Mobutu's Katanga Problem
HOWE, RUSSELL WARREN
A GHOST FROM THE PAST Mobutu's Katanga Problem by RUSSELL WARREN HOWE Washington In the predawn darkness of March 8, the ghost of Moise Tshombe marched again as about 1,500 Katangese men...
...That first shipment contained C-130 spare parts, cargo parachutes and medical aid...
...Katanga?now called Shaba by the Mobutu regime to erase the painful memories associated with it—was, after all, where today's freelance legionnaires were dubbed "mercenaries...
...Moreover, the Katangese gendarmes, engaged in a purely nationalist fight to free their relatively prosperous state from the harsh, corrupt and inefficient regime in Kinshasa, a thousand miles away, have the local population's support...
...Yet undoubtedly the ABC begun in January with Argentina, Brazil and Chile would end up with Z for Zaire...
...In the middle of last month, with Kinshasa still arming anti-MPLA guerrillas inside Angola, Neto happily sent his linguistically and ideologically foreign friends back to Zaire, to liberate their homeland and harass its president...
...Thus a kind of seal of approval was stamped on the Department's own pro-Mobutu stance...
...His rebellion was financed by Belgian corporate capital, and had it succeeded the Congo undoubtedly would have been hit by an even greater number of tribal risings than Tshombe's movement sparked...
...In the nearly three hours that Russell Warren Howe is a veteran African affairs correspondent...
...One year later, Colonel Joseph D. Mobutu ousted Kasavubu and Tshombe in a coup and named himself president...
...policy in Africa (the other, Ethiopia, was denied further aid earlier this year as it settled into a barbarous anarchy...
...He is one of the richest African politicians, owning the Kinshasa bus network, the Mercedes and Volkswagen franchises for his country, a huge German-managed farm, skyscrapers in the Ivory Coast and Senegal, a hotel in Lausanne, and more...
...Payment would be covered by a $10-million appropriation of Foreign Military Sales (FMS) funds for the "transitional quarter" (a total of $30.2 million for the new fiscal year has been requested for Zaire in the carried-over Ford budget...
...At President Carter's request, though, the Senator agreed not to press matters immediately because Fidel Castro and Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny were touring Africa...
...What he pursues instead is money...
...elapsed before President Mobutu Sese Seko, as he renamed himself, heard the disquieting news of the invasion, the minor copperbelt towns of Kapanga, Sandoa, Kasanji, and Dililo had fallen...
...This came as little surprise...
...State officials then admitted that the Cuban scare and the inflated guerrilla figures were probably a Mobutu trick to alarm Washington...
...Moscow, reading the signal "it's all yours" from Capitol Hill, shipped 500 advisers and an entire Cuban division of over 12,000 soldiers to Angola, conquering it for its protege...
...African specialists also note that there are ethnic reasons for looking upon the recent invasion with some tolerance: Katanga lies on the southeastern side of the natural divide between equatorial Africa and "Capricorn" Africa...
...True, there are different degrees of repression...
...The Katangan leader did not disappear from the scene, though...
...At Foggy Bottom, therefore, veteran Assistant Secretary for African Affairs William Sohauffele and the Central Africa desk officers hastily ordered $1.5 million worth of materiel put aboard four Boeing 747s belonging to Seaboard World Airways...
...help to the two main militarized parties in that nation...
...The third party, the MPLA—a creation of KGB funds—sought Soviet aid...
...Many of the invaders were youths wearing the collarless Belgian-style uniforms of their fathers, coming to recapture a land they barely remembered...
...Despite Schauffele's warning, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance held with Clark that the whole Zaire policy needed a oloser look before action was taken...
...And the liberators were moving on to the important mining center of Kolwezi...
...In March, the State Department's human rights division produced a report on the 82 nations receiving U.S...
...Once independence was won in 1975, MPLA head Agostinho Neto was left in the Katangans* debt...
...But the Katangan troops remained out of the picture until a new and ultimately victorious insurgent group, the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), asked for—and received —their help against the Portuguese...
...But it was too late: Guerrillas had already cut the line inside Angola...
...As the first border villages fell easily, excited peasants noticed white faces among the black gendarmerie, and few doubted that soldiers of fortune from Belgium, France and a host of other nations had returned, too...
...A GHOST FROM THE PAST Mobutu's Katanga Problem by RUSSELL WARREN HOWE Washington In the predawn darkness of March 8, the ghost of Moise Tshombe marched again as about 1,500 Katangese men reentered Zaire after a 12-year exile in Angola...
...Kinshasa was worried that if the Benguela railroad lines were destroyed there, the Katangese minerals which earn Zaire 60 per cent of its hard currency would have to be shipped via crowded Indian Ocean ports, neces sitating a week's more sailing time to markets in Europe and America...
...Belgium agreed to supply rifle ammunition, and France and Italy spare parts for the poorly maintained Mystere-V and Aero-macchi jet trainers used as counter-insurgency close-support aircraft...
...Not only had Castro emphatically denied any Cuban involvement in Katanga, but observers could not bring themselves to believe Havana would back the conservative, pro-Western Katangese...
...Tshombe's gendarmes fled to neighboring Portuguese Angola, where the major resistance movement, the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA), was led by Holden Roberto with the strong support of a former classmate: Mobutu...
...Upping the Katangese strength to 6,000 men, he said the whites among them were from "across the Atlantic"—implying they were Cubans (while, presumably, reserving the right to later claim he meant Europeans...
...This was a reference to Congress' 1975 refusal to send any more U.S...
...Meanwhile, the State Department regulars turned to the Administration's favorite Africa troubleshooter, UN Ambassador Andrew Young, and persuaded him to try to involve Nigeria as mediator in the Katangese battle...
...Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ethiopia and Uruguay have already been cut off, with Guatemala and El Salvador the next likely candidates for the list...
...Indeed, the Zaire President's killings are comparable in scope to Idi Am-in's, although unlike the Ugandan the humorless ex-sergeant typist carefully shuns publicity...
...To quell widespread turmoil, Congolese President Joseph Kasavubu appointed him premier in 1964...
...Zaire's record on human rights was no better than any of theirs...
...The roots of the conflict bringing these warriors to Zaire go back to 1960, when Tshombe, the provisional president of Katanga, a mineral-rich province of what was then the Republic of the Congo, tried to break away from the volatile Patrice Lumumba government...
...Katangans no more resemble the rest of Zaire's citizenry than Swedes do Indians...
...security assistance...
...interests can be affected by who wins what will probably be a long and vicious civil war...
...Soon afterward came a Mobutu request for aviation gasoline...
...His country has long been one of the two cornerstones of U.S...
...But Mobutu's decision to go international with his problem soon backfired...
...Mobutu quickly sounded the alarm...
...Schauffele told Clark it was essential not to repeat the "Angola mistake...
...For all the debate about a proper response to Katanga, it is difficult to see how U.S...
...On the Hill, Senate Africa subcommittee Chairman Dick Clark (D.-Iowa) asked whether Zaire qualified for military aid under human rights provisions...
...The study concluded that Botswana was the single African state (out of a total of 23 worldwide) respecting human rights...
...As farewell presents, he gave them Soviet light arms, his blessings and a promise to keep supply lines open...
...But most important, if human rights considerations were applied to all countries seeking military aid that have no strategic significance for the United States, the impact throughout Africa would be considerable...
...Washington has no pretext for helping Mobutu's notoriously brutal "horror guard" prolong the battle...
...But a sizable UN force, mostly funded by the U.S., defeated the secession after three years of sporadic fighting punctuated by drawn-out peace negotiations...
...He appealed to the United States for military aid...
Vol. 60 • April 1977 • No. 8
