**Imperialism and Africa: Where is Zaire headed?**

(Reprinted from the May 24, 1997 issue of the People's
Weekly World. May be reprinted or reposted with PWW credit.
For subscription information see below)

By William Pomeroy

The liberation struggle that has brought down the 32-year
dictatorial regime of President Mobutu Seso Seko in Zaire
will have a deep effect on Africa as a whole, and is
producing intensified activities by western powers on that
continent.

Installed as ruler with CIA backing in 1965, initially to
suppress national democratic forces in the newly-
independent former Belgian Congo (renamed Zaire) and then
to serve as an intervening bulwark against socialist
oriented neighboring countries. Mobutu's usefulness in such
a role withered with the ending of the Cold War and of
international support for socialist development.

At the same time the enormous corruption of the Mobutu
regime which the west tolerated and fostered as long as it
was anti-communist, no longer fits the system of
exploitation that western transnational companies, the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank seek to
develop in Africa today.

The exact circumstances that produced the revolt in Zaire
are not clear. In eastern Zaire were several fermenting
factors. Amidst the Hutu refugees was the armed force (the
FAR) that had massacred the Tutsis and was staging raids
into Rwanda against the now-Tutsi regime. Widespread
reports in Africa and in Europe have declared that the U.S.
did the training and equipping of an Alliance army, chiefly
at bases in Uganda, partially in Rwanda.

In northeastern Zaire a group of Ugandan guerrillas was
based, remnants of the followers of the ousted Milton
Obote, their target the government of Uganda headed by
President Yoweri Museveni. In addition, in the mountains of
eastern Zaire was based the anti-Mobutu People's
Revolutionary Party of Laurent Kabila, which had become one
of four components of an Alliance of Democratic Forces for
the Liberation of Congo-Zaire. Kabila was chosen to head
it.

That the armed forces of Uganda and Rwanda entered Zaire to
deal with their attackers is likely. That these forces then
joined with Kabila's Alliance army in an offensive against
Mobutu's army is probable. What is astonishing, however,
was the sudden emergence of a well-trained, well-armed
Alliance army that swept away the Mobuto troops. How did it
materialize?

Uganda's Museveni is presently the most highly praised of
African leaders in the west, for making Uganda the most
fully compliant to IMF-WB demands. In April Uganda became
the first country to win IMF-WB approval for debt relief,
occurring as success for the Ugandan role of intervention
in Zaire neared.

As U.S. backing for Kabila and the Alliance became
increasingly evident, with the U.S. itself calling on
Mobutu to resign, France sought repeatedly to mobilize aid
for Mobutu. Its efforts to obtain an international U.N.
force to intervene in Zaire, allegedly to stop invasion by
Uganda and Rwanda but actually to counter the Alliance,
were blocked by the U.S. and Britain. A French attempt then
to get European Union intervention to prevent a claimed
massacre of Hutu refugees by the Alliance in eastern Zaire
was vetoed by U.S. ally Britain.

Disapproved by the U.S. and Britain was the recruitment and
sending by France to Zaire of a "White Legion" of
mercenaries to bolster Mobutu's army. It collapsed when the
mercenaries lost heart in a losing battle.

In the French press and in statements of French officials
the U.S. has been accused of seeking to oust French
influence in Africa. One French official was quoted as
saying in bitterness: "The U.S. has three targets: Nigeria,
Zaire and South Africa. They will take control of this
continent if no one stops them."

As the Alliance drove rapidly across Zaire with little
effective resistance, significant features of its policies
were revealed. In the early reports Laurent Kabila had been
portrayed as a long-time revolutionary, a Marxist with
Maoist inclinations, but this soon gave way to an
assessment of him as an ex-Marxist who had become an
adherent of free enterprise. Underpinning this image were
the startling relations developed by the Alliance with big
western mining companies.

Within days of the occupation of Zaire's rich mining
districts in Kivu, Kasai and Shaba provinces, the mining
companies literally flocked to make deals with the
Alliance, including the companies with existing contracts
with the Mobutu regime, which severed their ties with
Mobutu. Alliance leaders almost immediately signed
agreements and handed vast mining concessions to the
western companies.

The first major deal, significantly, was signed in April
with the U.S. company American Mineral Fields, a $1 billion
agreement for AMF to mine copper, cobalt and zinc. Most
interesting, a large down payment was made to the Alliance,
which has been viewed as a form of funding for the rebel
movement.

Early in May the Canadian-based Tengke Mining Corporation,
which had a contract with the Mobutu regime to mine the
huge copper and cobalt deposits of Tengke Fugurume in
Shaba, shifted to an agreement with the Alliance, which was
given $50 million by the company as an initial payment on
the deal, also poured into the funds of the Alliance.

There are two interesting aspects of these and other
agreements being made: they are being reached with the
Alliance as formal concessions even before the struggle for
Zaire has been concluded or a new government established,
and they bear the marks of understandings that had been
arrived at well in advance. It has not been the common
experience of liberation movements.

In an interview Laurent Kabila pledged "to create an
economy friendly to private enterprise which will share
Zaire's riches with the people." It is difficult to imagine
that that is also the aim of the U.S. agencies that
reportedly have aided him, or of the big mining companies
whose reputation has never been exactly altruistic.