Congo

by David Van Reybrouck

  In 1974 things came to a head. The end of the Vietnam War resulted in a dramatic fall in copper prices. What’s more, the start of the oil crisis was being felt in Zaïre too. Prices shot up. The entire process of Zaïrianization contributed even more to inflation, for now that a class of the super-rich had arisen, shopkeepers pumped their prices up as well. For the average citizen, however, this meant a further decline in spending power. In 1960 an unskilled worker had to work one day in order to pay for a kilo (2.2 pounds) of freshwater fish; by the mid-1970s that same worker needed to work ten days to do so.64 Food became unaffordable and consumed the entire family budget. Farming in the interior had been neglected. Why should a farmer cultivate his land when there were no more roads to bring his goods to market? Zaïre, one of the world’s most fertile countries, therefore became highly dependent on expensive, imported food. Cans of tomato paste were unloaded in the harbors, while in the interior, tons of beefsteak tomatoes hung rotting on the plant.

  Mobutu’s promise of economic recovery had ended up in catastrophe. One of the MPR’s early slogans had been: Servir et non se server (Serve, but not to serve yourself), but Mobutu and his clan served themselves very well indeed. His popularity declined. The bread was running out. And what about the circuses?

  AFTER HIS ADVENTURE WITH BAUDOUIN’S SWORD, Longin Ngwadi returned to Kikwit. He began work as a salesman for Bata, the international shoe chain that had shops in Africa. One day he saw a pretty girl come into the shop. She looked at a few models, then went off to buy fish. A few minutes later Longwin closed the shop for lunch and went after her. She was just finishing her shopping. Fish was still affordable in those days. He spoke to her the immortal words:

  “I’ll pay for your fish, if you become my fiancée.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, really?”

  “Then I’ll give you my address.”

  That evening he visited her at her home. She called in her father and her uncles. The family first wanted to see who this oddball was.

  “I am ready to take this girl as my wife,” Ngwadi said.

  “Do you have money?” the family asked.

  “Yes.”

  That was not entirely true, but his European boss at the Bata shop was willing to advance him the dowry. It wasn’t the first time he’d done that for an employee. Ngwadi had to pay back a little each month. Bata had a good reputation, it was a serious shop. The father and uncles gave their approval.

  Ngwadi worked for Bata for many years. Meanwhile, his wife, because that happened to be the tradition, worked the land: she grew corn, manioc, and peanuts. The young couple had everything they needed. The first of six children was born in 1969. A few years later Ngwadi bought a big lot, thirty meters by forty (nearly 100 by 130 feet), and built a spacious clay house, the same house where I interviewed him. “That was the wealthiest period of my life.”

  But then came Zaïrianization. “My European boss left. Bata was taken over by a Zaïrian. He ran the company. That was not good. Bata went bankrupt.” Hard times came. Increasingly often, Ngwadi went to pray at the grave of Kuku Pemba, a dangerous spot, a mythical spot. Kuku Pemba had been the first man from that region to see a white man. In times of famine, people turned to something higher. Kuku Pemba was seen as a powerful ancestor; even Mobutu was afraid of him.

  In 1974, for the first time in years, Ngwadi went back to the capital. “I went to Kinshasa to see the fight. I saw Ali praying too. He was a Muslim and wore a little chain around his neck. Foreman had a big dog with him, like a European. I was sitting in the stadium. The match was held in the middle of the night. Foreman was stronger. Ali went to the ropes. He did that throughout the whole match. Foreman was swollen up like a pig. It was a fantastic fight, fantastic!”

  How could you stay angry at a president who treated you to a wonderful party like that?

  Because the American viewers needed to watch the fight during prime time, the match did not start until 4 A.M. The air in the city was hot and humid, the rainy season had arrived. The stadium already began filling up the morning before the match. “The children had a day off from school. Companies had to give their employees a day of paid leave. The bars had to sell beer at half price. Even the flour was free,” Zizi Kabongo recalled. Spectators came from all over, even as far away as Angola and Cameroon. Seventy thousand people had a seat in the stadium. A few thousand of those seats were reserved for VIPs, most of them Mobutu’s yes-men. A huge crowd milled around outside the stadium. Because of the unusual hour, Mobutu had had lighting installed. Around the grandstands, four gigantic flyswatters rose up out of the darkness. They were equipped with a battery of blinding lamps that, thanks to the current from the Inga Dam, bathed the entire stadium in bright white light. Mobutu was truly electric.

  In the middle of the soccer pitch stood the ring where it was all going to take place. The American TV crews had brought an impressive array of equipment. The children sitting on the concrete steps beamed with pride. Theirs was the only country in the world that could organize this match! Even the ring had been brought over from America! The Americans even had their own water with them! And their own toilet paper!

  The Zaïrian television crew, too, was well-equipped. To make sure nothing could go wrong, the state broadcasting company had bought five brand-new Arriflexes, heavy cameras you could carry on your shoulder. In addition, the reporters had a few Bell & Howells, lighter cameras for details and close-ups. Everything in color, of course. There were two directors, two commentators in French, and one in Lingala. All of them received a great deal of extra pay for working at night.

  Zizi Kabongo was put on the camera that was to record the crowd’s reactions. A brass band marched around the track, playing traditional Congolese music. A huge cheer went up when Ali came out of the catacombs and moved to the ring, dancing and shadowboxing as he went. He removed his cape. A god’s body shone in the spotlights. Ali, boma ye! Ali, boma ye! Zaïre chanted.

  But the most amazing thing of all was: Mobutu himself wasn’t there. The stadium where the people had welcomed him in 1965 he now avoided. Was he afraid he might be less popular than Ali? Did he fear for his own safety? Did he consider himself, as president-founder, more emphatically present when he was absent? Kabongo wasn’t sure. He did know, however, that Mobutu was viewing his shots live in his own palace. The chief, it so happened, had the country’s only closed-circuit television network. Kabongo let his camera glide over the sea of faces. On his monitor he saw the colorful celebration of a cheering crowd reduced to a mute scene in bluish gray.

  He was only able to catch an occasional glimpse of the match itself. He did not see it when, in the very first round, Ali tried to knock out Foreman with a series of brutal right leads to the body and face. He did not see how enraged Foreman became and how Ali forgot to dance. “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee,” that was what he’d promised. Dance he would, dance he must, but it didn’t happen. Through his camera Kabongo saw only the crowd, the crowd that cheered at first, then cowered in fear. He did not see how, starting in the second round, Ali kept to the ropes and leaned far back to avoid Foreman’s blows. Ali concealed his face behind his black gloves and soaked up a relentless tempest of punches to the body. “Everlast” was the word printed on the cushions in each corner of the ring, but the question was whether this could last forever. Foreman had one of the hardest punches in the history of heavyweight boxing. Ali’s plan was to beat his opponent by exhausting him. The “rope-a-dope” was how he would refer to the technique later. Kabongo did not hear how Ali kept shouting around the white grimace of his mouthguard: “George, you disappoint me.” “Come here, sucker! They told me you could punch.” “You’re not breaking popcorn, George.”

  Kabongo filmed and filmed. His shots were not meant to go around the world. The Americans were taking care of that. This was for domestic consumption. He saw the dignitaries: the state commissioner of sports, the provincial governors, the diplomats, the members of the Political
Bureau and the central committee: the whole clique that ate from Mobutu’s hand. Sycophantic spectators came up and handed him money, asking him to get a good shot of them, so the president would see. Especially women. A woman wearing a red pagne, a lady in white . . . Could he zoom in on them just a little?

  Every once in a while he turned and looked. Each time he saw that giant of a Foreman pounding Ali, who was hanging terribly over the ropes. Kabongo did not see how, in the eighth round, thirteen seconds before the bell, Ali suddenly bounced off the ropes and struck out with a lightning right-left-right combination. The final punch was a crushing sledgehammer blow to Foreman’s jaw that distorted his face into a lump of modeling clay. Foreman’s arms, which had rocked like the steel crossbars on a locomotive for eight whole rounds, suddenly milled helplessly in thin air. Foreman bent over, he couldn’t believe it. He had never been knocked out before. The floor of the ring rushed up to meet him.

  IT WAS A CRAZY NIGHT. Right after the match, an extremely heavy thunderstorm broke loose. The nightclubs of Kinshasa filled to the brim. The drinks were on the house. Everyone partied, everyone laughed, everyone went on a binge. But on his way home, Kabongo couldn’t help but wonder how Mobutu had viewed his shots. Alone in his palace with a few family members? Reveling in the spectacle he had given his country? Curious about the woman in the red pagne? Or peering restlessly at the crowd’s reactions, apprehensive of every face that did not smile broadly enough?

  CHAPTER 10

  TOUJOURS SERVIR

  A Marshal’s Madness

  1975–1990

  IN THE LONELINESS OF HIS OMNIPOTENCE, MOBUTU CONTINUED to stare at the screen. But, fifteen years after the historic bout, he saw things that knocked him for a bigger loop than any footage he’d seen before. It was Christmas Day 1989 and on a foreign channel he saw a turtle poke its head out, slow, helpless, with the fear of death in its eyes. No, this was no turtle, it was a man who came crawling—or who was squeezed, rather—from a compartment beneath an army tank. Amid the grayish-green steel his upper body moved so clumsily—his arms were pressed against his sides, his hands still in the compartment—that it made him look like a turtle. A soldier waiting on the street supported the man and pulled him out, like a midwife.

  The video footage was yellowed and grainy, the scene had something wintery about it. But Mobutu recognized the man right away. It was Nicolae Ceauşescu. He and his wife had been arrested shortly before, after days of protest in his country. Mobutu watched the Romanian president stumble to his feet and take off his black astrakhan cap to arrange his hair. The cap looked like a wintertime variation on his own leopard-skin model. That was not the only similarity. Like him, Ceauşescu had come to power in 1965 and Mobutu greatly admired the way he had kept Romania on a course independent from the Soviet Union. And like Mobutu, Ceauşescu had been able to count on great Western support. Both men derived their power from faithful allies abroad and an obedient clique at home, which allowed their presidencies to grow into a sort of monarchy. Both were fond of the same nickname: Ceauşescu had people call him the Conducător, the leader, while Mobutu liked to be called le Guide. Surrounding the “Genius of the Carpathians,” another one of those nicknames, there had grown a personality cult as remarkable as that surrounding the “Great Helmsman” in Kinshasa. In Zaïre, the philosophy of authenticity had meanwhile been transformed into “Mobutuism”; in Romania, “Ceauşesism” reigned supreme. With so much authority on their sides, neither of them were good at dealing with criticism. They curbed the freedom of the press and when it came to dissidents, they were pleased to see the back of them. Let them spew their rancor over full ashtrays in some grimy Parisian café, blind as they were to the blessings these men had brought with them. The security of the state deservedly took pride of place. Ceauşescu’s Securitate displayed striking resemblances to Mobutu’s DSP, the Division Spéciale Présidentielle. The ties between Kinshasa and Bucharest were extremely warm and were topped off by a close personal friendship between Mobutu and Ceauşescu. Mobutu looked to America for money and to the East for methodology. He had learned a lot from Mao and Kim Il-sung, but the only Communist head of state with whom he was still on friendly terms was Ceauşescu. Their wives got along well too.

  Mobutu saw the footage. Only one month earlier their two parties had held a bipartisan summit in Bucharest.1 Now he watched as Nicolae and Elena took their seats in a dismal classroom. How worn-out they looked, all of a sudden . . . Nicolae was a gray-haired senior citizen in a long winter coat, Elena an elderly lady with a big fur collar. An old Eastern European couple. They were sitting at a desk with thin metal legs. Nicolae waved his arms, raised his voice. The camera swung to the right. Shots of a few ranking officers covered in medals. Soldiers who sprang to their feet. A man reading aloud a printed statement.

  It had been an extremely turbulent year in Europe. Glasnost, perestroika, the Wall . . . Mobutu followed it all vigilantly. Mikhail Gorbachev’s impetus for a political thaw had prompted a chain reaction no one could stop now. Least of all Gorbachev himself. The democratization of a huge, single-party state seemed a totally reckless venture to Mobutu:

  Look at what is happening in the Soviet Union; even without a multiparty system installed, allowing the mere possibility of it was enough to cause regionalism and separatism to rear their heads. I pass no judgment whatsoever on the Baltic, Armenian, Georgian, or Belorussian movements; I limit myself to noting that the mere thought of a multiparty system works in favor of centrifugal forces.2

  Democratization, Mobutu was leery of that. He remembered all too well the debacle of the First Republic. The fall of Communism in Eastern Europe in many ways resembled the decolonization of Africa: an abrupt process in which a latent hope suddenly found itself caught up in an uncontrollable momentum. With true sophistry, he reasoned: “Were we to forcibly impose here a Western-style democratic system, only then would we fall into dictatorship.”3

  The end of the Communist era had arrived all over Central and Eastern Europe, without bloodshed. During the last few days, Mobutu had seen squares in Bucharest where tens of thousands of people had braved the cold to demand that the Conducător step down. But this shaky footage from a little village outside the capital gave him the real shivers. Suddenly Nicolae and Elena were no longer sitting in that classroom but standing on a empty playground, in front of a yellow wall. Mobutu saw a cloud of dust. Heard a rattling. Like someone shaking a can full of pebbles. The home video of world history. Faded colors. Muffled voices. Eternal winter. The camera then swept over two wax figures. Elena lying on her side, indifferent to the flow of blood trickling from her head. Nicolae on his back, his calves folded back unnaturally beneath his body, like a jumping jack. Mobutu looked, and kept looking.

  ZOOM OUT. Dolly back. Reframe. New focus: more than ten years earlier, 1978. Bright sunlight. Mobutu, brimming over with self-confidence. Shots of his figure. He’s grown a bit fatter since the coup; the presidency has obviously served him well. In 1970 and again in 1977 he was reelected as head of state. The term of office had been extended to seven years and there was no longer a statutory limit on the number of consecutive terms. Mobutu had always been the sole candidate. At the polls, the voters had only to deposit a red card or a green one in the ballot box. Red, as one was told by an MPR official in the polling place itself, stood for chaos, bloodshed, foreign ideologies. Green was the color of hope, of manioc, and the MPR itself. Everyone could see you vote. Mobutu received 98 or 99 percent and governed more comfortably than ever. He walked a little more slowly, spoke a little more slowly too. Dignity had become more important than energy.

  The rocket was ready to be launched. At the edge of a plateau overlooking the valley of the Luvua stood a slender juggernaut, twelve meters (thirty-nine feet) high. It was supported by a double framework of steel. It was 11:30 A.M. on Monday, June 5, 1978. A beaming Mobutu had invited a gaggle of friends and journalists to witness another of his stunts: the launching of a rocket from Zaïrian soil. He had c
ome to an agreement with a German firm a few years earlier. That company, OTRAG (Orbital Transport- und Raketen Aktiengesellschaft), was given free run of a huge stretch of savanna to experiment with the construction and launching of inexpensive rockets. OTRAG received German government funding in its attempts to find an alternative to the costly projects run by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).4 In the long run, these German Billigraketen (bargain rockets) were meant to launch satellites into earth orbit for a mere pittance. A private company that built rockets: that was a first in the history of space travel. And a company that received support from an African dictator: that was an absolute first. Driving force behind the project was Lutz Kayser, but the most striking name on the payroll was that of Kurt Debus, a German who had worked during World War II on the development of the V-2 and who after the war had headed the Kennedy Space Center for many years, where he was in charge of the Apollo program.

  OTRAG had gone looking for a large, empty spot along the equator, and had already taken a look at Indonesia, Singapore, Brazil, and Nauru, all countries bordered by an ocean. Zaïre entered the picture only late in the game. The savanna of Shaba, former Katanga, was thinly populated enough too. Within ten days in 1977 a deal was signed with Mobutu: the arrangement was stunning in every way. OTRAG became lord and master over an area of one hundred thousand square kilometers (thirty-nine thousand square miles), one and a half times the size of Ireland. It was reminiscent of the nineteenth-century rubber companies with their huge concessions that allowed them to “do business” unobstructed. For a period that extended to the remote year 2000, OTRAG leased almost 5 percent of Zaïre’s territory under extremely favorable terms. The company was exempted from paying import duties and was not to be held responsible for any environmental damage. Its employees paid no taxes and enjoyed legal immunity. And because the savanna was not quite as empty as the ocean, they were even allowed to relocate native settlements if they got in the way of the launch. Mobutu, the man who had fought against secessions and rebellions, was now effectively handing over the control over a substantial part of his country. In return he asked for no more than 5 percent of the net profits, if profits were ever made, and the launching of an observation satellite for domestic security, if such a launch should ever take place.5 But things never got to that point. In anticipation, however, he pulled in $25 million dollars’ rent each year, which immediately disappeared into his own pocket.6