About this Book The people of the Congo, as this book shows, have suffered cruelly throughout the past century from a particularly brutal experience of colonial rule; and, following independence in 1960, external inter- ference by the United States and other powers, a whole generation of patrimonial spoliation at the hands of Mobutu (the dictator installed by the West in 1965), and periodic warfare, which even now continues fitfully in the East of the country. But, as this insightful political history of the Congolese democratic movement in the 20th century decisively makes clear, its people have not taken these multiple oppressions lying down. Instead, the Congolese people have struggled over the years to improve their conditions of life by trying both to establish democratic institutions at home and to free themselves from exploitation from abroad; indeed, these cannot be separated one from the other. The author of this book, Professor Nzongola-Ntalaja, is one of the country’s leading intellectuals. Despite being forced into long years of exile (during which he taught political science in the United States and␣elsewhere), he has played a part at significant moments in his country’s political struggle. His deep knowledge of personalities and events, and his understanding of the underlying class, ethnic and other factors at work, make his book a compelling, lucid, radical and utterly unromanticized account of his countrymen’s struggle. In acknow- ledging their defeat, he sees it and the crisis of the post-colonial state as the result of the breakdown of the anti-colonial alliance between the masses and the national leadership after independence. This book is essential reading for understanding what is happening in the Congo and the Great Lakes region. It will also stand as a milestone in how to write the modern political history of Africa. About the Author Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja is a renowned scholar of African politics and an international consultant specializing in public policy, govern- ance and conflict-related issues. His distinguished scholarly career has included tenure as the James K. Batten Professor of Public Policy at Davidson College in North Carolina (1998–99); Professor of African Studies at Howard University (Washington DC) from 1978 to 1997; lectureships in the Congo (1970–75) and Nigeria (1977–78); and a visiting professorship at El Colegio de Mexico (summer 1987). He has also served as President of the African Studies Association (ASA) of the United States, 1987–88; Member of the Executive Committee of the International Political Science Association (IPSA), 1994–97; and President of the African Association of Political Science (AAPS) from 1995 to 1997. In the political sphere, he has played a role in his own country’s difficult transition from the Mobutu dictatorship – in 1992 he was a delegate to the Sovereign National Conference of Congo/Zaire; serv- ing thereafter as Diplomatic Adviser to the Transitional Government of Prime Minister Etienne Tshisekedi; and in 1996 as Deputy Presi- dent of the National Electoral Commission of the DRC and chief representative of the democratic opposition on the Commission. His publications include: The State and Democracy in Africa, co-editor (AAPS Books, Harare, 1997; Africa World Press, Trenton, 1998) The Oxford Companion to Politics of the World, co-editor (Oxford University Press, New York, 1993, 2001) Conflict in the Horn of Africa (African Studies Association Press, Atlanta, 1991) Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Africa (Zed Books, London, 1987) The Crisis in Zaire: Myths and Realities, editor (Africa World Press, Trenton, 1986) ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ The Congo from Leopold to Kabila A People’s History Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Z Zed Books LONDON AND NEW YORK The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People’s History was first n jf uk published by Zed Books Ltd, 7␣Cynthia Street, London 1 9 , and ny usa Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, 10010, in 2002. 3rd impression 2007 usa Distributed in the exclusively by Palgrave, a division of St Martin’s ny usa Press, LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, 10010, Copyright © Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, 2002 Map on p. xvi reproduced by courtesy of the Africa Institute of South Africa Cover designed by Andrew Corbett Set in Monotype Dante by Ewan Smith, London Printed and bound in the EU by Biddles Ltd The rights of Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja to be identified as the author of␣this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: available isbn 978 1 84277 062 8 hb isbn 978 1 84277 053 5 pb Contents Preface and Acknowledgements/vii Abbreviations and Acronyms/xii Name Equivalency/xiv Map of the Congo/xvi Introduction 1 The quest for freedom and prosperity/2 The Congolese democracy movement in historical perspective/4 1 Imperialism, Belgian Colonialism and African Resistance 13 Imperialism and the establishment of European rule in the Congo/14 The Belgian colonial system/26 African resistance to colonial rule/41 2 The Struggle for Independence 61 The social basis of decolonization in the Belgian Congo/61 The anticolonial alliance and the independence struggle/77 3 The First Congo Crisis 94 The crisis of decolonization, 1960–65 /95 The United Nations and the Congo crisis/112 4 The Second Independence Movement 121 The birth of the second independence movement/121 Strengths and weaknesses of the second independence movement/126 The externally led counterinsurgency/135 5 The Mobutu Regime: Dictatorship and State Decay 141 The origins and nature of the regime/142 Instruments of power/152 6 The Struggle for Multiparty Democracy 171 The fight against Mobutu’s dictatorship and reign of terror/171 The Sovereign Mational Conference/189 Politics and the institutions of the democratic transition/198 7 Conflict in the Great Lakes Region 214 The historical context/215 The war of partition and plunder/227 Resistance and repression in Kabila’s Congo/240 8 Conclusion 253 Internal political limitations/255 External constraints/258 The way forward/262 Chronology 265 Bibliography 279 Index 294 Preface and Acknowledgements § I started writing this book in December 1999, following a request from Hakim Ben Hammouda of Codesria. But this work is based on my ongoing research on the Congo since 1968. My main interest then was mass participation in politics, with particular emphasis on the mass factor in the independence struggle and the student movement in the 1960s. The focus of research changed to the state in 1980, with a 14- year research project largely supported by three Howard University grants on the Mobutu regime, its external connections and its con- sequences for the Congolese people. A contract was signed with Zed Books for a book on the subject, and this was to follow the 1987 publication there of my Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Africa. As I became increasingly involved in the activities of the Congolese demo- cracy movement from 1987 to 1996, this project was never completed. I am very grateful to Codesria and Zed Books for giving me the opportunity to add another publication to the impressive list of works of synthesis on Congolese political economy, which include Mbaya Kankwenda’s Zaïre: Vers quelles destinées?, my own edited volume entitled The Crisis in Zaire: Myths and Realities, Jacques Vanderlinden’s Du Congo au Zaïre, 1960–1980: Essai de bilan, and The Rise and Decline of the Zairian State by Crawford Young and Thomas Turner. Familiarity with these four texts, which are rich in data and helpful in elucidating the past, should give the serious student of Congolese politics the background information needed for a better appreciation of this book. My own contribution to the analysis of Congolese political realities is that of a scholar-activist. As a Congolese patriot who came of age during the great awakening of the national liberation struggle, I cannot be dispassionate or neutral in examining the political history of my country. As most people of my generation, I was forced to take a keen interest in politics as a teenager, and later on in life I took an active part in some of the events described in this book. Thus, in addition to using the historical and sociological methods of political economy, this study has also benefited from my own personal experience as a participant observer. This experience spans four decades, from student activism in the viii·The Congo from Leopold to Kabila 1960s to more recent involvement in Congolese civil society attempts to find a peaceful solution to the present crisis in the Great Lakes region. My baptism of fire in Congolese politics occurred in April 1960, when I was expelled from secondary school for participation in pro- independence activities. Four years later, I joined the Union générale des étudiants congolais (UGEC) and the editorial staff of its USA– Canada section organ, La Voix des étudiants congolais (LAVEC). As chief editor of LAVEC between September 1965 and January 1967, I was challenged to keep up with political developments back home to be able to provide the best services possible as an opinion leader within the Congolese community in North America. Following three years of university teaching, administration and research in Mobutu’s Zaire, between February 1971 and December 1973, I became convinced that the Mobutu regime was useless or dysfunctional for the Congo, and this is a position that I defended in my 1975 doctoral dissertation. The only logical thing to do, I thought, was to fight against it. By 1979, this position had become sufficiently widespread among Congolese intellectuals in the United States that it was possible to found a research and political action NGO for those professionals and students interested in finding an alternative to the Mobutu regime, the Centre d’études et de recherches sur le Zaïre/Center for Research on Zaire (CEREZ). I was honoured to serve as the Center’s executive director between 1981 and 1991. In addition to promoting socially or politically relevant research among our compatriots, CEREZ sponsored at least one panel on the Congo each year at the annual meetings of the African Studies Association of the United States. On top of this, four major achievements can be credited to CEREZ during this period: (1) pressure on the US Department of State to help obtain the liberation of Ernest Wamba-dia-Wamba, a founding member of CEREZ, who was detained in Kinshasa for nearly one year between 1981 and 1982; (2) an inter- national research workshop on ‘Myths and Realities of the Zairian Crisis’ at Howard University in 1984; (3) work with the Rainbow Lobby, a progressive US political advocacy group in support of Etienne Tshis- ekedi and the democracy movement in the Congo, beginning with Tshisekedi’s visit to the United States in 1987; and (4) the organization of a major conference on ‘Prospects for Democracy in Zaire’, held at Howard University with Tshisekedi and other Congolese democracy activists, in November 1990. In addition to CEREZ, I became an active member of the Mouvement national congolais/Lumumba (MNC-L) of the diaspora in 1984. In 1991, I was elected chair of the Brussels Conclave, from 28 February to 1 March, which took important decisions on the party’s role in the democratic transition in the Congo. At a Preface·ix subsequent meeting in June 1991 in Metz, France, I was designated as one of the persons to go back home as part of a fact-finding and party reunification mission, which I did two months later, in August, along with Etienne-Richard Mbaya and Patrice Mosamete. As a result of all this pro-democracy activity, I was co-opted by the delegates at the Sovereign National Conference to join them as one of seven ‘inter- nationally renowned’ Congolese scholars, in April 1992. Nothing in my previous or later political life can compare with the singularly exciting and learning experience of this national political reform and constitutional convention. In Kabila’s Congo, one often hears disparaging remarks about people who are nostalgic about the national conference. I, for one, plead guilty as charged. I have tried to tell the story of the conference in Chapter 6, but there is no way to do justice to what I witnessed. After my own general policy speech on 14␣May, I received nearly five hundred letters from all over the country, and I was the featured speaker at two to three public forums practically every weekend between June and October 1992 in Kinshasa. Afterwards, as diplomatic adviser to Prime Minister Tshisekedi, I also learned a lot in three of the major missions in which I was involved: the April 1993 independence referendum in Eritrea, the June 1993 OAU summit in Cairo, and that year’s UN General Assembly session in New York. While I served as a bona fide government representative in the United Nations Mission to Observe the Referendum in Eritrea (UNOVER), our delega- tion lost the credentials battle to Mobutu at the OAU and UN assemblies. In 1996, I was back home as deputy president of the National Electoral Commission, in which I also served as head of the democratic opposi- tion. I resigned from the commission after eight months of service on 3 September, mostly to protest against the sabotage of its work by Mobutu’s cronies, particularly Prime Minister Léon Kengo wa Dondo and Gérard Kamanda wa Kamanda, the interior minister. Working at close range with the Kengo government, the opposition leadership and representatives of the international community, I was able to gain valuable insights in the bankruptcy of the first group, the incompetence of the second, and the cynicism of the third. All of this personal experience was invaluable in determining the content of this book. Given the multiplicity of my organizational affiliations and the very long time it took me to write it, the book owes its existence to the generous support and kind assistance of several organizations and many people, too numerous to be mentioned here. However, acknowledgement must be made of the support from the Faculty Research Program in the Social Sciences, Humanities and Educa- tion at Howard University from the Office of the Vice-President for