Zaire’s president has reinstated a dictatorial governor he removed four years ago. Chris McGreal reports from Lumbumbashi
IT is four years since Kyungu wa Kumwanza tried to revive an independent Katanga with the brutal ethnic cleansing of one million people. He even went so far as to declare secession from Zaire. It cost the demagogic governor his post, and he was placed under house arrest.
Now Kyungu is due to move into the governor’s mansion again. President Mobutu Sese Seko ushered him back into office this week as rebel forces encroached ever deeper into Shaba, the southern province known as Katanga when United Nations troops killed its independence in the early 1960s.
Quite why Kyungu was reinstated is a mystery even he has difficulty explaining, other than as recognition of his undoubted popularity. But suspicion is rife in Shaba that Mobutu looks on the new governor as a means to weaken support for the rebels by reviving dreams of independence. It is a long shot.
Popular opinion in Shaba has swung firmly behind Laurent Kabila’s rebels. They are within 250km of Lumbumbashi, Shaba’s capital and the country’s second-largest city, where people eagerly await the promise of change.
As soon as news of Kyungu’s reappointment was broadcast, a stream of well-wishers made for his home where the new governor met them dressed in black with a gold watch hanging loosely from his wrist.
The politicians and businessmen were there to sound out his position on the civil war, but Kyungu is firmly straddling the fence. Although he grew up in the same village in Shaba as Kabila, he is evasive about their relationship.
“We know each other by name. We met, but he was not really my friend. Our families knew each other,” he said.
But Kyungu is also careful not to criticise the rebels. “I don’t have any problem with the rebels. The Zairean people want change. I’m among those who want things to change because the system of government we have didn’t permit the development of the country.”
Above all, Kyungu does not want to discuss secession any more. Perhaps he is trying to avoid upsetting Kabila, who insists that accusations he planned to split up Zaire are spurious charges aimed at justifying foreign intervention against the rebels.
Shaba has more reason than most of Zaire to resent the central government. Beside the brutal suppression of Katanga’s secession from the newly independent Congo in the Sixties, and the use of foreign troops to end two revolts in the following decade, Shaba has seen little benefit from its vast mineral wealth.
The province was on the cusp of a flourishing future when uranium for the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was mined at Shinkolobwe, 140km north-west of Lumbumbashi. Fifty years later, the state-owned company J Gecamines has concessions to enough minerals to make it the most profitable copper and cobalt mining firm in the world. But like much else in Zaire, Gecamines has fallen into ruin; its equipment systematically plundered or rotted into disrepair.
Mobutu drained the firm of so much hard currency it could not pay its debts overseas. Last year, copper production fell to a miserly one tenth of its peak.
But even when Gecamines was functioning well, Shaba saw few benefits.
Lumbumbashi, a graceful if dilapidated city, is still in better shape than most in Zaire. But hardly a new building has gone up since independence and the infrastructure is collapsing.
Mobutu appointed Kyungu as Shaba’s governor four years ago as a pawn in his game to undermine the growing pressure for democratic rule. But in the climate of despair and resentment, Kyungu swiftly revived Shaba’s secessionist tendencies, giving the province back its old name of Katanga. He launched a massive ethnic cleansing pogrom. About one million people with roots in neighbouring Kasai province were driven out.
Like the Asians in East Africa, the Kasaians are deeply resented in Shaba. They dominated the civil service, management and business. When Kyungu ordered their explusion, the rest of Shaba’s population was quick to seize their homes and loot their shops. Thousands of people were killed. Hundreds of thousands of others were forced on to trains to Kasai with no more than they could carry.
Kyungu’s rabid broadcasts denouncing Kasaians as parasites did much to fuel the violence. Today he paints a different picture of his role.
He said: “Most of those who went back to Kasai are those who didn’t have work or places to stay. We had an internal conflict between different communities. These things won’t happen again while I’m governor. We are turning the page.”
Ethnic cleansing barely caused a stir beyond Shaba, but then the governor went too far even for Mobutu. He declared secession. The president placed him under house arrest.
This week Kyungu returns as governor declaring that secession is off the agenda. “We can’t even think of it. The world won’t accept Katangan independence. We’ve had three wars over this and if we try it, we’ll have another war. We have to talk about autonomy. With federalism, we can get everything we can get from independence.”
Kyungu may be right, for now. The failure of Shaba’s people to grasp the present opportunity to declare an independent Katanga when the central government is in no position to prevent it suggests that the desire for secession has weakened.
But if Mobutu’s successors treat Shaba as dismissively as the ailing president, Kyungu’s old battle cry of independence could find new voice.