The Claws of Dictatorship in Zaire
Komisar, Lucy
The "Leopard" Still Rules The collective taxi had just passed the square, white Social Security Administration building. One of the two young men next to me asked his friend, "Do you know how...
...Abbe Silengwe Kabila, a young priest in Shaba, told me that Mobutu's agents had been paying people not to have funerals for their dead children...
...A young army colonel, Joseph Desire Mobutu, who was reportedly taking money from the Belgian and later the American intelligence agencies, seized control of the army...
...State Department—could Mobutu be counted on to make a democratic transition or should Washington drop him...
...Privately, however, in 1990, Assistant Secretary of State Herman Cohen shook his head and told me, "It's hopeless...
...That night the electricity in the university area was cut...
...governor of Mobutu's home province...
...The people here have suffered to the point that we are no longer afraid," one said...
...People say what they think...
...326 • DISSENT Dictatorship in Zaire "Kleptocracy" in Action President Mobutu rented Concorde planes for pleasure trips, bought European villas, and treated the national treasury as a personal bank account, apportioning funds to members of his tribe—the major beneficiaries of his rule—and to his personal presidential guard...
...A group of young professionals began meeting after the April speech on the manicured grounds of a young banker to discuss how they could promote a pluralist political culture...
...He was upset...
...A few days later, a group of rebel soldiers tried unsuccessfully to overthrow Mobutu...
...Emboldened by the changes in the East, people answered: democracy...
...The other agreed: "There are not two markets for rich and poor...
...For thirty years the American line has been, "There but for Mobutu goes chaos, tribalism...
...After April 24, students began meeting...
...A soft-voiced, twenty-five-year-old economics student told me how he and other students had marched to town to protest the president's speech...
...The students threw stones...
...We found blood everywhere in the rooms...
...The shots reverberated in Zaire...
...We beat him as a spy," he said...
...Ambassador in June 1991, continues the same policy...
...They were dressed in sports pants and jogging clothes...
...Immediately protests erupted...
...The UDPS opened a party headquarters the week after the speech...
...The big international flash-points were Cuba, Vietnam, and the Congo...
...It began with the end of communism," one said...
...He swore he was not alone at the university...
...In the early 1970s, he visited the People's Republic of China and North Korea...
...It was the State Department line, retrieved from its time warp...
...The students went to the rooms of the others and found radios and cellular phones there...
...Follow the model of Romania which is behind its chief," Mobutu had told Zairians...
...He set up a one-party state, enrolled everyone in the Popular Revolutionary Movement (MPR) from birth, ran public indoctrination sessions in "Mobutism," organized neighborhood committees to ensure ideological conformity, and even put his own likeness on the Zairian currency...
...But the U.S...
...When did things change...
...experts predicted that electric power production would soon stop...
...And Mobutu pleased the West by facilitating the intervention in Angola—and by sending troops at opportune moments to Chad, Djibouti, COte d'Ivoire, and Gabon...
...The law students set up a court...
...A debate went on inside the U.S...
...He is at the head of an establishment," said Kamanda wa Kamanda, a smoothtalking man, former deputy secretary general of the Organization of African Unity, who left the MPR to create his own party...
...She didn't ask for money, but the children wanted to give it to her...
...The effort to cobble together a government proved futile, as Mobutu insisted on retaining substantial power...
...Many students went down to find out why the current had been cut...
...newspaper report quoted a "senior Western diplomat," obviously an American Embassy official, saying, "It is not in our interest that Mobutu suddenly disappear...
...The economics student and others fled from the courtyard to their rooms in about ten five-story white brick and concrete blocks surrounded by untended grass and shrubs...
...I hid in a ditch until morning, then I fled...
...I am no longer chief of the party...
...Carter appointee Ambassador Robert Oakley made a point of parking his limousine, American flag flying, outside the house of UDPS leader Etienne Tshisekedi to draw attention to his visits, and a group of congressmen met with UDPS leaders publicly at the Intercontinental Hotel in 1983...
...They put signs on the buses: "Mobutu, murderer...
...policy toward Mobutu bordered on fantasy: "We are not asking him to leave...
...I was there with my friend," he said...
...What may replace him is unclear, and meanwhile, the situation could prove chaotic...
...Lumumba had just been captured and assassinated by his enemies...
...Mobutu is unpopular with the Belgian public...
...Previously, the Americans and others had presented the list of invitees for the approval of the Zairian protocol office— something they did not do in the communist world...
...people must rent post office boxes...
...There isn't even mail delivery...
...He also became friends with Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania...
...At the Sunday afternoon gathering of young professionals, one man said earnestly, "Stability is not made around a man but around democratic institutions...
...Two days later, a student demonstration was attacked by gendarmes with tear gas and shots fired into the air...
...We saw three trucks of soldiers enter," recalled the student...
...Zairians believe that the meeting moved Mobutu to promise a multiparty system...
...A "National Conference" to set up a transitional government was boycotted by the opposition in August, because Mobutu had infiltrated his own people among delegates ostensibly representing 150 opposition organizations...
...Then, in December 1989, Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was executed...
...Nothing...
...The major industries—copper and diamonds—were controlled by the state, and most others depended on government contracts and licenses...
...Mobutu, Zairians like to say, had his stomach in the West, but his heart and mind in the East...
...The Europeans made it clear they weren't backing Mobutu this time...
...The young professionals hold America partly responsible for the country's state...
...Mobutu refused to accept a representative national conference to determine the country's future...
...We heard a knock on the door and a shout, 'Open,' but my friend refused to open...
...Then my friend opened the door and the man slashed him with a bayonet on the face...
...Harrop came to visit me at my house," he SUMMER • 1992 • 329 Dictatorship in Zaire said...
...Mobutu's family and Ceausescu's were friends...
...Ironically, given the history of U.S...
...Some buses were attacked by the civil guard, and students were beaten...
...Soldiers who had not been paid their $10-a-month salary went on the rampage, looting shops and homes and killing anyone who stood in their way...
...In January, 1992, Nguz dismissed the National Conference, now dominated by the opposition...
...Crowds were prematurely celebrating in the streets when loyalist forces recaptured the broadcast center...
...Then he choked and wiped his eyes...
...Congressional Democrats had whittled away at aid programs during the 1980s, and in the fall of 1990 refused the administration's request for $4 million in military aid...
...Professors went on strike...
...330 • DISSENT...
...Most Americans promptly forgot about him and the Congo...
...Zairians were disappointed in the American reaction, which appeared to accept the government version of only one death and sought no international inquiry...
...Five hundred thousand zaires (about $7,500 a month) and what an ordinary worker earns...
...In November, Cohen told the Senate Subcommittee on Africa that Mobutu had "lost the legitimacy to govern Zaire," but he insisted that "the best hope for Zaire is now genuine power-sharing between President Mobutu and the opposition...
...It is such an injustice...
...Several hundred supporters appeared, but so did twenty security officers, who attacked the crowd with tear gas and bayonets, killing several as terrified people escaped through the streets...
...Nearly two in ten infants die in the first year of life...
...Members of the government, the parliament, the diplomatic corps,and the national press gathered inside a large party conference center outside the capital on April 24, 1990...
...Within several days, he joined one hundred colleagues in announcing the creation of the Democratic Social Christian Party (PDSC...
...Now it is, 'Change or we can't help you.' It was the first time they told him there is a linkage...
...They looked at me...
...the account was not published...
...By July, thousands of students were involved in these spontaneous, unorganized actions...
...They said, who would replace him, as if we were all imbeciles," said Kititwa Tumansi...
...Imbeciles because we didn't know how to kill others as he did...
...Nguz, who had tried his luck with the opposition, got angry that they wanted only Tshisekedi to head a new government and returned to the fold as Mobutu's new prime minister...
...However, the Belgian press picked up the issue...
...Democratic Pressures and Repression Worried, Mobutu called for national consultations in January 1990, and traveled around the country for several weeks asking people what they wanted...
...Washington had grown hostile to the leadership of the new prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, and used its influence to support Lumumba's opponents...
...He should remain so that he can control the military until an election is held...
...At emergency Senate hearings on the situation in February, Cohen's comments on U.S...
...In September, strikes erupted, with hundreds of thousands of protesters on Kinshasa's streets...
...The Americans supported Mobutu because they wanted to prevent the spread of communism in central Africa...
...and first vicepresident of the Central Committee...
...In 1980, regime opponents organized the Democratic Union for Social Progress (UDPS), calling for democratic change...
...One of the two young men next to me asked his friend, "Do you know how much the director there earns...
...When Nikita Khrushchev banged KINSHASA, ZAIRE his shoe at the United Nations, he was protesting the American-sponsored U.N...
...We have the impression that the Bush administration is timid," said UDPS leader Etienne Tshisekedi, a stocky, intense man who has spent the better part of the last decade in jail, exile, or house arrest and is not the least bit timid himself...
...The government took over the major industry—copper mining—and for a brief period nationalized—and looted—all foreign businesses...
...Think back to the 1960s...
...He reportedly pressed Mobutu to democratize, but said nothing about the massacre...
...What did they invest here...
...But a U.S...
...A seventeen-year old girl, among more than a dozen who were arrested, died after rape and torture in prison...
...The leaders spent most of the next decade in prison, "rusticated" in interior villages, or under house arrest...
...Several students were beaten by security agents...
...A parliamentary inquiry began five days later...
...Some of us are children of the men who ran the country," said one...
...But Reaganera ambassadors followed a policy of not meeting leading opponents of the regime...
...there were three...
...He grinned: "The leopard used to be powerful, but now the leopard's claws are falling out, and he can no longer leap as he did...
...America's turn toward backing democracy was expressed by Ambassador William Harrop's first visits to opposition leaders...
...Now that is over...
...Zaire was a "kleptocracy," based on corruption by anyone with authority, to the point of underpaid school teachers demanding bribes for grades, hospital guards extorting money from patients seeking admission, and policemen shaking down passersby...
...A journalist for AZAP, the government press agency, filed a report that fifty had been killed...
...On a bulletin board imprinted with "George Washington University," they sketched out the program of a series of "Forums for Development and Democracy," on guarantees for liberties, separation of powers, the role of the army, and privatization of public enterprises...
...The U.S...
...Members of his family and tribe had pressured him against giving up their power and privilege...
...A banker interjected: "They have the biggest embassy in black Africa," and everyone laughed...
...They were invited to the Fourth of July celebration, also for the first time...
...nobody wore the ugly high-necked, pointy-lapeled Mobutu suits that have been foisted on the male population...
...I jumped out of the window...
...Food shortages grew...
...I interrupted: "Aren't you afraid to say such things, to criticize the government in front of strangers like me or the driver or the woman in the front seat...
...line was, "We love your April 24 speech...
...People began to distribute tracts calling for change and to speak freely in buses and taxis...
...Nguz saw Mobutu unhappy again at an hour-long meeting with Secretary of State SUMMER • 1992 • 327 Dictatorship in Zaire Baker (on the dictator's yacht) in March 1990...
...We telephoned each other," recalled Kititwa Tumansi, who had been ambassador to Moscow, Paris, and Rome...
...They threatened to break in...
...Now don't forget it...
...Belgian economic interests have decreased in the Congo...
...used to tell him, 'Reform, you are making our task difficult with Congress,' " said Nguz...
...And here, since the killing of the students in Lubumbasha, everyone is different...
...Government workers earned about $15 a month, less than the monthly cost of manioc root, which is the country's starchy staple...
...Eyes Toward America The week after the massacre Assistant Secretary of State Herman Cohen arrived in Kinshasa...
...Mobutu has lost his power...
...Then the private transport companies removed some buses from the subsidized line to the campus...
...support a regime like Zaire' There are teachers who faint in class because they haven't eaten...
...Meanwhile, foreign technical workers left the country, and some industries damaged by looters were shut down...
...He built no schools or hospitals in thirty years, leaving the churches to carry out most social services...
...I said, 'In our case, what is moderation...
...The old pattern continued...
...A month later, soldiers fired at antigovernment protesters and killed at least thirteen...
...Mobutu saw it, too...
...He said about thirty students were dead or unaccounted for...
...troops burned down a major opposition newspaper and went on the rampage again, looting homes and offices...
...The French and Belgians sent troops to evacuate their nationals, and Washington urged Americans to leave...
...The soldiers began to massacre the students with guns and bayonets...
...His wife goes to shop at the same market...
...I asked...
...In the summer of 1991, things heated up again...
...You could see on his face that he was shocked...
...We don't approve of what they have done...
...They required that any economic assistance go through nongovernmental agencies...
...policy on the Congo, which had just become independent from Belgium...
...On May 3, Mobutu declared political gatherings illegal and announced that political parties wouldn't be allowed till the next year and that parliamentary elections wouldn't occur till 1992...
...The tribal-party chiefs had said, "If you leave us, you leave with us...
...Ordinary people danced in the streets...
...She hadn't eaten since the day before...
...A few days later they discovered a "student" with a walkie talkie, revolver, handcuffs, and military belt...
...The European Community also condemned the violence...
...we were on the first floor...
...You understand my emotion," he told them...
...The 328 • DISSENT Dictatorship in Zaire government said there had been a clash between students...
...They maintained in power a man who killed initiative," he said with emotion...
...A French television videotape of the Ceausescus' execution was widely circulated in Zaire...
...Students began to seize the buses, hijack them, and force them to go to the campus, an hour out of town...
...Old Patterns Continue Under foreign pressure, Mobutu agreed to share power and named Tshisekedi prime minister in a coalition government...
...Even the newspapers now say what they think...
...Some were expelled...
...support for Mobutu, all the oppositionists look to the Americans...
...That day, a lot of leading MPR members quit...
...Mobutu had second thoughts about the democratic opening...
...I was agreeably surprised...
...Just the previous month, the Romanian Communist Party congress had received over a hundred Zairian guests and given them extensive television coverage...
...Mobutu fired Tshisekedi...
...He argued that if Mobutu "left the scene, the unknown of what the military would do is something we would have to really worry about...
...Yet even in 1991, Bush asked for money for the Mobutu government...
...Melissa Wells, who became U.S...
...People had been imprisoned in Zaire for less...
...Departing oppositionists were beaten bloody by security police in the hotel parking lot...
...A doctor in a foreign-supported health program exclaimed, "How can a government like the U.S...
...Then they saw the Romanian revolution...
...For the first time you could hear people telling him publicly, 'We disagree with you,' " according to Nguz a Karl-i-Bond, Zaire's foreign minister...
...the three admitted the kidnapping and assassination of twenty-three students, were found guilty, and were beaten till they were rescued by civil guards...
...Dozens of new political parties and newspapers were founded...
...But Kyungu Gabriel, a member of the regional assembly inquiry commission said, "We saw a list of students to kill that Immigration Chief Gata had written to the governor...
...But people had stopped being afraid...
...My children asked me for money for their teacher...
...Over his shoulder, past the Spanish-style villa, I could see white-clad players on a tennis court...
...He gave me a counsel of moderation...
...About 12,000 zaires ($16...
...Kyungu visited the campus...
...The next day, the university was closed and any remaining students were shipped home...
...He arrived at the Intercontinental Hotel for our interview dressed in chinos and an Amnesty International sweatshirt featuring a man behind bars and the dove of peace...
...Five years later, after the CIA helped mercenaries put down internal rebellions, Mobutu swept away the civilian government and declared himself president...
...and the Flemish socialists, long leading the criticism of Mobutu and now part of a coalition government, would inevitably insist on critical action...
...Today I take official leave of the Popular Revolutionary Movement," he said...
Vol. 39 • July 1992 • No. 3
