By Norm Dixon
Hopes that Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) Laurent Kabila — whose rebel forces overthrew the "kleptocracy" of the brutal US-backed Mobutu dictatorship in 1997 — would usher in an era of peace, justice and regional cooperation have foundered on the rocks of imperialist hostility, revived ethnic chauvinism and the narrow national interests of the DRC's neighbours.
On August 2, Kabila was confronted with a mutiny by a large section of the army in the DRC's east. Within days, the main cities in the eastern provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu — Goma, Bukavu and Uvira — were in rebel hands.
In a deft military manoeuvre, hundreds of mutinous troops were airlifted across the country to the Kitona army base in the south-west, where they linked up with disgruntled soldiers.
By August 7, the insurgents had captured key Atlantic Ocean and river ports that supply the capital's fuel and food needs, and the Inga hydro-electric plant on August 13, the source of Kinshasa's electricity supply.
With Kinshasa in darkness, its water supply cut, shop shelves bare and well-armed mutineers advancing to within 20 kilometres of the capital, the Kabila government seemed on the brink of collapse.
The tide quickly turned after the August 22 intervention by thousands of battle-experienced troops, as well as jet fighters, from Angola and Zimbabwe. By August 28, the mutineers had been defeated in the west — but not before heavy fighting reached the capital's eastern suburbs.
Anti-Kabila rebels remain firmly in control of the east, having extended their control west as far as Kisangani, Congo's third largest city, and south to Kalemie, on the road to the mineral-rich southern province of Katanga.
It remains to be seen if Kabila's allies will be prepared to push into the east if they feel their own economic and security interests have been secured.
Angola's intervention is aimed primarily at denying UNITA contras bases on DRC territory and defending its oil-rich Cabinda enclave. Zimbabwe is seeking to secure its recent economic and political ties with the Kabila regime.
Imperialism's legacy
Thirty-two years of US-backed dictatorship left the DRC in a desperate economic and social situation. Congo was 141 out of 174 in the United Nations Development Program's ranking of states.
More than 26 million of the country's 46 million inhabitants had no access to health care; 27 million had no access to clean water. Life expectancy was just above 51 years (down from 53 in 1990); infant mortality was 93 per 1000; health spending represented just 0.8% of GDP. Adult illiteracy was 74%.
When the tyrant Mobutu Sese Seko fled, his personal wealth was estimated at more than $10 billion, while the DRC's foreign debt was US$14 billion. Much of that was loaned by western governments and financial institutions knowing it would pass straight into Mobutu's pockets.
The DRC contains 80% of the world's cobalt reserves and 20% of its copper, and is rich in diamonds, gold and oil. The resulting wealth never trickled lower than the very profitable western mining companies and Mobutu and his cronies.
If the new Kabila government was to turn this situation around, it would require massive economic aid — reparations would perhaps be a better term — from the imperialist powers.
Yet, instead of accepting its responsibility, wiping the debt and providing development aid, the US government made aid and loans conditional on the DRC accepting Washington's economic and political prescriptions.
Whereas the French imperialists, and their European allies, actively worked to overthrow Kabila, the US was more tolerant because it felt the DRC could be drawn into the developing US sphere of influence in Africa.
On May 17, the DRC celebrated the first anniversary of the overthrow of Mobutu. More than 60,000 people in Kinshasa heard Kabila criticise the western powers for their failure to offer adequate aid and to cancel the foreign debt. "We have asked the big powers for a Marshall Plan" worth $7 billion to rebuild the country, Kabila said.
US patience with Kabila's anti-imperialist rhetoric and his defiance of its dictates had worn thin. Using claims that the government was blocking UN investigations into human rights violations during the liberation war, the western powers froze delivery of promised aid.
Rather than cancelling DRC's monster debt, payments were demanded. The government refused; arrears climbed to $300 million in May.
In the face of imperialist hostility, unable to deliver on its promise to rebuild the DRC's shattered infrastructure and economy, Kabila was faced with two choices: mobilise the entire Congolese people against imperialism's attacks or exploit ethnic divisions in order to survive. He chose the latter.
The Kabila regime ditched its pan-African and anti-tribalist orientation, severing its alliance with the representatives of the oppressed Banyarwanda and Banyamulenge peoples of eastern Congo (so-called "Tutsis") by expelling their ministers from the government.
Kabila ordered the expulsion of Rwandan military advisers and trainers from the DRC, and purged senior Banyarwanda and Banyamulenge military officers.
On August 11, 41 former generals of Mobutu's Zairean Armed Forces wrote to commend Kabila on his actions and to offer their "availability to serve the country and kick the enemy out of our national territory".
Hundreds of Congolese Tutsis resident in Kinshasa have been rounded up and imprisoned, their homes and shops looted. State radio has broadcast chilling anti-Tutsi propaganda calling for Tutsis to be hunted down and killed.
Chauvinist mobs have attacked suspected "Tutsis", even unfortunate Senegalese and Malians who resemble the racist stereotype associated with being "Tutsi".
There is also evidence that Kabila has based 10,000 anti-Rwanda Interahamwe guerillas in camps in Katanga and has made contact with the reactionary Sudanese regime, which sponsors anti-Uganda terrorists.
In recent months, both Rwanda and Uganda have complained that Kinshasa is doing nothing to halt increasingly vicious terrorist attacks launched from DRC territory.
The Johannesburg Weekly Mail and Guardian reported on August 28 that the Kabila regime has also employed the notorious apartheid-linked mercenary outfit, Executive Outcomes, to bolster its forces against the mutineers.
It was the sudden opportunist lurch by the DRC government that triggered the army mutiny in the east, not some "Rwandan and Ugandan invasion", as is asserted by Kabila and his cronies, the western press and the DRC's self-seeking neighbours.
Irrespective of whether the Rwandan and Ugandan governments are providing aid, and perhaps even troops (despite insistent charges from Kinshasa and allegations reported as fact in the establishment press, no firm evidence has been presented), the rebellion — like the 1997 uprising — has its roots firmly within DRC soil.
Persecution and discrimination
Prior to the Belgian colonisation of central Africa in the late 19th century, North Kivu was part of the kingdom of Rwanda.
The imperialists drew borders without regard to ethnic boundaries. The Banyarwanda were incorporated into Belgian Congo. The Banyarwanda include both traditional castes in Rwandan society, Tutsi and Hutu.
The 400,000 Banyamulenge of South Kivu are descendants of Rwandan Tutsi pastoralists who settled there between the 16th and 18th centuries.
The Banyarwanda and Banyamulenge have long faced discrimination and persecution. In 1981, Mobutu stripped them of Zairean citizenship. In 1994, the Interahamwe — the Hutu-chauvinist death squads responsible for the genocide in Rwanda — and Mobutu's armed forces launched an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Banyarwanda.
The pogroms were part of the Rwandan contras' plan — supported by Zaire and accepted by the UN, France and the US — to build a "pure" Hutu rear base from which to reinvade Rwanda.
When Mobutu and the Interahamwe began to attack the Banyamulenge in South Kivu in 1996, they fought back. The resistance of the Banyamulenge triggered the anti-Mobutu uprising which liberated North and South Kivu, then swept across Congo, culminating in the liberation of Kinshasa.
Rather than admitting that the revolt was an indigenous uprising against oppression, Mobutu claimed Rwanda's ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front, which overthrew the genocidal Interahamwe-dominated government in 1994, was invading.
Today, Kabila's anti-Tutsi, anti-Rwandan rhetoric seems a copy of Mobutu's.
Unlike the 1996 uprising, the rebellion does not have a mass character. Its participants are mostly drawn from the army's 16,000-strong 10th Brigade, based in Goma. Thousands of other soldiers have rallied to the cause.
Its military commanders include the sacked Congolese army chief, James Kabare, and the 10th Brigade's commander Jean-Pierre Ondekane (a non-Tutsi from the northern Equateur province).
While most of the brigade's troops are from the east, many are from other parts of the DRC. Opposition to Kabila has been intensified by the fact that soldiers have not been paid for many months.
The mutiny's political leaders, calling themselves the Congolese Rally for Democracy, are a collection of discredited Mobutu-era "opposition" politicians, little-known exiled dissidents and ministers expelled from Kabila's government because of their ethnic background, like former foreign minister Bizima Karaha.
The rebels have accused Kabila of "incompetence", "corruption" and nepotism and criticised his failure to rebuild the country. However, they have remained silent on the responsibility of the western powers for the DRC's plight.
Nor have the mutineers been particularly choosy about their allies. There is some evidence that UNITA fighters linked up with the rebels in the south-west, and that former Mobutu-era generals exiled in South Africa — who have been plotting Kabila's overthrow ever since he entered Kinshasa — convinced soldiers still loyal to them to join the mutiny.