In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz

by Michela Wrong

  ‘He was a speaker of genius,’ said a Congolese journalist who was a student at the time. ‘I would go unwillingly, because I didn’t really approve of Mobutu. But as soon as he began speaking, we would be swept away. We’d stand in the sun for hours, but the time would slip by without you noticing. If you study those speeches now, in the cold light of day, you can see there was almost nothing in them, they were full of inconsistencies, gossip and tittle-tattle. But he knew just how to speak to the people. He would tell us nonsense and we would believe him.’

  It was that demagogic talent Mobutu was to exploit in the early 1970s as he launched the most intellectually ambitious project of his career. Five years after his military coup, he was increasingly aware that he needed to give his one-party regime an ideological lick of paint. The secession attempts of the 1960s had shown how prone to fragmentation the country was. Some binding, unifying philosophy was needed. There was also an element of one-upmanship to what followed. The post-independence era had seen a flourishing of African sensibility. From Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah’s vision of black consciousness and pan-Africanism had spread across the continent. In Tanzania, Julius Nyerere had launched his doctrine of socialism and self-reliance. In Senegal Leopold Senghor had preached the proud doctrine of ‘negritude’. As the leader of the third largest African nation, with the awareness of all those incredible mineral riches at the back of his mind, Mobutu felt greatness was rightfully his. His country would play a leading role in the non-aligned movement, become the West’s preferred African interlocutor and act as a catalyst for change on the continent and beyond, he decided. His head ringing with the praises of his entourage, the self-taught former army sergeant launched himself into a campaign he was signally ill-equipped to see through. Drawing on concepts of mass mobilisation, strong leadership and revolutionary ‘militancy’ picked up during visits staged to a friendly China and South Korea, he set out to take the intellectual lead in Africa.

  At its best, ‘authenticity’, as the movement born in 1971 was called, was an admirable attempt to recover a sense of African identity and pride crushed by the colonial experience. It was remarkable, in a way, that it had taken so long for a new country to feel the need for a fresh image. The country must modernise, Mobutu told his public rallies, but it would do so in a framework of ancestral spiritual values, not by aping Western materialism. ‘Authenticity is the realisation by the Zairean people that it must return to its origins, seek out the values of its ancestors, to discover those which contribute to its harmonious and natural development,’ Mobutu told the United Nations. ‘It is the refusal to blindly embrace imported ideologies. It is, in short, the affirmation of mankind, in its place, as it is, with its mental and social structures.’

  Congo was rebaptised Zaire, and the national currency and main waterway similarly renamed: one trademark embraced three key concepts. The Christian names left by the European missionaries were abandoned and African names revived, with Mobutu setting a personal, grandiose example. Roads and squares named after Belgian notables were rebaptised after key events in the struggle for independence and the national anthem and flag were changed. This was the moment when the statues of Stanley, King Leopold and King Baudoin were toppled.

  ‘Madame’ and ‘Monsieur’ were replaced by ‘Citoyen’ and ‘Citoyenne’, in an echo of the French Revolution. Instead of the European suit, men were to don a high-collared jacket of Mobutu’s invention. Dubbed the abacost (from ‘à bas le costume’—‘down with the jacket’), and usually modelled in dark brown or navy blue wool, this was no better adapted to the African climate, but it was different. Returning Zaireans would whip off their ties in the plane for fear of having them snipped in two at customs. As for women, the provocative miniskirts of the 1970s were replaced by more dignified African pagnes, or wraps, and wigs shunned in favour of ‘natural’ coiffure.

  Such changes hardly amounted to a coherent philosophy. But then, there probably never was one within the Mobutu brain, which stalled over even the basic question of the MPR’s political orientation, defined as being ‘neither left nor right, nor even the centre’. ‘If he had focalised and crystallised his thought by writing it down, there were rich ideas there waiting to be developed,’ insisted Honoré Ngbanda, who later became one of Mobutu’s closest aides. ‘It was a fundamental philosophical notion. But unfortunately, whether it was at the level of the MPR’s central committee, the government or his own collaborators, there was no one who could take the idea and give it a conceptual form.’

  However quaint its manifestations, authenticity did make its mark. For many Congolese today, it is the one Mobutu gift for which they remain grateful, leaving them with a sense of uniqueness, the awareness that they were not Kasaians, Shabaians or natives of Bas-Congo, but citizens of one vast central African nation with its own, very distinct identity.

  Even sceptics were won round. ‘At first all that business with the abacosts just seemed ridiculous to me,’ said Devlin. ‘Then I caught on. It meant “we are all one, I am a great leader and I have the respect of the world.” It did make Zaireans feel they were something special.’ So special, indeed, that the organisers of the world heavyweight boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman chose Kinshasa as venue for a ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ in 1974 that was as much a celebration of budding black pride as a sporting event.

  Unfortunately, the movement could all too easily be pushed in another direction, in a climate where Mobutu’s aides were falling over themselves to demonstrate their loyalty and commitment. Swiftly, authenticity elided into Mobutuism—never really defined—and an extravagant personality cult. The Guide, the Helmsman, Father of the Nation, Founding President, the official media called him. Thanks to the efforts of Sakombi Inongo, his public relations maestro, Mobutu’s face, with its carp-lips and heavy glasses, was on the cover of almost every newspaper. The daily television news broadcast began with an image of his features, emerging God-like from scudding clouds and his arrival was met with dancing and singing. Officials went so far as to compare Mobutu to the messiah, with the MPR as his church and party cadres as the disciples.

  But Mobutu was no Mao and the infinitely pragmatic Congolese were not in the same mould as the Chinese. If they had learned all about subjugation and passive resentment under Leopold, blind reverence, the wholesale swallowing of propaganda, was quite another matter. Mobutuism died a quiet death as the personality cult was met with a sceptical shrugging of shoulders and soft amusement.

  The same could not be said of the campaign that acted as the economic corollary of authenticity: Zaireanisation. In 1973 Mobutu decreed that foreign-owned farms, plantations, commercial enterprises—mostly in the hands of Portuguese, Greek, Italian and Pakistani traders—should be turned over ‘to sons of the country’. This was followed by radicalisation, in which the largely Belgian-controlled industrial sector was confiscated. The president may have envisaged some Chinese-style return to the land which would allow an alienated urban class to rediscover its ancestral roots and spell an end to rural stagnation. In theory, departing foreigners were to be compensated and the performance of new owners would be carefully monitored. In practice—a result, perhaps, of that presidential lack of attention when it came to matters financial—no guidelines were drawn up to specify who got what. The result was an obscene scramble for freebies by the burgeoning Zairean elite. Thousands of businesses, totalling around $1 billion in value, were divided between top officials in the most comprehensive nationalisation seen in Africa.

  Mobutu, of course, did best out of the share-out, seizing fourteen plantations which were merged into a conglomerate that employed 25,000 people, making it the third largest employer in the country, responsible for one fourth of Zairean cocoa and rubber production. Members of his Ngbandi tribe were the next to benefit, their plum positions in the newly nationalised companies and prime enterprises making up for all those jibes about rural backwardness. But Mobutu was careful to ensure all the major ethnic groups whose suppo
rt he needed profited. The social class known as the ‘Grosses Legumes’ (Big Vegetables)—a term used by ordinary Zaireans with a mixture of resentment and awe—was born.

  One Congolese woman, who was seventeen at the time, remembers having a surreal conversation with the father of a schoolfriend, who was helping to distribute the seized businesses: ‘ “Would you like a shop?” he asked me. When I said “no”, he insisted. “Go on, take one, I’ll give you the staff.” When I still said I wasn’t interested, he said: “Look, if you don’t want it yourself, you can always give it to your mother.” ’

  It was an approach to economic management so naively simple in its conception, so shoddily applied, that it was doomed to failure. Many of the new owners, busy forging their careers in Kinshasa, found they had neither the skills nor the interest to run their new toys. ‘They were giving cattle herds to people who couldn’t sex a bull,’ scoffed Endundu, the businessman. ‘It was a disaster.’ Others never even bothered to try and make a go of it, convinced the manna from heaven would keep dropping painlessly from on high. As expatriate managers headed for the airports, the new owners pocketed savings, sold herds, dumped equipment on local markets and ripped up bushes.

  The proceeds were spent on luxury items, with imports of Mercedes-Benz hitting an African record one year after Zaireanisation. Ordinary Zaireans, supposed beneficiaries of the process, watched in shock as businesses closed, prices rose, jobs were doled out by new bosses on purely nepotistic lines, and shelves emptied. After a few weeks, the Big Vegetables could be heard asking when the Portuguese and Greek businessmen who had left the country would be coming back to restock the warehouses. But in the West, outraged parent companies had halted supplies and frozen credit to their former subsidiaries.

  Mobutu could not have picked a worse moment to deliver such a shock to his economy. Intoxicated by his sense of national greatness, he had already borrowed heavily for a series of pharaonic industrial projects, including the building of the dam at Inga and the installation of a transmission line linking it to the southern mining area. In 1974, the world price for copper dropped by nearly two thirds as the oil shock plunged the world into recession.

  Until Zaireanisation, the economy had grown by an average 7 per cent a year. Look at a graph of just about any indicator and there, in 1974, is the sharp peak, followed by a long, slow, unstoppable swoop that continues to this day. ‘Mobutu survived an extraordinary decline,’ said Jerome Chevallier, a former World Bank resident representative. ‘But he killed that economy.’

  When the disastrous implications of what he had done began to sink in, Mobutu tried to reverse the damage. Majority shares were offered to former owners and some compensation finally paid. But no entrepreneur, large or small, would ever invest in the country with a tranquil heart again. Those who had put their faith in Zaire had been looted on the president’s orders. In future, businessmen who ventured there would demand exceptionally high rates of return and quick profits to justify the risk they were running, and would be careful to repatriate their proceeds rather than reinvest.

  The blow to Mobutu’s notions of grandeur was multi-pronged. For the economic crunch came as Africa’s leaders rejected authenticity as a model, contemptuous of Mobutu’s attempts to portray himself as a great thinker. Hurt by the hostile international reception, recognising that he had badly overstretched himself, Mobutu was never subsequently to attempt to give his rule ideological content. From then on, he would be the ultimate pragmatist, concerned only with what was necessary to keep him in power and allow him to make money.

  For his population, Zaireanisation’s impact was to extend far beyond the immediate commercial crisis. The belief that something could be had for nothing, the looter’s smash-and-grab mentality, had been endorsed at the very highest level of society. Mobutu and his ministers had plundered mercilessly, and no one had ever been punished. The president himself—in a slip made during a speech transmitted live on television—even appeared to articulate the new philosophy, telling employees: ‘Go ahead and steal, as long as you don’t take too much.’ The lesson was not lost on those lower down in the hierarchy, in far greater need of extra cash than their superiors.

  Before Zaireanisation, corruption, while a problem, had seemed to observers on a par with that witnessed in many other emerging African states. But in the generalised climate of impunity created by this botched economic experiment, sleaze—whether practised by the lowly bread-seller or the Mercedes-driving Big Vegetable—was about to become the most striking characteristic of Zairean society.

  Mobutu’s appropriation of one of Zaire’s largest plantations was the public signal that a new system of rule, glimpsed elsewhere in the world but never, perhaps, brought to such a level of purity, was in the process of being established in Africa: a kleptocracy.

  At the top of the heap sat the chief pilferer. Nobody knew for sure the size of his bank accounts, the range of his company holdings and investment funds. Deeds were made out to front companies, business associates and family members in order to cover his tracks. But it was easy enough to monitor the gradual build-up of a portfolio of desirable residences at home and abroad.

  In Zaire itself, the palace complex at Gbadolite gradually blossomed into life like one of those lush tropical flowers which virtually poison the air around, so potent is their scent. In each major town, a villa lay ready for the president’s use. Kinshasa, of course, also boasted a choice of residences, including a hillside mansion whose grounds served as a private zoo. But Mobutu came to prefer the pagoda in the Chinese village built at Nsele, east of the capital, or his luxury cruiser Kamanyola, furnished with oyster-shaped settees in pink silk.

  Some presents Mobutu made himself were simply too ostentatious to remain secret for long. Most notorious was the $5.2 million Villa del Mar in Roquebrune Cap Martin, not far from King Leopold’s former French Riviera estate. The story goes that when buying this neoclassical property, the president agreed a price, then as an afterthought enquired whether it would be in dollars or Belgian francs—the 39-fold difference in value held no meaning for a man of such careless wealth.

  On a similar lavish scale were Les Miguettes, a converted farmhouse in the Swiss village of Savigny and the $2.3 million Casa Agricola Solear estate in Portugal’s Algarve, blessed with 800 hectares of land, a 14,000-bottle cellar and 12 bedrooms. There was also a vast apartment on Paris’s Avenue Foch, conveniently close to the furrier who made his trademark leopardskin hats and the fashion designers patronised by his family. From Cape Town to Madrid, Marbella to Marrakesh, Abidjan to Dakar were scattered a string of farms, villas and hotels.

  However, the bulk of his real estate network was located in Brussels. The turreted Château Fond’Roy was just one of at least nine buildings scattered across the upmarket districts of Uccle and Rhode St Genèse, a sign that this most nationalist of African presidents was ready to forgive colonial wrongdoings when it came to finding a safe investment for his money. It was an impressive collection for a man who in 1959 claimed to have just $6 to his name.

  But no one could accuse Mobutu of hogging it all to himself. In playing to the hilt the role of high-rolling African Big Man, he was simultaneously setting an example for the Big Vegetables to copy. What he wanted was a quiescent, loyal political class and Zaireanisation was only the bluntest of methods of drawing as many potential rivals as possible into the establishment. Under Mobutu, indeed, the entire state administration came to resemble one of those conveyor belts that whizzes an array of gifts past contestants in a television game show, with even disappointed also-rans entitled to generous consolation prizes.

  Via the ruling MPR, Mobutu had at least 400 attractive posts, ranging from positions in the party’s central committee, executive council, regional administration and state enterprises, to offer as sweeteners. On top of that, an apparently endless succession of cabinet reshuffles prevented ministers from becoming overconfident while allowing a greater number of favourites their turn at the nationa
l trough. Between 1965 and 1990, when the one-party system came to an end, Zaire saw fifty-one government teams come and go, an average of two a year. Each contained an average of forty ministers and deputy ministers.

  The reshuffles were of no significance when it came to determining Zairean policy either at home or abroad, they simply constituted a way of spreading the largesse around. As one diplomat put it, when asked by a journalist for his assessment of the implications of yet another new government line-up: ‘What do you get when you shake up a can of worms? Dizzy worms.’

  And the worms were kept very dizzy indeed, their heads reeling with the profits to be made during a tenure they knew was fated to be all too brief. Every official assignment abroad, in itself covered by ridiculously high per diems, was treated like a Christmas shopping trip. Chester Crocker, the former US assistant secretary of state for Africa, would marvel every time he went to the airport to see Mobutu and his aides off. ‘The DC10 would barely be able to take off, its belly was so full of stereos and microwaves.’

  On ministerial fittings alone, rich pickings were to be had. Each minister had the right to two cars—usually a black Mercedes, Peugeot 605 or all-terrain jeep—while his deputy was entitled to one. Somehow, the cars and furniture were never to be found when the new incumbent moved into his predecessor’s strangely depleted offices. Small-scale tribal chiefs themselves, each minister knew he had to live up to the expectations of his constituency, which wanted to see its local hero’s worldly success on display. Those favoured knew their duty was to spread such benefits around the extended family. Every new minister, every new head of a state enterprise, would immediately set about distributing jobs to members of his or her ethnic group, appointments that would never be rescinded, merely added to, when a new administration came in.