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Zaire Religious Groups
The Roman Catholic Church
Until the inauguration of multipartyism in 1990, the
most
persistent and most effective opposition to the Mobutu
regime came
from the Roman Catholic Church. Mobutu's ambitions for
state
expansion necessarily implied conflict with organized
religion, and
the main adversary of the expansionist regime was the
Roman
Catholic Church, which claims 46 to 48 percent of the
population as
active members. The Catholic network of schools, clinics,
and other
social services was as large as that of the state, and
more
efficiently run. The role of the church thus was
pervasive, and its
moral authority made it an uncomfortable competitor for
the
comprehensive allegiance that Mobutu sought.
Initially, the church had welcomed the new regime and
supported
the consolidation of its authority. The founding of the
MPR led to
the first tensions, and in 1969 a conference of bishops
privately
noted "dictatorial tendencies" in the regime. The
following year,
Joseph Cardinal Malula, the head of the church in Zaire,
publicly
expressed fears regarding the regime's intentions during a
mass
celebrating the tenth anniversary of independence.
In 1971 the regime struck at the symbol of the Catholic
education system, absorbing Lovanium University (along
with the
Protestants' fledgling university) into the new National
University
of Zaire. Even more offensive to the church was the
announcement
that branches of the JMPR (party youth organization) had
to be
established in the seminaries. After weeks of tension and
closure
of the seminaries, in April 1972 the bishops accepted JMPR
cells on
the condition that their party links pass through the
church
hierarchy.
Another battle took place over the concept of
authenticity,
which the Catholic hierarchy began to see as a threat to
Christianity. The regime's stress on "mental
decolonization" and
"cultural disalienation" could be read as a veiled attack
on
Christianity as an import from the West, as could the
appeal to the
values of traditional African culture as an alternative to
indiscriminate Westernization.
Authenticity also included the banning of Christian
names, a
measure that particularly offended the church. The Zairian
bishops
briefly resisted the measure, then acquiesced. The
church's
opposition earned Cardinal Malula attacks as a "renegade
of the
revolution;" he was evicted from the residence the regime
had built
for him and forced to leave the country for three months.
Late in 1972, the regime banned all religious
publications and
dissolved church-sponsored youth movements. Indoctrination
of
Zairian youth should be an exclusive function of the
party, it was
argued. The zenith of this campaign came at the end of
1974 when
the religious school network was nationalized, public
celebration
of Christmas was banned, and the display of religious
artifacts was
limited to the interior of churches.
Soon thereafter, the regime began to concede tacitly
that it
had gone too far. The school networks eventually were
returned to
church management when the state proved unable to operate
them
effectively.
By 1976, the Catholic church had reemerged as the
strongest
critic of the existing sociopolitical order. Following the
abandonment of the education "reforms" and of
Zairianization of the
economy, and the fiasco of intervention in Angola, a mood
of
profound demoralization settled over the country, and the
church
expressed the prevailing mood in a pastoral letter.
Outraged,
Mobutu summoned the Catholic bishops and demanded that
they disavow
the letter; they flatly refused.
Since that time, church-state relations have been on a
see-saw.
Mobutu welcomed the visits of Pope John Paul II, in May
1980 and
August 1985, perhaps because they lent a reflected glory
to his
regime. But at other times, relations have been very bad
indeed. In
1982, for example, Le Monde reported that Cardinal
Malula
and three bishops had been subjected to violent
intimidation by the
authorities.
The death of Cardinal Malula in 1989 removed the most
prominent
opponent of Mobutism. But when Mobutu called for a
national
dialogue, early in 1990, the Catholic bishops produced a
memorandum
that was sweeping in its condemnation of Mobutu's
autocratic system
of rule.
Monsignor Etsou, bishop of Mbandaka, was named
archbishop of
Kinshasa in 1990, then raised to the rank of cardinal,
succeeding
Malula in both posts. These decisions doubtless were
motivated by
the needs of the church; however, "Mobutu's bishop"
appeared to
have been chosen by the church over other potential
successors.
This impression was strengthened, early in 1991, when
Etsou
cancelled a proreform march in Kinshasa, and he ordered
priests to
keep out of politics.
Yet other currents in the church clearly still oppose
Mobutu
and have been in the forefront of democratization efforts.
Monsignor Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya, archbishop of
Kisangani, was
elected president of the CNS in April 1992 and, as head of
the HCR,
has continued to lead negotiations aimed at political
reform.
Moreover, in December 1993, Zaire's Catholic bishops once
again
issued a public condemnation of the Mobutu regime,
accusing Mobutu
of using state terrorism, ethnic cleansing, and economic
sabotage
to destabilize the country and maintain control of the
state
apparatus.
The Protestants
Zaire's Protestant leaders were less resistant than the
Catholics to the excesses of Mobutu's Second Republic. The
Protestant churches, claiming about 24 to 28 percent of
the
population as communicants, acquiesced to the 1971
government-
imposed merger of the various Protestant groups (analogous
to the
unification of the trade union movement, discussed above).
The
result was the Church of Christ in Zaire (Église du Christ
au
Zaïre--ECZ), an umbrella organization. Some Protestants
welcomed
this action because it gave them equal standing with the
Catholics.
Conservative Protestant churches and missions refused to
join, only
to be faced by a government law recognizing the ECZ as the
only
legal framework for Protestant activity in the country.
Sixty-two
Protestant denominations were recognized as "communities"
within
the ECZ. Numerically, the most important were the
Baptists, the
Congregationalists, the Methodists, and the Presbyterians.
Leaders of the ECZ seem to have decided that the Mobutu
regime's authenticity campaign offered them an historic
opportunity. Unlike the Catholics, they embraced
authenticity and
its leader, Mobutu. The clash between Cardinal Malula and
President
Mobutu, culminating in the nationalization of Lovanium
University
and the exile of the cardinal, seemed to compensate for
the
advantages Catholicism had enjoyed under Belgian
colonialism. Even
though they lost their own newly established university,
the Free
University of the Congo (Université Libre du Congo--ULC),
the
Protestants apparently considered that what was bad news
for the
Catholics necessarily was good news for them.
The Protestants remained committed to the regime until
after
Mobutu's announcement of a process of popular
consultation. Then,
in February 1990, the ECZ's Executive committee for
Kasai-Oriental
Region submitted a memorandum in which it criticized the
constitutional structure of the Second Republic, denounced
the
failures or abuses of the functioning of the various
institutions,
and proposed a series of changes. The memorandum was
particularly
direct in criticizing the "excessiveness of the powers
held in the
hands of only one man," i.e., the president. What is
interesting in
light of subsequent events, however, is that this
memorandum did
not demand the replacement of the regime and made no
mention of
multipartyism.
A month later, the head of the ECZ submitted a
memorandum to
Mobutu, on behalf of the entire ECZ. The memorandum
recommended
that the president assume the role of "guarantor of
national unity
and sovereignty, making the government responsible before
the
people (the parliament) for the acts it commits." The ECZ
called
for a multiparty system with a minimum of two and a
maximum of
three parties, affirmed that only Mobutu could guide the
country
through the transition to multipartyism, and promised its
prayers
for the success of the president's efforts.
The proposals of the Protestants were curiously similar
to
those made by Mobutu in his speech of April 24, notably
the
limitation of three parties and the placing of the
president above
the parties. Some observers concluded that the ECZ had
been
influential in shaping Mobutu's ideas, but of course it is
equally
possible that leaders of the ECZ were well enough informed
as to
what the president planned to say, three weeks later, that
they
were able to tailor their document to correspond to the
president's
plans.
Following the massacre of students on the campus of the
University of Lubumbashi in May 1990, the national
executive
committee of the ECZ met at Goma in Nord-Kivu, where
Mobutu himself
was passing a considerable period of time. The committee
reportedly
recommended that the ECZ abstain from commenting on the
Lubumbashi
affair. This position was opposed by the regional leaders
from
Kasai-Oriental and especially by those from Shaba (of
which
Lubumbashi is the capital). Under the pressure of these
delegations
in particular, the ECZ issued a pastoral letter that went
farther
than any of its earlier statements in condemning the
chaotic state
of affairs. As to what should be done, the ECZ called for
"a
general amnesty" that would make it possible for all
political
tendencies to participate in a national conference.
Other Religions
The points of view of the Kimbanguist Church and of the
much
smaller Muslim community are similar to that of the
Protestants,
i.e., recognition by the Second Republic was welcome in
that it
gave the organizations far more status than they had
previously
enjoyed. As the political scene opened up in 1990, the
Kimbanguists
and Muslims were even slower than the Protestants to
oppose the
regime to which they owed so much.
Data as of December 1993
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