to Africa
South Africa’s attempts at diplomacy failed, but the rebels succeeded and Zaire became Congo. Africa will benefit from these developments but the West is alarmed
Despite jitters in the West, Laurent Kabila’s victory is potentially the most stabilising development in Central Africa in many years. Chris McGreal reports from Kinshasa
ZAIRE disappeared at the weekend. It was discarded into history along with Mobutu Sese Seko, the despot who gave the vast Central African country its name a quarter of a century ago.
In its place has been revived the shortlived, post-independence Democratic Republic of Congo. But the promise is of a very different model. The rebellion in what is once again Congo was more than a local revolution. Despite frenzied warnings from the West about chaos in Zaire – largely based on misinterpretation of why Rwandan refugees were being killed – Laurent Kabila’s victory is potentially the most stabilising development in Central Africa in years.
It snatches away the launching pad for conflicts in at least three other countries – Rwanda, Angola and, to a lesser degree, Burundi. And, as the dormant economic giant of the region, the new Congo is the greatest prize so far in rebuilding Central Africa’s battered infrastructure.
But it is only the latest of a spreading revolution which has crept across the region for a decade, laying the foundations for genuinely independent, self-sustaining African nations.
The repercussions are being felt from Angola to Sudan, besides giving Kenya’s president, Daniel arap Moi, something to ponder and exposing Nigeria’s military machine as a dinosaur.
A new generation of African presidents, headed by Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, is contemptuously brushing aside the immediate post-colonial leadership as incompetent, avaricious and neo-colonial puppets. In their place, the new breed is trying to build systems which serve the interests not of an elite or some foreign power but the broad mass of citizens.
While Museveni and his ilk are less willing to blame only colonisation for their countries’ problems, they are healthily sceptical of the intentions of West and East after the havoc and repression generated in Africa by the Cold War. The Ugandan leader is fted in London and Washington for his economic reforms, but he has resisted all attempts to persuade him that multiparty democracy would not tear his country apart.
Neither is the new breed of leaders at war with their own people, as is Nigeria’s military. Museveni has dreams of an economic zone spread across the breadth of Central Africa and, eventually, down to the Cape. Implicit in the vision is the realisation that poverty lies at the heart of the region’s problems.
For decades it was viewed as the natural order of things in Africa. And yet, as the Ugandan leader has frequently pointed out, even with the world economic order stacked against the continent, the problem was also one of bad administration.
In Zaire, Mobutu stole all the money and the West was a co-conspirator. Zaire never really was an independent nation. It had all the trappings and a seat at the United Nations. But the Cold War brought another form of colonisation at the expense of the Zairean people, and ultimately the whole of Central Africa.
It is too early to say if the new order in Congo fits the Museveni mould. Quite who Kabila is and what he represents remains to be seen, but he has been greatly influenced by Museveni. According to the Ugandan leader, they remain in frequent contact.
It speaks volumes that Kabila’s forces were able to walk into every major city without much bloodshed and to receive a rousing welcome. The new Congo’s new leader has apparently won the support of most of his compatriots for vanquishing the old tyrant.
Now comes the difficult bit. It will take years to make up for the lost decades. The formal economy is more than wrecked, it is virtually non-existent, the infrastructure eroded away. Perhaps most debilitating was Mobutu’s creation of a system of officials with their hands out. But while Zaire was dysfunctional as a state, it was only because its people were anything but that they survived.
As in Uganda, the resources for Kabila to rebuild his nation lie with the masses of ordinary people who jury-rigged the system when the state walked away. They ran their own schools, fell back on traditional forms of justice and found ways to help neighbours even less fortunate than themselves.
Yet the West has already stepped in to lay down its demands. The United States, fearing that the new president does not fit its requirements, is the most vocal.
Kabila has been scolded that he is expected to abide by the latest demands of the outside world and swiftly hold elections. And if not, he will pay a price.
The New York Times quoted a US official as saying aid would be forthcoming for Kabila “provided that he behaves”.
Chester Crocker, assistant secretary of state for Africa under Ronald Reagan – who loudly sang Mobutu’s praises – openly states the threat. “The point is that we and our friends control the keys to the clubs and the treasuries that Kabila will need to tap if he is going to rebuild the country,” he said.
It might be thought that the US, among others, would have the grace to give the new government some breathing space after propping up the former regime.
Perhaps the West has finally discovered that Zaireans are human beings after the ruinous decades when it backed Mobutu while his compatriots’ lives were cut short for lack of medicines, or children starved because the president pocketed foreign aid, or generations were robbed of opportunity because there were no schools.
Even after the collapse of communism, the US continued to consort with Mobutu. The Americans kept alive the hoary old myth generated by Mobutu himself that he was the one thing that held his country together. Washington nodded in agreement. Without Mobutu there would be chaos. But there was already chaos. The rebellion brought order.
Now the pressure is on for instant elections. This is an absurd notion. A ballot may allow Washington to tick off the new Congo as a victory for democracy but the country’s infrastructure is ruined, the political class is discredited and there is every reason to believe the vote will divide along regional and ethnic lines.
It could open a Pandora’s box of years of violent strife far more destructive than the war now coming to an end.
In mineral-rich Shaba province, for instance, if an election for governor were held tomorrow there is every chance that Kyungu wa Kumwanza would win. In a previous incarnation as governor he ethnically cleansed more than one million people from his province. Thousands died in the process. Barely a peep was heard from the outside world.
Kabila has promised representative government and a constituent assembly. Without the establishment of a constitutional framework which would prevent Kyungu and others from committing such atrocities – and which people had the confidence would be enforced – a swift election is potentially a very dangerous and destabilising exercise in Shaba.
Museveni embraced economic reform and free markets under foreign pressure but effectively resisted Western dictates as to what constitutes democracy. Uganda is on the up, with a thriving economy and recognition of a government which, on the whole, serves the people. It is transformed from the days of Idi Amin and Milton Obete.
Kenya plumped for the multiparty system and President Moi promptly used it to create violence and further repression while the economy sinks deeper into the mire.
What matters in the new Congo today are not the false trappings of fake democracy but decent government.