hotel
Chris McGreal in Kinshasa
BREAKFASTS will never be the same at Kinshasa’s Intercontinental hotel. First the rebels’ arrival heralded the end of the almond croissants. Then came the business with the grenade.
Just about the only person not disturbed by the little metal ball clattering on to the tiled floor and wandering its way laboriously under the breakfast tables was the young soldier who dropped it. The sun was just up and he was more interested in opening his first beer of the day.
The regular clientele of local businessmen and foreign diplomats sat frozen and incredulous until their liberator finally slouched his way over to recover his misplaced explosive and made off to blitz the buffet.
Most of the leaders of the revolution which revived Zaire as the re-christened Congo are now basking in Kinshasa’s top hotel. With them have come young soldiers from the rural interior who have seen nothing like it. And, for all the decrepit state of Mobutu Sese Seko’s defeated troops, the hotel has never seen anything quite like their conquerors.
One regular guest at the breakfast table specialises in the Mexican bandit look, with wads of ammunition strung across his chest while humping a machine-gun almost as tall as himself which he refuses to let go of, even as he loads up his bowl with tinned fruit. It could wipe out most of the clientele in a matter of seconds. They tend to wait their turn at a distance.
Laden under an array of weaponry, rebels wander around the lobby wide-eyed at the fine suits and electronic gadgets decorating the opulent shops. The lifts are a particular source of fascination and confusion.
The prostitutes have left some rebels close to apoplectic at the sight of mini-skirts and make-up – so much so that soldiers in other parts of Kinshasa have ordered women in short skirts or trousers to strip before burning the offending articles and giving the distressed victims stern lectures on African morality.
The “Inter” – as the hotel is universally known in Kinshasa – had not filled more than a few dozen rooms at a time in years. It used to be the most profitable in the international hotel chain, but business dropped off with Zaire’s economic collapse about the same time the company spent millions on a new tower.
The end of the war has brought a new boom, if filling the hundreds of rooms is what matters. Quite who is paying is something else. Half the hotel is owned by the government, which used to mean Mobutu. His much-despised son, Kongulu – nicknamed “Saddam Hussein” for his ruthlessness – found it a favourite hangout for entertaining whoever took his fancy at someone else’s cost.
The encounters were not always happy. The previous manager, a German, was pursued by a gun-waving Mobutu junior when the casino refused to accept a freshly printed batch of worthless money. The manager had to spend the night hiding in an empty room. The hotel nightclub was closed after one of Kongulu’s friends shot at the barman and drunkenly missed.
Kongulu’s final visit to the Inter began at 3am the morning the rebels moved into Kinshasa. He jumped from an armoured car and stormed into the hotel with a group of soldiers in search of an errant army captain and the prime minister’s family to settle old scores. He found neither, and a few hours later bolted across the river to Brazzaville. He left behind a $1-million hotel bill.
The hotel’s Palestinian-Jordanian manager is uncertain if the new order is any more creditworthy as it does its best to compete with Kongulu’s spending. The rebels even got the hotel to arrange Laurent Kabila’s inauguration last week, in the absence of anyone in Kinshasa with recent first-hand experience of swearing in presidents.
The Inter may come to regret its breakfast buffet in particular. After ordering their first beers, soldiers sweep the platters clean before making full use of the numerous baggy pockets on their uniforms to stock up for the rest of the day.
Outside, a growing crowd of Kinshasans makes its way to the hotel each morning to offer invaluable advice to the new regime on how the country should be run. Young men carrying the ubiquitous briefcases which signal self-declared membership of the “intellectual class” are often offended to discover Kabila can do without them.
Security outside the hotel is tight, if you don’t have a gun. While men dripping in weapons wander in and out unhindered, everyone else is searched, with the exception of some of Mobutu’s former associates. The security guards are having a hard time shedding old habits, so they dutifully salute and wave them through the doors untroubled.
When the bar toilets overflowed, the plumbers discovered they were blocked with ripped-up documents discarded by a few of the deposed despot’s cronies who stayed on in the hope of finding a role in the new regime. One of Mobutu’s generals is living in the hotel, hoping to ingratiate himself. It is not clear if he has been successful or is on his way to a prison cell.