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

by Gerard Prunier

  161. He was still in Lubumbashi, where he had retreated after taking part in the defeat at Pweto.

  Chapter 8

  1. IRIN Press dispatch, January 18, 2001.

  2. RTNC/Kinshasa, in BBC Summary of World Broadcasts (henceforth BBC/SWB), January 19, 2001.

  3. RFI, in BBC/SWB, January 21, 2001.

  4. Popular talk in Kinshasa had dubbed the interim president “P’tit Joseph” (Li’l Joseph).

  5. Agence France Presse dispatch, Paris, January 23, 2001.

  6. They were not alone in questioning his right to office. Kinshasa opponent Joseph Olenghankoy declared in an interview, “On what grounds was he ‘appointed’ to handle the transition? That boy has no training, he knows nothing of life and he does not even speak French.” Le Soir. January 19, 2001.

  7. Even the ranking order of gratitude was precisely calculated.

  8. This is what Colette Braeckman called, deprecatingly, “giving up on all that his father has refused.” Les nouveaux prédateurs (Paris: Fayard, 2003), 136. The speech was immediately criticized by the old Maoist militant Ludo Mertens, who had been an enthusiastic supporter of his father.

  9. RTNC/Kinshasa, in BBC/SWB, January 31, 2001.

  10. Interview with a Mulubakat leader, Paris, July 2001. This particular gentleman supported P’tit Joseph’s takeover but thought that it gave the Balubakat a special political edge. He later ended up in jail.

  11. Powell had seen Kagame the day before and had told him bluntly, “This is the end of the free ride.” Interview with a member of the U.S. State Department, Washington, DC, February 2001. In the State Department, more diplomatic official words describing the relationship with Rwanda, so close under Clinton, had changed “from an embrace to a handshake.” New York Times, February 1, 2001.

  12. Agence France Presse dispatch, New York, February 3, 2001.

  13. New York Times, February 2,2001.

  14. IRIN Bulletin, no. 1, 107 (February 6, 2001).

  15. African Press Agency dispatch, Kinshasa, February 5, 2001.

  16. See the ASADHO open letter to the president, February 14, 2001.

  17. RTNC Kinshasa, in BBC/SWB, February 13, 2001.

  18. Author’s meeting with Ugandan Foreign Minister Eriya Kategaya, Paris, February 21, 2001.

  19. Author’s meeting with UNITA leader Isaac Samakuva, Paris, February 28, 2001.

  20. Angolan Foreign Affairs Minister Joao Bernardo Miranda later felt obliged to deny that there was any tension between Zimbabwean and Angolan forces in the DRC. IRIN Bulletin, no. 1,203 (June 19, 2001).

  21. Joseph waited until April 24 to go to Luanda, when he was sure that everything was safe. By then he had solidified his relationship with the international community, taken control of his secret services, replaced his cabinet, put the Nokos back in their place, and consolidated his internal support. Dos Santos, always the pragmatist, knew a winner when he saw one, and Kapend was abandoned to his fate.

  22. African Press Agency dispatch, March 19, 2001.

  23. New Vision, February 25, 2001.

  24. Erik Kennes, Essai biographique sur Laurent-Désiré Kabila (Tervuren, Belgium: CEDAF, 2003). The relevant pages to clarify Joseph’s filiation are 39, 291, and 300–302.

  25. Since the late Kabila had had at least a dozen “wives” and over twenty children, getting confused about the family was understandable.

  26. The last episode in the filiation saga occurred on April 15, 2002, when L. D. Kabila’s eldest son, Etienne Taratibu, suddenly surfaced in Sun City during the peace negotiations and denounced Joseph’s “illegitimate” origins. La Libre Belgique, April 17, 2002. It is more than likely that he was put up to it by some of the parties then negotiating, who seemed to hope that his supposed “Rwandese” ancestry would translate into political weakening. Even if that had been proven, it is not certain that it would have had the expected effect. During the data collection for the BERCI opinion poll “Les cent jours de Joseph Kabila” (April 27–29, 2001) many young respondents volunteered their opinion that “Joseph Kabila is one of us. For the first time we have a young person as President. Who cares if he is a Rwandese Tutsi! At least that means he won’t have tribal preferences!” If one keeps in mind that the under-twenty-five group represents nearly 70 percent of Congo’s population, this point of view is of some relevance.

  27. PANA dispatch, Kinshasa, February 28, 2001.

  28. Africa Mining Intelligence, April 25, 2001.

  29. La Lettre du Continent, April 26, 2001.

  30. Africa Mining Intelligence, March 14, 2001.

  31. Africa Confidential 42, no. 6 (March 23, 2001).

  32. Le Soir, March 17, 2001.

  33. The four services were DEMIAP, PIR, PNC/SS, and ANR. Kazadi Nyembwe, born in Burundi and later adopted by a Mulubakat trader who had remarried his divorced Tutsi mother, is a former bank robber and escaped convict with a colorful past. His close relationship with Laurent-Désiré Kabila dated from 1979 and was based on shared business interests. Kennes, Eassai biographique, 266–268. His closeness to Joseph came from the fact that during his rather solitary youth, as L. D. Kabila traveled all over, “Didi” Nyembwe used to take care of him in Dar-es-Salaam, almost as a substitute father.

  34. The Kimbanguist Church was the largest of the many messianic movements that had developed in the Lower Congo during colonial times. On this topic, see Martial Sinda, Le messianisme congolais et ses incidences politiques (Paris: Payot, 1972); Susan Asch, L’Eglise du Prophète Kimbangu, de ses origines à son rôle actuel au Zaïre (Paris: Karthala, 1983).

  35. Le Soir, April 21, 2001.

  36. IRIN Bulletin, no. 1,157 (April 16, 2001) and 1,161 (April 20, 2001).

  37. Le Potentiel, April 17, 2001. An element of peevishness could be detected because the usual Kinshasa political rumor mill had been taken aback and was feeling bypassed. The same phenomenon was to be repeated in February 2007, when a new cabinet of largely unknown persons was proclaimed after the elections.

  38. Le Monde correspondent Stephen Smith called him “a levitating extra-terrestrial.”

  39. Economist, July 28, 2001.

  40. IRIN Bulletin, no. 1,185 (May 24, 2001).

  41. Le Monde, April 29–30, 2001.

  42. Agence France Presse dispatch, Kinshasa, May 24, 2001.

  43. La Voix des Sans-Voix, La famille du Colonel Eddy Kapend martyrisée par le Parquet, Kinshasa, March 12, 2002.

  44. The silence thickened further on October 5, 2004, when State Prosecutor Col. Charles Alamba was condemned to death for a murder alledgedly committed in September 2003. He was not executed, but no more was heard from him.

  45. Conversations with UPDF middle-ranking officers showed that quite a few would have preferred a war with Rwanda rather than the continuation of the war in the DRC, which mostly benefited their superiors (Kampala, November 2000).

  46. The HIV-positive status of a lot of the officers made it imperative for them to secure the necessary money for treatment, which their normal army salaries could not buy. Given the essentially military nature of the RPF power structure, their feelings could hardly be neglected.

  47. Agence France Presse dispatch, New York, February 7, 2001.

  48. Pana dispatch, February 10, 2001.

  49. IRIN Bulletin, no. 1,113 (February 13, 2001). A year before the UN Security Council had authorized 5,537 men for MONUC.

  50. IRIN Bulletin, no. 1,114 (February 14, 2001).

  51. He was conveniently “forgetting” his own role at the time.

  52. Le Soir, March 7, 2001.

  53. Confidential U.S. State Department memo dated March 20, 2001, transmitted to the author.

  54. Museveni was worried both by increased tension with Rwanda and by the discussions then going on in New York about the data gathered by the first UN report on the illegal exploitation of Congolese resources (see next section, on the economic situation).

  55. IRIN Bulletin, no. 1,160 (April 20, 2001).

  56. New Vision, May 1
, 2001.

  57. New Vision, May 2, 2001. The inclusion of Rwanda in the list was symptomatic of the tensions between Rwanda and Uganda.

  58. See IRIN Bulletin, no. 1,179 (May 16, 2001), 1,183 (May 22, 2001), 1,187 (May 28, 2001), and 1,189 (May 30, 2001).

  59. Associated Press dispatch, Kinshasa, May 21, 2001.

  60. African Press Agency dispatch, Kinshasa, May 27, 2001.

  61. Uganda had already withdrawn 6,000 troops during late 2000. It was now in the process of taking out another 4,000 from various locations in Equateur, leaving about 3,000 in Buta, Bunia, and the Ruwenzori slopes. La Lettre de l’Océan Indien, May 26, 2001.

  62. Some of them walked for two months, accompanied by mechanical equipment that constantly broke down.

  63. IRIN Bulletin, no. 1,207 (June 25, 2001).

  64. IRIN Bulletin, no. 1,227 (July 19, 2001). The UN did not manage to speak with one voice on Kisangani since Jean-Marie Guehenno accepted the RCD-G “temporary stay” and J. D. Levitte asked for a speedy application of UN resolutions 1304 and 1355.

  65. IRIN dispatch, August 27, 2001.

  66. The scramble was all the fiercer because nobody knew the rules of the game anymore. The fifteen political parties present in Gaborone had unilaterally decided to multiply their representation by four for the Addis-Ababa meeting and had then started to sell their delegates’ seats to excluded parties. The MLC, on the contrary, which had only a skeleton leadership, co-opted three ex-RCDs (Alexis Thambwe, Jose Endundo, and Lunda Bululu) as members, while announcing its intention to become a political party. La Libre Belgique, September 4, 2001.

  67. IRIN dispatch, August 29, 2001.

  68. Agence France Presse dispatch, Kisangani, September 3, 2001.

  69. IRIN dispatch, June 19, 2001.

  70. Interview with European Union Great Lakes Political Officer Christian Manahl, Nairobi, September 2001.

  71. For a good analysis of this double game, see International Crisis Group, Disarmament in the Congo: Jump-starting DDRRR to Prevent Further War, Brussels, December 2001.

  72. See IRIN Bulletin, no. 1,279 (October 3, 2001), chronicling the harassment of Voix des Sans Voix human rights NGO members.

  73. Author’s own observations at the conference, Addis-Ababa, October 2001.

  74. Museveni even denied his obvious troop redeployment in the Ituri.

  75. The following account of the conference is drawn from interviews with both Congolese participants and foreign observers in a series of meetings in Nairobi, Addis-Ababa, Paris, and Washington between February and October 2002.

  76. See the article by Jonathan Katzenellenbogen, “Sun City: Colourful Delegates Eclipse the Holiday Crowd,” Business Day (Johannesburg), March 6, 2002.

  77. The main reason was that Moliro was used by Kinshasa to run guns by boat to the various “negative forces” (the FDD in Kigoma, ALIR II and Willy Dunia’s Mayi Mayi in the Fizi-Baraka area). Kigali wanted to show to the participants that force remained an ultimate option which circumscribed their discussions.

  78. Agence France Presse dispatch, Sun City, April 17, 2002.

  79. This was confirmed in a confidential EU report dated April 21, 2002 obtained by the author, which stated, “RCD-G margin for manoeuvre has been severely constrained by constant Rwandese interference…. By refusing to give RCD-G reasonable freedom for negotiating . . . Rwanda has manoeuvred itself into dangerous isolation. The perspective is now of Uganda becoming an ally of the new transitional government, leaving Rwanda and RCD-G isolated.”

  80. One of them (COCEAN) was a tiny Congolese student group in the United States.

  81. IRIN dispatch, April 26, 2002.

  82. On May 7 ASD declared that the Bemba-Kabila accord was “the consecration of trickery, intending to make the National Dialogue fail… . This satanic agreement is a coup against Lusaka… . The signatories were corrupted by giving them each $1,000.” Tshisekedi then toyed briefly with the idea of starting his own armed movement or of setting up a separate government in Kisangani. Outside Kasaï these confused moves lost him a lot of credibility.

  83. African Press Agency dispatch, May 7, 2002.

  84. Misna website, May 14, 2002. The mutiny took place a day after the failure of separate government talks with RCD-G organized by the South Africans in Capetown.

  85. This brief description of the uprising and its consequences is based on a meeting with a survivor of the mutiny in Brussels in May 2002 and on several off-the-record interviews with MONUC personnel in Nairobi in February 2003.

  86. His role in slaughtering over two hundred people in four days was denounced by Human Rights Watch Africa on August 20, which caused a problem when the transition government later came into being and the perpetrator of this atrocity was picked by RCD-G to head a military district for the unified army. Another perpetrator was the commander of the 7th Brigade, Col. Laurent Nkunda, later to become one of the main security problems of the late transition period (see next chapter).

  87. The figure was underestimated but reasonable. Reuters dispatch, Geneva, June 27, 2002. RCD-G admitted only thirty-nine fatalities.

  88. Radio France Internationale, in BBC/SWB, June 9, 2002. The 40,000 figure was of course grossly inflated, but the 15,000 MONUC figure was probably underestimated. The real total was likely between 20,000 and 25,000.

  89. See, for example, the Associated Press piece “Congo’s Kabila Tries to End War,” July 27, 2002, wherein “human interest” tidbits slanted the interview to make the young president appear a sympathetic figure.

  90. This did not influence in the least Kigali’s policy on the ground, where it went ahead with its control plans. On June 24, for example, the RCD-G imposed the monetary circulation of the Rwandese franc in all territories under its control (see its internal memo 075/2PFBP/RCD/2002).

  91. For these last two elements, see the section on the continued conflict in the east.

  92. IRIN dispatch, March 27, 2002.

  93. Even more so since Jonas Savimbi had been killed in an ambush on February 22, 2002.

  94. For details on the economic situation, see next section.

  95. Business Day (Johannesburg), August 8, 2002. On August 24 Zimbabwe signed a whole bevy of trade agreements with Kinshasa, desperately trying to preserve some of the fragile economic advantages it had acquired during the war.

  96. New Vision, August 12, 2002. The Ugandan president said he would take out the 19th and 53rd Battalions and later the two elements of the 35th Battalion still guarding Gbadolite Airport and garrisoning Buta.

  97. He was said to have been “discovered” in a UNITA demobilizing camp. This was most likely a face-saving device provided by the Angolans to help Joseph Kabila, since the notorious general had been on Congolese territory all along. See Agence France Presse dispatch, Kigali, August 13, 2002: “Le Général Bizimungu arrêté en RDC, pas en Angola.”

  98. IRIN dispatch, August 28, 2002.

  99. In late August Kinshasa attracted the attention of the international community because the RPA was infiltrating North Kivu and Ituri on the heels of the retreating UPDF.

  100. The repatriation was presented by Kigali as voluntary. See Agence France Presse dispatch, Kigali, September 3, 2002; IRIN dispatch, September 5, 2002; Jesuit Refugee Service communiqué, September 17, 2002.

  101. East African, September 16, 2002; IRIN dispatch, September 16, 2002.

  102. The best overall view of the confused situation at the time of the Rwandese “evacuation” is to be found in the Réseau Européen Congo reports of October 2 and 16, 2002.

  103. This was all the harder to detect because a large proportion of the RPA troops in the Congo were by then Hutu. They were a mixture of civilian prisoners from Rwanda formerly accused of genocide and freed on condition of joining the army, rallied génocidaires POWs, and Congolese Hutu locally recruited in North Kivu.

  104. The RCD-G commander responsible for the repression cynically boasted on the movement’s radio about having escaped punishm
ent for his behavior in Kisangani the preceding May.

  105. The veteran Yermos Lukole Madoa Doa was a former companion of Laurent-Désiré Kabila from the days of the 1960s Hewa Bora guerrillas. He had been commissioned as a brigadier in the Fac.

  106. Obsac website, September 15, 2002.

  107. Le Potentiel, October 15, 2002.

  108. East African, October 21, 2002.

  109. In fact, the whole operation was supervised by the South African Secret Service operative Billy Masethla and a small team of his men working with Congolese Security. On October 31, after they had forcibly repatriated to Kigali some of the FDLR leadership who had initially been promised political asylum in Brazzaville, there was a revolt during which seven FAC soldiers and an FDLR colonel were killed. Over fifteen hundred FDLR troops managed to run away from the camp and headed for South Kivu. IRIN dispatch, November 4, 2002.