Zaire POSTINDEPENDENCE POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT
Establishment of a Personalistic Regime
View of Kinshasa, with Pool de Malebo on the
Congo River in the background
Courtesy Zaire National Tourism Office
Modern buildings on the outskirts of Kinshasa
Courtesy Zaire National Tourism Office
After the bedlam of the First Republic, 1960-65, the
preceding
colonial regime seemed to offer an alternative model of
order and
discipline
(see The
First Republic, 1960-65
, ch. 1). Thus,
as he
moved to depoliticize the legislative and administrative
structures
of the First Republic, Mobutu consciously restored
structures of
the colonial era. Mobutu and his associates attempted to
establish
a nation based solely on the colonial state, but without
the
colonial trinity, which also included the Roman Catholic
Church and
colonial companies
(see The
Apparatus of Control
, ch. 1).
In
essence, Mobutu attempted to develop a political religion
to
replace the imported Christian faith, and a single party,
the MPR,
was to be the "church" of that religion.
Mobutu and his associates consolidated their control of
the
country's security apparatus by eliminating professionally
autonomous military units, gradually suppressing rival
ethnic and
regional secessionist rebellions, establishing an
effective state
security agency, and maintaining linkages with external
backers,
who provided extensive training and equipment. To achieve
greater
national independence, Mobuto's regime diversified
relations with
external patrons (France, China, Israel, the United
States,
Belgium, and the conservative Arab states) and
expropriated
colonial enterprises. The Congo (Zaire was formally called
the
Republic of the Congo from independence to August 1, 1964,
when it
became the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which name
was used
until October 27, 1971.) solicited a multitude of new
links to
Western multinational corporations and banks. The revenue
needs of
the state were to be met by sharp increases in fiscal
impositions
on the colonial corporate structure, which had been very
lightly
taxed, by perpetuation of the taxes imposed on the peasant
majority, and by drawing in major new resources from
abroad through
loans, aid, and investments as well as by mortgaging the
country's
rich natural resource base.
What began as a collegial alliance of the Binza Group
(a group
of Mobutu supporters named for the prosperous suburb where
its
members lived); the top military command; some former
supporters of
Patrice Lumumba, who was the Congo's first prime minister;
and
young, often radical university graduates, gradually
became an
assemblage of courtiers doing the bidding of the
presidential
monarch
(see
The
Second Republic, 1965-90: The Rebirth of Bula Matari, ch. 1).
Mobutu carried out this transformation by
suborning former colleagues and adversaries, thereby
sapping the
autonomous power bases of influential First Republic
officials.
Systematic rotation of high office was practiced, and a
pool of
vacant positions was sustained through the continuous
pensioning of
former collaborators into lucrative business
opportunities. Access
to high rank in all state agencies depended upon
presidential
favor. The sanction for not cooperating in this new elite
was exile
or imprisonment on trumped up or real charges of
corruption,
nepotism, or subversion.
The term presidential monarch became
increasingly
appropriate as applied to Mobutu. Mobutu's retinue was
reported to
consist of some 600 courtiers, and members of his family
were
treated as royalty. His son, Mobutu Nyiwa, was trained to
succeed
him, occupying a series of ministerial posts. President
Mobutu
increasingly spent more and more time at the several
palaces he had
built in his ancestral village, Gbadolite, which was
transformed
into a modern town, endowed with an international airport,
satellite television antennae, street lights, and other
amenities
that most Congolese centers lacked. The president often
met with
his cabinet at Gbadolite, and he received foreign
dignitaries
there.
In 1973, espousing what Mobutu claimed to be Zairian
nationalism, the regime embarked on a quest for economic
and
cultural emancipation in a sweeping program known as
Zairianization
(see Glossary). In the economic sphere, however,
Zairianization
resulted in an ill-advised and costly nationalization and
confiscation program, highlighted by the personal
aggrandizement of
President Mobutu's ruling political and commercial class.
Zairianization also advocated cultural pride and autonomy
and aimed
at rejecting and eliminating foreign cultural influences.
Christian
names of individuals and colonial place-names were dropped
in favor
of "authentic" Zairian names
(see Zairianization, Radicalization, and Retrocession
, ch. 1;
Zairianization
, ch. 3).
By 1974 the official ideology had metamorphosed into
Mobutism (see
Glossary), in which the acts and sayings of the
leader were
glorified. The state was personalized, and state and party
were
fused together. But Mobutism soon degenerated into a
parody of
Maoism. To "Founder-President" were added ever more
extravagant
praise-names: "Guide of the Revolution," "Helmsman"
(borrowed from
Mao Zedong), "Mulopwe" (emperor, or even god-king), and
finally
"Messiah." Important places in the president's political
career
were designated as pilgrimage sites. At this point, the
ideology of
the regime had become so overblown that many Zairians and
most
foreign observers found it impossible to take seriously.
But as
Zaire specialist Michael G. Schatzberg points out, the
paternalistic strand of Mobutu's ideology corresponds to a
"deeply
rooted ideological and symbolic moral matrix undergirding
both
Zairian state and society." As he explains, "legitimate
governance,
in Zaire and in much of Africa, is based on the tacit
normative
idea that government stands in the same relationship to
its
citizens that a father does to his children." Yet this
same moral
matrix also provides the basis for opposition. When
African
political leaders violate the implied cultural norms and
underlying
premises of political "fatherhood," "legitimacy erodes,
tensions
mount, and instability, repression, or both, ensue."
A number of the themes in the Mobutist ideology--the
yearning
for cultural and economic autonomy and for strong,
paternalistic
leadership--resonated with deeply held opinions on the
part of
Zairians, among both the elite and the people in general.
At the
same time, however, it is difficult to avoid the
conclusion that
this ideology served to justify the domination of the
political
system by a self-serving ruling class that lived off the
profits to
be extracted from Zaire's interface with the world
economy.
Data as of December 1993
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