The legacy of Mobutu: The DRC votes.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the vast and troubled country in sub-Saharan Africa, is going to the polls for only the second time in fifty years today. A country ten times the size of Britain, with a population just over 70 million, has suffered terribly since its independence from Belgium in 1960. Its vast reserves of natural resources that include timber, gold, diamonds and many precious metals should have created economic stability and wealth for its people, yet war, corruption on an enormous scale and destitution has left the people of the Congo at the bottom of the UN’s Human Development Index, earning a miserly $200 a year. The current President Joseph Kabila, who has been in charge since the previous leader (his father Joseph-Desire) was assassinated in 2001, looks set cement another term in Government and reaffirm his Premiership. However, the 40-year-old, Kabila is far from popular. Labelled as another African autocratic, he is distrusted in the east of the country and the ten million strong capital city Kinshasa. Pledging to introduce high speed rail to a country that notoriously lacks a road network, Kabila is certain to win through a mix of weak opposition and strong arm tactics. International critics are alarmed that Kabila has abolished any run offs between first and second place candidates and feel that the ruling party will do anything to hijack victory by any means possible, including ballot rigging. So why have the DRC and its people endured such an ignominious past and what does the future hold for this huge country.

In what became known as ‘The Scramble for Africa’ the small European nation of Belgium snapped up the huge region surrounding the mouth of the River Congo. Ordained Belgian-Congo, it became a playground for Emperor Leopold II in what can be deemed as one of Europe’s darkest periods of imperialism. Reconstructed in Joseph Conrad’s early 20^th century novella, ‘Heart of Darkness’ captures the impunity and sheer subjugation of human life in pursuit of mineral wealth, most notably ivory. After World War Two when the ‘Winds of Change’ were sweeping across Africa, Belgium had highlighted that Congo may require longer transition before independence. Instead of the 50 year period that Belgium had drawn up, the Cold War forced it to fast forward independence to 18 months. The country’s first Prime Minister and pan-African Marxist, Patrick Lumumba, was deemed as a liability by Western Governments and swiftly abducted then killed by firing squad, before his remains were put in acid to prevent him being deemed a martyr. The man the West backed and who would go on to rule for 32 years was Colonel Joseph Mobutu.

The rule of Mobutu can only be deemed as bizarre and shameful for all those who kept him in power. A powerful public speaker and strong campaigner, Mobutu was a bulwark against Soviet interests. If he was ever facing political strife then he could rely on French, Belgian or American paratroopers to put down any insurgency and all the while he could rule as he pleased. His reforms included the Africanisation of his country. He became Mobutu Sese Seko which translated to ‘all powerful warrior’ and Congo was renamed Zaire, Leopoldville to Kinshasa. He introduced cultural rules including collarless shirt similar to Mao’s China, he wanted to reaffirm an identity to country that for so long had been mismanaged and corrupted. It was Mobutu who brought Muhammed Ali and George Foreman to fight in Kinshasa in 1974 in what became known as ‘The Rumble in the Jungle’ to raise the country’s profile. Yet Mobutu was the most flamboyant and corrupt of them all. Economic mismanagement saw him ordering crates of money for himself from the central bank and building massive palaces in the dense jungles. He had fleets of Concorde, had a taste for expensive pink champagne and used the Zairian Treasury as a wallet on extravagant shopping trips to Europe.

Like most dictators, ideology gradually blurred because power was everything. As long as he was in power, the West turned a blind eye to what was going on internally. If he ever felt a threat from others, they were either bought off or executed. Towards the end of his rule, Mobutu, like many dictators before him, became obsessed about plots to kill him. He retreated to his palace in the forest and let most decisions be taken by his generals.

The collapse of the Soviet Union meant that Western Governments no longer needed to fancy favours from these decrepit despots. Economic collapse and the genocide in Rwanda and Burundi forced hundreds of thousands of refugees into the East of Congo around Goma. Mobutu, now suffering from cancer, was unable to put up any resistance against the Tutsi-led armies from Rwanda and Uganda, and fled in exile to Togo and then Morocco.

The question that many commentators asked was what a post-Mobutu Zaire would look like and whether it would work? Africa’s biggest kleptocrat had plundered, yet he had stabilised tribes and created an identity for his people. The day he fled, the rebel leader Laurent Kabila declared himself President, yet peace was short lived.

What is now recorded as the bloodiest conflict since the Second World War, and seen as Africa’s world war, drawing in nine countries and reportedly leading to over five million deaths, and shamelessly ignored by most Western media outlets. Many of the belligerents have been accused of invading/co-operating purely to loot the DRC’s mineral wealth, in fact Rwanda recently handed back some money it had made from stolen diamonds. To this day, the UN’s largest peace-keeping force operates within the country, with nearly 20,000 uniformed personnel on the ground and costing over $1 billion a year. Most reports to the outside world highlight the use of rape as a weapon of war, in 2009 there were 8,900 recorded incidents of rape. Yet, in a country so huge, it is difficult to determine the number of sexual crimes that have taken place, countless have been infected by HIV.

The great new Empire of China has also been criticised for its relationship with the DRC Government. A multibillion dollar bilateral contract that exchanges infrastructure work for valuable minerals. Many criticised China for taking advantage of its African partner.

So as over 32 million people head for the polls to vote for the candidates (including Mobutu’s son) it is hard to believe that a cross in a box is really going to make a difference in a country that has a tortured history and hopeless future.