Zaire Government and Politics
Celebrants below a billboard of the flaming
torch in the national flag, 20th of May Stadium, Kinshasa
SINCE 1965, JOSEPH-DÉSIRÉ MOBUTU, or Mobutu Sese Seko
as he has
called himself since 1971, has thoroughly dominated the
political
life of Zaire, a fact reflected in the title that he
awarded
himself, "Father of the Nation." Mobutu presides over a
political
system that has the formal trappings of a republic but is
in
reality the personal fiefdom of the president, who uses
the
national treasury as his personal checkbook and disburses
both
rewards and punishments at will. Corruption, nepotism, and
cronyism, as well as maladministration and inefficiency,
are
pervasive and widespread in the Zairian political system.
From 1967 until 1990, the primary instrument of
Mobutu's
control of the government was the country's sole legal
political
party, the Popular Revolutionary Movement (Mouvement
Populaire de
la Révolution--MPR), a Mobutu creation. In theory, the
party was a
separate entity intended to parallel the state apparatus
and to
guide and control it. But in reality the party had
virtually no
independent existence from the state, so the state and
party were
effectively fused.
On April 24, 1990, Mobutu radically transformed the
political
environment by announcing the establishment of a
competitive
multiparty system. But his move, generally regarded as a
calculated
attempt to quell domestic and international pressures for
change
rather than a sincere commitment to reform, unleashed
volatile
forces that threatened to topple the regime, although
Mobutu did
everything in his power to retain his hold on the
government.
Independent political parties were permitted to register,
with the
Union for Democracy and Social Progress (Union pour la
Démocratie
et le Progrès Social--UDPS) emerging as the main
opposition party.
In mid-1991 Mobutu finally convened a long-promised
national
conference, ostensibly designed to oversee the drafting of
a new
constitution and to manage the transition to a democratic,
multiparty political system. But inevitably conflicts
arose between
a conference determined to assert its sovereign powers and
a
president equally determined not to cede control of the
government,
and the conference was very much an on-again-off-again
institution
throughout 1991 and most of 1992.
In August 1992, the conference passed a Transitional
Act to
serve as a provisional constitution. The Transitional Act
established a parliamentary system with a figurehead
president, a
High Council of the Republic (Haut Conseil de la
République--HCR)
to serve as a provisional legislature; and a first state
commissioner (prime minister) to serve as head of
government. Under
the terms of the Transitional Act, Étienne Tshisekedi wa
Mulumba,
head of the UDPS, was duly elected to head the
transitional
government. But the new administration, although
recognized by the
United States and other Western powers, has never been
able to
govern because of Mobutu's continued control of key
military and
security forces, which he has used to obstruct the
functioning of
the transitional government, to intimidate the opposition,
to
incite ethnic violence, and to promote instability
throughout the
country. In early 1993, Mobutu went further in repudiating
the
authority of the transitional government by appointing a
rival
administration under a different prime minister, Faustin
Birindwa.
Since that time, a political stalemate has prevailed in
Zaire, with
two parallel governments vying for international
acceptance and
political control over a country in crisis, its economy
and social
system in total disarray.
Data as of December 1993
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