Howard Barrell
Growing military pressure on his tottering regime drove Democratic Republic of Congo President Laurent Kabila to visit Pretoria this week. He came to beg President Thabo Mbeki to put pressure on Rwanda and Uganda in the hope of forcing the rebels to sign the ceasefire deal drawn up in Lusaka earlier this month.
Mbeki heard Kabila’s request on Monday evening, July 26, and dispatched Minister of Foreign Affairs Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma to Kampala, the Ugandan capital, and Kigali, the Rwandan capital, before daybreak on Tuesday, according to official and security sources in the region.
The meeting with Mbeki was a humiliation for Kabila in that he had to come cap in hand to enlist the help of the country he had more than once rudely accused both of bad faith and of supporting the rebels fighting his regime. Kabila last year rejected South African attempts to secure a negotiated settlement with the rebels and, instead, sought military assistance to fight them from, among others, Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe. But that military backing appears on the point of being withdrawn.
“Kabila’s nowhere without Zimbabwean and foreign military support,” said Hannelie de Beer, a senior researcher at the Pretoria- based Institute of Security Studies who specialises in Congo.
A source who spoke to the Mail & Guardian on condition of anonymity added: “It finally dawned on Kabila that he needed South African involvement. Only South Africa has the leverage with Rwanda and Uganda to rein in the rebels. Kabila needs the ceasefire deal to happen to hope to survive. The rebels don’t. They know they can win the war. So Kabila had to come to Pretoria.”
Regional security sources report a marked deterioration in Kabila’s military position in the north and east of Congo in the weeks since the ceasefire plan was drawn up. They say rebel forces are now operating around Mbandaka on the Congo River only about 500km from Kinshasa and near Bandundu about 300km to the east. These two rebel thrusts make a future rebel offensive against Kinshasa, the capital, more plausible.
Moreover, the vital diamond mining centre of Mbuji-Mayi in east-central Congo is all but surrounded by rebels of the Rwandan- backed Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD). This poses a serious threat to Kabila’s ability to continue financing his side of the war. Zimbabwe is, meanwhile, evidently intent on withdrawing its forces from Mbuji-Mayi, where they form the backbone of pro-Kabila resistance against the rebel assault.
Large swathes of east-central and northern Congo have long been occupied by the rebels. Despite claims of victories against the rebels, pro-Kabila forces have made no headway in recapturing territory, these sources add.
Dlamini-Zuma’s trip to Kampala and Kigali also follows unsuccessful attempts by Tanzania earlier this week to mediate between two rival factions of the RCD rebel group. Disunity within the RCD is one reason the rebels did not sign up to the Lusaka ceasefire plan: the RCD was divided over which of its leaders was entitled to sign on its behalf. The other main rebel group, the Ugandan-backed MLC, then used this dispute as a justification for not to signing the document itself.
The Rwandan government is maintaining publicly that it has now given up trying to talk sense into the RCD rebels. But the South African view is understood to be that Rwanda is being less than frank in this claim, and continues to exercise overwhelming influence within the ranks of the RCD.
Mbeki is understood to have treated seriously Kabila’s request for South African assistance. His special interest in achieving a peace settlement in Congo was evident in the way he kept Director General of Foreign Affairs Jackie Selebi in Lusaka, the Zambian capital, for three weeks of negotiations on a ceasefire earlier this month and Dlamini-Zuma there for two weeks.
South Africa learned only at short notice last week that Kabila wanted to pay a low- key visit to the country. The Department of Foreign Affairs accordingly characterised the visit as “private”. But, on his arrival, South Africa learned that Kabila had brought along five of his ministers, including those dealing with mining, finance and economics. At this point foreign affairs felt bounced into revising the status of the visit to “official”.
“This can be explained in terms of the chaos theory of Congolese government,” said a human rights worker dealing with Central African affairs. “I don’t think there was much guile behind it. Kabila has no idea how these things work and has no institutions operating around him. He seems to have just invited a few of his mates along to do a bit of shopping in South Africa.”
However, once in Pretoria, Kabila’s ministers are understood to have held talks with their South African counterparts and to have met with selected South African businessmen.
These meetings were set up by the South African side to take forward undertakings South Africa made when Kabila first replaced former president Mobutu Sese Seko – at that stage with Rwandan and Ugandan support. At the time, South Africa undertook to give technical support to Kabila’s government, which then included most of the rebel leaders now confronting his regime.