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Zaire Fragmented Exile Movements
For the most part, groups in exile, including the
Lumumbists,
remained fragmented and unable to pose much of a threat to
Mobutu.
Their weakness is exemplified by the meeting held in
Switzerland in
1987. Thirteen Zairian opposition movements took part and
agreed to
establish a government in exile, the sole aim of which was
"to
overthrow the Zairian dictator by any means." But no
sooner had the
composition of the government in exile been announced than
the
supposed "president of the Constituent Assembly" denied
his
participation and appealed to exiles "to return to the
country to
take part in the immense task of national reconstruction."
An earlier attempt to unite the exiled opposition was
the
Council for the Liberation of the Congo (CLC), set up by
former
Lumumbist politician Bernardin Mungul-Diaka. Mungul-Diaka
had been
a minister under Mobutu, then fled the country in 1980,
and
surfaced in Brussels as head of the CLC. This council
supposedly
brought together five organizations, including the FLNC,
the PRP,
and the Progressive Congolese Students, all of which
identified the
country by its former name, rejecting "Zaire" as a
creation of
Mobutu. It was clear that the FLNC and PRP existed; it was
less
clear that the CLC would be able to coordinate their
activities, or
indeed to survive the return of Mungul-Diaka from exile.
Equally
ephemeral were the Congolese Front for the Restoration of
Democracy, created in 1982 by Nguza Karl-i-Bond, and the
African
Socialist Force (Force Socialiste Africaine--FSA), formed
by
Cléophas Kamitatu in 1977. Such opposition groups competed
with one
another for aid from foreign supporters and were
vulnerable to the
co-optation of their leaders by Mobutu. They were
important in that
they managed to publicize abuses of the Mobutu regime but
posed
little threat to its endurance.
Data as of December 1993
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