Congo (62 page)

The ban on Christian names came as a blow to the church. “Mobutu wanted to destroy the power of the Catholic Church,” Zizi said. “He wanted to replace the saints with the ancestors.” At first the church had shown itself loyal to the new regime. One month after the coup, Cardinal Malula solemnly stated: “Mr. President, the church recognizes your authority, because authority is God-given. We will faithfully abide by the laws you see fit to pass.”
⁵¹
But six years later, on January 12, 1972, this same Malula delivered a cutting speech against the regime. Mobutu was furious. He immediately expelled Malula from the Order of the Leopard, sent him into exile abroad, and forbade Christians to pray for their archbishop. To little avail. The church long remained one of the regime’s most vociferous critics. The bishops enjoyed the backing of an international network and they also ran the schools. States usually have two means for molding their citizens: the schools and the media. Mobutu had only the media. He therefore did all he could to curb the power of the church (mission schools had to have a native headmaster, crucifixes were burned, seminarians had to join the MPR youth movement, Christian young people’s organizations were banned, Christmas became a normal working day, even all religious gatherings, with the exception of mass and confession, were taboo at a certain point). And when none of this had the desired effect, he simply offered the bishops top government positions or bought them jeeps and limousines.

Mobutu’s cultural policies did not explicitly stipulate what the Congolese were to believe, and ancestor worship received no detailed national theology, but Kimbanguism, the religion persecuted so heavily under the Belgians, flourished as never before. It was seen as an authentic African religion. The Kimbanguists’ own organization developed into a miniature version of the state: hypercentralistic and hierarchical. The religious leader was venerated in song and dance, just like Mobutu. The underdogs of the colonial era now became the heralds of Mobutuism.
⁵²

R
ELYING ON ONE
’
S OWN IDENTITY
was a lovely idea, but of course also fraught with catches. Why did Mobutu promote the native kitchen, when his own favorite dish was still
ossobuco alla romana
? What was so authentic about that gruesome
animation politique
, which he had only copied from Kim Il-sung of North Korea? What was so Zaïrian about the notorious
abacost
, which was really nothing more than a Mao outfit with more color to it, the finest examples of which came from Arzoni, a textile plant in Zellik, close to Brussels? What was so typically African about the
pagne
—made from Indonesian batik and praised by the nuns for the way it covered the breasts—the most colorfast variations of which (the famous
wax hollandaise)
came from the Vlisco plant in Helmond, the Netherlands? What made Camille Feruzi an authentic musician? He played the accordion, for God’s sake, and he had obviously listened to a lot of Tino Rossi.

Was this
recours à l’authenticité
then simply a ruse? A charming ideology meant to disguise a deeper reality? Yes, it was. And that deeper reality was: Mobutu had started caring less and less about his people. He was so busy safeguarding his position that he neglected major governmental duties. He was so caught up with handing out cars, appointments, honorariums, and ambassadorial posts that the state treasury was drained. Yes, one could speak of economic recovery, but that was due more to Vietnam than to prudent policy making. It was a chance period of economic boom on which Mobutu was able to surf along in comfort, but it in no way served to combat poverty. He used the wealth of revenues to keep his own power base intact. In essence, he owed his power to an extreme form of pork-barrel politics. Mobutu perched atop a pyramid of clientalism where, directly or indirectly, thousands ate from his hand. He and his retinue were bound to each other by a network of mutual debts and favors. In exchange for benefits, his followers gave him the loyalty he needed to remain in power. Mobutu needed them and they needed Mobutu. A monstrous alliance. Mobutu was a slave to his own thirst for power.

In Zaïre, therefore, a true state bourgeoisie arose, a large group of individuals who owed their prosperity to the regime.
⁵³
In the most literal sense, the state served as economic base for this new middle class, which did not hesitate to diplay its newfound wealth in the form of expensive cars, lovely homes, and a luxurious lifestyle.
⁵⁴
Those who drove around in a Jaguar or Mercedes received the nickname “Onassis.” “And anyone who felt a nasty cough coming on flew to his family physician in Brussels,” Zizi said.

This clientalism went well as long as there was money. The nationalization of Union Minière had produced huge revenues for Mobutu, but his attempts to retain power were consuming more of that money all the time. “I used to have, as it were, no family at all,” he moaned once, “no one cared a whit about me! But since I have become president, it seems that half of Zaïre has discovered that they could very well be related to me in one way or another, and therefore have a right to my assistance.”
⁵⁵
All of this took place, of course, to the disadvantage of the common Zaïrian, who was unable to recall any family ties with the head of state. To keep his growing clientele satisfied, Mobutu had to keep on finding new sources of income. Foreign investments, bilateral agreements, and international loans came in handy.
⁵⁶
The more needy his country was, the more he was able to rake in. Poverty pays. It was an economic jackpot.

But it was still not enough. On November 30, 1973, he made a drastic decision. He had just returned from a tour of China, where he had seen the country’s planned economy. “The peril is more white than yellow,” he said upon his return. “Politically we are a free people, culturally we are becoming that, but in economic terms we are not at all the masters of our fate.”
⁵⁷
Mobutu began a process of “Zaïrianization”: those small- and medium-sized businesses, plantations, and trading companies still in the hands of foreigners, a few thousand enterprises in all, were expropriated and given to his faithful followers.
⁵⁸
From one day to the next, Portuguese restaurant owners, Greek shopkeepers, Pakistani TV repairmen, or Belgian coffee growers saw the work of a lifetime disappear. At the head of their company came a Zaïrian from the president’s circles who usually had no sense of how to run a business. In the best of cases he allowed the original owner to work on as manager and came by each month to collect the profits. In the worst cases, he immediately emptied the till and sold all the stocks on hand.

The consequences were grotesque. An elegant lady who never left the capital might suddenly be running a quinine plantation on the other side of the country. Gentlemen who couldn’t tell a cow from a bull became heads of a cattle company. Generals were allowed to run fisheries, and diplomats soft-drink factories. Minister of Information Sakombi became the owner of a series of newsstands and movie theaters, but also of a few sawmills. Bisengimana received the Prince de Ligne plantations on Idjwi, which comprised one-third of the island itself.
⁵⁹
Our friend Jamais Kolonga, a small fish in the network around the president, became head of a lumberyard in his native district. The party animal from the capital was now suddenly required to manage a stock of tropical hardwood. Some made a mess of it, others rose to the occasion. In one fell swoop, pop star Franco became the new owner of Willy Pelgrim’s recording empire, a sector with which he was indeed familiar.
⁶⁰
Thanks to Zaïrianization, Jeannot Bemba became the country’s wealthiest businessman. He was made chairman of the employers’ association and even started his own airline, Scibe Zaïre. Finally, Mobutu treated himself to fourteen plantations spread all over the country. He controlled a quarter of the production of cacao and rubber, had twenty-five thousand people on the payroll, and so became the nation’s third biggest employer. Thanks in part to the mining revenues, he was now estimated to be the world’s eighth richest man.
⁶¹

But Mobutu saw his country, and it was not good. In late 1974 he switched to “radicalization.” Ailing companies were now taken over by the state. That way they could continue to yield revenue and with those yields he could stay on friendly terms with his friends. It had not been a good idea, letting them run the companies. But this new economic reform worked out badly as well. Without asking for it, Mobutu, that close friend of the Americans, suddenly found himself stuck with a communist economy. By means of a third reform, this one dubbed “retrocession”(rhetoric was the only branch of business still solidly on its feet), he tried to give the plucked and dressed companies back to their original owners, but they were no longer interested in the least.
⁶²

The social consequences were disastrous. As brilliant a communicator as Mobutu was, he was an equally great flop as an economist. The fiasco of Zaïrianization caused unemployment to rise. Those who still had a job, for example as civil servant or teacher, could no longer get by.
⁶³
Everyone moonlighted, as bricklayer, chauffeur, or beer vendor. Their wives tried to earn a little through microcommerce. They would spend the whole day on the market, sitting beside a little pile of charcoal or onions. They bought bread at the wholesale bakery and carried it on their heads around town until it had all been sold. They stayed at home with the children and started a little shop where the neighbors could come to buy tea bags, matches, and soap. They let their homes be used as depots for a brewery or a cement factory, and sold soft drinks or bags of cement at a tiny profit. Everyone tried to make ends meet. Even if that meant turning to their families for help.

In 1974 things came to a head. The end of the Vietnam War resulted in a dramatic fall in copper prices. What’s more, the start of the oil crisis was being felt in Zaïre too. Prices shot up. The entire process of Zaïrianization contributed even more to inflation, for now that a class of the super-rich had arisen, shopkeepers pumped their prices up as well. For the average citizen, however, this meant a further decline in spending power. In 1960 an unskilled worker had to work one day in order to pay for a kilo (2.2 pounds) of freshwater fish; by the mid-1970s that same worker needed to work ten days to do so.
⁶⁴
Food became unaffordable and consumed the entire family budget. Farming in the interior had been neglected. Why should a farmer cultivate his land when there were no more roads to bring his goods to market? Zaïre, one of the world’s most fertile countries, therefore became highly dependent on expensive, imported food. Cans of tomato paste were unloaded in the harbors, while in the interior, tons of beefsteak tomatoes hung rotting on the plant.

Mobutu’s promise of economic recovery had ended up in catastrophe. One of the MPR’s early slogans had been:
Servir et non se server
(Serve, but not to serve yourself), but Mobutu and his clan served themselves very well indeed. His popularity declined. The bread was running out. And what about the circuses?

A
FTER HIS ADVENTURE WITH BAUDOUIN
’
S SWORD
, Longin Ngwadi returned to Kikwit. He began work as a salesman for Bata, the international shoe chain that had shops in Africa. One day he saw a pretty girl come into the shop. She looked at a few models, then went off to buy fish. A few minutes later Longwin closed the shop for lunch and went after her. She was just finishing her shopping. Fish was still affordable in those days. He spoke to her the immortal words:

“I’ll pay for your fish, if you become my fiancée.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really?”

“Then I’ll give you my address.”

That evening he visited her at her home. She called in her father and her uncles. The family first wanted to see who this oddball was.

“I am ready to take this girl as my wife,” Ngwadi said.

“Do you have money?” the family asked.

“Yes.”

That was not entirely true, but his European boss at the Bata shop was willing to advance him the dowry. It wasn’t the first time he’d done that for an employee. Ngwadi had to pay back a little each month. Bata had a good reputation, it was a serious shop. The father and uncles gave their approval.

Ngwadi worked for Bata for many years. Meanwhile, his wife, because that happened to be the tradition, worked the land: she grew corn, manioc, and peanuts. The young couple had everything they needed. The first of six children was born in 1969. A few years later Ngwadi bought a big lot, thirty meters by forty (nearly 100 by 130 feet), and built a spacious clay house, the same house where I interviewed him. “That was the wealthiest period of my life.”

But then came Zaïrianization. “My European boss left. Bata was taken over by a Zaïrian. He ran the company. That was not good. Bata went bankrupt.” Hard times came. Increasingly often, Ngwadi went to pray at the grave of Kuku Pemba, a dangerous spot, a mythical spot. Kuku Pemba had been the first man from that region to see a white man. In times of famine, people turned to something higher. Kuku Pemba was seen as a powerful ancestor; even Mobutu was afraid of him.

In 1974, for the first time in years, Ngwadi went back to the capital. “I went to Kinshasa to see the fight. I saw Ali praying too. He was a Muslim and wore a little chain around his neck. Foreman had a big dog with him, like a European. I was sitting in the stadium. The match was held in the middle of the night. Foreman was stronger. Ali went to the ropes. He did that throughout the whole match. Foreman was swollen up like a pig. It was a fantastic fight, fantastic!”