The PDP was a Marxist political movement born in the convulsions of the Congolese crisis, being founded in 1967 in Fizi by Laurent-Désiré Kabila, who decades later would overthrow Mobutu and take control of the country.

Gaining limited control of the mountain towns, they organized a people's commune, Hewa Bora, on the Chinese model.

However, after several years of armed struggle, the FAZ succeeded in crushing the Maoist insurgents, who were reduced to a weakened network scattered throughout East Africa and Western Europe.

After the Rwandan genocide and the Zairian crisis, Kabila, who had abandoned Maoism, reappeared on the political scene as one of the main leaders against Mobutism.

At the invitation of the new regimes in Uganda (Yoweri Museveni) and Rwanda (Paul Kagame), Laurent-Désiré Kabila became in 1996 the spokesman for the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of the Congo (AFDL), a heterogeneous coalition of forces hostile to Mobutu, including the CNRD, the ADP and the MRLZ.