With a cry of alarm addressed to the capitalist West, President Mobutu revealed to the world the new threat of disintegration looming over his regime. "The African continent is the object of a genuine ideological agression," he declared in the May 16 Le Monde. This harping on the threat of destabilization by the Soviets and Cubans is thé common theme song nowadays of all crisis-ridden regimes. It was the excuse used by the South Africans for their intervention in Angola in 1975, and it's the same story with the Senegalese Socialist Party, a section of the Second International.
Just over a year ago, in March 1977, the Congo National Liberation Front (Front National de Libération du Congo-FNLC) attacked Zaïrian troops in the Kolwezi area, and threatened the mining centers and the stability of the Kinshasa regime, which had been brought to the edge of bankruptcy by an unprecedented economic crisis. It took the intervention of Moroccan troops, backed up logistically by the French army, to make the FNLC decide on a temporary pullback. What has happened since?
For one thing, the economic crisis has only grown worse. Despite the tendency of the International Monetary Fund and the big Western banks to assume more control, the government has been unable to make order out of the bureaucratic and economic chaos. The foreign debt has reportedly risen to more than $2 billion. Inflation seems to have surpassed 80 percent, and corruption retains its primary role in the workings of the administration and the business world.
On the other hand, in the political realm, Mobutu broke with his heir apparent Karl I Bond, as a result of some murky dealings that reportedly convinced the Western capitals that he could be used to replace his mentor. Sentenced to death and later pardoned, Karl I Bond does not seem to have been able to influence a section of the Zaïrian army in a lasting way.
Nevertheless, Mobutu is continuing to create a vacuum around himself. On March 8, Kinshasa announced the execution of fourteen persons accused of a "military plot." Around the same time, it was learned that the Zaïrian army had entered Bandundu province, massacring hundreds of "rebels,
," probably villagers.
In Shaba, the retaking of the terrain by government troops was accompanied by reprisals against the Lunda population, which was accused of "complicity." Mobutu's soldiers behaved like an occupation force, extracting ransom from people, looting villages, and running a black market for their own benefit.
For several months Shaba had been in an uproar. The Zairian army had moved part of its troops from Kolwezi to Dilolo and Kasaji, and the Europeans report that their servants had warned them of the likelihood of a new military raid by the FNLC.
The decomposition of the Zairian army may have had even graver consequences. It is possible, in fact, that a section of the army, or at least of the officers stripped of their rank following the events of last year, may have gone over to the camp of the FNLC. The latter has been considerably strengthened as a result of the flight of refugees during the last war; it has found many collaborators in the cities and deepened its implantation among the tribal groups. Finally, it has sanctuaries in all the areas bordering on Angola and Zambia.
Its raid on Kolwezi appears to have been child's play. The government troops put up only minimal resistance, and the majority of the population sided with the FNLC.
Imperialist Intervention and the French 'Gendarmes'
In March 1977, the imperialist powers decided to pull the Mobutu regime out of its rut. On the one hand, they made conditional pledges of economic aid to Zaïre, and on the other they supported the French-Moroccan intervention all but unanimously. Only a few voices publicly expressed doubts about the operation. Some American politicians and sectors of the European bourgeoisie were uncertain as to the possible advantages that this regime in chaos could ultimately bring the West. Incidentally, there was agreement on that occasion that the Soviet Union and Cuba had nothing to do with the FNLC attack.
This time, proof of Mobutu's incompetence is no longer in doubt. Kinshasa has not succeeded either in establishing its power over the entire territory, or in controlling the economy as a whole. The imperialist plundering of this country is taking place in a surreal atmosphere of structural and individual decay.
For the imperialist rulers, Zaire has become an undecipherable riddle. On the one hand, the country cannot, even for the time being, be abandoned to a pettybourgeois nationalist leadership, which would rush to take over the mines and industries of Gecamines,' and which would severely limit the power of foreign inves tors. On the other hand, maintaining a minimum of imperialist control over the situation in southern Africa, and the chances of catching the Zimbabwean and Namibian nationalists in a vise requires maintaining a government in Zaire that is firmly tied to the West.
But this fine plan has run up against the impossibility of finding political leaderships that can succeed one another while giving the illusion of a change in the regime. The first Congolese civil war ended by physically and politically crushing the different nationalist parties, and by Mobutu taking power. Since then, the political vacuum around the dictator has grown owing to the permanent repression he has built into a system. The Mobutu regime is on its last legs, but no one is really ready to replace it or capable of neutralizing the opposition forces for long.
Confronted by this dilemma, the different imperialist factions have not all taken the same stance. This is how Western governments are able to take varying positions according to the predominant interests of their ruling classes, and how, within the same country, various capitalist groups are divided on what solution to adopt, as in the United States and Belgium.
In Belgium, the investors who hold the most interests in Zaïrian mines are frantically seeking an alternative to Mobutu.
In the current conflict, French imperialism, which poses as the "ambitious young man" with respect to its two big rivals, American and Belgian, has come up with nothing better than to stake their game on Mobutu, for the time being.? As a result, when the first distress signal went up from the dictator of Kinshasa, Paris hastened to respond to it. The defense of future French investments in Zaire seems tied to maintaining the present government. Unlike Belgium, France is the godfather of many neocolonial bourgeois states on the African continent. Its ability to defend a regime threatened by "subversion," given the current situation in Africa, is an important factor in negotiations between imperialist rulers and native rulers.
For the farsighted wing of the Belgian bourgeoisie, Mobutu's advantages fade away once he becomes incapable of making the wheels of the economy turn, since these are what Gecamines depends on. With $800 million worth of investments, Belgium's are forty times those of France. This economic penetration is accompanied by an "infrastructure" of 25,000 Belgians, 2,000 of them in Kolwezi.
The policies of the two countries in the recent period could only diverge with respect to tactics. For such people, defending the interests of the system is intimately tied to the way in which they must defend their respective interests. There lies an old contradiction of interimperialist rivalry. This explains why last year, during the first Shaba war, the Belgian minister of foreign affairs declared: "France is particularly interested in the wealth of Zaire, and Belgium perceives this as international rivalry." And with the sanctimoniousness typical of this kind of shark, he added that France ought to leave Belgium "in peace in those areas that have historically been its home."3
In the heat of recent events, this difference between Paris and Brussels has taken a more pronounced turn. Among the many attacks by the Belgian government coalition on the French government, the current minister of foreign affairs, Simonet, has been the most vehement. He declared, "The French government has an African policy that is not ours. France is seeking to maintain some leverage on the black continent, while Belgium is seeking cooperation with a country rather than with a regime."*
That's a fine piece of hypocrisy, since Belgium (together with the United States) has been the principal mainstay of this regime for more than ten years. But Simonet is no more honest than his French friends. He translates into discreet terms that satisfy the moralistic anxieties of Belgian Social Democracy what might more bluntly be called the "rackets" of the Belgian employers.
For their part, the Americans have behaved impeccably toward their allies. Rather than openly choose one of the two solutions, they have offered their logistical services, supplying fuel and air shipments. To make himself look good, Carter announced May 18 a grant of $17.5 million to Zaire in the form of spare parts, fuel, and pharmaceutical products. The U.S. presi dent found it necessary to justify this as "in the U.S. national interest." Surprise!
Thus, the aim of the 1,800 paratroopers who left for Shaba, according to official sources, was to repatriate all of the Belgian technicians. For their part, the French paratroopers, intervening directly in Kolwezi as assault troops, were trying to take the city back from the FNLC and restore the central government to its pre rogatives. For Paris, it was not basically a question of repatriating the Europeans, but rather of putting them back to work.
Brussels seems to have quietly drawn
MOBUTU: A shaky future.
the lessons of national liberation struggles in Africa. As a matter of fact, repatriating the 2,000 Belgians in Kolwezi constitutes, beyond any doubt, their best bargaining card with the FNLC. For that matter, the FNLC did not hide the fact that, in addition to its offers to evacuate the Europeans from Kolwezi, it had had contacts with the management of Gecamines.
According to Mbumba, leader of the FNLC, "a meeting took place between my organization and the representative of the foreign personnel at Gecamines, Mr. Renard, in front of other foreign nationals, with the aim of cooperating in running the city." He says that "they agreed, and promised to give active support in this area." Moreover, the FNLC seems to have wanted to set up a "revolutionary committee" for Kolwezi that would include Europeans. The FNLC does not hide its desire to negotiate with Belgium and its refusal to alienate the first favorable attitudes that have appeared in the Brussels business community.
March 1977 and May 1978:
Acts One and Two
Still, with the arrival of the French paratroopers, the FNLC decided to pull back, the better to capitalize on its unquestionable political success. France enabled Mobutu to save face for a while. The Belgian government was bitterly attacked by its Liberal opposition, and suddenly began to redouble its proclamations of friendship for the Zaïrian general. Even better than anything it could say, the Tindemans government decided to ban meetings of Zaïrian oppositionists in Brussels. What did Simonet, who claims to have so little interest in the "regimes" of friendly countries, think of this? France emerged from the test enhanced in the eyes of the one man clinging to power in Kinshasa.
This shows how little meaning this victory has in the race for investments, especially since the Common Market will eventually have to adopt a unanimous position on the question. The big industrial projects, like the hydroelectric and industrial compound at Inga, the high-voltage cable from Inga to Shaba, or the secret base for German OTRAG rockets in the northwest of the same region, necessarily make the principal sources of financing interdependent (private banks, the European Development Fund, and so on). The good old days when Brussels could toy with the secession of Katanga to protect its mining interests are over. The integration of capital and the scope of economic projects in this region have done away with old-school neocolonialism.
The FNLC, then, is going to prepare for its third offensive, in the context of a slightly weaker government, an even more ossified army, and a population willing to get it over with by whatever means are necessary. The nationalist illusions in the Mbumba leadership should initially contribute to Mobutu's isolation, inasmuch as the FNLC could become a hodge-podge in which every oppositionist can find a niche.
In an interview with Rouge published in the May 29 issue, the FNLC representative in Belgium stated that "there is no other possibility except to resume the struggle. With the paratroopers gone, it is clear that we will be in a position to retake the city."
If this should happen, two factors would determine Mobutu's future: first, the FNL's military capacity to march on Lubumbashi and take control of it; second, the ability of the worldwide antiimperialist movement to make prompt military aid by the Western powers to the Kinshasa regime difficult, if not impossible.
If these two conditions were met, Shaba province, completely under the control of the opposition, would bring down all of Zaïre in a civil war. In that case, the post- Mobutu era might resemble the pre- Mobutu era, that is, a new entanglement between the mass movement, its nationalist leaderships, and the factions of imperialism.
Notes
1. Société Générale Congolaise des Minerais, a Zaïrian state corporation managed by Belgian interests which exploits vast copper and other mineral resources.—IP/I
2. The French government is one of the few Western governments that can initiate direct military intervention in Africa without a parliamentary crisis or a moralizing outery from the media. This margin of maneuver helps strengthen the special role French imperialism plays in Africa.
3. See Le Monde, May 21, 1978.
4. See Le Monde, May 23, 1978.
5. Afrique-Asie, May 28, 1978.