The
Republic of Zaire ( ; ) was the name of the
present Democratic Republic of the
Congo
between 27 October 1971, and 17 May 1997.
The name of Zaire derives from the , itself an adaptation of the
Kongo word
nzere or
nzadi, or "the river that swallows all rivers".
Known as the
Belgian Congo up until
its independence in June 1960, unrest and rebellion plagued the new
government until 1965, when Lieutenant General
Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, by then
commander-in-chief of the national army, seized control of the
country and declared himself president for five years during what
is now called the
Congo Crisis. Mobutu
quickly consolidated his power and was elected unopposed as
president in 1970.
The Second Republic
In retrospective justification of his 1965 seizure of power, Mobutu
later summed up the record of the First Republic as one of "chaos,
disorder, negligence, and incompetence." Rejection of the legacy of
the First Republic went far beyond rhetoric. In the first two years
of its existence, the new regime turned to the urgent tasks of
political reconstruction and consolidation. Creating a new basis of
legitimacy for the state, in the form of a single party, came next
in Mobutu's order of priority. A third imperative was to expand the
reach of the state in the social and political realms, a process
that began in 1970 and culminated in the adoption of a new
constitution in 1974. By 1976, however, this
effort had begun to generate its own inner contradictions, thus
paving the way for the resurrection of a
Bula Matari ("the rocks breaker one")
system.
Self-proclaimed Father of the Nation
From 1965, Mobutu Sésé Seko dominated the political life of Congo
(Léopoldville), restructuring the state on more than one occasion,
and claiming the title of "Father of the Nation."
Joseph-Désiré Mobutu was born in the town of
Lisala
, on the Congo River
, on 14 October 1930. His father, Albéric
Gbemani, was a cook for a colonial magistrate in Lisala.
Despite
his birthplace, however, Mobutu belonged not to the dominant ethnic
group of that region but rather to the Ngbandi, a small ethnic
community whose domain lay far to the north, along the border with
the Central African
Republic
.
Mobutu
often referred to his humble background as the son of a cook and to
the reputation of his father's warrior and diviner uncle from the
village of Gbadolite
. In addition to his official name, Mobutu
was also given the name of his great-uncle, Sese Seko Nkuku wa za
Banga, meaning "all-conquering warrior, who goes from triumph to
triumph." When, under the authenticity policy of the early 1970s,
Zairians were obliged to adopt "authentic" names, Mobutu dropped
Joseph-Désiré and became Mobutu Sésé Seko Nkuku Ngbendu wa Za
Banga—or, more commonly, Mobutu Sésé Seko.
Mobutu, who had completed four years of primary school in
Léopoldville, took seven more years to reach the secondary level,
moving in and out of different schools. He had frequent conflicts
with the
Roman Catholic missionaries
whose schools he attended, and in 1950, at the age of nineteen, he
was definitively expelled. A seven-year disciplinary conscription
into the
Force Publique
followed.
Military service proved crucial in shaping Mobutu's career. Unlike
many recruits, he spoke excellent
French, which quickly won him a desk job. By
November 1950, he was sent to the school for noncommissioned
officers, where he came to know many members of the military
generation who would assume control of the army after the flight of
the Belgian officers in 1960. By the time of his discharge in 1956,
Mobutu had risen to the rank of sergeant-major, the highest rank
open to Congolese. He also had begun to write newspaper articles
under a pseudonym.
Mobutu returned to civilian life just as decolonization began to
seem possible. His newspaper articles had brought him to the
attention of
Pierre Davister, a
Belgian editor of the Léopoldville paper
L'Avenir (The Future.) At that time, a European
patron was of enormous benefit to an ambitious Congolese; under
Davister's tutelage, Mobutu became an editorial writer for the new
African weekly,
Actualités
Africaines. Davister later would provide valuable services by
giving favorable coverage to the Mobutu regime as editor of his own
Belgian magazine, Spécial.
Mobutu thus acquired visibility among the emergent African elite of
Léopoldville. Yet one portal to status in colonial society remained
closed to him: full recognition as an
évolué depended upon approval by the
Roman Catholic Church. Denied
this recognition, Mobutu rejected the church.
During 1949–60, politically ambitious young Congolese were busy
constructing political networks for themselves. Residence in
Belgium prevented Mobutu from the path of many of his peers at
home, who were building ethno-regional clientèles. But their
approach would have been unpromising for him in any case, since the
Ngbandi were a small and peripheral community, and among the so
called Ngala (Lingala-speaking immigrants in Léopoldville) such
figures as Jean Bolikango were potential opponents.
Mobutu pursued another
route, as Belgian diplomatic, intelligence, and financial interests
sought clients among the Congolese students and interns in Brussels
.
Fatefully, Mobutu also had met
Patrice
Lumumba, when the latter arrived in Brussels. He allied himself
with Lumumba (whose school background, like that of Mobutu,
inclined him to anticlericalism), when the Congolese National
Movement (
Mouvement
National Congolais – MNC) split into two wings identified,
respectively, with Lumumba and
Albert
Kalonji. By early 1960, Mobutu had been named head of the
MNC-Lumumba
office in Brussels. He attended the Round Table Conference on
independence held in Brussels in January 1960 and returned home
only three weeks before Independence Day, 30 June. When the army
mutinied against its Belgian officers, Mobutu was a logical choice
to help fill the void. Lumumba, elected prime minister in May 1960,
named as commander in chief a member of his own ethnic group,
Victor Lundula, but Mobutu was
Lumumba's choice as chief of staff.
During the crucial period of July August 1960, Mobutu built up
"his" national army by channeling foreign aid to units loyal to
him, by exiling unreliable units to remote areas, and by absorbing
or dispersing rival armies. He tied individual officers to him by
controlling their promotion and the flow of money for payrolls.
Lundula, older and less competitive, apparently did little to
prevent Mobutu.
After President Kasavubu dismissed Lumumba as premier on 5
September, and Lumumba sought to block this action through
parliament, Mobutu staged his first coup on 14 September.
On his own
authority (but with United
States
backing), he installed an interim government, the
so-called College of Commissioners, composed primarily of
university students and graduates, which replaced parliament for
six months in 1960–61.
During the next four years, as weak civilian governments rose and
fell in Léopoldville, real power was held behind the scenes by the
"Binza Group," a group of Mobutu supporters named for the
prosperous suburb where its members lived.
When in 1965, as in 1960, the division of power between president
and prime minister led to a stalemate and threatened the country's
stability, Mobutu again seized power (again with United States
backing). Unlike the first time, however, Mobutu assumed the
presidency, rather than remaining behind the scenes.
In an attempt at political reconstruction, Mobutu then undertook
the task of launching a more broadly based movement—a movement
which, in Mobutu's words, "will be animated by the Chief of State
himself, and of which the
CVR is not at
all the embryo."
Quest for legitimacy
By 1967, Mobutu had consolidated his rule and proceeded to give the
country a new constitution and a single party. The new constitution
was submitted to popular referendum in June 1967 and approved by 98
percent of those voting. It provided that executive powers be
centralized in the president, who was to be head of state, head of
government, commander in chief of the armed forces and the police,
and in charge of foreign policy. The president was to appoint and
dismiss cabinet members and determine their areas of
responsibility. The ministers, as heads of their respective
departments, were to execute the programs and decisions of the
president. The president also was to have the power to appoint and
dismiss the governors of the provinces and the judges of all
courts, including those of the
Supreme
Court of Justice.
The bicameral parliament was replaced by a unicameral legislative
body called the National Assembly. Governors of provinces were no
longer elected by provincial assemblies but appointed by the
central government. The president had the power to issue autonomous
regulations on matters other than those pertaining to the domain of
law, without prejudice to other provisions of the constitution.
Under certain conditions, the president was empowered to govern by
executive order, which carried the force of law.
But the most far-reaching change was the creation of the
Popular Movement of the
Revolution (Mouvement Populaire de la Révolution—MPR) on 17
April 1967, marking the emergence of "the nation politically
organized." Rather than being the
emanation of the state, the state was
henceforth defined as the emanation of the party. Thus, in October
1967 party and administrative responsibilities were merged into a
single framework, thereby automatically extending the role of the
party to all administrative organs at the central and provincial
levels, as well as to the
trade unions,
youth movements, and student
organizations. In short, the MPR became the sole legitimate vehicle
for participating in the political life of the country and all
Zairians were considered to be members by birth. Or, as one
official put it, "the MPR must be considered as a Church and its
Founder as its Messiah."
The doctrinal foundation was disclosed shortly after its birth, in
the form of the Manifesto of N'Sele (so named because it was issued
from the president's rural residence at N'Sele, sixty km upriver
from Kinshasa), made public in May 1967. Nationalism, revolution,
and authenticity were identified as the major themes of what came
to be known as "
Mobutism".
Nationalism implied the achievement of economic
independence.
Revolution, described as a
"truly national revolution, essentially pragmatic," meant "the
repudiation of both
capitalism and
communism. "Neither right nor left" thus
became one of the legitimizing slogans of the regime, along with
"authenticity." The concept of authenticity was derived from the
MPR's professed doctrine of "authentic Zairian nationalism and
condemnation of regionalism and tribalism." Mobutu defined it as
being conscious of one's own personality and one's own values and
of being at home in one's culture. In line with the dictates of
authenticity, the name of the country was changed to the
Republic of Zaire in October 1971, and that of the
armed forces to Zairian Armed Forces (Forces Armées Zaïroises—FAZ).
This
decision was curious, given that the name Congo, which
referred both to the river
Congo and to the ancient Kongo
Empire, was fundamentally "authentic" to pre-colonial African
roots, while Zaire is in fact a Portuguese corruption of
another African word, Nzere ("river", by Nzadi o Nzere,
"the river that swallows all the other rivers", another name of the
Congo river). General Mobutu became Mobutu Sésé Seko and
forced all his citizens to adopt
African
names and many cities were also renamed. Some of the conversions
are as follows:
Additionally, the
zaïre was introduced
to replace the franc as the new national currency. 100 makuta
(singular likuta) equaled one zaïre. The likuta was also divided
into 100 sengi. However this unit was worth very little, so the
smallest coin was for 10 sengi. As a result, it was common practice
to write cash amounts with three zeros after the decimal place,
even after inflation had greatly devalued the currency. Many other
geographic name changes had already taken place, between 1966 and
1971. The adoption of Zairian, as opposed to
Western or
Christian, names in 1972 and the abandonment of
Western dress in favor of the wearing of the
abacost were subsequently promoted as expressions of
authenticity.
Authenticity provided Mobutu with his strongest claim to
philosophical originality. So far from implying a rejection of
modernity, authenticity is perhaps best
seen as an effort to reconcile the claims of the traditional
Zairian culture with the exigencies of
modernization. Exactly how this synthesis was
to be accomplished remained unclear, however. What is beyond doubt
is Mobutu's effort to use the concept of authenticity as a means of
vindicating his own brand of leadership. As he himself stated, "in
our African tradition there are never two chiefs … That is why we
Congolese, in the desire to conform to the traditions of our
continent, have resolved to group all the energies of the citizens
of our country under the banner of a single national party."
Critics of the regime were quick to point out the shortcomings of
Mobutism as a legitimizing formula, in particular its selfserving
qualities and inherent vagueness; nonetheless, the MPR's
ideological training center, the
Makanda Kabobi Institute, took
seriously its assigned task of propagating through the land "the
teachings of the Founder-President, which must be given and
interpreted in the same fashion throughout the country." Members of
the MPR Political Bureau, meanwhile, were entrusted with the
responsibility of serving as "the repositories and guarantors of
Mobutism."
Quite aside from the merits or weaknesses of Mobutism, the MPR drew
much of its legitimacy from the model of the overarching mass
parties that had come into existence in Africa in the 1960s, a
model which had also been a source of inspiration for the
MNC-Lumumba. It was this Lumumbist heritage which the MPR tried to
appropriate in its effort to mobilize the Zairian masses behind its
founder-president. Intimately tied up with the doctrine of Mobutism
was the vision of an all-encompassing single party reaching out to
all sectors of the nation.
Authoritarian expansion
Translating the concept of "the nation politically organized" into
reality implied a major expansion of state control of
civil society. It meant, to begin with, the
incorporation of youth groups and worker organizations into the
matrix of the MPR. In July 1967, the Political Bureau announced the
creation of the
Youth of the Popular
Revolutionary Movement (Jeunesse du Mouvement Populaire de la
Révolution—JMPR), following the launching a month earlier of the
National Union of
Zairian Workers (Union Nationale des Travailleurs
Zaïrois—UNTZA), which brought together into a single organizational
framework three preexisting trade unions. Ostensibly, the aim of
the merger, in the terms of the Manifesto of N'Sele, was to
transform the role of trade unions from "being merely a force of
confrontation" into "an organ of support for government policy,"
thus providing "a communication link between the working class and
the state." Similarly, the JMPR was to act as a major link between
the student population and the state. In reality, the government
was attempting to bring under its control those sectors where
opposition to the regime might be centered. By appointing key labor
and youth leaders to the MPR Political Bureau, the regime hoped to
harness syndical and student forces to the machinery of the state.
Nevertheless, as has been pointed out by numerous observers, there
is little evidence that
co-optation
succeeded in mobilizing support for the regime beyond the most
superficial level.
The trend toward co-optation of key social sectors continued in
subsequent years. Women's associations were eventually brought
under the control of the party, as was the
press, and in December 1971 Mobutu proceeded to
emasculate the power of the churches. From then on, only three
churches were recognized: the
Church of Christ in Zaire
(L'Église du Christ au Zaïre), the
Kimbanguist Church, and the
Roman Catholic Church. Nationalization
of the universities of Kinshasa and Kisangani, coupled with
Mobutu's insistence on banning all Christian names and establishing
JMPR sections in all seminaries, soon brought the Roman Catholic
Church and the state into conflict. Not until 1975, and after
considerable pressure from the
Vatican, did
the regime agree to tone down its attacks on the Roman Catholic
Church and return some of its control of the school system to the
church. Meanwhile, in line with a December 1971 law, which allowed
the state to dissolve "any church or sect that compromises or
threatens to compromise public order," scores of unrecognized
religious sects were dissolved and
their leaders jailed.
Mobutu was careful also to suppress all institutions that could
mobilize ethnic loyalties. Avowedly opposed to ethnicity as a basis
for political alignment, he outlawed such ethnic associations as
the Association of Lulua Brothers (Association des Lulua Frères),
which had been organized in
Kasai in 1953 in
reaction to the growing political and economic influence in Kasai
of the rival
Luba people, and Liboke lya
Bangala (literally, "a bundle of Bangala"), an association formed
in the 1950s to represent the interests of
Lingala speakers in large cities. It helped Mobutu
that his ethnic affiliation was blurred in the public mind.
Nevertheless, as dissatisfaction arose, ethnic tensions surfaced
again.
Running parallel to the efforts of the state to control all
autonomous sources of power, important administrative reforms were
introduced in 1967 and 1973 to strengthen the hand of the central
authorities in the provinces.
The central objective of the 1967 reform was
to abolish provincial governments and replace them with state
functionaries appointed by Kinshasa
. The principle of centralization was further
extended to districts and territories, each headed by
administrators appointed by the central government. The only units
of government that still retained a fair measure of autonomy—but
not for long—were the so-called local collectivities, i.e.,
chiefdoms and sectors (the latter
incorporating several chiefdoms). The unitary, centralized state
system thus legislated into existence bore a striking resemblance
to its colonial antecedent, except that from July 1972 provinces
were called regions.
With the January 1973 reform, another major step was taken in the
direction of further centralization. The aim, in essence, was to
operate a complete fusion of political and administrative
hierarchies by making the head of each administrative unit the
president of the local party committee. Furthermore, another
consequence of the reform was to severely curtail the power of
traditional authorities at the local level. Hereditary claims to
authority would no longer be recognized; instead, all chiefs were
to be appointed and controlled by the state via the administrative
hierarchy. By then, the process of centralization had theoretically
eliminated all preexisting centers of local autonomy.
The analogy with the colonial state becomes even more compelling if
we take into account the introduction in 1973 of "obligatory civic
work" (locally known as
Salongo after the Lingala term for
work), in the form of one afternoon a week of compulsory labor on
agricultural and development projects. Officially described as a
revolutionary attempt to return to the values of
communalism and solidarity inherent in the
traditional society, Salongo was intended to mobilize the
population into the performance of collective work "with enthusiasm
and without constraint." But, in fact Salongo was forced labor. The
conspicuous lack of popular enthusiasm for Salongo led to
widespread resistance and foot dragging, causing many local
administrators to look the other way. Although failure to comply
carried penalties of one month to six months in jail, by the late
1970s most Zairians avoided their Salongo obligations. By
resuscitating one of the most bitterly resented features of the
colonial state, obligatory civic work contributed in no small way
to the erosion of legitimacy suffered by the Mobutist state.
Mobutist Nomenklatura
In the 1970s and 1980s, Mobutu's government relied on a selected
pool of technocrats from which the Head of State drew, and
periodically rotated, competent individuals. They comprised the
Executive Council and led the full spectrum of Ministries or, as
they were then called, State Commissariats. Among these individuals
were internationally respected appointees such as Djamboleka Lona
Okitongono who was named Secretary of Finance, under Citizen
Namwisi (Minister of Finance), and later became President of
OGEDEP, the National Debt Management Office. Ultimately, Djamboleka
became Governor of the Bank of Zaire in the final stage of Mobutu's
government. His progress was fairly typical of the rotational
pattern established by the Head of State, Mobutu, who, incidentally
retained the most sensitive ministerial portfolios, such as
Defense, for himself.
"Zairianization"
Relative peace and stability prevailed until 1977 and 1978 when
Katangan rebels, based in Angola, launched a series of invasions,
sometimes known as
Shaba I, into the
Shaba (Katanga) region. The rebels were driven
out with the aid of French and Belgian paratroopers.
During the 1980s, Zaire remained a one-party state. Although Mobutu
successfully maintained control during this period, opposition
parties, most notably the Union pour la Démocratie et le Progrès
Social (UDPS), were active. Mobutu's attempts to quell these groups
drew significant international criticism.
As the
Cold War came to a close, internal
and external pressures on Mobutu increased. In late 1989 and early
1990, Mobutu was weakened by a series of domestic protests, by
heightened international criticism of his regime's human rights
practices, by a faltering economy, and by government corruption,
most notably his massive embezzlement of government funds for
personal use.
In June 1989, Mobutu visited Washington,
D.C.
, where he was the first African head of state to be
invited for a state meeting with newly elected U.S.
President
George H. W. Bush.
In May 1990 Mobutu agreed to the principle of a multi-party system
with elections and a constitution. As details of a reform package
were delayed, soldiers began looting Kinshasa in September 1991 to
protest their unpaid wages. Two thousand French and Belgian troops,
some of whom were flown in on U.S. Air Force planes, arrived to
evacuate the 20,000 endangered foreign nationals in Kinshasa.
In 1992, after previous similar attempts, the long-promised
Sovereign National Conference was staged, encompassing over 2,000
representatives from various political parties. The conference gave
itself a legislative mandate and elected Archbishop Laurent
Monsengwo as its chairman, along with Étienne Tshisekedi wa
Mulumba, leader of the UDPS, as prime minister. By the end of the
year Mobutu had created a rival government with its own prime
minister. The ensuing stalemate produced a compromise merger of the
two governments into the High Council of Republic-Parliament of
Transition (HCR-PT) in 1994, with Mobutu as head of state and Kengo
Wa Dondo as prime minister. Although presidential and legislative
elections were scheduled repeatedly over the next 2 years, they
never took place.
First Congo War
By 1996,
tensions from the neighboring Rwanda
war and
genocide had spilled over to Zaire (see History of Rwanda). Rwandan
Hutu militia forces (
Interahamwe), who had fled Rwanda following the
ascension of an
RPF-led government, had been
using Hutu refugee camps in eastern Zaire as a basis for incursion
against Rwanda. These Hutu militia forces soon allied with the
Zairian armed forces (FAZ) to launch a campaign against Congolese
ethnic Tutsis in eastern Zaire. In turn, these Tutsis formed a
militia to defend themselves against attacks. When the Zairian
government began to escalate its massacres in November 1996, the
Tutsi militias erupted in rebellion against Mobutu, starting what
would become known as the
First Congo
War.
The Tutsi militia was soon joined by various opposition groups and
supported by several countries, including Rwanda and Uganda. This
coalition, led by
Laurent-Desire
Kabila, became known as the Alliance des Forces Démocratiques
pour la Libération du Congo-Zaïre (
AFDL). The
AFDL, now seeking the broader goal of ousting Mobutu, made
significant military gains in early 1997. Following failed peace
talks between Mobutu and Kabila in May 1997, Mobutu fled the
country, and Kabila marched unopposed to Kinshasa on 20 May.
Kabila
named himself president, consolidated power around himself and the
AFDL, and reverted the name of the country to the Democratic
Republic of Congo
.
Standards and abbreviations
In computing, Zaire's
top-level
domain was "
.zr". It has
since changed to "
.cd".
See also
References
- Peter Forbath, The River Congo, p. 19
- "Zaire's Mobutu Visits America," by Michael Johns,
Heritage Foundation Executive Memorandum #239, June 29,
1989.
- " IANA Report on Deletion of the .zr Top-Level
Domain." Internet Assigned
Numbers Authority. 20 June 2001. Retrieved on 11 June
2009.
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