News- Zaire

Death Throes of a Regime

As Catholic World Report goes to press, rebels appear poised to take control of the government in Zaire. An African observer reflects on the events leading up to the latest crisis.

On September 14, 1960, the man then known as Colonel Joseph Mobutu took over control of the country then known as Congo. Mobutu came to power by overthrowing President Joseph Kasavubu in a military coup, just after Congo declared its independence from Belgium.

In 1991 Mobutu returned power to Kasavubu, but vowed that he would return to the scene if political squabbling continued. So it was not a surprise when on November 24, 1966 he ousted a civilian government in another military coup d'état, and assumed absolute executive powers. That was the beginning of a long story--covering 31 years, at this writing--of continuous rule, dominated by corruption in high places, multiple human-rights violations, contempt for genuine democracy, and finally a total breakdown of the rule of law.

In 1970 there was a presidential elections in Congo, but Mobutu was the only legal candidate. In 1971 he changed the name of the country to Zaire, and next he changed his own name to Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngendu Wa Za Banga, which means "Mobutu the all-powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, will go from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake." Since that time, the President has been encouraging other Zairians to drop their first names in favor of African names. In changing the name of the country, and seeking to change the names of its people, Mobutu's idea was to eradicate all vestiges of Western influence n Africa.

Zaire's 784-member parliament was born of a political crisis in 1990, and the newly installed legislators, responded decisively to their new responsibility, managed to strip Mobutu of much of his legal authority. Unfortunately, having accomplished that much, the legislators made no apparent effort to continue with the business of governing Zaire. It has now been many months since the parliament has produced a new law of any description. In place of active legislation, the bloated national assembly has become the site for corruption, back-room maneuvering, and displays of pathetic inexperience with the process of democracy. Like most of Zaire's official institutions, the parliament has proved almost completely irrelevant to the actual life of a nation nearing collapse.

Since its first inception in the 1960s, the Mobutu regime has faced a succession of rebellions, organized both by forces within the country and by Zairians living in exile. Laurent Kabila, the head of the rebel force now on the threshold of victory, is also a veteran of the fighting; he has been engaged in off-and-on efforts to overthrow Mobutu for nearly three decades. To date, Africa's longest-reigning dictator has always found a way to put down all such insurrections, often with the help of foreign support. In one noteworthy battle, in 1978, for example, he called upon the help of French paratroopers to defeat exiled Zairians who had invaded the country.

However, since the outbreak of the current fighting last October, the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (ADFL), with Laurent Kabila at the helm, have seized control over nearly the whole of Africa's third-largest country. The rebels are now determined to topple the Mobutu government within a matter of days; at the time of this writing they are making what appears to be the final military approach on the capital city of Kinshasa. Strangely enough, Mobutu believes that his troops could still mount a determined resistance to defend the capital. Yet in the seven months of the current civil war, Zaire's government troops--ill equipped, ill fed, underpaid, and invariably low in morale--have routinely abandoned towns whenever the rebels have approached, pausing only to loot before they fled.

As the African saying goes, "When two elephants are fighting, the grass suffers. " In Zaire's case, the current armed conflict has unleashed untold suffering on the innocent population. The failed transition to democracy, and the consequences of government policies which incited ethnic hatred, set the stage for a bloody conflict which has led to the massacre of civilians. Both government soldiers and the rebel ADFL forces continue to commit gross human-rights violations throughout the country.

The killings, the lootings, and the general breakdown in the country's economic structure have resulted in serious shortages of almost every essential commodity. Relief assistance programs organized by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Catholic Church, and other agencies have done an enormous amount to provide for the human needs of war victims. Nevertheless, in spite of the best efforts of relief workers--among whom Catholic missionaries have been the most prominent--it has always been difficult for civilians in the war-torn areas to receive food, medicine, and other relief supplies because of the absence of safe transportation for the relief workers and their vehicles. That problem is particularly acute today, as countless thousands of displaced people--especially women and children--depend on the aid furnished by relief agencies for their survival.

In eastern Zaire, there is an increasing sense of urgency and frustration, verging on hysteria, regarding the welfare of some 350,000 Hutu refugees. Charitable agencies have been pressing rebel military leaders to explain why they have not granted free access for relief workers serving the refugee camps. International leaders have even criticized rebel soldiers of organizing massacres among these refugees. The latter charge is an ominous new development; until recently most reporters characterized the rebels as a highly disciplined group, in sharp contrast to the government's own marauding soldiers.

Meanwhile, to complicate matters still further, at least 85,000 of these Hutu refugees have vanished from the refugee camps, slipping away into the rain forest south of Kisangani (formerly Stanleyville) in northeast Zaire last year. This mysterious flight from the temporary refugee camps has apparently been prompted by two forces. First, the refugees have come under attack by some local landowners in Zaire, who in turn have been incensed by the extremists of the Hutu militia, who have organized raids on local farmers. Second, these militia forces have done their best to intimidate refugees, frightening them away from the camps, in order to thwart plans for the repatriation of the Hutus to their native Rwanda.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has been planning for months to organize emergency flights from Kisangani back to Rwanda, returning the refugees to their homes. But those plans constitute a threat to some members of the Hutu militia group Interahamwe. If they are returned to Rwanda, these extremists might face prosecution for their role in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, which left a toll of roughly one million dead Tutsis and moderate Hutus. So they have been forcing civilians away from staging areas, successfully delaying the repatriation flights.

Leaders of the international community are all agreed that the only satisfactory solution to the present crisis in Zaire would come through a negotiated settlement, which should be preceded by a cease-fire. Predictably enough, the road toward that solution has been cluttered with obstacles, as different forces in Kinshasa have struggled for leverage in the negotiating process. Now the national parliament is planning to set up its own committee, whose members would bargain with the rebels and ultimately set up a new government in which Kabila and his supporters would be accommodated.

Despite Kabila's apparently unstoppable drive to take over unquestioned military control in the nation's capital, the legislature of Zaire has also unveiled a new gambit, asking Archbishop Laurent Pasinya Monsengwo of Kisangani to become the speaker of a new reconstituted parliament--thus putting him in position to be the next constitutional head of state if and when Mobutu steps down.

Actually the legislators are not alone in looking to the archbishop as a potential guide to a peaceful solution in Zaire. Archbishop Monsengwo has long ranked among the nation's most respected leaders. Several Western countries--including Belgium, France, and the United States--have even appealed to Rome, asking the Vatican to authorize the archbishop to become the president of a transitional government.

While Archbishop Monsengwo is being urged to undertake an overtly political role--one which clearly could have an immense influence on the future of his country--still in the long run, even the most active involvement in the peace process would be less important than the many years of quiet pastoral and charitable work performed by the Catholic Church in Zaire. (Indeed it is a measure of respect for the Catholic contribution that political leaders in Zaire and around the world would look to an archbishop as their best hope for peace.) Without the schools, hospitals, and clinics which have been set up and served by missionaries, most of Zaire's poor people would have no welfare system whatsoever to comfort them; the government's programs are thoroughly dysfunctional. Even in the field of communications, the Church network works much more efficiently than the government's system.

Given the grass-roots respect for the Catholic Church engendered by that record of effective service, the notion that a Catholic archbishop might become the key broker in the process of a peaceful transition seems clever--provided, of course, that Archbishop Monsengwo could take up the task without compromising his episcopal duties or confusing his roles. But the proposal may soon be irrelevant, because of the opposition of one crucial party: Laurent Kabila.

Kabila's ADFL rebels have declared their outright rejection of the plan to form a transitional government. Their latest statements indicate that they plan to take Kinshasa by force, even if the archbishop accepts the new appointment as speaker of parliament. To explain his opposition, Kabila has issued only vague statements, suggesting that the archbishop is too closely associated with the Mobutu regime. He adds that the media have been too quick to accept the plan for a transitional government, failing to examine the plan carefully and ask how for details as to how it would be accomplished in practice.

In addition, there are some signs that Kabila and his backers may not be terribly fond of either the leaders of the Catholic Church or the works of mercy which their followers have performed. His rebels failed to protect a mission outpost in Kivu, even after three Hutu raids on the town, so that finally the Tutsi monks living there were forced to flee. More disturbing still, there have been several recent occasions on which hundreds of refugees disappeared, without any explanation, from areas occupied by rebel soldiers.

Whatever happens in the coming weeks, it is already a foregone conclusion that the era of Marshal Mobutu--who gave Zaire its name, whose long, corrupt, and repressive regime drained the nation of its riches and forfeited its stability--is already over. The focus now must be on what will happen to this massive and fractious country after the fall of Kinshasa.

Joseph Ocwet writes from Uganda for the London-based agency Resolution Africa.