In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz (9 page)

Bringing the 1960 mutiny to heel involved standing up in front of hundreds of furious, drunk soldiers who had plundered the barracks'
weapons stores and quelling them through sheer force of personality. And Mobutu carried out that task, one that civilian politicians understandably balked at, not once but many times. ‘I've been in enough wars to know when men are putting it on and when they really are courageous,' said Devlin. ‘And Mobutu really was courageous.' Once, he watched Mobutu curb a mutiny by the police force. ‘They were hollering and screaming and pointing guns at him and telling him not to come any closer or they'd shoot. He just started talking quietly and calmly until they quietened down, then he walked along taking their guns from them, one by one. Believe me, it was hellish impressive.'

The quality was to be tested repeatedly. The assassination attempt foiled by Devlin's intervention was one of five such bids in the week that followed Mobutu's ‘peaceful revolution'. Such was the danger that Mobutu sent his family to Belgium. Marie-Antoinette deposited her offspring and returned in twenty-four hours, refusing to leave her husband's side. ‘If they kill him they have to kill me,' she told friends.

What constitutes charm? A presence, a capacity to command attention, an innate conviction of one's own uniqueness, combined, as often as not, with the more manipulative ability of making the interlocutor believe he has one's undivided attention and has gained a certain indefinable something from the encounter. Whatever its components, the quality was innate with Mobutu, but definitely blossomed as growing power swelled his sense of self-worth. In the early 1960s European observers referred to him as the ‘doux colonel' (mild-mannered colonel), suggesting a certain diffidence. Nonetheless he was a remarkable enough figure to prompt Francis Monheim, a Belgian journalist covering events, to feel he merited an early hagiography. By the end of his life, whether they loathed or loved him, those who had brushed against Mobutu rarely forgot the experience. All remarked on an extraordinary personal charisma.

‘I've never seen a photograph of Mobutu that did him justice, that makes him look at all impressive,' claimed Kim Jaycox, the World Bank's former vice-president for Africa, who met Mobutu
many times. ‘It's like taking a photograph of a jacaranda tree, you can't capture the actual impact of that colour, of that tree. In photos he looked kind of unintelligent and without lustre. But when you were in his presence discussing anything that was important to him, you suddenly saw this quite extraordinary personality, a kind of glowing personality. No matter what you thought of his behaviour or what he was doing to the country, you could see why he was in charge.'

He had a gift for the grand gesture, a stylish bravado that captured the imagination. Setting off for Shaba to cover the invasions of the 1970s, foreign journalists would occasionally disembark to discover, to their astonishment, that their military plane had been flown by a camouflage-clad president, showing off his pilot's licence.

There were some of the personal quirks that can count for much when it comes to political networking and pressing the flesh, whether in a democracy or a one-party state. He had a superb memory and on the basis of the briefest of meetings would be able, re-encountering his interlocutor many years later, to recall name, profession and tribal affiliation. ‘It was phenomenal,' remembers Honoré Ngbanda, who as presidential aide for many years was responsible for briefing Mobutu for his meetings. ‘Whether it was a visual memory or a memory for dates, he could remember things that had happened 10 years ago: the date, the day and time. His memory was elephantine.'

Mobutu had another of the characteristics of the manipulative charmer: he could be all things to all men, holding up a mirror to his interlocutors that reflected back their wishes, convincing each that he perfectly understood their predicament and was on their side. ‘He could treat people with kid gloves or he could treat them with a steel fist,' remembered a former prime minister who saw more of the fist than the glove. ‘It was different for everyone. He was very clever at tailoring the response to the individual.'

Not for him the rigid stances that had doomed Lumumba. He would dither for days, leaving his collaborators in a state of nervous ambiguity, often uncertain over what instructions had actually been issued. This was the negative side of his adaptability. But while colleagues tried to second-guess his wishes, he would be assessing the
mood of the day, ready to change direction with all the panache of a born actor. ‘He was very good at putting on a show,' acknowledged a contemporary. ‘He could be absolutely furious and two minutes later, when he saw it wasn't the right thing to do, he'd change completely.'

And finally, there was the humour: sardonic, worldly wise, it deepened as the years turned against him until, listening to Mobutu fielding questions about human rights and corruption at a hostile press conference in Biarritz, it was difficult not to feel a certain grudging admiration for the impeccable politeness, the fake innocence, the ironic demeanour that all broadcast one defiant message: I know your game and I am far too old and wily a fox to be caught out.

 

This was the man
who seized control of Congo in September 1960. He was to prove as good as his word, swiftly handing power to a group of ‘general commissioners'—a collection of the country's few university graduates—who were supposed to run the country while the politicians took stock of the problems confronting Congo. With four separate governments in existence—one in the eastern city of Stanleyville, loyal to the ousted Lumumba; one in Katanga under Moise Tshombe, supported by the Belgians; one in Kasai under Albert Kalonji; and one in Leopoldville under President Kasavubu—national partition was now a reality rather than a threat. But the disappearance of probably the key player in this game was about to alter the situation.

In the space of a couple of months, Lumumba had managed to outrage the Belgians by insulting their king, appal the West with his flirtation with Moscow and alienate the United Nations. He had also frightened former colleagues by hatching a series of cack-handed assassination plots against his Congolese rivals. With Mobutu in charge, Lumumba was now in detention, but his Napoleon-like ability to whip up the crowds and convert waverers to his cause—even at times his own jailers—meant he remained a dangerous loose cannon.

In August of that year, the CIA director himself had told Devlin
that Lumumba's removal was an ‘urgent and prime objective', an instruction that presumably could have covered anything from encouraging Lumumba's rivals to topple him by legal means to funding a
coup
. Now Washington moved to direct action. Shortly after Mobutu's takeover, Devlin was advised by headquarters that ‘Joe from Paris' would be coming to Leopoldville on an urgent mission. ‘I was told I'd recognise him, and I did. He was waiting at a café across from the embassy and he walked me to my car and we went to a quiet place where we could talk.' The man was a top CIA scientist and he had come to Kinshasa with a poison for Lumumba. Devlin, he said, was to arrange for it to be slipped into the prime minister's food, or his toothpaste. The poison was cleverly designed to produce one of the diseases endemic to central Africa so that Lumumba's death would look like an unfortunate accident. ‘Jesus Christ, isn't this unusual?' was Devlin's astonished reply. Joe from Paris acknowledged that it was, but said authorisation came from President Eisenhower himself.

It was a job the usually conscientious Devlin somehow never got around to performing. He insisted, and has testified before a US Senate committee hearing, that while he held no moral objections to the principle of political assassination when demanded by circumstances, the killing of Lumumba was never a step he personally considered necessary or intended to carry out. ‘If I had had Hitler in my sights in 1941 and I'd pulled the trigger, maybe 20 or 30 million people would be alive today. But I just never felt it was justified with Lumumba. I was hoping the Congolese would settle it amongst themselves, one way or another.'

No hint of his doubts, it must be said, appeared in his cables, raising the question of whether Devlin really was as reluctant as he makes out or just sanitised his account with the passage of time. Although he had access to Lumumba's entourage, Devlin stalled. The months passed, with the CIA considering first one assassination scenario and then another. Devlin eventually disposed of the poison by pouring it into the Congo river. ‘I had the damn stuff in my drawer and I wanted to get rid of it.'

During that time, Lumumba was demonstrating just what a threat he remained by dramatically escaping from detention. Recaptured, he was transferred to a military base, only to be briefly freed when the soldiers mutinied. Finally, both the Americans and Belgians were provided with the let-out they had been hoping and pushing for all along. Exasperated by Lumumba's Houdini-like qualities, Kasavubu and the commissioners dispatched the prime minister to his arch-enemies in the south. On 17 January 1961, Lumumba and two collaborators were flown to Katanga. During the flight down, Luba soldiers avenged themselves for the massacre of their tribesmen by Leopoldville's army the year before, beating their prisoners so brutally the horrified Belgian air crew closed themselves in the cockpit to drown out the noise. Approaching Elizabethville, the pilot radioed the control tower to announce ‘I have three precious packages aboard'. On arrival, they were taken away to be killed, almost certainly shot dead in front of Katanga's top officials and their Belgian collaborators.

The Congolese secessionists had done the CIA's dirty work for them. Devlin insisted he was not aware of Lumumba's departure until it was too late. As for Mobutu, no one has ever been able to prove his involvement in the murders. The adoring account written by the Belgian Francis Monheim claims, unconvincingly, that Mobutu was never even told of the decision to move the prisoner. But it is almost impossible to believe that the head of the army, the man who held the real power in the country, could have been kept unawares of such a key development. ‘I can't believe he wasn't involved,' confessed Devlin. ‘But it was just one of those questions you didn't ask at the time.'

Whoever actually pulled the trigger, in the eyes of Lumumbists and many other Zaireans, Mobutu always bore moral responsibility for Lumumba's murderer, with the Western powers playing the part of Iago, whispering their instructions from behind the scenes. Mobutu's decision later to erect a monument to the country's first prime minister was regarded as an act of extraordinary cynicism, Orwellian in its apparent intention of rewriting history. Certainly, the
story of Lumumba and Mobutu follows the pattern of one of the great parables of mankind: the loving brothers, the best friends who end up trying to destroy each other, their former intimacy ironically rendering them more ruthless, more implacable in their hatred than any two strangers could ever be. It is the story of Romulus and Remus, Cain and Abel, Macbeth and Banquo. There was even a moment during those years when a dishevelled Lumumba, thwarted by Mobutu in a bid to address the army, turned on his former friend and in a quiet, sad voice said: ‘Is it you, Joseph, saying that?' And Mobutu replied: ‘Yes, it is me. I have had enough.' It was the 1960s equivalent of ‘Et tu, Brute?' from the dying lips of the betrayed Julius Caesar.

Lumumba had certainly started off being the dominant member of the partnership, more famous, more charismatic, more politically sophisticated and far more idealistic. But he had lacked pragmatism, and that was Mobutu's forte.

The whereabouts of Lumumba's body have never been identified. It was probably hacked into pieces, the head dissolved in a vat of sulphuric acid by a Belgian clean-up team sent to remove all traces of the assassinations. But another, even more fanciful story has done the rounds: that Mobutu's collaborators, terrified that Lumumba's spirit would live on after his death, asked a witch-doctor how to destroy his supernatural powers. On his instructions they divided up the body, hired a low-flying C130, and flew along the borders of their huge country, scattering the pieces. This was the only way, the marabout had said, to prevent Lumumba's spirit reassembling and returning to challenge his former friend.

Lumumba's death removed a man who, while alive, would always represent a challenge to those in power. But it did not end Congo's political turmoil. Sucked into the government's attempts to re-establish territorial integrity, the UN was to find itself embroiled in pitched battles with a mercenary force recruited by the Katangans and to lose its secretary-general when Dag Hammarskjöld was killed in a plane crash flying to yet another round of negotiations.

Once the Katanga and Kasai secessions had been brought to heel, the government was confronted by a new set of anti-Western, Marxist uprisings in the east. In one of these a young rebel called Laurent Kabila, whose womanising ways and heavy drinking exasperated Che Guevara, the Argentine revolutionary who had set off to help his African brothers, played a role before fading from view. Western audiences were more preoccupied by the horrors that occurred in Stanleyville, where a white mercenary force and Belgian paratroopers were unable to prevent the slaughter of 200 Europeans held hostage by the rebels. Never again would Western leaders and the public at large look at Africa with the same cheerful optimism of the postwar days.

During all this time Mobutu, as head of the armed forces, was watching and waiting, a quiet presence behind the succession of weak and divided civilian governments. By October 1965, another political impasse had developed, with Kasavubu sacking Tshombe, the rebel-turned-prime minister, and elections looming. By this stage, Mobutu had become a regular visitor at the Devlin household. The two men had got to know each other's families, with Mobutu taking a particular shine to the CIA station chief's young daughter, who liked to steal his cap and swagger stick and march up and down with them. However, what happened in November, Devlin maintained, was not the result of any advice on his part. ‘The US position and British position was that they did not want a
coup
, they wanted Kasavubu as president and Tshombe as prime minister. I told Mobutu that, and he smiled and said: “A Johnson–Goldwater ticket you mean?” (a Democrat–Republican combination that would have united the US's two main parties) I said “Yes”, and he said “Fine”. The next thing I knew, I was woken at five in the morning with the word he had just pulled a
coup
.'