Congo (59 page)

Mobutu had won the struggle for the throne, but during the first years of his regime he systematically eliminated his rivals from the First Republic. Even Lumumba, five years after his death, had to be neutralized. His backers were still far too numerous, and not only in the east of the country. Mobutu responded with a masterful move that displayed both strategic brilliance and bottomless cynicism: he, Mobutu, the man who had played a key role in Lumumba’s murder, now pronounced that same Lumumba to be . . . a national hero! During the celebration of the national holiday, the Congolese people heard Mobutu say, without a waver: “All honor and fame to this illustrious Congolese, to this great African, the first martyr of our economic independence: Patrice Emery Lumumba.”
¹⁵
Boulevard Léopold II, one of Kinshasa’s main arterials, was promptly redubbed Boulevard Patrice Emery Lumumba. And it bears that name still. At the top of the boulevard, a huge statue of Lumumba stands waving to the mass of honking cars.

The move bore witness to a craftiness beyond compare. Just as Mobutu had neutralized Tshombe in 1964 by employing him in his fight against the Simbas, he now neutralized the person of Lumumba by means of posthumous rehabilitation. The Lumumbists had the wind knocked out of them: their hero had suddenly become the enemy’s hero too! Mobutu had, as it were, dragged him onto the back of the scooter of his coup d’état. Neutralization by encapsulation would, in the next thirty years, become one of the favorite tricks of his dictatorship.

Neutralization was also a key theme in the first months of his regime. After banning the political parties, he now put the parliament out to pasture as well. To the MPs and senators he said: “Go now and get some rest, take a five-year break!”
¹⁶
He, in the meantime, would see to the country’s legislation. The provinces, too, had their turn. The proliferation of miniprovinces was a waste of money, Mobutu felt. He preferred to keep things simple and so reduced their number from twenty-one to nine, all ruled over now by Mobutu adepts. This centralization was intended to counter the centrifugal forces of secession and tribalism. And the ball kept rolling. Congo was transformed from a federal, civil democracy into a decentralized military dictatorship. At the time of the takeover Mobutu had appointed General Léonard Mulamba as his prime minister, but after a time saw the need to neutralize that function as well. Zizi Kabongo knew the real reason: “The people loved Mulamba more than Mobutu. That’s why he sent him away. Mulumba became the new ambassador to Japan. That’s how it always went. Ostensible promotions, tassels and fringe, money, all kinds of favors just to keep people quiet.” As a result, Mobutu—in addition to legislative and military authority—now assumed executive power too.

But a public hanging? That was altogether different from treating a rival to a remote ambassadorial post in a sumptuous villa. “No one thought it would really happen,” Zizi said. “Mobutu’s power base was still fairly shaky. All he had was the army, and the four condemned men all had tribesmen in that army. They could have mutinied.” Mobutu hesitated. For a few days he avoided his wife, fearing that she would talk him out of it. Archbishop Joseph-Albert Malula, too, had requested that the men be pardoned. Even the pope had called. But to give in now would be a sign of weakness . . . . Mobutu’s favorite book in those days was Machiavelli’s
Principe
.

That same day, a military brass band played on the gallows field. The sea of people looked on as a jeep drove up. The four condemned men were in it! When they reached the platform, two women began to scream in despair. The “conspirators” were family of theirs. They had to be removed from the grounds, along with their children. The women were hysterical, their torsos were bared, their hair hanging down over their faces. All eyes were now fixed on the gallows. The first to climb it was the executioner, a burly man dressed all in black, with a black hood over his head. Immediately afterward the crowd saw a tall, blindfolded man on the steps. He was wearing only a pair of blue soccer shorts with white and red stripes. It was Évariste Kimba, former prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo. At the foot of the platform a priest had heard his confession, beside the four coffins that lay in wait. The executioner read the verdict. Kimba stood straight. The noose was placed around his neck and the trapdoor fell open. Horrified cries went up from the crowd, followed by a deathly silence. Kimba’s death throes lasted more than twenty minutes. While the crowd looked on in silence, the former prime minister’s body continued thrashing about. It took an eternity. From the jeep, the three remaining condemned men could see the fate that awaited them.

During the final hanging, panic broke out in the crowd. The people began running, knocking down the soldiers as they went. Children and adults stumbled and fell in the stampede. Within only a few minutes, tens of thousands of people ran away. When it was over, the field was dotted with groaning bodies and lost shoes. A little farther away a fourth coffin was being nailed shut. On that day, June 2, 1966, the people no longer cheered for Mobutu, but trembled in fear of him.

“Because it is difficult to unite love and fear in one person, it is much safer to be feared than loved, when—of the two—either must be dispensed with,” Machiavelli had written.

“F
ROM THEN ON
, everybody lived in fear,” Zizi told me. “The state intelligence service became very powerful. No one dared to dine at the restaurant at the zoo anymore, the place where politicians and diplomats had always met, because they were afraid of being spied on by the waiters. Even at memorial services, we were afraid of the little boys who sold peanuts. Maybe they were spies. Mobutu used those hangings to set an example. ‘No one toys with my power.’ He wanted to strike fear into people’s hearts and affirm his own status.”

In an interview two days later, Mobutu said: “With us, respect for the chief is sacred. A striking example had to be set.” The whole business of secessions, rebellions, and dismissals could not be allowed to start all over again. “When a chief decides something, it is decided, period.”
¹⁷

Mobutu made sure that the cornerstone of his authority, the army, lacked for nothing. There would no mutiny against him. Unrest was immediately counteracted with money. The army underwent drastic modernization. New waves of recruits received new opportunities. In addition to an officers’ academy, he also organized specialized military training. Kisangani had been liberated by Belgian paratroopers. His army, Mobutu decided, would have parachutists as well.

In Kinshasa I spoke with Alphonsine Mosolo Mpiaka. She had been the first female paratrooper in the Congolese army. In 1966 she was twenty-five. “We received our ground training here in Ndjili. A center for paratroopers was set up there. Our instructors were Israelis.” America backed Mobutu, so Israel did too—to the great annoyance of the Arab world. “For the jumps themselves, we had to go to Israel. I did twelve. I was the first woman; after me, Mobutu recruited another twenty-four girls. The team had to be mixed, ethnically too. A couple of Bakongos, a couple of Balubas, a few from Katanga.” Detribalization here as well. Mobutu wanted an army that no longer thought along tribal lines. Loyalty was something he paid for. “We were highly respected and extremely pampered. My billet-money was enough for me to buy a plot of land with a house on it. But I never had to jump in the course of combat, only for the parades here in Kinshasa.”
¹⁸

Her expertise, however, still came in handy. The rebellion in the east of the country was not yet fully under control, but Mobutu preferred to leave that to the white mercenaries. Bob Denard and Jean Schramme did most of the work and were decorated afterward. Schramme later turned against him and tried to “save” Congo singlehandedly, but that adventure met an ignominious end.
¹⁹
And once the rebellion was over, the national army was able to shake off its white soldiers of fortune once and for all. In late 1967 Gaston Soumialot and Christophe Gbenye took to their heels, and all of Congo once again fell under the authority of the capital city. All of Congo? In its eastern reaches, a mountainous region close to Lake Tanganyika, Laurent-Désiré Kabila continued to rule the roost. But after Che Guevara’s departure, his “revolutionary” pocket of resistance between Fizi and Baraka came to resemble the comic-book village of Asterix and Obelix: autonomous, to be sure, but above all harmless.

Congo was pacified and from 1968 on Mobutu began restoring civil authority.
²⁰
He himself even began appearing in public out of uniform. For the first time he was seen sporting the accessories that would become his trademark: the characteristic leopard-skin hat, and in his hand a carved ebony walking stick. The traditional symbols of chiefdom.

Pierre Mulele figured it was safe to return home. After his peasants’ revolt in Kwilu in 1964 he had fled to Brazzaville. In 1968, however, Mobutu granted him amnesty. Justin Bomboko, the minister of foreign affairs and an insider of the Binza Group, assured him that he would be welcomed like a brother. In September of that year Mulele crossed the river and received a festive reception on the near shore. He was invited to stay at Bomboko’s house. Three days later, a contingent of soldiers came to pick him up for a big appearance at the soccer stadium. The impassioned and self-willed freedom fighter would be allowed to speak to the people there. Instead, the soldiers drove him to an army base where he was tortured gruesomely that same evening. They cut off his ears and nose. They gouged out his eyes and chopped off his genitals. While he was still alive, they then cut off his arms and legs. A few hours later, a sack filled with his remains was plunged into the big river.
²¹

K
ASAVUBU
, T
SHOMBE
, K
IMBA
, Gbenye, Soumialot, Mulele: one by one, within a few years’ time, Mobutu’s former rivals left the scene. To consolidate his new-won power, though, he also had to make sure that no new rivals arose. In 1967, therefore, his absolute sway became firmly embedded in a new constitution. “The Congolese people and I,” he once told parliament, “are one and the same.”
²²

The days that followed were bitter ones. Just outside the capital, on a leafy green hillside, lay the University of Lovanium. While Mobutu was busy establishing absolute sway, the student movement continued its incredibly brave attempts to knock the pins out from under him. The May 1968 student revolts in Paris, Louvain, and Amsterdam, so crucial to Europe, seem like little more than frivolous happenings when compared with the dedication and intensity of the Congolese student movement. Mobutu had succeeded in silencing all countermovements. The trade unions had been bound and gagged; the church was keeping its head down. Only the students still dared to make their presence known.
²³

In April 1967 Mobutu and his staff set up the Mouvement Populaire de la Révolution (MPR); the primary text was written on May 20. The MPR was called a popular movement, but was in fact merely Mobutu’s political party. Its meetings were held outside the capital, in the little town of Nsele. Within a few years this riverside village would expand into a vast conference center with white, modernistic visitors’ quarters and impressive meeting halls. It became a sanctum of Mobutism. The text drafted on May 20 was sent into the world under the title “Manifeste de la Nsele” and became familiar to all in the course of time. In analogy to Mao’s
Little Red Book
, it was published and distributed widely in the form of a little green book, to serve as the catechism of the new regime. From now on, the text stated, every inhabitant of Congo belonged to the MPR. “Olinga olinga te, ozali na kati ya MPR,” people sighed. “Whether you like it or not, you’re a member by definition.”
²⁴

At first Mobutu seemed to be making room for an opposition party, but he quickly abandoned that idea. Like so many African countries shortly after independence, Congo became a single-party state. The abrupt transition from a monolithic, colonial administration to a democratic, multiparty system had included no intermediate steps, which was precisely why it resulted in a fiasco. The MPR was out to reunite the people. “More than the class struggle, the union of all is the guarantee for progress,” the manifesto said.
²⁵
The entire nation had to be made enthusiastic about the country’s reconstruction. The inner core of the MPR consisted only of a group of young Mobutuist volunteers, but soon the party’s power reached astronomical heights. The MPR became the country’s supreme institution—so much so, in fact, that the line between party and state was obscured. “The MPR is the designation of the state,” Mobutu’s house ideologist went so far as to say.
²⁶
At the top one had the president and his cabinet, the extremely powerful Bureau du Président. Beneath that was the MPR Congress and the Political Bureau, followed by a legislative, executive, and judicial council. All titles had been changed. A cabinet minister was henceforth to be called a state commissioner, a governor was a regional commissioner, and a member of parliament a people’s commissioner. Every citizen was a party member, even the ancestors and the embryos.

The students were not at all keen about this. Mobutu was out to do away with organized politics, they noted rightly. In doing so, he was turning back the clock: during colonial times, too, there was only a bureaucracy, an administrative leviathan that maintained statistics and spewed reports but made no allowance for public participation. Congolese academic circles had welcomed the coup at first, but their enthusiasm quickly dried up. The most important student movement took a resolutely anti-imperialist stance. Lumumba became their hero, Mobutu their enemy. When American Vice President Hubert Humphrey visited the country in January 1968 and wanted to lay a wreath at the Lumumba monument, the students viewed that as a provocation. During the ensuing demonstration, many people were arrested.