Since the 16th Century the Democratic Republic of Congo (former Zaire) has not known any peace and its people have suffered one of the appalling exploitation ever to happen to any group of people. King Leopold II of Belgium turned the country into a large slave colony exploiting its rubber and timber to feed the car economy in Europe and America. The forced enslavement of the Congolese led to the death of 10 million people. Prof. Mwesiga Baregu of University of Dar es salaam notes that ?between 1880 and 1920, for example, the Congo lost nearly ten million people (approximately one half of its population) to barbaric genocide perpetrated by the likes of Conrad’s? (Baregu, 2002). Leopold II’s genocidal machine was so vicious and exploitative that in 1924 a conference held in Belgium on Congo concluded that African population of the Congo might ‘collapse or disappear’ (Hailey, 1957). The exploitation of rubber and ivory was replaced with diamond, gold, coltan, copper, cobalt, timber, and wildlife reserves after Asia began exporting rubber to the car market in Europe and America. Thus Congo and its people have endured a long period of exploitation dictated by market condition in Europe and America. This exploitation continued till 1960 when Belgium reluctantly granted the country ‘independence’.
Patrice Lumumba, the country’s Prime Minister decided that Congo had had enough of the exploitation without development and therefore moved to institute a policy to put a stop to it and to make sure Congolese resources were used to promote the development of the country. Lumumba’s policies enlisted hatred from the Belgians and their western allies who thought that Lumumba’s policies would deny them the free hand to loot and steal the country’s resources. Hiding behind the Cold War, Lumumba was branded a communist by the communist-obsessed American and European elites. The CIA was tasked with the responsibility to eliminate Lumumba at all cost. The U.S. government with the help of the racist and corrupt Belgian economic, political and military establishments, as well as French and British intelligence services, hatched a diabolical plot in which Lumumba was to be completely eliminated and his place taken over by a puppet who will serve the interest of the West. That plan succeeded and on upon the advice of the CIA, Lumumba was eventually murdered in 1961.
Recently declassified U.S. government data on Congo indicate that the CIA encouraged and worked seriously to have Mobutu stage the coup that brought him to power. He succeeded and turned over Congo and its people to the Euro-American multinational exploitation machine which spared no effort in unleashing their agenda on Congo. Mobutu befriended and obediently worked for more than 6 American presidents including Nixon, Reagan, and Bush Sr. At the behest of his American paymasters, he used Congo to meddle in Angolan politics and worked with the colonial and imperialist elements in that country to undermine the pro-independence forces seeking freedom from Portugal. French (1997) notes that during the Angolan war of independence the West and Washington in particular, used Mobutu’s Congo as a weapons supply and staging area for support of the UNITA rebel movement fighting the government in Angola. ?Mobutu, acting with strong CIA encouragement, had been assisting rebel movements fighting Angola’s Marxist government. The first involvement was a disastrous CIA-backed effort to seize Angola’s oil-producing Cabinda enclave, which began in 1975, the day before Angola achieved independence from Portugal. Mobutu’s meddling in Angola, at the behest of Washington, set a pattern for the rest of his rule. He constantly kept a finger in the crises of neighboring countries, from Chad and Congo to Uganda and the Sudan? (French, 1997).
During the Congo crisis in the 1960s African countries and their leaders sent soldiers to protect Congo, but Mobutu failed to acknowledge their sacrifice. Thus while his fellow Africans worked to promote peace and unity across the continent Mobutu worked secretly to undermine that effort by destabilising his neighbors to appease his western friends who sustained his regime.
For his efforts, Mobutu was handsomely rewarded not only for his efforts to allow Congo to be used to achieve the geopolitical and geo-economic interests of the West but also for his efforts to undermine OAU’s unity aspirations. In 1977 and 1978 France and Belgium sent troops to aid him when rebels attempted to remove him from power.
The Euro-American financial institutions including the IMF and the World Bank also prodded him. Under President Jimmy Carter for example nearly half of the aid that went to Sub Sahara Africa went to Mobutu. The Export-Import Bank of America financed some of his white elephant projects and profited from the largely costly yet non-performing projects.
Mobutu reciprocated their efforts by granting Western multinationals unbridled access to Congo’s resources which were largely exploited for the benefit of the West. The profits these corporations made were moved out of the country as quickly as they were made, leaving the people of Congo penniless (Baregu, 2002).
Many patriotic African leaders including Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere heavily criticized the Euro-American efforts to control Africa through the backdoor. A visionary Nkrumah who saw the threat Europe and America posed to Africa urged his fellow African leaders to unite to avert the impending catastrophe that was to be fall the continent. In 1963 the Organization of Africa Unity (OAU) was formed to marshal strategies to secure the continent’s independence as well as her political, economic and cultural security and to counter the imperialists’ agenda of exploitation and domination.
But the dark forces in Europe and America did not stop working in Africa. As their American counterparts did in South and Central America, British trained Nigerian military officers mounted a coup in Nigeria in January 1966. One month later, on 24th February 1966, British trained Ghanaian military officers encouraged by the CIA to emulate their Nigerian and Congolese counterparts, also mounted a coup to overthrow Kwame Nkrumah’s government. The coups were designed to destroy the continental leadership and to smash the collective effort by Africans to emancipate themselves from perpetual Western bondage.
Mobutu’s 1960 and 1965 coups that deposed Patrice Lumumba and Moise Tshombe respectively, did a mortal blow to Africa’s independence efforts and struggles against colonialism and neocolonialism. The coups helped to usher in waves of coups and counter coups that would see his own country and Africa turned into a bloodbath. As he happily worked to appease his paymasters in France, Belgium and the United States, he turned a blind eye to the exploitation of his country’s people and their natural resources.
Thus Mobutu became the head of the neocolonialists in Central Africa who happily worked to undermine the progress of his own people and continent. He offered Congo as a gift to America, Belgium and France and collaborated with the West to undermine Africa’s Unity and her emancipation efforts. Through Mobutu, Congo became the instrument through which Africa’s effort to unite and free itself from foreign political, economic, cultural and military domination was thwarted.
In 1997 after more than three decades as head of the Western backed kleptocratic regime in Congo, Mobutu was eventually toppled by the rebel group Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo led by Laurent Kabila. Kabila was hugely assisted by the regimes in Rwanda and Uganda. French (1997) writing in the New York Times noted that ?African patrons with scores to settle against Mobutu lined up to help the rebels with money, men and arms?.
As his regime tumbled Mobutu sought explanation from his U.S. backers as to why they had abandoned him after long years of loyal service and friendship. He was reminded by Bill Richardson, head of President Bill Clinton’s delegation to Congo, that the mess he was in were his not his Western paymasters. “You just didn’t govern your own country” Bill Richardson told him (French, 1997). He soon learnt that his Western backers had dumped him because they had found new and more obedient allies in Uganda and Rwanda in the persons of warmongers Museveni and Paul Kagame.
Thus, it soon became clear that the Rwandan and Ugandan forces that supported Laurent Kabila did not do so because they loved Africa, neither did they support Kabila because they wanted to protect Africa from the imperialist West but rather to advance their own individual interests as well as maintain the strategic interest of the West in Congo. Kigali and Kampala were not fascinated by the bigger Africa project but were very much interested in destabilizing Congo to take advantage of the economic opportunities that Congo offered.
The Kabila-Uganda-Rwanda triangle’s aim to remove an aging and corrupt dictator soon turned into plunder and robbery. Rather than dismantling the corrupt system that had plunged Congo into bankruptcy the Uganda-Rwanda alliance learnt that they could use the same system to further their interest and that of Western multinational corporations that paid their war bills. One of such multinationals was the US based mining company, American Mineral Fields (AMF) which provided money for Kabila’s military campaign in return for future diamond mining rights and obtained exploration rights for cobalt, zinc and copper after the war (Baregu, 2002).
Kabila realized that his Uganda and Rwandan backers were themselves agents of foreign regimes and wanted to assert his independence and that of his country.
The regimes in Rwanda and Uganda declared war against their former ally-Kabila. They began marching their forces towards Eastern Congo. Other countries notably Zimbabwe and Angola sensing that they too could make profit from the war declared their support for Kabila triggering what has become known as the Great Africa War. It was the first time when a war involving several African countries took place. Eastern Congo became a zone of exploitation by army officers linked to the regimes in Uganda, Rwanda, Zimbabwe and Burundi. As for Laurent Kabila a plot was quickly hatched in Kigali and Kampala and he was quickly eliminated. But the Rwandese and their Ugandan allies soon fell out as they viciously competed and plundered Congo’s natural resources.
These are the countries whose leaders always embark on annual pilgrimage to Addis Ababa claiming to belong to the Organization of Africa Unity (now Africa Union) but in fact worked to destroy that unity to advance their own narrow interest. Rwanda and Uganda instead of protecting their neighbor to bring stability and help achieve the AU’s goal of bringing peace to the Great Lakes region joined the plunder and robbery.
In 2000, a UN Panel of Experts on Congo’s investigation into the war established that 85 Western multinational corporations including Afrimex, Ahmad Diamond, Banro, Bayer A.G. Cabot, De Beers, DAS Air, Echogen, and Egimex illegally supported and profited from the war. The governments of Rwanda, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Burundi, several army officers, gunrunners, encouraged the war and systematically looted and plundered Congo. The UN Panel of Experts documented Rwandan, Burundian and Ugandan armed forces looted on mass scale stockpiles of minerals, livestock, forest and agricultural products. The invaders also visited farms, storage facilities and banks and ordered managers to open the coffers and doors and carted whatever they found away. The Panel noted that the plunder was so huge that it took Rwanda and Uganda months to transport them to their respective countries (UNSC, 2002:8). The war was so profitable to Uganda and Rwanda that when the UN asked them to disband their army and withdraw from Congo they simply refused.
Congo remains an intractable security issue that continues to divide Africans. Rwanda and Uganda with their individually backed rebel groups continue to covertly battle one another for control of Congo’s resources.
But Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Zimbabwe are not the only countries that have worked to undermine the unity and stability of Africa. In East Africa and in the Horn of Africa region Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, Kenya and Somalia have done the same against their neighbors, supporting rebels and uprisings while claiming to work for the unity of Africa. Gabon, Cameroon, and Congo Brazzaville continue to act as the spy for France preferring a relationship with France to the unity of Africa.
The actions of the leadership of these countries and indeed so many others explain why Africa Unity has become elusive despite the political rhetoric and annual pilgrimage and funfair in Addis Ababa. The unity will continue to remain elusive unless the various actors in Africa realize that they have more to gain together than allowing greed and narrow interest to overshadow their thinking.
By Lord Aikins Adusei
[email protected]
References
Baregu, Mwesiga (2002) ?The Clones of ‘Mr. Kurtz’: Violence, War and Plunder in the DRC? Africa journal of Political Science, Vol 7 No. 2
French, Howard (1997) ?Anatomy of an Autocracy: Mobutu’s 32-Year Reign? New York Times http://partners.nytimes.com/library/world/africa/051797zaire-mobutu.html
Hailey, Lord (1957). An African Survey: Revised 1956: A Study of Problems Arising in Africa South of the Sahara. London: Oxford University Press.
UN Security Council (2001) ?Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other forms of Wealth of the Democratic Congo
By: Lord Aikins Adusei.
