The citizens of Kinshasa, the sprawling capital of Zaire, await the outcome of the Mobutu-Kabila peace talks with mounting fear. Chris McGreal reports
LEOPOLD MUANDO’s first venture into futuristic art sits among his realist paintings of Zairean soldiers tearing Kinshasa apart and the ever-present trauma of Aids. Muando’s imagination has conjured up a vision of a skeletal Mobutu Sese Seko prostrate before a towering foe.
The grinning conqueror with his foot on the Zairean president’s chest is the rebel leader, Laurent Kabila. It is a fantasy that many in the last citadel of Mobutu’s regime would delight in seeing a reality.
“Do you think it will end like this?” Muando asked. “People want to see Mobutu suffer for all the suffering he has caused us. But I don’t think it will be like this. Mobutu will still die better than most of us have lived.”
So far there have been no takers for the painting on sale at a Kinshasa roadside. But among those drawn to its vision, it reignites the seemingly endless debate on the capital’s streets about what the looming finale of the civil war will bring.
Kinshasa has its back to the Congo river. The rebel Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire claims it is within 60km of the capital.
What remains of the regime’s power is concentrated in the bunker of Mobutu’s mind. Nowadays his circle comprises mostly close relatives. The wider political family has been discarded in favour of seemingly stronger, and therefore more reliable, blood ties.
But the only real influence Mobutu wields is over the immediate fate of Kinshasa’s five million people. It still lies within the ailing president’s hands to decide whether the capital goes down in flames or if the rebels can take their last and greatest prize with as little bloodshed as most other cities have fallen during their astonishing 1 500km sweep across Zaire in little more than six months.
Pretoria and Washington’s mediation efforts are met with scepticism in Kinshasa. Muando is not alone in fearing they may all be an elaborate international plot to extend Mobutu’s power even at this late stage. “We are suspicious because Mobutu is very sly and the Americans are very sly. They were his friends for 30 years. Kabila must be careful. He must know that people want him to come here and if the Americans or French try to keep Mobutu in power people will take their revenge. They must do nothing to stop Kabila coming here,” he said.
Then there are those who have deluded themselves into believing that the thousands of British, American and French troops massed across the Congo river in Brazzaville are waiting to pounce and seize Kinshasa on Kabila’s behalf while Mobutu is out of the country.
Still, the foreign troops give some comfort to Kinshasans. Perhaps the threat of intervention to rescue foreigners will discourage the Zairean army from one last destructive rampage in the final collapse. The greatest danger for the capital lies not in a full scale military assault but in a total disintegration in power and order before the rebels are able to move in and assert their authority.
Most people would settle for jeering Mobutu as he fled, and welcoming the rebels with open arms. But Kinshasa has become the point of last retreat for many old Mobutu loyalists and no one is certain how they will react. Kinshasans fear that those who face losing everything would rather take the capital down with them with one last, grand looting, by which the army pillaging of 1991 and 1993 would pale in comparison. For weeks now, the wealthy have been spiriting their families out of the city.
The few banks with foreign currency have been drained of American dollars and Belgian francs.
Builders are doing a flourishing trade throwing up walls around vulnerable homes. Not so many people venture out after dark anymore. Gangs of youths have taken to hijacking cars. Murders are on the rise. Pamphlets issued in the rebels’ name this week appeared on Kinshasa’s streets. They reassured the population that the Alliance’s “valiant combatants” have already infiltrated the capital. The leaflets appealed to the population to remain calm and to demonstrate support for the rebels by wearing white headbands. And they called on people to support those elements of the army that back the rebels, and to “throw into oblivion” those who remain loyal to Mobutu.
While there is undoubted backing for the rebels in Kinshasa, as yet few people feel secure enough to demonstrate it openly by wearing symbols of support. But there was no shortage of readers to snatch up the many newspapers that specialise in wild conspiracies – from claims that Mobutu is really a prisoner on a South African ship to a report that his final act will be to bombard Kinshasa with radiation from an experimental nuclear reactor at the university.
Politicians and diplomats have been poring over what is said to be a hit list drawn up by the Presidential Guard. The politicians figure high, including Mobutu’s last prime minister, Kengo wa Dondo, who the army accuses of ripping off millions of dollars in arms contracts. But he is safely ensconced in Switzerland.
* Mobutu flew out of Kinshasa this week, after Kabila gave him three days to depart or be “chased from power”. Foreign diplomats, who have been trying to massage Mobutu from office to avoid a battle for Kinshasa, cautiously anticipated he may finally have given up the struggle to cling to power after 32 years. But the Zairean leader’s aides insist he will return.
Other Mobutu cronies have also left Zaire. General Kpama Baramoto, the Zairean president’s brother-in-law and former army chief of staff, has bolted for South Africa.
Mobutu’s high command said it would fight on and claimed to have reversed the rebel advance in what appeared a last ditch attempt to stall, if not halt, the rebel advance. Heavy fighting was reported around the town of Kikwit, about 200km east of the capital. Residents of villages in the area said the numbers of government troops had risen sharply in recent days, including Portuguese speaking men presumed to be members of Angola’s Unita, which has long and close ties to Mobutu. But Kabila’s rebels have also been sighted much closer to the south of Kinshasa.