From Kagame’s point of view, the international community, which had let 800,000 Tutsi who were under its care get slaughtered without lifting a finger, did not have the moral right to ask too many questions. And if it insisted, then it was being “political.41
But insist it did, and with obstinacy. The ambiguity of the situation was well perceived by Julius Nyerere, who, as both the father of the whole crusade and the continent’s elder statesman, could see both sides of the story.42 While in New York shortly after the war he said that Kabila “should not be pushed too hard” and that the West should not “demonise him, making him responsible for the crimes of others.”43 Which was both a way to admit that crimes had indeed been committed and that Kabila was probably not the principal perpetrator. But the Congolese president was caught on the horns of a dilemma well summed up by Colette Braeckman:
His was an impossible position: either he had to admit that at the time of the events he had no control over his army and then look like an absolute puppet; or else he had to shoulder the responsibility and run the risk of being accused of crimes against humanity, even perhaps of genocide.44
This was the moment Kagame chose to candidly admit what he had been denying indignantly less than five months before: that it was the Rwandese army that led the war.45 This was perfect timing. Now impaled on one horn of the dilemma, the most humiliating one, Kabila chose to shake himself free and immediately impaled himself on the other horn by hotly claiming to have been in full control during the war.46 Now there was no way he could unload the responsibility on Rwanda. Some of the Americans, especially in the State Department, started to feel a bit queasy. After Kabila declared in Windhoek that the UN Commission of Inquiry was a “French-inspired smear campaign,” Acting Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Twaddell retorted,
The United States has a clear stake in the policy decisions taken by the new leadership in the Congo… . U.S.-Congolese relations will depend on progress in creating a broad-based transitional government, respect for human rights and co-operation with the UN-led probe into the alleged massacres.47
In fact the massacres had not stopped with the end of the war. During May there were more killings, in Mbandaka and around Biaro.48 Small groups of stragglers were by now trying to make it back to Rwanda, or at least to a place where the media and humanitarian workers would guarantee their safety. At times this was not enough; at Shabunda a group of five hundred refugees were wiped out on August 14, after they had made contact with UNHCR, which could not protect them.49 By then the AFDL had discreetly changed tack and was trying to catch up with the refugees still floating around. The aim was to protect them from the Rwandese, but it soon turned into something more ambiguous because there were ex-FAR and Interahamwe among the civilian refugees, and they offered the only thing they had left in exchange for their life: their fighting capacity. Thus by late 1997, Kabila slowly started mixing the safety of civilians with the recruitment of soldiers.50
The first UN investigation mission, led by Roberto Garreton in January 1997, resulted in a searing report Kigali did not appreciate at all. When Garreton went back with another mission in May he was blocked in Kigali by the Rwandese government and, unable to get to the field, eventually flew back to New York. This was the beginning of an incredible saga, wherein a Rwanda-controlled Kinshasa government stubbornly tried by all means, fair or foul, to block any further investigation into the fate of the refugees.51 On July 8 the UN agreed to a new commission without Garreton, a condition that was denounced by several NGOs as unethical, especially since an independent observer, Dr. Guy Mérineau from Médecins du Monde, had published almost simultaneously a whole page of eyewitness accounts of the massacres in a Paris newspaper.52 Reconstruction Minister Etienne Mbaya first denied that the Garreton Report contained any truth and then accused France of “trying to destabilise our government.”53 Then, in a move fully coherent with the ”kulembeka African Crusade” spirit described above, a number of African heads of state met in Kinshasa and issued a communiqué in support of the new Congolese regime. They said, among other things:
That there was a “persistent misinformation campaign against the DRC” (point 2).
That a commission of inquiry was fine, but that its mandate should start in 1993 (point 6).
That they totally and unequivocally supported the DRC government (point 7).
That they commended Kabila’s “tireless efforts to restore order in the region” (point 10).
Under the presidency of “Comrade” Robert Mugabe,54 then OAU chairman, the meeting was attended by the presidents of Zimbabwe, Uganda, Zambia, the DRC, Mozambique, Namibia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, the Central African Republic, and Rwanda. This was to be the last concerted effort by the regional leaders to block the inquiry. It also fitted briefly into the framework of analysis that saw in this concerted effort a continuation of the anti-Mobutu crusade, marking the emergence of “New African Leaders” under U.S. supervision.55
Reality soon reasserted itself in the shape of a new massacre when 833 people were killed by AFDL forces in the small fishing villages of Wimbi, Alela, Abanga, and Talama on the shores of Lake Tanganyika.56 The victims were a mix of refugees and the local people who had given them shelter. This occurred shortly after Gen. Ndenga wa Milumba, the new 4th Brigade commander in charge of the Kivus and Maniema, declared, “There should be no prison for bandits, only public firing squads.” His men had perhaps taken his words a bit too literally. Then 105 “new refugees,” mostly Congolese with some Rwandese, managed to cross the lake and arrive at Kigoma. On August 27 the Congolese human rights organization AZADHO denounced the arrest of Robert Lukando, an eyewitness to some of the massacres who had been detained in Kindu as he was trying to make contact with a humanitarian organization.
By then the situation had turned into a regular diplomatic war: Secretary General Kofi Annan named Ambassador Mohamed Sahnoun special envoy and sent him to Kinshasa after the Congolese government recused the new head of the commission, Kofi Amega, because he was Togolese and Togo “had had close relations with Mobutu.”57 After Sahnoun’s arrival the commission got the go-ahead from the government, but UNHCR High Commissioner Sadako Ogata decided to withdraw from the DRC “in view of the complete disregard of international humanitarian norms in the handling of the remaining Rwandese refugees.”58 The next day Kagame’s personal secretary, Emmanuel Ndahiro, commented that Ogata had “imaginary notions about the whole thing.”59 Kofi Annan then denied that he was “soft on Kabila,” acknowledged that the commission’s work was “not smooth sailing,” but asked for “patience for a regime that is trying to take over in a country that has more or less collapsed.”60 The commission then gave an ultimatum to the government about letting it do its work, which drove Kabila to lash out at “western plots in the guise of humanitarian action.”61 The journalist Scott Campbell, who had managed to get to some of the former refugee camps, wrote, “The bones are still visible on the massacre sites but they are now being burned to hide the evidence.”62
There was a strange duality of purpose within the mythical “international community.” At about this same time I attended a UN meeting in New York (September 26–27) where people were wondering how to get regular cooperation restarted in the DRC in spite of the refugee business. Sir Kieran Prendergast, the representative of the secretary-general, even said with a note of anguish in his voice, “We are in a box. I ask you as experts: How can we get out of the box?” We could not, but it was interesting to see that the fate of the refugees was of concern to some members of the international community, whereas for many others the main worry seemed to be about how business as usual could be reinstated. The whole background of the genocide and its impact on the Kivus, which was repeatedly brought back into the discussion by Jacques Depelchin, the future leader of the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie (RCD), did not seem to register on the UN personnel, who appeared embarrassed by such painful and complicated considerations.
But business as
usual could not work anymore in this situation, which was perfectly summed up by a headline in the Economist: “Kabila Sends a Message to the World: Buzz Offi”63 The Washington Post was even more explicit, asking in an editorial, “Will Congo self-destruct?”64 The question was pertinent because the issue of the refugees loomed more and more menacingly over the proposed “Friends of the Congo” meeting, which was scheduled for early December with a view to restarting some kind of sorely needed economic cooperation. Some of Kinshasa’s friends had creative ideas about getting out of Sir Kieran’s “box.” When French Minister of Foreign Affairs Hubert Védrine went to South Africa, his counterpart there, Alfred Nzo, started their meeting by simply denying that there had been any massacres at all, but when Thabo Mbeki said that “it was not possible to simply reject the inquiry without alienating the donors,” this led one of his aides to suggest that it would perhaps be possible “to dilute their massacres into all the other massacres which have taken place in the region.”65 This was easier said than done with Kabila, who kept vociferating that the massacre eyewitnesses had been “manipulated,” that all opposition politicians (including Etienne Tshisekedi) were “agents of Mobutu,” and that the NGOs were guilty of “politicisation and smuggling.”66 A new UN mission finally got going and arrived at Mbandaka, only to find that there was no food or lodging.67 Soon large “spontaneous” demonstrations forced them to flee for their own safery.68 The UN still did not give up and sent another mission, only to find freshly emptied mass graves and more demonstrations, in which the local people accused the UN staff of having “desecrated the graves of our ancestors.” Some of the witnesses who came forward to talk to them were immediately arrested.69
By then everybody was tired of the game and serious trouble began to develop.70 The Friends of the Congo meeting in December had of course ended in failure, and the Americans were getting impatient with their loose cannon, the “New Leader.” When President Clinton went to Africa on his grand diplomatic tour of the continent in March 1998 he decided not to go to Kinshasa but instead called President Kabila to a meeting in Entebbe. There he officially told him, “You have to help us help you.”71 He actually took Kabila aside and said, “We are fed up. You have six months to free the opposition politicians, stop harassing the civil society, NGOs, and the press and curb your army. If you fail to do that, in six months we drop you flat.”72 He did not even mention the refugee inquiry, which by now everybody had given up for lost. Kabila verbally acquiesced, although he never acted on his promises. The UN made one last try and sent another mission to Goma. Congolese police immediately arrested a Canadian UN staff member, searched his luggage, and briefly detained him. In spite of New York’s furor, the U.S. State Department still intervened on Kabila’s behalf and asked the UN to please not drop the inquiry and the Congo with it.73 But this was going to be the last time. The UN did withdraw, and on June 30 it released a very severe report which was described by Kigali as “emotive and lacking in credibility,” while the DRC ambassador in New York called it “a collection of unfounded allegations” and Kabila more simply “a pure fabrication.”74 He had won the battle, but he had lost the peace. The economy was in shambles, and new storm clouds were rising in the east.
The economy: an ineffectual attempt at normalization
The economic situation the AFDL government inherited from the Mobutu regime was catastrophic. The real downward spiral had started around 1990, when a combination of low copper prices and growing political and administrative confusion pushed up costs and reduced revenue. From sickly, the Zairian economy turned terminal. In a fertile country like Zaire people could still eat, but even agricultural production was stagnant because of an almost complete lack of investment in transport, fertilizer, pesticides, or even simple tools. With a population growing at 3 percent per year, per capita food production entered into a slow decline in the mid-1980s: because the cropping area had remained stable at around 7.8 million hectares, as had the production technique, the output remained stagnant for a rapidly expanding population. In ten years (1985–1995) per capita food production diminished by over 10 percent. Agricultural exports had declined only moderately until around 1992, but a negative price evolution had drastically reduced their value. And then, after 1992, commercial agriculture moved the same way as the mining and manufacturing sectors: sharply downward. Coffee production went from 92,000 tons in 1988 to 56,000 in 1996, palm oil production declined from 95,000 tons to 18,000 during the same period, and rubber practically disappeared. The mining and manufacturing situation was even worse, given the dependency of these sectors on imported spare parts and equipment. Copper production went from 506,000 tons in 1988 to around 38,000 in 1996, MIBA industrial diamond production fell from about 10 million carats in 1986 to 6.5 million in 1996, and cobalt went from 10,000 tons in 1988 to less than 4,000 tons in 1996. The effects on the balance of trade were drastic, with revenues dropping from about $1.3 billion in 1990 to $176 million in 1994. Because imports remained at a fairly high level for some time while exports declined, the external debt had risen to $12.8 billion by 1996, representing 233 percent of GDP, or 924 percent of the export capacity. Debt service was not paid and arrears had risen to over $800 million. Zaire had been suspended from the IMF in 1992 and never reinstated. The result was an almost complete collapse of the state financial capacity, with public revenue falling from 17 percent of GDP in the 1960s to less than 5 percent in 1996. Not having any more money the state practically stopped spending, and public investment in infrastructure fell to about 1 percent of GDP.75
Perhaps the most preoccupying effect of this collapse was the quasi-disappearance of the monetary system. With an inflation rate that the IMF calculated at an average 2,000 percent during most of the 1990s, prices shot up in an insane way.
Evolution of the Consumer Price Index (1990 = 100)
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
27
55
100
2,154
4,130
1,989,738
Source: Economist Intelligence Unit, Zaire Country Report 1994, 17.
The government started to print money as fast as it could, simply to keep a certain amount of fiduciary current irrigating the economy. Bills were printed in ever higher denominations and put into circulation as fast as possible, and their rapidly shrinking real purchasing value would then wipe them off the market in a way that made even the German hyperinflation of the 1920s look mild.
Currency Life Cycle
Bill Denomination (Zaire)
U.S. Dollar Equivalent
Life Duration (months)76
10,000
22.00
30
50,000
12.10
19
100,000
1.00
15
200,000
1.30
17
500,000
3.18
17
1,000,000
1.12
131 .
Source: Hughes Leclerq, “Commentaire sur la situation économique récente de la RDC et ses implications pour la politique d’aide internationale,” paper prepared for the UN Congo Expert Group Meeting, New York, May 1–3, 1998.
In December 1992 the system finally imploded: the Z 5 million bill was refused by everybody and had a zero life span. The government then tried to force it through by paying soldiers’ salaries with the new currency, but the army rioted when its money was refused in the shops. In 1993 the government demonetized the old Zaire bills and introduced the “New Zaire.” The result split the monetary system in two because Kasai refused the new currency and kept using the old one, which regained a certain value simply by not being printed anymore. But by 1994 the modern sector was operating entirely with foreign currencies, mostly U.S. dollars, which were either used directly in bills or held in special accounts in Zairian banks. This created a
third fiduciary zone linked with international money transfers. As a result the actual total value of the money in private circulation within the country kept shrinking because foreign currency circulation was negligible inside.
Total Amount of Fiduciary Circulation (in U.S. $ millions)
Year
Value of Circulating Cash
Value of Bank Deposits
Total
1974
365
521
886
1989
337
260
597
1990
310
200
510
1993
127
blocked
127
1996
93
12
105
Source: Hughes Leclerq, “Commentaire sur la situation économique récente de la RDC et ses implications pour la politique d’aide internationale,” paper prepared for the UN Congo Expert Group Meeting, New York, May 1–3, 1998.
The result of this evolution was the slow destruction of the monetary sector of the economy, pushing the whole economic system back to self-subsistence supplemented by barter. Paid employment shrank.
Paid Employment Evolution (in millions of people)
1974
1989
1995
Total population
21.20
36.10
43.80
Active population
10.30
18.40
22.40
Population in paid employment
Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe Page 26
