[Militant, No. 409, 9th June 1978, p. 10-11]
In the past, the ruling classes of Europe have boasted of their “civilising” role in Africa, and of how they granted “emergent nations” their independence when “the time was ripe”.
Events in Zaire, however, reveal just how far direct colonial domination was replaced by indirect exploitation – with the propping up of the most “uncivilised”, barbarous regimes as the agencies of continued capitalist plunder.
As soon as one of the most corrupt and ruthlessly repressive of these regimes was threatened, last month, French imperialism flew in the paratroops to save Mobutu and defend their interests.
The French government claimed that its intervention was “humanitarian”, aimed simply at rescuing the Europeans in Shaba, a story backed up by the capitalist press in Britain. In fact, the dropping of French paratroops was almost certainly the main cause of the horrifying massacre of whites in and around Kolwezi.
Prior to the French intervention, there were firm reports of only a handful of European deaths, although the atrocity scare-stories had already begun in the press. The Belgian government (despite its denials) was almost certainly negotiating with FNLC (Congo National Liberation Front) representatives for the evacuation of Europeans by Belgian forces. FNLC spokesmen, who claimed that there were already French troops fighting for Mobutu (possibly mercenaries), warned that any intervention would prejudice the lives of Europeans in Shaba.
Nevertheless of the 19th May, the French paratroops were dropped over Kolwezi: “Refugees,” reported The Times (22 May), “say the massacre began as French paratroopers from the Foreign Legion launched their assault on the town [Kolwezi] on Friday… It appears that French nationals were the rebels’ primary target in those last hours before the French troops retook the town…”
The French operation brought a sharp clash with the Belgian government, which was informed only after the paratroops were on their way, Mr Tindemans, the Belgian prime minister, criticised the French operation as being of “quite a different character than the Belgian”; and the Belgian Socialist Party issued a statement criticising the French action more bluntly as being of “a purely military character, which compromises the security of Europeans in the region.”
Expressing opposition to any further military involvement in Zaire, Andre Cools, the Socialist Party leader, warned: “Belgian youth must not become the spearhead of an African Vietnam.” (Financial Times, 24 May)
While the Belgian reaction partly reflected pressure exerted through the Socialist Party, which participates in a coalition government with the Christian Democrats, it also reflected the resentment of Belgian big business.
Wording their public criticisms diplomatically, the Belgian government nevertheless clearly viewed France’s “humanitarian” operation as a cover for further efforts to establish a dominant role in Zaire. Belgian capitalists, with a stake of $800 millions in Zaire, undoubtedly remembered Giscard’s speeches when visiting Zaire, when he referred to the former Belgian colony as “the most Francophone country after France itself.”
After last year’s operation, when France had flown in Moroccan troops to save Mobutu, the Belgian foreign minister, Renaat van Elslande, had bluntly declared: “France is particularly interested in Zaire’s natural resources and Belgium resents this as international rivalry.” He had gone on to ask France to leave “Belgium alone in regions where it is historically at home.” (Le Monde 22 May)
Invaders welcomed by population
While the French intervention has been presented as a humanitarian rescue bid, the upheaval in Shaba province has been pictured in the crudest possible terms, as a frenzied invasion by Katangan exiles, armed, directed and cynically manipulated by Cuba and Russia.
But this fails to answer one vital question: how could a small invasion force, generally estimated at only about 2,000, rout the Zairean army and take over the main mining centres of Shaba – and for the second time in little over a year – unless it had extensive local sympathy and support?
In fact, events in Shaba testify, not to the strength of the invaders, but to the rottenness of the regime they aimed to topple.
The invaders are usually referred to as ex-Katangan gendarmes. These are the remnants of the force that supported Moise Tshombe’s attempt, shortly after the independence of Congo (renamed Zaire), to establish a separate state of Katanga (renamed Shaba). When this failed, largely because of the UN forces’ intervention in favour of a unified Congo, Tshombe’s gendarmes went into exile in neighbouring Angola.
Tshombe’s movement was right-wing, but more recently the Katangans fought with the left-wing MPLA in Angola. After their victory, the MPLA leaders were only too pleased to support the Katangans’ struggle against Mobutu, who had actively obstructed the MPLA in its fight against Portuguese colonialism and who had supported the CIA-backed UNITA and FNLA.
What is clear, however, is that the ageing ex-Katangans now only form a minority of the FNLC. In the last few years, the ex-gendarmes have been joined by a growing stream of young volunteers from inside Zaire, not only from the Lunda people of Shaba, but from all over the country. If the arms and training are available, as they now are from Cuba and Eastern Europe, there can be little difficulty for the FNLC finding recruits, when there are at present 250,000 (mainly Lunda) refugees living in camps in Angola rather than face the barbarous conditions and repression in Zaire.
The media have portrayed the Shaba events as simply an orgy of violence against whites, perpetrated by black, “communist” hordes. But the reports of evacuated whites contrast this crude version. The wife of a Belgian school teacher told The Times (22 May):
“We did not get any support from the Zaire Army soldiers. We feared them more than we feared the rebels.”
“The natives in the town took advantage of the situation. They told the rebels where the whites were hiding and then they looted the homes.”
“Many of the refugees at Kolwezi,” continues the report, “were saying that government troops, high on hashish, rather than rebels were responsible for the worst massacre.”
After decades of the most barbarous colonial exploitation, and after a further period of super-exploitation and degradation under Mobutu’s neo-colonial regime, is it surprising that the most downtrodden of the local population should turn in anger against the Europeans, the most conspicuous of their exploiters? Only a Marxist leadership, capable of expressing the anger of the oppressed and giving them socialist aims, could have averted such bloody reprisals.
Reporting from Kolwezi, John Swain gives a graphic picture of the situation:
“The sad truth is that, with some notable exceptions, many of the 2,500 Belgian and French expatriates running Kolwezi’s copper mines worked in Zaire for money rather than for a love of the country. Theirs was often a selfish, sumptuous way of life which they could not hope to repeat in Europe. They had high salaries, lots of domestic servants, fabulous houses with big gardens and swimming pools. Their wives could afford to buy the most expensive perfumes and Paris fashions…
“Few Kolwezi whites ventured into the hot and dirty shacks of Cité Manika with their earthy, sour smell, their flies and barefoot urchins, where 150,000 blacks lead lives of misery and despair. Had they done so they might have felt the simmering discontent and the tension beneath the surface.
“…there is no doubt that some of massacres of Kolwezi’s whites were perpetrated by the deprived and desperate inhabitants of this sordid shanty town, who welcomed the invasion of the Cuban-trained rebels.”
Another report provides an eloquent comment on the hysterical denunciations of a Cuban invasion of Shaba, of which neither the western governments nor the capitalist press have been able to provide any evidence. An evacuated Briton told The Guardian (22 May) of how he was rescued by the French paratroopers – but not in a way that would have provided President Giscard with any satisfaction at all!
“As the parachutes opened over the town the rebel prison guards slipped away, leaving the jubilant population cheering what they thought was a Cuban drop.
“When the guards left the people just wanted to get into the prison and lynch us. They were cheering and waving at the troops coming down on parachutes, They honestly thought the Cubans had come in to help the rebels and they loved it.”
The invaders have now pulled back, some returning to Angola, some hiding in the bush. Few doubt that they will be back, and with even bigger forces, whatever the support provided to Mobutu by the west.
France plays Africa’s gendarme
Last year, France transported Moroccan troops to save Mobutu. This year, France has intervened directly to prop up Mobutu’s crumbling dictatorship. The French action, moreover, is not an isolated episode but part of a drive by French capitalism to increase its influence throughout Africa.
The underlying motives are undoubtedly economic. Although France has less investment in Zaire than Belgium, the US, and Britain, it has huge investments throughout Africa. French capitalism has favourable trade balances with a number of African states, and carries on a highly profitable arms trade second only to America’s.
As a consequence of its African policy, France is now engaged in four military operations: in Chad; in Djibuti; in Mauritania (where it has mineral interests and is fighting the Polisario Liberation Front); and now in Zaire.
The French ruling class has the illusion that, while the power of the United States has declined, France can play the role of African gendarme, protecting pro-western regimes and safeguarding capitalist interests.
“France under President Giscard d’Estaing, has assumed the mantle of international policeman laid down by the United States after the Vietnam disaster … the president (believes) he too (like De Gaulle) is leading France back to an historic role of influence alongside the super-powers.” (‘The Times’ 24 May)
But while big business and the right-wing applaud French efforts on their behalf, the serious strategists of capital have already expressed fears that France will burn its fingers in Africa. This is indicated by the very cautious, indirect support from the other powers, and the attempt to replace French paratroops with a “pan-African” “peace-keeping” force of Moroccan and other African troops.
In France, too, sections of the ruling class – remembering their defeats in Algeria and Indo-China – have voiced fears of being embroiled in unwinnable African wars.
The capitalist critics of Giscard’s policy point out that it is easier to send French forces to prop up shaky regimes that to pull them out. Relatively small guerrilla armies can tie down large conventional armies for years, draining resources and provoking a political reaction at home against neo-colonialist intervention.
Even in economic terms intervention can rebound. Already, French policy has provoked a reaction from countries like Algeria and Libya, which back liberation movements being fought by France, and which are actually more important economically than the client states receiving protection. Military intervention, as the US found to its cost in Angola, also has the effect of pushing liberation movements more and more into the arms of Cuba and Eastern Europe.
The dilemma of imperialism is reflected in the split in the US government over how far to go in trying to prop up Mobutu. If they allow Mobutu to fall, Zaire would very likely go the same way as Angola and Mozambique, resulting in the overthrow of landlordism and capitalism.
But a more open military attempt to defend Mobutu’s rotten regime, would just as likely stiffen the movement against him and prompt increased aid from the Eastern bloc – with the same result in the long run.
The balance has tipped against imperialism
Zaire is proof enough of the complete inability of imperialism to develop society in the ex-colonial lands. The complete rottenness of these client states makes it futile for the big powers to try to sustain regimes like Mobutu’s without pouring massive resources – and ultimately opening up a new Vietnam.
The defeat of imperialism in Angola and Mozambique marked a decisive change in the balance of forces for world imperialism. The intensification of the struggle in Rhodesia, the movement of the black youth in South Africa, and the additional impulse given to the liberation movements throughout Africa, testify to this.
The new situation in Africa places the fight for a Socialist United States of Africa, which alone could provide a basis for a socialist planning of production necessary to lift the African people into the twentieth century, on the agenda for the coming period.
The revolutions in Angola, Mozambique, Ethopia and Somalia, because they have been confined within narrow national limits and have consequently relied on the Stalinist states of Russia and Eastern Europe for support against imperialism, have inevitably taken on a bureaucratically deformed character.
But movements throughout Africa, and particularly in the working-class centres of South Africa and Nigeria, would open up the possibility of a struggle for socialism, in collaboration with the workers of the advanced countries, which would avoid the bureaucratic distortions and open up a democratic development of society.
The first duty of the labour movement of the metropolitan countries is to demand the immediate withdrawal of all imperialist forces from Zaire, and from Africa generally. But we also have a duty to advance an internationalist programme and perspective for socialism which takes account of the toiling masses of Africa
Box: Africa’s El Dorado
French intervention in Zaire was justified on “humanitarian” grounds. But the capitalist press soon revealed that what was at stake was more than the lives of the two or three thousand whites whose fate occupied the front pages.
Shaba [formerly Katanga] is about the nearest nature has ever come to producing a real El Dorado.
Zaire is one of the world’s main copper producers, accounting for 6% to 8% of world output. About three-quarters of Zaire’s export earnings are from copper, and about half of the copper comes from the mines around Kolwezi.
Shaba is also rich in diamonds, zinc, silver and platinum.
Even more vital than these minerals to western capitalism, however, is Shaba’s cobalt [a by-product of copper mining]. Shaba’s copper could fairly easily be replaced from other sources. But Shaba accounts for 50% to 60% of the west’s supply of cobalt [yielding the very highest quality mineral], vital for the manufacture of magnets, industrial catalysts, and above all heat-resistant metals for the military aero-space industry. The growing de- (end of sentence missing – ID)
Shaba also has rich uranium deposits, of unknown [or undisclosed?] extent, and the presence of this nuclear fuel is an additional reason for the intervention of French capitalism committed as it is to one of the biggest nuclear programmes in the west.
Clearly, this vast material wealth, which makes Zaire potentially one of the richest countries in Africa, is the loot that western imperialism is determined to keep its hands on.
Mining, however, was brought to a sudden halt by the fighting. Experts who have examined the damage at Kolwezi’s vast open-cast copper mines claim they could be fully operational within six months and work at 30% capacity within days once the water has been pumped out.
“But the betting here,” reports the ‘Sunday Times’ correspondent from Kolwezi, “is that they will remain idle… or work well below capacity because Zaire cannot find white experts brave enough to run them” [28 May].
Whether or not western forces manage to prop up Mobutu for the time being, imperialism has suffered another serious blow, with the interruption of mineral production and the inevitable price rises that shortages, panic and profiteering will bring on the international metal markets.
Box: Mobutu: the West’s barbaric Frontman
Throughout the west, the capitalist press is hysterically denouncing ‘foreign’, ‘communist’ influence in Zaire. But from the time he came to power thirteen years ago, Mobutu has been nothing if not a stooge of foreign capitalist interests.
Mobutu Sese Soko seized power in 1965 with CIA help, and it has cost the US about $17,000 a year since then to keep him in power. In the years when his regime seemed one of the most stable in Africa, and provided a sound basis for the exploitation of Zaire’s mineral and agriculture resources by the multinational corporations, the west had nothing but praise for Mobutu, one of the most vicious dictators in Africa.
More recently, however, his western paymasters began to fear that he was getting too big for his boots – and becoming a serious economic liability into the bargain.
In 1973, when Zaire’s economy seemed to be buoyed up by the rapid rise of copper prices, and high prices of other raw materials, Mobutu embarked on a programme of “Zaireanisation”. Foreign interests were taken over and put under state control, under the direction of the great “Guide of the Nation”, General Mobutu.
Since then, Mobutu has been obliged to hand most of the expropriated interests back on very favourable terms to the foreign corporations. But not before running up staggering debts, and reducing the economy to a shambles.
Multi-millionaire
More Mobutu, “Zaireanisation” meant primarily the concentration of the country’s wealth into the hands of his family, tribal associates from his home region of Equateur, and selected army commanders. “While Zaireremains one of the poorest countries in the world, and is getting poorer, its president – with his industrial and property shareholdings all over Europe, his villas in Brussels, his apartment blocks in Paris, and his engaging habit of filling an attaché case with foreign currency from the national bank whenever he goes abroad – must now count among the richest individuals anywhere.” (‘Sunday Times’ 28 May)
A former governor of the Bank of Zaire, who recently fled Europe, told the ‘Sunday Times’ “that the entire funds allocated to the president at the end of the 1960s had been expended not for state purposes but for purely personal ends. These included $6 million to buy a small Mercedes assembly line for the president’s wife, Antoinette … and another large amount intended to purchase for Mobutu himself a minor Swiss bank.”
Under his management, Zaire ran up incredible foreign debts of about $3,000 million. Any other country that so offended the IMF’s book-keeping principles would have been mercilessly pilloried in world headlines. But Mobutu, for all his faults, was still the west’s bastion in central Africa.
In fact, the IMF, together with other international and private creditors, were due to meet to discuss the re-scheduling of Zaire’s debt just as the new crisis broke out. Mobutu may survive for the time being, but the economic crisis will remain. Apart from the debts, foreign investment has dried up and the national income is thought to be declining at about 5% to 6% a year.
Inflation is about 80% a year, and there is an extensive black market, especially in imported goods. Although Zaire is rich in agricultural raw materials, as well as minerals, food now has to be imported to sustain the population.
Savage rule
Such is the extent of graft, corruption, and large-scale smuggling, that in the last recorded year state customs receipts from exported goods fell by a staggering 43%.
The complete rottenness of Mobutu’s colonial regime was reflected at the beginning of this year in purges directed against the army leadership itself. Mobutu’s fellow conspirators of 1965 were long ago bumped off, imprisoned or forced into exile. But following last year’s Shaba invasion, when he was saved by Moroccan troops, Mobutu has again turned on the commanders of his brutal and ill-disciplined army, jailing 250 officers and executing 13 after a show trial.
Throughout his rule, Mobutu has facilitated the ruthless international capitalist exploitation of Zaire by the most brutal dictatorial methods. Little, if anything, however, was said previously about this repression in the world capitalist press.
“An example of how the government keeps its power can be gleamed from the massacre of between 700 and 1,000 villagers carried out by a national guard battalion in the Idolfa district 300 miles south-east of the capital [in Bandundu province, which has long been a stronghold of anti-Mobutu feeling] in January this year.” (‘The Guardian’, 2 June)
According to reports, village headmen and their relative were hunted down by Mobutu’s troops, and then publicly hanged, burned or buried alive.
“Similar pacification tactics were employed in the Shaba province last year after the Katangese revolt fizzled out at the end of 80 days’ sporadic fighting.
“At least one village of several hundred people 30 miles west of the mining town of Kolwezi was reported to have been wiped out by FAZ [Zairean Army] troops during their less than victorious advance against the rebels. Even hardened Moroccan soldiers who had been flown in to lead the counter offensive were said to have been sickened by such tactics.
“It does not take much speculation to envisage what FAZ forces now reoccupying Kolwezi are doing to the local population after the second Shaba invasion.”
This is how Mobutu rules Zaire!
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