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Zaire The Quest for Legitimacy
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President Mobutu Sese Seko with the secretary
general of the United Nations, Kurt Waldheim, 1979
Courtesy The United Nations
By 1967 Mobutu had consolidated his rule and proceeded
to give
the country a new constitution and a single party. The new
constitution was submitted to popular referendum in June
1967 and
approved by 98 percent of those voting. It provided that
executive
powers be centralized in the president, who was to be head
of
state, head of government, commander in chief of the armed
forces
and the police, and in charge of foreign policy. The
president was
to appoint and dismiss cabinet members and determine their
areas of
responsibility. The ministers, as heads of their
respective
departments, were to execute the programs and decisions of
the
president. The president also was to have the power to
appoint and
dismiss the governors of the provinces and the judges of
all
courts, including those of the Supreme Court of Justice.
The bicameral parliament was replaced by a unicameral
legislative body called the National Assembly. Governors
of
provinces were no longer elected by provincial assemblies
but
appointed by the central government. The president had the
power to
issue autonomous regulations on matters other than those
pertaining
to the domain of law, without prejudice to other
provisions of the
constitution. Under certain conditions, the president was
empowered
to govern by executive order, which carried the force of
law.
But the most far-reaching change was the creation of
the
Popular Revolutionary Movement (Mouvement Populaire de la
Révolution--MPR) on April 17, 1967, marking the emergence
of "the
national politically organized." Rather than being the
emanation of
the state, the state was henceforth defined as the
emanation of the
party. Thus, in October 1967 party and administrative
responsibilities were merged into a single framework,
thereby
automatically extending the role of the party to all
administrative
organs at the central and provincial levels, as well as to
the
trade unions, youth movements, and student organizations.
In short,
the MPR had now become the sole legitimate vehicle for
participating in the political life of the country. Or, as
one
official put it, "the MPR must be considered as a Church
and its
Founder as its Messiah."
The doctrinal foundation was disclosed shortly after
its birth,
in the form of the Manifesto of N'Sele (so named because
it was
issued from the president's rural residence at N'Sele,
sixty
kilometers upriver from Kinshasa), made public in May
1967.
Nationalism, revolution, and authenticity were identified
as the
major themes of what came to be known as
Mobutism (see
Glossary).
Nationalism implied the achievement of economic
independence.
Revolution, described as a "truly national revolution,
essentially
pragmatic," meant "the repudiation of both capitalism and
communism. "Neither right nor left" thus became one of the
legitimizing slogans of the regime, along with
"authenticity." The
concept of authenticity was derived from the MPR's
professed
doctrine of "authentic Zairian nationalism and
condemnation of
regionalism and tribalism." Mobutu defined it as being
conscious of
one's own personality and one's own values and of being at
home in
one's culture. In line with the dictates of authenticity,
the name
of the country was changed to the Republic of Zaire in
October
1971, and that of the armed forces to Zairian Armed Forces
(Forces
Armées Zaïroises--FAZ). Many other geographic name changes
had
already taken place, between 1966 and 1971. The adoption
of
Zairian, as opposed to Western or Christian, names in 1972
and the
abandonment of Western dress in favor of the wearing of
the
abacost
(see Glossary) were subsequently promoted
as
expressions of authenticity.
Authenticity provided Mobutu with his strongest claim
to
philosophical originality. So far from implying a
rejection of
modernity, authenticity is perhaps best seen as an effort
to
reconcile the claims of the traditional Zairian culture
with the
exigencies of modernization. Exactly how this synthesis
was to be
accomplished remained unclear, however. What is beyond
doubt is
Mobutu's effort to use the concept of authenticity as a
means of
vindicating his own brand of leadership. As he himself
stated, "in
our African tradition there are never two chiefs . . . .
That is
why we Congolese, in the desire to conform to the
traditions of our
continent, have resolved to group all the energies of the
citizens
of our country under the banner of a single national
party."
Critics of the regime were quick to point out the
shortcomings
of Mobutism as a legitimizing formula, in particular its
selfserving qualities and inherent vagueness; nonetheless, the
MPR's
ideological training center, the Makanda Kabobi Institute,
took
seriously its assigned task of propagating through the
land "the
teachings of the Founder-President, which must be given
and
interpreted in the same fashion throughout the country."
Members of
the MPR Political Bureau, meanwhile, were entrusted with
the
responsibility of serving as "the repositories and
guarantors of
Mobutism."
Quite aside from the merits or weaknesses of Mobutism,
the MPR
drew much of its legitimacy from the model of the
overarching mass
parties that had come into existence in Africa in the
1960s, a
model which had also been a source of inspiration for the
MNCLumumba . It was this Lumumbist heritage which the MPR
tried to
appropriate in its effort to mobilize the Zairian masses
behind its
founder-president. Intimately tied up with the doctrine of
Mobutism
was the vision of an all-encompassing single party
reaching out to
all sectors of the nation
(see The
Party-State as a System of Rule
, ch. 4).
Data as of December 1993
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