Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa (31 page)

The fall of Kisangani was followed a few days later by the fall of Mbuji-Mayi, lending added drama to Mobutu’s predicament. Mobutu had now lost his last major source of income, the $20 million or so in monthly revenues from official diamond sales there. Deprived of cash, he now turned in desperation to his longtime nemesis, Etienne Tshisekedi, naming him as prime minister for the third time, in a stop-gap gesture that had the distinct odor of a poisoned gift.

Tshisekedi responded with boldness, hoping to make the best of his weak hand with a series of dramatic gambits. He announced a new cabinet that included no Mobutu loyalists, and said that six positions would be held open for Kabila appointees. Infuriated by the slight, Mobutu moved to get rid of his rival even before his government could be formally seated. Security forces were told to prevent Tshisekedi from entering the prime minister’s offices. Meanwhile, Kabila’s response to Tshisekedi’s olive branch dripped with contempt. “If Tshisekedi wants to pilot a ship that is going down, he must learn how to swim,” said Kabila’s uncle and close aide Gaëtan Kakudji. “Because this ship is going to sink.”

Tshisekedi’s Democratic Union for Social Progress (UDPS) boasted a large and disciplined network of activists in Kinshasa and throughout the western half of the country. In a three-way showdown in which the other two figures fielded men with guns, they were his only soldiers, and the time had come to call them out into the streets. If Kabila was to be prevented from storming Kinshasa, and if Zaire was to be spared a political takeover by force, Mobutu would have to be defied convincingly, through mass civil action. Tshisekedi’s final option, in effect, was to have his own legitimacy validated by the people.

For two days, Kinshasa boiled with tension, and it seemed impossible to tell how things would unfold. Mobutu enjoyed some residual support in the parliament, largely as a result of payoffs from his ruling party, and Tshisekedi loyalists—mostly students and other young people—set up roadblocks using burning tires and the chassis of abandoned cars on the roads leading to the building, and roughed up many of Mobutu’s supporters. Mobutu responded by calling out the army, and the green trucks of the feared Division Spéciale Présidentielle, or DSP, rumbled through the streets of Kinshasa, smashing the students’ barricades and breaking up demonstrations. The street scenes were passably reminiscent of Beijing in 1989, during the Tiananmen protests. Young people armed with nothing more than their courage stood in front of armored personnel carriers and trucks full of troops, lecturing Mobutu’s soldiers on the need for democracy and peaceful change until their drivers, whether convinced or merely discouraged, changed course.

Students rode around the city banging on the sides of the decrepit minivans that were the most common form of transportation, or formed clusters, ready to disperse at the first sign of a threat, and chanted slogans like “Mobutu, don’t you know the name of the people’s prime minister? It’s Tshisekedi.” Others warned the soldiers to be on guard when Kabila’s forces arrived, treating the matter as an inevitability. Above all, they urged, the military must protect civil authority. “Once Mobutu has fled into exile, let Kabila come. Don’t resist him,” said Didier Bitini, a twenty-seven-year-old student. “The only thing you must insist upon is that Tshisekedi be given a free hand as prime minister.”

It was a tall order, too much, in fact, even to dream of from an army that had known only dictatorship, an army that was disintegrating wherever there was combat. I asked a soldier who was looking on impassively what he made of the demonstrations. “Let them do whatever they want,” he told me. “Politics is none of our business.”

If what was left of Mobutu’s army could not conceive of fighting for Zairian democracy, the outside world was not much moved by the idea, either. Setting aside the continent’s immense natural resources, for the West the only reliably compelling subject in Africa is the theater of misery and suffering. In such a universe, scenes like the peaceful uprising of Tshisekedi’s supporters simply did not compute. No statement of support for Tshisekedi would be coming from Washington. There would be nothing even resembling a strong call for a freeze of the fighting on the ground so that a civil solution could be found.

On Capitol Hill, George Moose contented himself with stating the obvious, while avoiding the essential: the future stability and integrity of Africa’s third-largest nation. “It is clear,” he said, “that Mobutu, the Mobutu regime, is a thing of the past.”

In late April, Tshisekedi decided to step personally into the fray. The international press had been alerted that the renegade prime minister would lead his supporters on a march along the broad avenues that led from his home in the leafy Limeté district to the seat of government in Gombé, to assume his office by popular force.

Pierre drove me to Tshisekedi’s house that morning in his dilapidated Fiat, together with Robert and a couple of other colleagues. The crowds were already impassably thick for many blocks surrounding the prime minister’s villa. Militants from the UDPS acted as lookouts on every corner, and for extra measure, large trees had been cut down and laid across the streets leading to their leader’s residence.

After two days of muscular street demonstrations, and a huge turnout of supporters that morning in Limeté, Tshisekedi’s lieutenants exuded confidence. One advisor, Martin Tshibanga, bragged to me that the boss was still sleeping. “He hasn’t even gotten up yet. He hasn’t lifted a finger to call people out. They have come of their own accord.”

Later that morning, in sweltering heat, Tshisekedi finally emerged from the office in the back of his home to discover a thick crowd of reporters who had been allowed into the courtyard. With a wan little smile, and a simple “Bonjour,” he turned on his heels and disappeared. There would be no press conference, we were told. “Toujours énigmatique,” Tshibanga said, nodding approvingly. I was far less sure. A few minutes later, though, Tshisekedi reemerged before the large crowds that choked the surrounding streets and suddenly the march looked as if it was on. Just moments after setting out, however, the scene erupted into total panic with the arrival of Mobutu’s shock troops.

Trucks full of DSP troops had completely surrounded the area, and when the order was given, they began firing off tear-gas canisters and shooting live rounds, sending people scurrying for their lives in a terrified frenzy. Pierre had taken the precaution of parking on the heavily shaded carriage lane on the road leading to the center of town, and not on one of the narrow side streets that were now completely blocked off. Dodging rifle butts as we ran, Pierre, ever trusty, got us out of there.

Working my cell phones on the ride into town, I quickly learned that Tshisekedi was safe. The huge army trucks that had besieged his neighborhood now began appearing in Pierre’s rearview mirror. Cars were being forced off the road, and reporters were being pulled out and beaten. Pierre went back onto the carriage lane to park and wait out the storm, while Robert set off to take pictures of this menacing convoy.

Pierre and I sat in the shade for what seemed like an eternity as the huge green military vehicles passed by, and just as we began to fear that something serious might have happened to Robert, he showed up. He was filthy and looked pained and crumpled. He had been hurt somehow, but most of all he was piping angry. “Fuck. Fuck,” he kept repeating. “Those bastards stole my cameras.”

Robert had been shooting dramatic compositions of the trucks rolling down the avenue with angry, rifle-waving soldiers leaning from the sides, when a driver suckered him, opening the door to the passenger’s cabin just as he pulled up alongside him. Robert had been knocked senseless, and the next thing he knew, the soldiers were striking him with their rifle butts and stripping him of his cameras and other valuables.

When we reached Mandela Square, a dusty traffic circle on Boulevard 30 Juin, where the UDPS was telling its supporters to mass, Tshisekedi’s supporters were already there in the thousands, chanting, “The power is in the streets. Mobutu and his ragged prostates are finished.” It was as if they had walked there faster than we could drive. The circle is bisected by several avenues, and without forewarning, Tshisekedi soon materialized at the head of a cluster of close supporters. The air was already electric, and the crowd roared its approval and fell in behind Tshisekedi, who bore the grim expression of a man who knew this might be his last act.

Mobutu’s thuggish son Kongulu entered the circle from another boulevard, heavily armed and accompanied by his close aide, Guy Vanda. Guy, who was hoisting an automatic rifle, had become one of my best contacts inside the Mobutu entourage and had even become a friend of sorts. He saw me and beckoned, and when I approached him he warned me to leave the area. There might be violence. People could be killed.

I thanked him for the advice and wisely or unwisely ignored it, getting as close as I could to Tshisekedi, who was blanketed by chanting supporters like a queen bee surrounded by her drones. A clutch of Mobutu’s agents, all armed with machine guns, moved to cut off the march, blocking Tshisekedi’s forward progress. The enigma then began to speak. “This is a dictatorship in its final agony that refuses to die. A fraction of the army is trying to prop it up. But it goes without saying that in the days ahead, we will maintain our pressure until the results of the National Conference are respected.”

At that moment, a beige Peugeot split the crowd, and there was a lot of desperate, panicked pushing and shoving. The air crackled with gunfire, and people were again scattering frantically as the shooting grew wild and sustained. Tear gas thickened the air. I hid behind a tree and could see Tshisekedi being forced into the car, which sped off quickly. Soldiers were savagely beating whomever they could grab hold of.

Amid the mayhem, I was separated from my colleagues and jumped over a wall into someone’s garden. I raised Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, a reporter and close friend from the BBC, on my cell phone. We had been standing together moments before. She was okay, and we agreed on a meeting place. Other friends called to say they had taken refuge inside people’s houses. Robert, already injured and without cameras, had returned briefly to the hotel.

Later we learned that Tshisekedi had been placed under house arrest. He was not seriously hurt. The hope of civilian transition in Zaire was dead, however. And the American Embassy was silent.

In his hour of greatest need, Mobutu turned to another powerful man he held in high distrust. Dictators whose primary mode of operation involves slithering tend, it seems, to feel most comfortable with other reptiles.

In Mobutu’s entourage, reptiles were in great supply, and he named one, General Likulia Bolongo, to replace Etienne Tshisekedi. The nomination was at best legally questionable, because the parliament was bypassed, but Kabila’s forces had reportedly reached Bandundu Province, whose capital, Kikwit, 370 miles southeast of Kinshasa, was where the Ebola outbreak had occurred not long before, and with the democracy movement broken, few were in the mood for arguing.

“The accent of this government is particularly on patriotism,” Likulia said, dressed in full four-star uniform and straining to put a brave face on things as he introduced his government on the steps of the prime minister’s office, surrounded by other senior officers. “One of the prime missions of these ministers, outside of peace and the defense of territory, is the restructuring of the army. Please note the presence of generals from great military academies and professors and researchers from different university disciplines.”

Men of valor were practically unheard of in the senior ranks of the Zairian armed forces. Mobutu, who counted on foreign powers for security and feared being overthrown by his own aides more than he feared attack from abroad, had always wanted it that way. So as Likulia spoke, all eyes were on General Marc Mahélé Lièko Bokungu, who after being kept out of action for most of the war was now being made deputy prime minister and defense minister, along with his previous title, army chief of staff.

Mahélé was that rarest of Zairian species, a professional soldier who had earned his stripes. He had proved his bona fides during the two brief secession wars in Shaba, where he was the only commander who could be counted on not to steal, and again during the pillages in Kinshasa, when he ordered his men to fire on rioting troops. Distinctions like these would have made him a national hero in most countries. In Mobutu’s Zaire, though, where he had the further demerit of not belonging to the president’s Ngbandi ethnic group, they made him a marked man.

As the regime cracked, Zaire was opening up like a crocus. Suddenly, it seemed as if everybody, from the innermost insiders to the foreign powers who still wielded tremendous influence from the shadows, wanted to reveal their most closely held secrets to me— everybody, that is, but Mobutu himself. I was selfishly pleased with Likulia’s nomination, because his aide-de-camp was already a valuable source, and had long ago given me details of the corrupt dealings of the army’s top generals, including his boss. Mobutu’s new interior minister, a former general named Ilunga, was also a good source, and he told me not to pay attention to any of the new government’s rhetoric. People in high places were already sending their families out of the country. Even Likulia knew the game was over, he told me, and had accepted the job only to steal what was left to be grabbed. Guy, who was in and out of the presidential palace every day, told me that Papa Mobutu, as he called him, knew about all of the stealing. Guy also said that Mobutu had taken precautions to prevent General Mahélé from ever enjoying a truly free hand, however many titles he accumulated.

Mahélé knew what needed to be done to fix the Zairian army. But like Tshisekedi, he had been called upon too late to make a difference. Unlike Tshisekedi, though, he would not be easy to shake. Quite unexpectedly, the general summoned me to a private residence in Kinshasa one afternoon shortly after his “promotion” for the first of several secret meetings. The first key to getting the army to fight, he said, was surprisingly simple: Pay the soldiers. Even as Kabila’s fighters swept across the country, Mobutu’s relatives, Ngbandi generals like Baramoto and Eluki, were stealing the army payrolls.