It’s a different world now. Last week the young fighters of lifelong revolutionary Laurent Kabila strolled into Shaba’s capital, Lubumbashi, all but unopposed. Most of Mobutu’s troops simply put on white headbands and switched sides. “We are freeing Zaire,” one told a British reporter. “We want change.”
And, finally, so does the West. “Mobutuism is about to become a creature of history,” observed White House spokesman Michael McCurry last week. Given the problems that Mobutu now faces-advanced prostate cancer, a six-month-old rebellion that has captured the richer and more populous half of his nation, political unrest in the capital-that might seem to state the obvious. But these words, and similar statements from Paris and Brussels, represented a watershed-the first time governments that sustained Mobutu for $2 years have so bluntly spoken out about one of the world’s most corrupt regimes. His longtime patrons now wish that Mobutu, the last “friendly tyrant” of the cold-war era, would fade away, like Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and Jean-Claude Duvalier of Haiti before him.
The West hopes its harsh words will bring a transition to the democracy Mobutu has long promised. But the 66-year-old dictator seems more likely to fight for what little he has left. Meanwhile, rebel leader Kabila, believed by U.S. sources to be largely supplied by Angola, seems less than a model democrat. And peace talks in South Africa, set to resume this week, have gone nowhere. The worry is that the standoff will lead to Sorealia-style chaos. U.S., French and Belgian troops were across the Zaire River in Brazzaville, ready to evacuate their citizens. “The situation on the ground is driving everything,” says a U.S. official. “We’re either going to see a bloodbath-or negotiation and some semblance of a peace process.”
Since returning last month to the capital, Kinshasa, from a villa on the French Riviera where he has received periodic cancer treatments, Mobutu has reverted to shuffling his government. That’s long been Mobutu’s pattern, a trademark brand of rope-a-dope that long kept critics hoping for real change. Renewing a pledge of sweeping democratization he made seven years ago, Mobutu installed his most credible rival, Etienne Tshisekedi, as prime minister. Last week Tshisekedi offered to share power with Kabila (the rebel leader refused) and tried to begin governing. Soldiers tear-gassed his supporters and briefly detained him. Mobutu then declared martial law and appointed a general in his place. “Mobutu carried out an internal coup d’etat, and we just weren’t going to let that pass,” says State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns, explaining the administration’s more strident rhetoric. At a press conference Saturday, Mobutu replied, “Is Zaire a Western colony?”
Washington knows the pattern well. Fearing a communist takeover after Belgium hurriedly granted its colony independence in 1960, the CIA plotted unsuccessfully to poison Mobutu’s predecessor, Patrice Lumumba (he was killed by rivals in 1960). They saw General Mobutu as the only one who could hold the vast, ethnically diverse nation together. Once formally installed as president in a 1965 coup, he made capriciousness a political art form. In a letter to his daughter in the mid-1960s, the CIA’s Desmond FitzGerald called Mobutu’s government “a joke, almost.” One guest at a dinner in Kinshasa had just been released from jail, where Mobutu had sent him for disloyalty. The guest “got quietly drunk and fell disgracefully asleep,” wrote FitzGerald, quoted by NEWSWEEK’S Evan Thomas in his 1995 book on the CIA, “The Very Best Men.” The economics minister arrived drunk and “maintained stoutly that tomorrow was not the day to consider the budget”-he wanted to go to Paris. Mobutu complained, but made him comptroller of the currency.
Mobutu has now fallen back on his inner circle. One of the most prominent members appears to be Gen. Mobutu Kongolo, 28, a son who heads his security forces. Toting an automatic rifle, he seemed in charge as police dispersed Tshisekedi’s supporters in the capital last week. Terrified residents call him “Saddam Hussein.” “They can kill anybody they want to here,” said John Nzola, a 27-year-old student. “That’s why when the Tshisekedi protest was over, the people gave up. Once there was shooting, they ran away. We are waiting for Kabila.”
Washington can do little more. U.S. Ambassador Daniel Simpson hasn’t even met with Mobutu since January, says a State Department source; U.S. messages are relayed through Mobutu’s aides, King Hassan of Morocco or President Omar Bongo of Gabon. Fewer than 500 Americans remain in Kinshasa, but Pentagon planners worried last week that new roadblocks set up under martial law could complicate plans to evacute them from central gathering points if there is a replay of the riots that took hundreds of lives in 1991 and 1993. The State Department fears that ordering an evacuation could trigger such unrest. Official U.S. policy in a country that once was among its closest African allies has come down to crossed fingers.
