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Zaire Relations with the Communist World
Mobutu's Zaire has had cooler relations with the Soviet
Union
than with most other major states, the coolness being a
remnant of
the First Republic, when the Soviet Union had attempted to
assist
Lumumba in his efforts to reconquer secessionist Kasai and
Katanga
in July-September 1960. Mobutu expelled Soviet and
Czechoslovak
diplomats and personnel when he first seized power on
September 14.
Nikita S. Khrushchev then tried unsuccessfully to use the
ouster of
Lumumba as the catalyst for a Soviet-Afro-Asian voting
bloc in the
UN and an assault on the position of the UN's secretary
general,
Dag Hammarskjöld. After this double defeat, the Soviet
Union was
left in a marginal position, with little influence in
Zaire
(see The
Crisis of Decolonization
, ch. 1).
The wave of Lumumbist "second independence" rebellions
that
swept the country in 1963-65 seemed to offer an
opportunity for an
expanded Soviet role. In January 1964, as Chinese-trained
Lumumbist
Pierre Mulele began his insurgency in Kwilu, all personnel
of the
Soviet embassy were expelled from Zaire, on the grounds of
complicity (probably fictitious) with the rebellion. In
fact,
Soviet support for the insurgents was largely rhetorical.
The
Soviet Union eventually began to supply significant aid to
the
secessionists, overland from Sudan. But after several
truckloads of
arms had been stolen by rebels in southern Sudan and
turned against
the Sudanese government, Khartoum cut off the route to
Zaire.
During 1965 most communist aid to the rebellions came from
China
and Cuba (uncoordinated with the Soviet Union).
The Soviet Union initially reacted very negatively to
Mobutu's
1965 coup, denouncing the "American grip on the country."
However,
the nationalization of UMHK and the reorientation of the
new
regime's African policy led to more positive assessments
by Soviet
spokesmen.
In 1967 negotiations between Zaire and the Soviet Union
led to
the reestablishment of normal relations between the two
countries,
and a new Soviet ambassador presented his credentials
early in
1968. Formal ties with the Soviet Union were useful, as
Mobutu,
still closely linked to the United States, attempted to
present an
image of nonalignment. However, the chief utility of a
Soviet
presence was still to provide a visible scapegoat; Soviet
diplomats
were expelled in 1970 and 1971, on the grounds that they
had
fomented unrest among university students and carried out
other
"subversive activities."
When Mobutu developed ambitions for a leadership role
in Africa
and the Third World, he turned first to China rather than
the
Soviet Union, as a symbol of his nonalignment. In a sense,
this
move foreclosed the possibility of warmer ties to the
Soviets,
given the level of animosity between the communist
superpowers.
There are indications that a state visit to Moscow was in
the
planning stages late in 1974 but failed to materialize
when the
Soviet Union declined to provide the extravagant
ceremonials to
which Mobutu was becoming accustomed. Instead, the Zairian
leader
made a sudden visit to the Democratic People's Republic of
Korea
(North Korea) and China at the time originally announced
for the
visit to the Soviet Union.
The Portuguese coup of 1974 and the struggle for
control of
Angola placed Zaire and the Soviet Union in conflict once
again.
Not anticipating heavy Soviet and Cuban backing for the
Popular
Movement for the Liberation of Angola (Movimento Popular
de
Libertação de Angola--MPLA), Mobutu took the fateful
decision to
commit Zairian army units to Angola, backing the National
Front for
the Liberation of Angola (Frente Nacional de Libertação de
Angola--
FNLA) of Holden Roberto. Zairian forces probably were
operating in
Angola as early as March 1975. In November 1975, the
Zairian-FNLA
column was almost in sight of Luanda--where an FNLA
government
would have been installed--when it encountered Cuban
troops. The
Cubans inflicted a crushing defeat on the men of Mobutu
and Holden,
who fled back into Zaire, and the MPLA governed Angola
alone.
The fact that the Soviet Union and Zaire had backed
opposite
sides in the Angolan civil war had a decisive impact on
Zaire's
foreign policy for the next decade or more. Mobutu's claim
to
African leadership was foreclosed, as most African
governments
sided with the MPLA regime. Economic and military needs
pushed
Mobutu back into the arms of the United States and its
allies, and
Mobutu took a pro-American stance on such matters as
Israel's
position in international organizations.
In 1977 and 1978, Zaire was invaded by a few thousand
men of
the FLNC
(see External
Threats to Regime Stability
, ch.
1). These
men had come from Angola, where they had been based since
the early
1970s, and perhaps had undergone Cuban training there. It
has been
alleged that the German Democratic Republic (East Germany)
was
assigned the job of destabilizing Zaire, on behalf of the
Soviet
Union, and that the FLNC was the chosen instrument. Both
in 1977
and 1978, Mobutu chose to blame the invasions on the
Soviet Union
and Cuba, but no evidence supporting Soviet or Cuban
involvement
ever came to light.
Since the Shaba invasions, there has been little
significant
shift in Zaire-Soviet relations. In 1986 Mobutu made an
effort to
"play the Soviet card," i.e., to promote the idea of
closer
relations with the Soviets as a ploy in his much more
important
struggle to maintain or augment the flow of aid and
investment from
the West. In sum, the Soviet Union, before it broke up
into
independent republics, remained of symbolic importance to
Zaire and
occasionally served either as a scapegoat for difficulties
that
were entirely or mainly domestic or as a threat to the
relationship
between Zaire and its Western partners.
Relations with China were cold at first because of
Chinese aid
to Mulele and other rebels, and Mobutu opposed seating
China at the
United Nations. By 1972, however, he began to view China
as an
important counterweight to the Soviet Union. Zaire
recognized China
along with North Korea and East Germany in November 1972,
and in
the following year Mobutu paid a state visit to Beijing
from which
he returned with promises of US$100 million in economic
aid. The
friendship with China deepened when the two countries
found
themselves supporting enemies of the MPLA in the Angolan
civil war.
During a second state visit to Beijing in 1974, Mobutu and
Chairman
Mao Zedong discussed further aid to the FNLA. Mobutu
appeared to
have been so impressed by what he saw in China and in
North Korea
that his rhetoric became noticeably more radical. He
instituted the
takeover of schools by the party and began advocating the
establishment of agricultural cooperatives.
After the defeat of the FNLA, China became more
circumspect in
its dealings with Zaire, but Mobutu continued to emphasize
his ties
to China as a counterpart to his close relations to the
United
States and South Africa in the eyes of the world. During
the second
Shaba invasion, China sided firmly with Mobutu, accusing
the Soviet
Union and Cuba of destabilizing Central Africa by their
interference. In 1983 Zaire received partial relief from
its
massive debt burden, as Premier Zhao Ziyang, during his
elevennation African tour, announced that China was cancelling
Kinshasa's
US$100 million debt. The money borrowed would be
reinvested in
joint Chinese-Zairian projects. In the late 1980s, China
provided
Zaire with some military equipment and training. Following
the
cutoff of Western aid to Zaire in 1991, China is reported
to have
become more active in Zaire. An estimated 1,000 Chinese
technicians
reportedly were working on agricultural and forestry
projects in
Zaire in the early 1990s.
Because of the alleged support by Cuba and East Germany
of the
Shaba invasion, Zaire suspended relations with those
countries in
the spring of 1977. Relations with Cuba were restored in
1979, in
order to facilitate Zairian participation in the
nonaligned summit
held in Havana in September of that year. Relations with
North
Korea cooled after the country recognized the MPLA regime,
and
North Korean military instructors left Zaire in the spring
of 1977.
Romania remained one of Zaire's closest foreign
partners until
the fall and execution of Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989. Part
of the
attraction doubtless was the independence of the Ceausescu
regime
vis-à-vis Soviet hegemony. Mobutu seems also to have
admired the
cult of personality surrounding his Balkan counterpart.
Relations
were not just state-to-state but also party-to-party
between the
MPR and the Romanian Communist Party. The fall of
Ceausescu,
vividly presented on Kinshasa television, reportedly made
a strong
impression upon Mobutu, whose announcement of
democratization
followed shortly thereafter. Popular humor in the capital
speculated upon the future of "Mobutu Sesesescu."
Data as of December 1993
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