One Day the Soldiers Came - Charles London [25]
When the Congo was a Belgian colony at the dawn of the twentieth century, it was the personal property of King Leopold II. Using forced labor from the locals, he extracted a fortune from the vast territory, which is almost a hundred times the size of little Belgium. It is said in Congo that the streets of Brussels are paved with Congolese gold. The price for this gold was an estimated 10 million human beings dead, due to King Leopold’s policy of destroying crops and villages to quell revolt, forcing men, women, and children into slavery, and the free use of capital punishment.
After independence from the Belgians in 1960, a U.S.-backed coup ousted the first democratically elected leader of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba, and placed the government in the hands of Joseph Désiré Mobutu in 1965. Mobutu was then the Army Chief of Staff. He was to rule for the next thirty-two years, stealing about 4 billion dollars from his country while many of the inhabitants remained some of the poorest people on earth. To describe his style of government, journalists used the term “kleptocracy.”
He changed his name to the praise name Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu wa za Banga, and changed the name of his country to Zaire, a Portuguese corruption of the name of the country’s largest river. He created “Mobutuism,” a policy designed to drive colonial influence from Zaire. To this end, he outlawed the necktie and designed a new fashion statement, the abacost: a two-piece outfit of pants and a tunic worn with an ascot. He was a master of the politics of the ground. He bestowed favors on his allies, access to the minerals and metals in the soil, and a share of his largess. Foreign companies and local Big Men benefited greatly from his favor, even as the people starved. Much like Marhsal Tito in Yugoslavia, he suppressed ethnic nationalism when it threatened him, and divided people along ethnic lines when it served his interests. The army wasn’t paid—he told them to fend for themselves with their weapons and take what they needed from the people.
His rule grew more and more precarious. In 1995, the parliament passed a referendum that would strip Mobutu of all real power and leave him as a figurehead to create a smooth transition to democracy. It was one of the first and boldest democratic moves in Zaire since the coup that ousted Patrice Lumumba. Mobutu ignored the referendum, as did the rest of the world. But the frustrated political opposition to his rule turned into a military opposition soon enough.
With the backing of Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi, the Marxist guerilla Laurent Kabila (who had fought briefly with Che Guevera during the late sixties), formed the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (ADFL) and marched on Kinshasa. He ousted Mobutu in 1997, and the man once known as the Father of the Nation became a refugee himself. Mobutu died in Rabat, Morocco, shortly after his exile began. He is buried there in a cemetery now, ironically, given Mobutu’s legacy in Africa, as “Pax.”
Laurent Kabila’s takeover set the stage for the start of what would be known as Africa’s world war. After the fall of Mobutu, Kabila changed the name of the country to the Democratic Republic of Congo. He had come to power with the support of neighboring Rwanda, but resentment grew against Rwandan power in the Congo, and against his support of the Banyamulenge, who were Congolese Tutsis, often labled as Rwandan themselves. In order to shore up his political gains, Kabila turned against the Rwandan and Ugandan