than 200 ethnic groups live in Congo.
Roads are impassable.
Kinshasa, in the west, is a capital in name only, its monuments crumbling and its hold over the east theoretical even before the war. These days, the Government grasps for ways, from songs to clothing, to unify the country and its people. It produced a video featuring many of Kinshasa's most famous singers just to get people to use the new Congolese franc. But few people have televisions. In the southeast, they gravitate philosophically to South Africa and mundanely, for services like mail, across the border to Zambia.