Peter Rosenblum -- T-WATCHer and projects director of the Human Rights Program

at Harvard Law School -- has a careful analysis of the recent political history of
Zaire/Congo in the current Current History. His conclusion is not altogether optimistic:
Yet the political space created by seven years of opposition to Mobutu endures. The
press headlines its opposition and community groups speak out and publish their
positions. The churches remain a base of independent thinking. In the government itself
there is a core of bright, well-intentioned young cadres who retain their earlier hope of
effecting positive change. Whether their efforts and the space for freedom survive is
increasingly unlikely.

Judging by Kabila's recent course, this space will last only until he can close it with
impunity. Unless his erstwhile regional allies help him see his way to a new policy of
inclusion, they may soon be in the position of trying to contain new security threats
emanating from Congo.
Thomas Keenan

SUNY Binghamton Shorenstein Center, Harvard University

=====================================================

Kabila's Congo
By PETER ROSENBLUM
Projects director of the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law
School.
CURRENT HISTORY May 1998, Vol. 97, No. 619
"Recent months have seen the pace of repression increase in Congo. Human rights
reports have been seized and activists intimidated and beaten.
Political figures have been arrested or, in the case of Etienne Tshisekedi, sent into
internal exile. . . Yet the political space created by seven years of opposition to Mobutu
endures. . . Judging by [President Laurent] Kabila's recent course, this space will last
only until he can close it with impunity."

On May 17, 1997, rebel troops of the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of the
Congo swept into the capital city of Kinshasa, bringing to an end the rule of Mobutu Sese
Seko and erasing the name of Zaire from world maps. The speed of the victory took everyone
by surprise. Fighting had begun only seven months earlier when a little-known group of
Zairian Tutsi, the Banyamulenge, stood up to corrupt local authorities in eastern Zaire who
had threatened to seize their property and eject them from the country. Few people believed it
possible that a rebel army could cross the nearly roadless expanse of more than 1,000 miles in
that amount of time, much less conquer it.

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But besides grand gestures, like changing the name of the country to the Democratic Republic
of the Congo and declaring the rebirth of democracy, liberation from Mobutu has not assured
lasting victory for the new self-proclaimed president, rebel leader Laurent Kabila. Kabila has
enjoyed the world's shortest honeymoon, as one commentator put it. Almost before it began,
there was a threat of international isolation because of reports alleging massacres of Hutu
refugees fleeing west to escape Kabila's Tutsi-dominated rebels. Moreover, many Zairians
were not prepared to accept the authority of the rebels merely by virtue of their military
victory. For seven years the people of Zaire had been struggling to liberate themselves
without the use of arms. They had developed a culture of resistance that had undermined the
authority of the Mobutist state -- and could do the same for Kabila.
Finally, there is the problem of Kabila himself, whose awkward attempts to consolidate power
and establish political legitimacy bear an eerie resemblance to the actions of his predecessor.
The president's efforts are losing him friends without winning over many enemies. His allies
abroad are beginning to take their distance. Even the Banyamulenge -- the war's supposed
victors -- threatened rebellion in early March. While that problem has been defused for the
moment, renewed conflict in the east, triumphalist arrogance in the west, and a general sense
of political incoherence have made for an inauspicious start to Kabila's vaunted republican
rebirth.

REBELS FOR WHOSE CAUSE?

Although the speed of the rebel advance was surprising, the eventual outcome -- at least on
the battlefield -- was determined at least two months before Kinshasa fell. The unpaid,
untrained, and unmotivated troops of the Mobutu regime were never a match for the rebels
and their battle-tested foreign allies coming from Rwanda and Uganda. After the rebels took
Kisangani on March 15 of last year, handily defeating the "thunderous" counterattack
Mobutu's generals had promised, what followed was a war of public perceptions. Zairians had
initially rallied around Mobutu and against what they believed to be a foreign invasion. But
Mobutu, who feared the internal opposition more than the rebels, squandered public support.
Meanwhile, Zairians willed themselves into backing Kabila. With its predictable pattern of
rape and pillage, the retreating Zairian army further pushed the population toward the rebels.

One city after another offered itself up without resistance until Kabila's forces reached the
gates of the capital. There the rebels were delayed for a few days, forcing a last minute race
with the cancer that was consuming Mobutu's body. The rebels won the race, but just barely.
It is said that Mobutu, who died four months later in exile in Morocco, never fully realized
what had happened to him.

From the beginning of the war, Kabila's troops were plagued by suspicion of foreign
domination. Despite frequent denials, few doubted the importance of Rwanda and Uganda in
initiating and pursuing the war. Rwanda in particular had made its interests clear. More than a
million Rwandan refugees, rebel soldiers, and militia members, many of whom had
participated in the 1994 genocide of Tutsi and moderate Hutu, were camped in Zaire along
Rwanda's border, providing a fecund source of insurgency.
By threatening the Banyamulenge -- a Tutsi community that had been in Zaire for more than a
century and whose members did not even live near the recently encamped "genocidaires" --
Zairian authorities handed the Rwandans a local ally and a useful cover for their operations.

2
But there was also strong reason to suspect that the Rwandan government or its Ugandan
allies had fashioned the alliance that put a Zairian face on the rebellion. This would have been
sensible. Ethnic Rwandans are simply viewed as foreigners by most Zairians. Zairians thus
reacted with suspicion when Laurent Kabila, a dubious figure from the independence era --
but indisputably Zairian -- suddenly emerged as spokesman for the rebellion.
Kabila's mixed reputation derived from his early years as a guerrilla fighter and the
intervening silence. A recent biography of Che Guevara conveys a picture of Kabila as an
undependable ally, mysteriously absent from the scene of battle when Che brought a group of
Cubans to Zaire to aid Kabila's fight in 1965. Since then Kabila had remained largely
invisible, staging a few daring attacks but reportedly spending most of his time in Dar es
Salaam, surviving from trafficking in minerals. It is not even clear that Kabila brought any
troops into the alliance, further contributing to suspicion about his backing. Nevertheless, his
credibility increased as the rebels progressed, picking up recruits and publicity along the way.
Ironically, given later events, Kabila's cause was given a major boost by opposition leader
Etienne Tshisekedi, who stood up for him against the xenophobic wave that had hit the
capital.
As the rebellion gathered momentum, other countries joined in backing the rebels. Angola
provided essential logistical support as well as troops.
Zimbabwe and Zambia also provided assistance. But the Rwandan presence remained the
most obvious, the most controversial, and the least acknowledged until Rwandan leader Paul
Kagame himself decided to break the silence two months after liberation. By then, any visitor
to the seat of government in Kinshasa -- the Intercontinental Hotel -- would have been struck
by the presence of Rwandan soldiers and businessmen, most of whom did little to hide their
origins. Then there were Kabila's "body guards" -- "six tall, English-speaking gentlemen," as
one visitor described them -- not Zairian and not necessarily there to protect him.

BUILDING ON THE PAST

The end of the rebellion came quietly and almost without violence. This was due in part to the
organized restraint of the population -- the churches in particular -- but significant credit also
goes to Mobutu's chief of staff, a popular military leader who maintained order to the end.

General Marc Mahele was a rare figure in the army: faithful to President Mobutu but trusted
by the people, especially since the 1992 National Conference, where he had declared the
army's support for the democratic process. He was no radical democrat, how ever. And it is
ironic that his efforts made him a "martyr to peace," as the archbishop of Kinshasa declared at
his funeral. On the night of May 16, hours before Kabila's Alliance of Democratic Forces for
the Liberation of the Congo (ADFL) entered Kinshasa, he attempted to stop soldiers from
pillaging the city.
At Camp Tshatshi, the base for Mobutu's Special Presidential Division, he was executed --
reportedly by Mobutu's own son.
With its troops in the city and Mobutu in flight, the ADFL solemnly declared its right to
govern and Kabila's authority as president. On May 28, Kabila issued a one-page decree
establishing the new con stitutional order. It was broad and vague, granting nearly absolute
power to the president.

3
On May 29, Kabila was sworn into office in the presence of dignitaries from around the
region, including the presidents of Angola, Uganda, Zambia, Rwanda, and Burundi. A rumor
spread that the head of the Supreme Court had gotten the president's name wrong during the
swearing-in, accidentally calling him "Laurent-Desire Mobutu." In his inaugural speech
Kabila was already consumed with resentment of his critics. "Whether we like it or not," he
said, the Third Republic had begun, suggesting that everything that came before, including the
National Conference, a process and event that was unassailable for most Zairians, belonged to
Mobutu's "Second Republic." "We do not support the maneuvers of this so-called sovereign
conference," he said. Without naming names, he lashed out at the political opposition in
Kinshasa, mocked the proliferation of parties under Mobutu, and dismissed the demand for
immediate elections on the grounds that it would perpetuate Mobutism. Then, after warning
citizens about focusing too closely on timetables, he laid out his own, beginning with a
constitutional commission and ending with elections in two years.
"It is promised," he said. "Be assured that these dates will be respected." By September 1, the
first three deadlines had all been missed.

LEGITIMATION CRISIS
Much of Kabila's rancor might be explained by his struggle for political legitimacy with
Etienne Tshisekedi. Tshisekedi was Mobutu's most steadfast and well-known opponent, living
for years under house arrest or in internal exile. He was also elected in August 1992 by the
National Conference to lead a transition government. After he was effectively displaced by
Mobutu, he and his supporters clung to the legal fiction that he remained prime minister by
virtue of the National Conference. Kabila could hardly have endorsed the conference without
accepting Tshisekedi, although had he done so, he would have gained the immediate support
of a vast part of the population for whom the National Conference remained the one
legitimate political basis for transition.
The rejection of Tshisekedi did not occur at once. During the fighting, tentative efforts to
create an understanding between the two leaders collapsed in mutual recriminations.
Strangely, the resentment revolved around an unanswered phone call from Kabila to
Tshisekedi during which he was reportedly in the bathroom. But once the alliance arrived in
Kinshasa, its leaders seemed intent on driving Tshisekedi away. Kabila's advance man in
Kinshasa, Deogratias Bugera, a Zairian Tutsi with designs on the job of prime minister, was
sent to "negotiate" with the opposition leader. Kabila himself never met with Tshisekedi.
Eventually, Tshisekedi reacted to the insult by rejecting the government and publicly
appealing to the xenophobia that he had previously helped to allay.

Acknowledgment would have been awkward for another reason. Kabila's strength and
ideological commitment are based on pan-Africanism and regional solidarity. In many ways
he seems frozen in the 1960s events that formed him intellectually, including the betrayal of
Patrice Lumumba, the independence leader whose death is attributed by many to the CIA. But
for most Congolese -- who were not even born when he was killed in 1961 -- Lumumba is no
more than a distant historical figure. It is life under Mobutu, not the struggle against
imperialism, that shaped their psyches.
Civil society, which promoted the National Conference and remains its strongest proponent, is
deeply tied in its thinking and its sources of support to the West. It is in essence a liberal,
pluralist movement linked through churches, nongovernmental organizations, and donors to

4
the United States and Western Europe. For Kabila, this is both foreign and potentially
threatening.
Many of Kabila's closest advisers also arrived with a rhetoric intact from the 1960s liberation
struggles and a willing ness to apply it to economics, politics, and morality. ADFL
reeducation programs followed the rebels across the country, offering a muddled Marxist
analysis of Congolese society to the vast crowds that gathered to hear. The programs' 10
"lessons" explain the failure of the Lumumbist revolution (over reliance on foreign support
and ethnic particularism, among other reasons), the purpose of the renewed struggle (to seize
power), and the meaning of class struggle.

It is unclear how the lessons relate to the country's mass impoverishment and economic
stagnation. The solution offered by many of Kabila's advisers is an economic development
program based on authoritarian centralized planning. Some of the "new" ideas even predate
independence. A month after taking power, Kabila's chief of staff, Aubert Mukendi, a
venerable intellectual and courageous figure in the Zairian opposition, crafted a vision of
enforced building and agricultural development taken intact from his childhood under the
colonial authority. When asked why the Congolese would conform to this script, he spoke
glowingly of the whip, which had made its appearance in the first weeks following liberation.
It was by the whip that soldiers brought calm to the airport, imposed summary justice in city
neighborhoods, and set out to enforce a new and foreign moral code.

The short-lived effort to install a new morality was one of the most peculiar contributions of
the alliance. Although the stories were certainly exaggerated, even Mukendi spoke with relish
of drunken men whipped in front of their families. Girls were whipped and undressed in
public for wearing clothes deemed indecent. The people, how ever, appear to have quickly
convinced the authorities to give up the whip.

THE LESS KNOWN OF TWO EVILS

The bitter public reaction to Kabila's rule hid the delicate psychological transition that was
under way. There was certainly exhilaration at the departure of Mobutu and his thugs.
Overnight, the daily extortion and official banditry had come to an end. Yet the demon
Mobutu had defined political life for more than 30 years; it was hard to adjust.

The confusion was evident wherever people gathered. A group of civil society organizations
from around the country met in June, barely a month after the ADFL took power. One speaker
after another tripped over the name of the country -- and this was one of the popular changes.
The tone of resentment was unchanged from a month before. It sometimes seemed as if
Kabila was being blamed for problems that had existed for 20 years.

But in some ways the situation really had grown worse. The struggle to survive Mobutism and
replace it had given birth to one of the most dynamic civil societies in all of sub-Saharan
Africa. Human rights groups, women's organizations, development groups, and church
activists through out the country had grown in confidence and prominence through the
struggle. They transformed the system: holding government abuses in check, negotiating the
release of detainees, providing assistance to prisoners abandoned by the state. What ever
functioned in Zaire did so because of informal networks, frequently operated by civil society.
Suddenly the networks were closed. No one knew the name of the local military commander
or whether he spoke a familiar language. A new band of security police, political operatives,
5
and military authorities had come to town. In many cases they were struggling among
themselves for control.
It isn't surprising that the population could not-figure them out.
Out of suspicion or misunderstanding, the new leaders exacerbated the problems. It was
common knowledge that judges and prosecutors were corrupt, so in a number of areas the
alliance leaders closed the courts and turned matters over to the newly formed internal
security service -- most of whose rank and file came from the old security service. From the
outside it looked like a return to the way Mobutu had run the justice system for 20 years. As
local residents knew, corruption was a relative matter. So long as the nongovernmental human
rights groups kept their eyes on the courts and maintained access to detention centers, the
most flagrant violations were avoidable. In many regions the new authorities backtracked
quickly and turned matters over to the courts, although they continued to block prisons and
detention centers.
People also felt distanced from the new government, which was packed with returning exiles,
unfamiliar with and suspicious of the events of recent years in the country. The minister of
justice had spent his entire career in Belgium; the minister of cooperation, in the United
Kingdom; and the minister of the inte rior, in the United States. A number of ministers had
dubious histories. Minister of Justice Celestin Lwangy, for example, was implicated in a legal
scandal in Belgium. The minister of cooperation, Thomas Kanza, was persona non grata in
the United States, where he had lost and refused to pay a substantial court judgment. They
were oblivious to the grating impact of their return. One official of the Ministry of
Reconstruction shocked the June gathering of civil society by calmly explaining that he had
left 20 years earlier because it was impossible to live in the country.

BLOOD ON MANY HANDS

The Congolese were not alone in struggling to understand and cope with their new leaders.
The United Nations was involved in a similar struggle with suspicious and uncooperative
government officials. It did not help that the first area of tension was the fate of Hutu refugees
reportedly massacred during the rebellion. On August 24, 1997, a team of UN investigators
arrived in Kinshasa to begin investigating the massacres. It was a long and tortuous path that
had led to their arrival. In deference to the new government, UN Secretary General Kofi
Annan made unprecedented compromises, shaking up the UN human rights apparatus and
raising his personal stake in the outcome. By the time the team arrived, the investigation had
become the single most important test of the new government's legitimacy; the United States
and the European Union had explicitly conditioned aid on cooperation with the investigation.

The war and the refugee problem were inextricably linked. Whatever Kabila's goal, ending
the security crisis along their borders was the central war aim for Rwanda, Burundi, and
Uganda. The international community was in an awkward position. Although it recognized
the security threat posed by the Hutu refugees -- and its impotence in ending it -- it continued
to treat the problem as primarily a humanitarian concern. As fighting displaced refugees in
southern Zaire and moved closer to the camps in the north in the fall of 1996, pressure
mounted for a multilateral force to create safety corridors to allow refugees to return home or
seek asylum elsewhere. Already skeptical of the international community's motives, regional
leaders were let down entirely when it turned out that the multilateral force would not even
disarm the returning Hutus. In a race with Canadian UN envoy Raymond Chretien, who was

6
in the region to negotiate the terms of the intervention, the rebel forces deftly attacked the
refugee camps, sending as many as 600,000 Hutus racing into Rwanda in November 1996 in
what constituted the largest "voluntary" return of refugees in history.
At that moment, the United States ambassador to Rwanda, Robert Gribben, a staunch backer
of the Rwandan government, declared the refugee problem settled. The momentum for an
international force disappeared. Still, as many as 450,000 refugees were unaccounted for,
presumably fleeing into western Zaire. Refugee organizations were critical of both the ADFL
and the United States, accusing the latter of disinformation.
In February and March 1997, refugees began to stream out into the open, creating makeshift
camps nearly 400 miles west of where they had begun their trek. Though many had died and
others were frail, the mystery was solved and tensions began to dissipate, until one camp after
another was attacked and refugees further dispersed. One of the most dramatic incidents
occurred just south of Kisangani where about 80,000 refugees had gathered during the month
of April. Rebels claimed villagers attacked the refugees after Hutu militants killed six local
people. For four days, rebel troops sealed off the area. Afterward, all evidence of the camps
and refugees disappeared. Many of the refugees continued 600 miles farther, through
extraordinarily hostile terrain without dependable roads, to arrive in the western Zaire
province of Equateur. There, in mid-May, in and around the provincial capital of Mbandaka,
the best-documented slaughters occurred.

Meanwhile, Kabila was busy holding off an international investigation into the massacres. A
preliminary report issued on April 2, 1997, by UN Special Rapporteur Roberto Garreton
identified 40 massacre sites in eastern Zaire and recommended further investigation. The
Commission on Human Rights, the UN'S principal human rights body, called on Garreton to
direct an investigation together with two other high-level UN rapporteurs. When they traveled
to the region with forensic experts in early May, the investigation was blocked. In the first of
many excuses to follow, Kabila's team accused Garreton of bias and insisted that he be
replaced.
There was a telling irony in the attack on Garreton. If he had a failing, it was to err on the side
of the activist. But he did so with equanimity.
He had been among the first and most significant figures to call attention to the problems
faced by the Banyamulenge, an unpopular cause among Zairian activists at the time. His past
efforts were entirely overlooked by the ADFL leaders. United States diplomats gave support
to the ADFL claims, accusing Garreton of speculative reporting and a lack of balance.
Stranger still, however, was the behavior of Secretary General Annan, who gave in to the
pressure in the least diplomatic way, essentially brushing Garreton aside to create a separate
investigative mission under his own authority. In any event, the Congolese government
quickly saved Garreton's reputation by inventing new reasons to obstruct the investigation.
Within days of its arrival in Kinshasa, the authorities objected to the composition of the new
UN team led by the former president of the Supreme Court of Togo, Atsu-Koffi Amega,
rejected the unarmed UN security personnel, and insisted that the mission await a parallel
investigation by the Organization of African Unity. Once these hurdles were overcome, new
ones were found. Finally, the team sought to begin the investigation only to find that travel
agents were prohibited from selling them tickets.

7
The battle erupted into the open over the team's plan to begin the investigation in the area of
Mbandaka, the site of the most recent massacre reports and the one area in which no security
protection would be necessary. There was no reasonable argument against doing so.
Nevertheless, the team received little sympathy -- in fact, United States and UN officials
complained of the obstinacy of the team members. An intense lobbying effort was launched in
Kinshasa and New York to force the team to back off from Mbandaka.
On October 1, Annan recalled the team for consultations, during which time Kabila again
agreed to all the terms of the investigation, including Mbandaka. On November 11, the team
returned, only to face further delays.

Once it finally deployed to the field, staged protests stopped its work.
Finally, at the end of March 1998, after a series of arrests, harassment, and the mysterious
disinterring of bodies from a mass grave site, the UN com plained, the forensic experts
withdrew, and, in early April, the secretary general again suspended the mission. By then
interest in the investigation had flagged and the failure of the mission went almost unreported
in the international press. The government, meanwhile, denied that there were any problems
and accused the UN of trying to destabilize the country.

"YOU HAVE TO HELP US HELP YOU"

The massacre investigation was an unfortunate test of Kabila's government since most
observers, foreign and Congolese, do not believe Kabila or the ADFL had much to do with
the refugee massacres -- except to the extent that they fought a proxy battle for Rwanda.
Circumstantial evidence suggests that Rwandan soldiers -- especially Rwandan officers --
were on the spot where massacres occurred. Local residents recall names like "Commander
David" or "Colonel Wilson" and soldiers who spoke neither French nor any other Zairian
national language -- except Swahili, which is widely spoken in the Ugandan and Rwandan
armies. Moreover, the Zairians would have had little motivation to slaughter Hutus.
If this is true -- or even partially true -- then Kabila probably could not have allowed the
investigation even had he wanted to. The "six, tall, English-speaking men" alone would see to
that. The pressure placed on Kabila merely forced him to behave unreasonably, souring future
relations with the international community.

This explains in part why American diplomats tried to make Kabila look good. But it begs the
question of why the United States put no public pressure on Rwanda either during or after the
massacres. By 1995 there was a strong pro-Rwanda lobby in the State Department and an
outspoken ambassador (Robert Gribben) in the field. The United States had become Rwanda's
primary supporter in the international community and viewed the war sympathetically. It
knew that Rwanda was training Zairian Tutsis and planning to break up the refugee camps.
The most damning praise came from Paul Kagame, who told the July 9, 1997, Washington
Post that the United States took "the right decisions to let it proceed." Before Kagame
acknowledged to the Post that his troops had fought in Zaire, the American ambassador was
one of the last people still denying it.

In contrast to its interest in Rwanda, the United States had substantially withdrawn from
Zaire. Since 1991 the American embassy in Kinshasa had operated with a nearly skeleton
staff. Aid to the government had stopped.
8
With the reduced investment came bureaucratic disengagement. It was hard to find two
people in the State Department in Washington who followed Zaire on a daily basis.
When the war broke out, there was an almost comic contrast between the messages coming
from Kigali, where the United States embassy supported the war, and from Kinshasa, where
Ambassador Daniel Simpson attacked it as a foreign invasion. As the war progressed, the
United States role remained confused, and bureaucratic turf battles erupted between the two
embassies.
While foreign allies (and rivals) such as France saw a coherent plan to back Kabila and bring
in United States business, the most significant United States diplomatic initiative --
negotiations to bring Mobutu and Kabila together to negotiate a cease-fire -- would have
effectively stopped Kabila and revived the authority of Mobutu. Only Mobutu's obstinacy and
the incompetence of his team kept the negotiations from proceeding. When the negotiations
collapsed, Kabila was left standing arm in arm with President Nelson Mandela, the most
powerful endorsement of his new statesman status.

The next boost to Kabila's fortunes also came from the United States. One month before the
fall of Kinshasa, Kabila signed a nearly $1 billion contract with American Mineral Fields
(AMF), a Hope, Arkansas-based mining firm. The effect was explosive: a company from the
hometown of the United States president, a contract for more money than anyone had
invested in the country for 20 years, and all for a rebel leader who was still hundreds of miles
from the capital. Zairians immediately saw the hand of the United States government behind
the deal. So, it turned out, did Europeans and Canadians.
Not surprisingly, little if any money actually flowed into Kabila's hands as a result of the
contract or any other deals he had struck with mineral companies. In fact, relations with AMF
soured soon after Kabila took power. The contract with AMF was partially renounced, and
lawsuits were threatened. At that point money was changing hands for speculation, lawyers'
fees, and payoffs, but there was no sign of actual investment in the country.
When Kabila finally came to power in Kinshasa, the United States was committed to
supporting him but was hamstrung by congressional limits on aid and frustrated by attacks
from the human rights community. The United States did help organize meetings of donors in
conjunction with the World Bank to create a multinational fund to support development
projects in the country. It also developed an innovative plan to support locally based efforts,
using former Peace Corps workers and others with strong personal links to the country.
In December, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright traveled to the region in an attempt to
focus attention on Africa's "new leaders" -- the military men who had taken power in Uganda,
Ethiopia, and Rwanda -- and, implicitly, to draw Kabila into that circle. Her trip was aimed in
part at building momentum in Congress to overcome skepticism about aid to Congo.
Unfortunately, Kabila refused to behave, embarrassing the secretary of state and setting in
motion a process that appears to be unraveling United States support for the leader. At a joint
press conference, the secretary of state tried deftly to deflect questions related to the political
repression occurring in the country. Kabila, however, used the opportunity to denounce the
political opposition and promise further measures to control it. He then fumed to Albright
with what journalists took to be a mocking grin and declared, "vive la democratie." In any
case, Africa's "new leaders" were not so sure that they wanted to include Kabila in the club. It

9
turned out, surprisingly, that they, too, viewed Kabila as inconsistent, undependable, and
paranoid -- surprising because, until then, people believed these leaders represented Kabila's
power base and that any paranoia was aimed at the West.
Albright returned from the trip defensive, disturbed more by the bad press than the erratic
behavior of her host. She was intent on pursuing a personal dialogue with Kabila, as she had
announced in Kinshasa. The opportunity presented itself two months later. Jesse Jackson,
President Bill Clinton's special envoy to Africa to promote democracy, chose to visit Congo,
where in addition to government officials he would meet with leaders of the opposition,
including Etienne Tshisekedi. Kabila and Foreign Minister Bizima Karaha repeatedly
postponed their meeting with Jackson and then, after his meeting with Tshisekedi, denounced
Jackson for violating diplomatic protocol. Soon after ward Tshisekedi was arrested and sent --
with a combine harvester and some seeds -- into internal exile.
(In announcing the measure, Agriculture Minister Mawapanga Mwananga said that "Etienne
Tshisekedi's patriotic sense and capacity as a leader must be put to use by making him
contribute to the attainment of food security in our country.") Tshisekedi's arrest was probably
inevitable, although Jackson's visit must have irked Kabila. After the arrest Albright called
Kabila and reportedly spoke to him for 40 very unsatisfying minutes. By the time President
Clinton visited the region in late March, the possibility of including Congo on the itinerary
was entirely excluded. Even a meeting with Kabila was controversial. And the message that
Clinton conveyed, "we want you to succeed, but you have to help us help you," sounded like a
last plea to save a broken friendship.

POCKETS OF RESISTANCE
Recent months have seen the pace of repression increase in Congo. Human rights reports have
been seized and activists intimidated and beaten.

Political figures have been arrested or, as in the case of Etienne Tshisekedi, sent into internal
exile. Even Clinton's plea appeared to have had little effect. Soon after Kabila returned from
meeting with the president, he banned the nation's leading human rights organization and
denied legal registration to more than a hundred others, arrested a leading journalist, picked a
fight with Belgium, and accused the United Nations of subversion.

Yet the political space created by seven years of opposition to Mobutu endures. The press
headlines its opposition and community groups speak out and publish their positions. The
churches remain a base of independent thinking. In the government itself there is a core of
bright, well-intentioned young cadres who retain their earlier hope of effecting positive
change. Whether their efforts and the space for freedom survive is increasingly unlikely.
Judging by Kabila's recent course, this space will last only until he can close it with impunity.
Unless his erstwhile regional allies help him see his way to a new policy of inclusion, they
may soon be in the position of trying to contain new security threats emanating from Congo.

10