|
Zaire Relations with North Africa
During the 1980s, Mobutu's most bitter rival was
undoubtedly
Libya's Colonel Muammar Qadhafi. Speaking in Burundi in
May 1985,
the Libyan leader called on the Zairian population to
"physically
eliminate" Mobutu. On June 9, Zairian authorities
announced they
had dismantled a "pro-Libyan terrorist network" operating
in the
country and arrested four people carrying passports issued
by
unidentified neighboring states. Zaire's information
minister said
two of the four suspects were "closely linked" with
bombings in
March 1984, at the Voice of Zaire and the central post
office in
Kinshasa. The other two suspects allegedly were among
twelve
"Zairian terrorists trained in Libya" who had been
identified by
local authorities.
Libya urged the OAU, the African states, and all
African
nationalist forces and organizations "to adopt a serious
position
regarding the Mobutu regime which, it is now confirmed, is
a
hireling regime that conspires directly with the two
racist regimes
in South Africa and occupied Palestine against the
security,
safety, and stability of our African continent." In fact,
Zaire had
taken a leading role among Black African states in
breaking
relations with Israel in 1973, but once Egypt and Israel
had signed
a peace agreement and Israel had withdrawn from the Sinai
and thus
from Africa, Mobutu renewed his relations with the Jewish
state (in
May 1982). Israel, anxious to secure a bridgehead in
Africa, became
a significant supplier of foreign aid to Zaire, including
training
and directing the Special Presidential Brigade (later the
Special
Presidential Division), which guards the president. Mobutu
also
maintained commercial ties with South Africa at least as
early as
1989, although diplomatic relations were not established
until
September 1993.
In 1975, when Zaire intervened on the side of the FNLA,
Libya
favored the victorious MPLA. In Chad Mobutu favored
Hissein Habré
(who also was backed by Egypt and Sudan) against former
President
Goukouni Oueddei (backed by Libya). Zaire's contingent was
small
and played an inconsequential role compared to that of
France, but
had Zaire not intervened the French would have appeared to
be the
lone bakers of Habré. Nevertheless, the Mobutu regime was
acting in
its own interest, because a Libyan-dominated Chad would
menace both
Sudan and the Central African Republic, states contiguous
with
Zaire. In June 1992, Zaire and Libya discussed normalizing
relations between the two countries.
Mobutu was a close ally of the Sudanese regime of
Jaafar an
Nimeiri, which Libya opposed. The overthrow of Nimeiri,
and his
replacement by a regime more friendly to Libya, apparently
represented a further threat to Mobutu. By 1990, however,
he was on
good enough terms both with the Arab-dominated government
in
Khartoum and John Garang's Sudanese People's Liberation
Army to be
able to undertake mediation between the two.
On a continental level, Mobutu took the lead in
articulating
the dissatisfaction of moderate Black African states with
the OAU.
In July 1984, he called on those states to break away from
the OAU
and form a new regional organization. Although negative
reactions
led him to soften his position, claiming that the proposed
new
group would not conflict with the OAU (just as North
African states
can belong to the OAU and the Arab League), Mobutu
continued to
promote the idea for several years, even though it was
anathema not
only to the North Africans but also to "progressives"
south of the
Sahara. There is no evidence that Mobutu was promoting the
split
between Arab Africa and Black Africa because of his ties
to Israel
and/or South Africa, but such a split was in the perceived
interest
of the latter countries.
In contrast to the apparently anti-Arab initiative of
promoting
a Black African organization, Mobutu has maintained close
relations
with Egypt and especially with Morocco. The latter sent
troops to
Shaba in 1977 to suppress the FLNC invasion, and Mobutu
apparently
paid back this assistance by supporting Morocco's claim to
the
Western Sahara. In fact, Zaire boycotted the OAU from 1984
to 1986
in protest over its admission of the Saharan Arab
Democratic
Republic. Mobutu visited both Egypt and Morocco in April
1992 in an
apparent attempt to improve ties with Arab states in the
face of
deteriorating relations with the West.
* * *
The best sources on politics and government in Zaire
continue
to be the various works of Thomas M. Callaghy, Michael G.
Schatzberg, Thomas E. Turner, and Crawford Young. Of
particular
note are Callaghy's The State-Society Struggle: Zaire
in
Comparative Perspective and Culture and Politics in
Zaire; Schatzberg's The Dialectics of Oppression in
Zaire, Politics and Class in Zaire, and
Mobutu or
Chaos? The United States and Zaire, 1960-1990; and
Young and
Turner's The Rise and Decline of the Zairian State.
The Zairian human rights record, as well as its legal
system,
have been investigated in Makau wa Mutua and Peter
Rosenblum's
Zaire: Repression As Policy--A Human Rights Report,
published by the Lawyers' Committee for Human Rights, as
well as in
specialized reports by Amnesty International and the
United States
Department of State's annual Country Reports on Human
Rights
Practices.
Up-to-date information about Zaire can be found in the
annual
editions of Africa South of the Sahara; the
Economist
Intelligence Unit's quarterly Country Report: Zaire,
Rwanda,
Burundi and annual Country Profile: Zaire, Rwanda,
Burundi; issues of Current History; and print
and
broadcast articles reproduced in the Foreign Broadcast
Information
Service (FBIS), Daily Report: Sub-Saharan Africa.
(For
further information and complete citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of December 1993
|
