Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe

by Gerard Prunier

  111. For the chapter subheading here, I borrow this formula from Pierre Kalck’s remarkable Histoire Centrafricaine des origines à 1966 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1992).

  112. The definitive work on this subject is Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, “Le Congo français au temps des grandes compagnies concessionnaires (1898–1930),” PhD diss., Sorbonne, 1970.

  113. Often they were Belgians who were sacked from the Congo administration for excessive violence or theft.

  114. Kalck, Histoire Centrafricaine, 183.

  115. André Gide, Voyage au Congo (Paris: Gallimard, 1927). Some of the cases he documented included torture and the burning alive of women and children.

  116. Albert Londres, Terre d’ébène: La traite des noirs (Paris: Albin Michel, 1927).

  117. In the French “assimilationist” system, contrary to the British colonies, which were supposed to develop various degrees of self-rule in their territories, political development was conceived of as an increased participation of the colonies in the metropolitan political life. Thus many among francophone Africa’s first generation of politicians were at one time or another MPs in Paris during the 1940s and 1950s, and some, such as Houphouet-Boigny, even became cabinet ministers.

  118. The whites who worked for what was left of the Grandes Compagnies Concessionnaires hated Boganda, who had been instrumental in finally getting compulsory labor outlawed in 1946. They also hated his intelligence, which was unsettling to their view of black inferiority.

  119. With full French support, since Goumba was supposed to be left-leaning. See Kalck, Histoire Centrafricaine, 302–312.

  120. Max Weber, Economy and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 241–242.

  121. The French ambassador was able to persuade him at the last moment that it was a bit too gross.

  122. Bokassa’s personality fostered a whole sensationalistic literature in France. For a more thoughtful view of the violence without the prurient interest, refer to E. Germain, La Centrafrique et Bokassa (1965–1979): Force et déclin d’un pouvoir personnel (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2000). For a more theoretical approach (with which I am not really in agreement but which has the merit of objectivity), see Didier Bigo, Pouvoir et obéissance en Centrafrique (Paris: Karthala, 1988).

  123. Germain, La Centrafrique et Bokassa, 190–191. There are good reasons to suspect that it was actually the French Secret Service trying to poison him.

  124. Since Bokassa never tried to hide any of his killings (on the contrary), it is possible to evaluate their numbers. Germain (La Centrafrique et Bokassa, 123) arrives at about 400, a very small amount if compared to Idi Amin’s 200,000 or Macias Nguema’s 300,000.

  125. De Gaulle found it particularly irritating and once told him in public, “I am not your father.” But given the way Bokassa’s real father had been murdered by agents of French power, the insistence amounted to a Freudian transfer.

  126. They were valued at around $100 million at the time he was deposed, a large figure for the Central African Republic but a very modest one if compared to Mobutu’s standards.

  127. There were numerous accusations of cannibalism, and when he was overthrown two human bodies were found in the palace’s cold room among the carcasses of sheep and oxen.

  128. “As a British soldier Amin had internalised the most nationalistic British values. But these were peripheral, not central. When they were combined with the interiorisation of new nationalistic values it produced a state of aggressive anglophilia, very different from Anglophobia.” Ali Mazrui, “Racial Self-reliance and Cultural Dependency: Nyerere and Amin in Comparative Perspective,” Journal of International Affairs 27, no. 1 (1973): 105–121. Replacing Mazrui’s terms with “aggressive Francophilia, different from Francophobia” would depict perfectly Bokassa’s attitude toward his former colonizers, the killers of his father and his army superiors.

  129. Or so they thought. But Bokassa was still a French citizen and he eventually took refuge in France itself, where his embarrassing behavior eventually caused considerable difficulties and played a key role in President Giscard d’Estaing’s electoral defeat in April 1981.

  130. He flew back to the Central African Republic in one of the French army transport planes.

  131. See Bigo, Pouvoir et obéissance, 262–263. Kolingba was no simple French stooge. He managed to turn around his secret service minder, Col. J. C. Mantion, and get him to defy his Paris superiors for the sake of an independent “power behind the throne” role in Central Africa. The Kolingba years could equally well be termed the Mantion years.

  132. Kolingba was a Yakoma, one of the biggest “river tribes.”

  133. J. P. Ngoupande, Chronique de la crise centrafricaine (1996–1997) (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1997), 108.

  134. He was hoping to get Gaddafi’s support to overthrow Dacko, then just brought back to power by the French.

  135. See a scathing exposé in the French magazine Lui, September 1996.

  136. Ngoupande, Chronique, 24–30.

  137. Bangui is ethnically mixed but with a Gbaya-Banda-Mandja majority.

  138. Highway robbers, often coming from Chad and the Sudan. The government had lost control over at least 30 percent of the territory, particularly along the northern and eastern borders.

  139. With almost half the Congo’s population the capital has such a powerful effect on the rest of the country that it has been described as “a suburb of Brazzaville.” See the special issue of Politique Africaine, no. 31 (October 1988) entitled “Le Congo, banlieue de Brazzaville.”

  140. Just as Ubangi-Chari was the ugly duckling of the AEF family, the Congo was its child prodigy. In a rather interesting development this has led practically all the contemporary politicians (Marien Ngouabi, Denis Sassou-Nguesso, Pascal Lissouba, Bernard Kolelas, and others) to write books about their views of politics. This is a very French tradition; de Gaulle of course, but even Giscard d’Estaing, François Mitterrand, Nicolas Sarkozy, and a whole bevy of lesser political figures have all written books, a necessary element for “serious” political recognition in France.

  141. De Gaulle’s chief Africa adviser, Jacques Foccart, regretted not intervening when he saw Youlou replaced by the left-leaning Massamba-Debat. So when President Léon Mba was overthrown by a popular movement in Gabon in February 1964, Foccart convinced de Gaulle to send his army to put him back in power in what was the first of Paris’s many military interventions in sub-Saharan Africa.

  142. Massamba-Deba was a Mukongo, but not a Lari like Youlou. Lissouba came from the small Nzabi tribe, whose majority lives across the border in Gabon.

  143. Aloïse Moudileno-Massengo, La République Populaire du Congo, une escroquerie idéologique (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1975).

  144. The PCT was a full-fledged communist party, with references to Marx and Lenin. The republic was “popular” and its flag was red with a yellow star, a hammer, and a hoe instead of a sickle.

  145. For a good political history of the Brazzaville-Congo up to the PCT downfall in 1991, see Rémy Bazenguissa-Ganga, Les voies du politique au Congo: Essai de sociologie historique (Paris: Karthala, 1997).

  146. Brazzavillian life is vividly portrayed in E. Dorier-Apprill et al., Vivre à Brazzaville: Modernité et crise au quotidien (Paris: Karthala, 1998).

  147. Gen. Denis Sassou-Nguesso played a key role in the events surrounding the death of Ngouabi.

  148. It was the sixth constitution the Congo had known since independence. Although all had regularly been violated, the intellectually inclined Congolese retained a particular fondness for fundamental texts.

  149. André Bassinet, “Congo: À qui profite la rente pétrolière?” Imprecor, no. 173 (May 14, 1984): 30–34, quoted in R. Bazenguissa-Ganga, Les voies du politique au Congo, 274.

  150. For the effects of this speech on Rwanda, see G. Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide (London: Hurst, 1995), 88–89.

  151. This is where the various strands of the Congo’s soci
al contradictions came together: overurbanization, youth unemployment, a very lively antiestablishment youth subculture (the sapeurs or “smart dressers” and the music and bar groups). The presidential militia had no recruitment problem, quite the contrary. Other politicians soon followed suit.

  152. See Global Witness, A Rough Trade, particularly 13–14 and notes 46–52.

  153. And the old commitments as well: by May 1993 salaries in the bloated civil service were already seven months in arrears.

  154. Elf produced 75 percent of Congo’s oil and commercialized 90 percent of it. Since 1979 oil revenues represented between 50 and 80 percent of the government’s fiscal base. Yitzhak Koula, La démocratie congolaise brûlée au pétrole (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1999), 173–174.

  155. Mouvement Congolais pour le Développement et la Démocratie Intégrale, the political party created by Bernard Kolelas.

  156. They were never computed, but the estimates vary from 2,000 to 5,000.

  157. For a description of the phenomenon, see R. Bazenguissa-Ganga, “Milices politiques et bandes armées à Brazzaville, enquête sur la violence politique et sociale des jeunes déclassés,” Les Etudes du CERI, no. 13 (April 1996).

  158. Sassou-Nguesso had wisely removed himself to his village in the north and let Kolelas and Lissouba slug it out, giving only some calculated support to the MCDDI leader. He considered lissouba the stronger of the two since he had parts of the state apparatus at his disposal. The Lissouba militia was called the Zulu, while the Kolelas militia went by the name Ninja. There were other, smaller militias, such as the Requins (Sharks) and Faucons (Falcons), with different ethnic or pseudo-ethnic identities.

  159. This was particularly clear for the many “ethnic half-castes.” See Dorier-Apprill et al., Vivre à Brazzaville, 314–315: the story of the half-Lari Zulu militia boy who “hated Lari” when he fought their Ninja militia and then forgot his hatred after the war was over. The militias hardened ethnic identities or even replaced them altogether since they could integrate people who did not have the “right” ethnic identity.

  160. If the “Niboleks” joined the Zulu it was the same thing on the other side, where various Teke and Lari groups who joined the Ninja were also far from acting out clearly identified ethnic identities.

  161. U.S. Vice President al Gore’s visit to Brazzaville in December 1995 was frowned upon in Paris.

  162. A false assumption: by 1996 the various “foreign” oil companies (the U.S. Oxy, Chevron, and Exxon; the South African Engen; the Anglo-Dutch Shell; the Kuwaiti Kufpec; and the Italian Agip) had received together less than 45 percent of the exploration permits, and most of those had gone to Agip, with very few to the U.S. companies.

  Chapter 4

  1. It had in fact been signed in a Kigali hotel; the Lemera location was announced only to make it sound more “authentically Congolese.” This small piece of deception was typical of the larger artificiality of the whole process.

  2. His nom de guerre was “Douglas,” which was later mistakenly said to be his first name.

  3. This Conseil National de Résistance pour la Démocratie was the new denomination of the old Parti de la Libération Congolais.

  4. His mother was a Tutsi refugee from Rwanda in 1959. This and the fact that he had fought in the RPF during the Rwandese war of 1990–1994 made him Kagame’s favorite among the AFDL leaders. Interview with his uncle, Aristide Chahihabwa Bambaga, Kampala, January 2000.

  5. For general views of the first Congolese civil war, see Benoit Verhaegen, Rébellions au Congo, 2 vols. (Brussels: CRISP, 1966–1969); C. Coquery-Vidrovitch et al., eds, Rébellions-Révolution au Zaïre (1963–1965), 2 vols. (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1987); Madeleine Kalb, The Congo Cables (New York: Macmillan, 1982). On the war in Katanga, see Kabuya Lumuna Sando, Nord-Katanga (1960–1964): De la secession à la guerre civile (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1992); Christophe Goosens, “Political Instability in Congo-Zaire: Ethno-Regionalism in Katanga,” in R. Doom and J. Gorus, eds., Politics of Identity and Economics of Conflict in the Great Lakes Region (Brussels: VUB Press, 2000), 243–262. On Kabila himself we now have an excellent biography by Erik Kennes: Essai biographique sur Laurent-Désiré Kabila (Tervuren, Belgium: CEDAF, 2003). The following information on Kabila is mostly drawn form Kennes’s work.

  6. Although his mother was Lunda. But the Baluba are strongly patrilineal.

  7. CONAKAT, led by Moïse Tshombe, eventually led the secession of Katanga.

  8. Kabila was largely self-educated, never having finished secondary school. But during his travels in Eastern Europe in 1964 and later during several trips to China in the late 1960s he progressively became reasonably familiar with Marxism.

  9. It is then that he fell out with Sendwe, who had veered toward opportunist politics and who was murdered by the “Mulelists” in June 1964, when they took Albertville (Kalemie). That murder would later remain an unresolved problem between Kabila and the mainstream Balubakat.

  10. The whole episode is chronicled in William Galvez, Che in Africa (Melbourne: Ocean Press, 1999). Guevara hoped that the Congo could become a foco de guerrilla for the whole continent, a mistake he was to repeat two years later in his assessment of the situation in Bolivia.

  11. Tshombe had by then graduated from heading the Katanga secession to being prime minister in Leopoldville.

  12. They were mostly based in Cairo.

  13. “The only man who has the genuine qualities of a mass leader is in my view Kabila. But to carry a revolution forward it is essential to have revolutionary seriousness, an ideology that can guide action, a spirit of sacrifice that accompanies one’s actions. Up to now Kabila has not shown that he possesses any of these qualities. He is young and he can change… but I have grave doubts about his ability to overcome his defects in the environment in which he operates.” Ernesto “Che” Guevara, The African Dream: Diaries of the Revolutionary War in the Congo (London: Harvill Press, 2000), 244.

  14. Laurent-Désiré Kabila and a few friends (Ildephonse Masengo, Jeanson Umba, Gabriel Yumbu) remained in the Fizi-Baraka area and created the Parti de la Révolution Populaire (PRP) in December 1967 to continue the struggle against the Leopoldville authorities.

  15. “Pure air” in Swahili; this was the name given by the PRP combatants to their “liberated zone.”

  16. For details of the hewa bora days, see W. B. Cosma, Fizi 1967–1986: Le maquis Kabila (Brussels: CEDAF, 1997).

  17. E. Kennes, “L. D. Kabila: A Biographical Essay,” in D. Goyvaerts, ed., Conflict and Ethnicity in Central Africa (Tokyo: Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, 2000), 146. This is an earlier version of the text later developed in book form.

  18. Interview with Didi Mwati, Paris, November 1999.

  19. He did a bit of everything: dealing in smuggled gems and gold, ivory, insurance brokerage, commercial fishing, and fraudulent sale of stolen Gécamines cobalt. In 1989 he even met Mobutu to facilitate a deal between the Zairian president and Sudanese rebel leader John Garang to sell some tropical lumber from Equatoria through Zaire. The SPLA had no French speakers on staff, and Kabila was “supplied” to Garang as an interpreter courtesy of the old communist networks working with Ethiopian president Menguistu Haile Mariam. Interview with an eyewitness to the meeting, Paris, March 1997. See also Libération, January 7, 1997.

  20. Interview with Adonya Ayebare, Washington, DC, October 1999.

  21. Interview with a Tanzanian security officer, Arusha, August 1999.

  22. Monsignor Munzihirwa, bishop of Bukavu, Open Letter to the International Community, October 11, 1996.

  23. Refugee International Bulletin, October 11, 1996.

  24. Le Monde, October 20–21, 1996.

  25. USIA communiqué, October 25, 1996.

  26. They were in fact Bahunde and Banyanga Mayi Mayi combatants who had decided to ally themselves with the Rwandese, believing that the encroaching ex-FAR and Interahamwe were the main enemy for the time being.

  27. IRIN B
ulletin, October 26, 1996.

  28. Radio Rwanda, in BBC Summary of World Broadcasts (henceforth BBC/SWB), October 28, 1996.

  29. Radio France Internationale, in BBC/SWB, October 29, 1996.

  30. Interviews with eyewitnesses, Paris, October and November 1999. The man who shot Munzihirwa was known only by his nickname, “Sankara.” In a situation typical of the paradoxes of this fratricidal conflict Munzihirwa had just come down from the Alfajiri College, where he had hidden some Tutsi nuns whom he feared might be killed in the violent anti-Banyamulenge and anti-Tutsi climate, when he was stopped at a roadblock by Banyamulenge militiamen and shot by “Sankara.”

  31. Reuters dispatch, Paris, October 30, 1996. President Bongo and Biya had flown to Paris the day before and consulted with Chirac. Elysée Secretary-General Dominique de Villepin and Secret Service Adviser Fernand Wibaux told them that Mobutu had asked Paris to help him recruit mercenaries. Africa Confidential 37, no. 23 (November 15, 1996).