Why have Kabila's former friends turned against him?
Congo War Is a Tragic Play of Limping Leaders
The Nation, November 21, 1998. Nairobi -
It is true that without the considerable help he got
from Ugandan, Rwandese and Burundian armed forces,
President Laurent Kabila of Democratic Republic of Congo
could never have made it to Kinshasa. Why have his former
allies turned against him? Freelance journalist attempts
to answer the question.
Is the beleaguered President of the Democratic Republic of
Congo, Mr Laurent Desire Kabila, a hero or a villain? No
one can be really certain. Until not too long ago, when he
ousted dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, who was universally
regarded as the epitome of evil, Mr Kabila was projected as
a hero by his erstwhile friends, including Ugandan President
Yoweri Museveni, as well as the leaders of two other
friends-turned-foe - Rwanda and Burundi.
It is true that without considerable help from Ugandan,
Rwandese and Burundian armed forces, Mr Kabila could
never have made it to Kinshasa. Why have his former friends
turned against him and are determined to oust him?
The answer is not simple. But one can try to make sense out
of this apparent nonsense. First, Mr Museveni has never
made any secret of his ambition to form a Federation of East
and Central African states. It's not just the hunger for power,
but it also has a great deal to do with the fact that Uganda is
landlocked and has fewer resources than the other countries
in the region, Congo being the most resource-rich.
Being a half-Tutsi, he is a brother-in-arms of the minority
Tutsi regimes in Rwanda and Burundi. Obviously, the
mastermind behind the rebellion in Congo is Mr Museveni.
Indeed, even Mobutu had accused him of having
"hegemonistic tendencies and expansionist dreams" in the
region and derisively referred to him as the "meddling devil"
responsible for the dictator's "nightmares".
The eternal-meddler theory of Mobutu is proving to be
correct: Kampala admits that its Chief of Army Staff,
Brigadier James Kazini, is heading the joint command
coordinating the offensive by the Congolese rebels and their
allies from Rwanda, Burundi and, of course, Uganda. And
Brig Kazini's deputy is a Colonel Kayumba of Rwanda.
But Presidents Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe), Jose Eduardo
dos Santos (Angola) and Sam Nujoma (Namibia), have sent
troops to the Congo to save the Kabila regime.
Ironically all of the parties fighting for or against Mr Kabila
are themselves in the middle of turmoil of one type or other.
Uganda is facing a bloody rebellion in the north as well as
cross-border skirmishes with the Sudanese forces of General
Omar Hassan el-Bashir. "Terrorist" bomb blasts in the heart
of Kampala have become too common for comfort.
How many wars is Mr Museveni going to fight
simultaneously? True, he is currently the blue-eyed boy of the
United States, in particular, and the West in general, having
effectively replaced President Moi.
But going by current economic trends in the former "Pearl of
Africa", the West has not come up with any tangible rescue
package. Take the currency, for example: one US dollar
today fetches about Uganda Sh1,400. In Kenya, one can
easily buy a dollar for Kenya Sh60.
But Mr Museveni continues to support Colonel John Garang's
Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) against Sudan,
Africa's largest country. Col Garang claims that Khartoum is
ready to use chemical weapons against the Christian-animist
southern rebels. If this accusation is true, where does Uganda
stand against such a formidable enemy? Is it a question of 12
years of unbridled power going to the former guerrilla
leader's head?
In the Congo, Mr Museveni has to contend with the awesome
logistical problems in the continent's third largest country,
not to mention the more than 250 tribes, of which the Tutsis
form a miniscule part.
True, the Tutsis are among the most organised tribes in the
region, which explains their virtual strangle-hold in
Hutu-majority Rwanda and Burundi. But the Rwanda and
Burundi regimes themselves are finding it exceedingly
difficult to control the restive Hutus, who have been sending
distress signals about an impending, even an on-going, Tutsi
retribution genocide of Hutus for their inhuman action in
1994.
On the other hand, President Mugabe is in trouble and not
just because of the weekly nationwide strikes over his
government's failure to improve the living standards of the
people during his 18-year rule since independence from the
white minority regime.
Mr Mugabe has been devoting half his time on foreign affairs
and the other half either on trying to deprive the whites of
their large farms or with his young wife. But for the majority
blacks, the honeymoon with freedom was obviously over
within the first year of his regime. But he has managed to
send more than 6,000 soldiers to the Congo.
Both Mr dos Santos and Mr Sam Nujoma are also in trouble.
Since independence from Portugal on November 11, 1976,
the Angolans have never seen peace - 23 years of civil war
is too long a period to be in a state of war without getting
war-weary.
But an army, any army, needs armaments to fight a war.
Where is Angola getting its arsenal from? Of course, South
Africa. Everyone knows this. President Nelson Mandela
owes the country a debt of honour for the sins of the
apartheid regime which supported the Angolan rebels. That
alone makes South Africa an accessory to the conflict in the
Congo.
Mr Nujoma is another long-time fighter of freedom from 24
years of occupation by the racist Pretoria regime. He has
completed two terms as President since independence on
February 16, 1990. And he is trying to change the
Constitution to get another term.
The list of Mr Nujoma's domestic failures is almost as long
as that of his counterpart in Harare. Mr Museveni, who
plotted the overthrow of tyrant Mobutu, now leads the assault
against his one-time personal friend, Mr Kabila.
The truth on the surface is that the combined strength of Mr
Kabila's allies, whatever their domestic problems, is much
greater than that of the three regimes opposed to him. So, on
the face of it, Mr Museveni's adventurism is doomed to fail
sooner or later. Ask any of the several thousand Congolese
resident in Kenya and they will unhesitatingly tell you the
same thing.
The issue here, then, is: How does one stop the suffering of
innocent people caught up in the crossfire of irreconcilable
ambitions. Can the United Nations be of any help? Going by
its past record, it would be churlish to expect anything
positive from it.
What about the OAU? Bluntly, the continental body has been
no more than an ineffective trade union ever since its
inception in 1964. Its mediation efforts have been serious
flops.
Mr Museveni says he has committed his troops in the Congo
to protect Uganda's "national interests". No one knows what
those interests are. Indeed, there are none.
South Africa is the only African country which does have
major investments and mineral interests in the Congo. But,
then, the US also has similar interests there and it has
condemned Rwanda and Burundi for their "military
interference" in the Congo. It makes no mention of Uganda
and it is perhaps for this reason that Washington is unlikely
to interfere militarily.
So, what is going to be the result of the escalating conflict? It
should all depend on the Congolese people themselves in the
end. The Museveni-engineered revolution-to-be can come
about only if the local people are ready for yet another
upheaval barely a year-and-a-half after getting rid of one
super-kleptodespot. Indications are that they are not ready for
another revolution.
So, is Mr Kabila a villain or a hero? He does have an
uncanny physical resemblance to laughing Buddha, which the
Chinese revere, and characteristics of Humpty Dumpty. So
far, he is yet to lay claim to either.
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