Date: Tue, 5 Nov 1996 21:19:11 -0500 (EST)
From: danceswithcarp <dcombs@kiva.net>
X-Sender: dcombs@ansel.intersource.com
To: Crime Wave <anarchy-list@cwi.nl>
Subject: ForeignCorrespondent HEART OF DARKNESSS (fwd)
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Damn Frogs.   I still can't fiogure this margolis guy out.  This seems a
fairly enlightened piece.

carp
**************************************************************************



Reply-To: emargolis@lglobal.com


HEART OF DARKNESSS
by
Eric Margolis 4 Nov 1996



The bloody tribal war between the Hutu and Tutsi of Rwanda
and Burundi spilled over last week into neighboring Zaire.
Tutsi troops from Rwanda, backed by ethnic Zairean Tutsi
guerrillas known as `Banya mulenge,' stormed the border
towns of Chengugu and Bukavu, routing  drunken soldiers of
the ragtag Zairean army and their Hutu allies. Victorious
Tutsis called for `Greater Rwanda.' 

This renewed tribal warfare recalled the ghastly, 1994
massacres in Rwanda that left an estimated 500,000 Tutsi
dead, and displaced 200,000 Hutus to camps in Zaire. The 
west again wrung its hands and called for action to prevent
the tribal bloodbath from spreading.  But, as before, there
was really nothing the west could do to stop the communal
massacres.  African nations called on their former white
colonial masters to solve the mess. 

The last time Bukavu made headlines was back in the early
60's when white mercenaries hired by one of my favorite
characters from the Congo's darkest days, Albert Kalonji,
`Diamond King of Kasai,' drove  government troops from the
town.  Kalonji and his ally, Moise Tschombe, `president' of
mineral-rich Katanga (today Shaba)- both stooges of Belgian
mining interests- were trying to secede from Zaire and form
their own independent nations.

This was the era of President Patrice Lumumba, assassinated
by the Belgians and CIA; of dashing UN chief Dag
Hammerskjold, assassinated, it was whispered,  by French or
Belgian secret services; of `Mad Mike' Hoare, Col. Bob
Denard, and their white mercenaries.  Of lugubrious Joseph
Kasavubu. Of Pierre Mullele and Antoine Gizenga. chiefs of
the notorious `Simbas:' painted savages, crazed by drugs and
palm wine, who murdered and raped their way along the Congo
River - until they ran into Mad Mike and his boys.

>From this bloodbath emerged a former army sergeant and 
journalist, Joseph Mobutu.  Backed by CIA, Mobutu became
president of Congo(renamed Zaire) in 1965. He has ruled
Africa's third largest nation ever since as a God-king.  

Like many African rulers, Mobutu has been a de facto
colonial administrator for western commercial and strategic
interests. A brilliant politician, Mobutu managed to hold
Zaire's 44 million people together. But he and his
kleptomaniac cronies have bankrupted and pillaged this once
wealthy country.

The ailing Mobutu is one of the world's richest men,  with
an estimated  US $5-7 billion stashed in Swiss banks. He is
being treated for advanced prostate cancer in Switzerland.  
Zaire, Africa's most strategic region, and its second
richest source of minerals after South Africa, now faces a
future without the God-king who single-handedly kept it
united for three decades. 

Those appalled by the carnage in tiny Rwanda and Burundi
should gaze upon Zaire and tremble.  In reality, Zaire is
not really a nation, merely a notational outline drawn
around the Congo River basin last century by European
imperialists.   

Zaire has 200 tribes and even more languages that run from
Bangubangu, and Gumbu, to Kituba, Luba, Ngbaka and Chokwe. 
Many of Zaire's bigger tribes extend into neighboring
Angola, Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Congo, Zambia and
Central African Republic.

Zaire will probably splinter after Mobutu's death,
Roads have disappeared; railroads are rusted; phone don't
work. Only rickety air service sporadically links the
dilapidated parts of this great African vastness.
Zaire is fast going back to the bush..

Three big, mineral-rich provinces - Shaba, Kasai and Kivu,
are already semi-independent.  As the feeble central
government further crumbles, powerful tribes will seek
autonomy or independence.  Think of Yugoslavia, writ large
across the landscape of Central Africa.

In Africa, tribes, the essential unit of life, power, and
society,  remain the key to everything.  The tribe provides
physical security,  laws, welfare, old age support, 
housing,  friends and family.  Africans hardly ever marry
outside their tribes, and are loathe to leave their tribal
areas.  In other words, the tribe is Africa's equivalent of
our nation state.  

Zaire forms the geographic heart of Africa. An implosion and
tribal war there could destabilize much of the continent,
producing cross-border tribal wars such as we are seeing
this week in eastern Zaire.  Equally alarming, a fragmenting
Zaire raises the question of modern Africa's biggest taboo:
the immutability of colonial borders. If Zaire's colonial
borders are redrawn, then all of black Africa is open to
territorial uncertainty and a storm of conflicting
nationalist, tribal and economic claims.  

The ailing Mobutu Sese Seko cannot much longer rule his
disintegrating empire from a Swiss hotel. The Zairean army,
gendarmerie and police are bandits in uniform;  Kinshasa's 
bureaucrats -thieves in French silk suits.  Zaire's coffers are
empty; all the money has been stolen. There is no more cash to
buy the loyalty of tribal chiefs. No new God-king awaits in the
wings.

France, the neo-colonial ruler of West Africa, has designs
on Zaire, Burundi and Rwanda.  France, working through Uganda, 
is arming Tutsi forces.  Paris aims to wrest  control of Zaire's
mineral wealth by elbowing the Americans out of Zaire - just the
way the US shoved France out of the Mideast.   

French tutelage seems preferable to the bloody military
coups that almost certainly await post-Mobutu Zaire. After
three decades of catastrophic independence, Zaire's best
recourse may be a return to the safety and order of colonial
rule. 

copyright eric margolis 1996

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