Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa

by Jason K. Stearns

Within days, the tide had turned. With no escape route, the rebels made a desperate run for Kinshasa, hoping they would be able to fulfill their mission with the ammunition and food they had left. At night, rebel troops in civilian dress began infiltrating the densely populated Masina and Njili neighborhoods on the northwestern outskirts of town, close to the airport. Bolstered by Zimbabwean and Angolan troops, Laurent Kabila returned to Kinshasa and announced that victory was theirs. Exhorting people to take up sticks and spears to defend the city, he declared that, “The people must be completely mobilized and armed to crush the aggressors.”28 His cigar-smoking chief of staff was less subtle. “The rebels are vermin, microbes which must be methodically eradicated,” he said on state radio.29

precocious

As with many Africans in the diaspora, distance from his homeland catalyzed his interest in its politics. “I was not radicalized about Africa until I came to the United States,” he later reflected. “It is strange, but I became much more aware of what was going on in Congo in the United States than I had ever been in Congo.”

There his men told him that the new recruits increasingly only came from Kabila’s own Lubakat tribe. In a private meeting, he warned Kabila, “Our support was not for you; it was for the Congolese people. If you don’t watch out, the same thing will happen to you as happened to Mobutu.”4 Before he left, Nyerere gave a press conference at his hotel, where he told journalists: “I came to the Congo and saw its leaders. But I didn’t see a single new road, hospital or school.”5

centrifuge;

The revolution devoured many of its children, spitting them out when it had sucked what it needed out of them. Wamba was one of these pieces of flotsam:

avuncular,

disparate

propitious

indignation

cacophony

innocuous

In early 1999, Wamba was toppled as the president of the RCD.

Politically and socially, however, the RCD was a disaster.

According to many of his former rebel colleagues, Wamba was never in it for personal gain. Even when I visited him, the collar of his shirt was threadbare; he complained that he had been threatened with eviction on several occasions after he was unable to pay the rent. When I asked him about a friend of his, he tried calling him, but realized sheepishly that he had run out of phone credits.

A Congolese friend once described the curse of Congolese politics as “the reverse Midas effect.”“Anything touched by politics in the Congo turns to shit,” he told me. “It doesn’t matter if the Holy Father himself decides to run for president, he will inevitably come out corrupt, power-hungry, and guilty of breaking all ten of the holy commandments.”

Expatriate workers in the Congo are often heard to say, “You know how it is—they don’t have any ideology. The Congolese like fun and dancing. They can never stand up for themselves.”“They would sell their sister for a Gucci suit and sunglasses; you can buy anybody here.”“They are like children; you need to teach them, kindly but firmly.”

Some Congolese leaders have courageously stood up in protest: Lumumba before independence, Tshisekedi during Mobutu’s reign, and the countless journalists, priests, doctors, and human rights defenders who opposed oppression and injustice. Once these individuals become members of government, they are confronted with two problems: the lack of a popular base and the abject weakness of the state. Unable to implement policy and attacked on all sides by rivals, they have been either co-opted, killed, or forced to quit.

If the fiercest ideology or ethics that can be found in the country is ethnic, that is because no other institution has been strong enough for the people to rally around. Unfortunately, ethnic mobilization is usually exclusive in nature and does not form an equitable or truly democratic basis for the distribution of state resources; also, given the manipulation of customary chiefs, even this vessel has been corrupted. It will take generations to rebuild institutions or social organizations that can challenge the current predatory state without resorting to ethnicity.

He became a victim of his own idealism, reduced to irrelevance.

As always in the Congo, the myth reveals a bit of the man, but not much. Bemba is certainly endowed with a bloated ego and an overly keen business acumen. But he also managed to do something that no other rebel leader in the Congo had done: He built a rebel movement that was able to control a large part of the country while maintaining popular support, all without excessive outside interference.

ingratiate

As opposed to most other rebel movements in the Congo, which spent much of their life spans embroiled in internecine squabbles, Bemba was the unquestioned leader of the MLC, politically as well as militarily. From command central on his couch, he micromanaged the organization, one hand on the remote control of his television, another on his satellite phone or ham radio.

In October 2002, following a coup attempt, the president of the Central African Republic, Ange Felix Patassé, asked Bemba to come to his aid. Bangui, the capital of the strife-torn country, was just across the river from one of Bemba’s bases. It was a purely mercenary affair, with Patassé paying Bemba cash in return for sending 1,000 troops to help ward off the attack. Once again, Bemba’s troops committed atrocities, pillaging villages and raping dozens of women. Bemba, who himself visited his troops deployed there and followed the operations closely, suffered another dent to his reputation. This time, the consequences would be more serious. Five years later, he would be arrested and forced to stand trial for his soldiers’ abuses in front of the International Criminal Court.

Jean-Pierre Bemba was no Che Guevara.”19

As Che Guevara himself had concluded at the end of his sojourn in the country in 1965, the rebels were “devoid of coherent political education . . . revolutionary awareness or any forward-looking perspective beyond the traditional horizon of their tribal territory.”20

Kisangani became the graveyard of Rwandan and Ugandan reputations, where the two countries’ lofty rhetoric gave way to another, more tawdry reality.

Then, in 1999 and 2000, the alliance between Rwanda and Uganda fell apart, as the two countries fought three battles in the streets of Kisangani. Thousands of Congolese died as the two countries sought to settle their differences on foreign soil. With this internecine violence, their pretext of self-defense crumbled. But what was their real motive in fighting over the City on the River? To many, the battle in one of the region’s main hubs of the diamond trade was the final proof that the two countries were really just seeking self-enrichment. The reality was, as always, more complex. Yes, access to resources was increasingly supplanting ideology and self-defense as a motive in the conflict, but the root of the fighting was just as tightly linked to personality and regional politics.

The Rwandans were disappointed but were focused on other matters. Helping Museveni take power in Uganda had only been a stepping stone to overthrowing the government in Rwanda. Just one year after their victory in Kampala, the Rwandan Patriotic Front was formed. Museveni provided them with weapons, medicine, and a rear base from which to operate. For many Ugandans, their debt to their Rwandan allies had been repaid.

The Congo wars saw the Rwandans usurp the role of regional power from Uganda. From the beginning, they seemed eager to show their former mentors that they could do better.

Nonetheless, the wars were led and executed mostly by Rwanda, which gave them a much stronger influence with the Congolese and gave Rwandan entrepreneurs preferential access to business deals.

For the Rwandans, Museveni’s attitude smacked of hypocrisy. After all, they had helped him come to power and as recompense were told to leave the country. They liked to invoke a Swahili saying: Shukrani ya punda ni teke (The gratitude of a donkey is a kick). Even in the Congo, the Rwandans felt like the Ugandans were overbearing and constantly trying to teach them how to go about their business. “It was jealousy,” one of Kagame’s advisors told me. “Museveni couldn’t deal with the fact that we were now stronger and more successful than him. He forgot that we were no longer refugees in his country. He couldn’t order us around!”9

Then there were the diamonds.

The trade proved to be divisive, as each side brought in their own traders, lugging suitcases full of money counters, microscopes, satellite phones, and precision scales. For the Ugandans, it was the experienced Belgian trader Philippe Surowicke, who had spent years dealing diamonds with rebels in Angola.17 The Rwandans flew in a bevy of Lebanese traders. Each were protected by a phalanx of Ugandan or Rwandan soldiers, respectively. Not surprisingly, a standoff developed.

Wamba’s arrival put a match to this powder keg. Much to the chagrin of the Rwandans, who had just ousted him from the RCD leadership, he began holding rallies in downtown Kisangani to large crowds riveted by his demand for an immediate end to hostilities and talks with Kinshasa. He created a rebellion, dubbed RCD–Movement of Liberation, which would be free of Rwanda’s meddlesome interference. He was ferried around town in a Toyota 4x4 with tinted windows, followed by a pickup bristling with Ugandan soldiers. Thousands of people flocked to his rallies, and the toleka bicycle taxis accompanied him, ringing their bells, as he paraded through town. “He was a poor speaker,” one Kisangani resident told me of Wamba. “He sounded like a university lecturer. But he had denounced the Rwandans! For us, that was very brave.”18

Both the original RCD and Wamba’s new dissidents had set up radio stations that they used for trading insults and threatening each other. “Why do the Rwandans want to colonize the Congo? The population doesn’t want you—recognize it!”19 taunted Radio Liberté, Wamba’s station. Its rival station responded by accusing the professor of recruiting ex-FAR génocidaires into his army, the ultimate insult for the Rwandans. “The Ugandans can’t even deal with a bunch of rebels in Uganda. How are you going to deal with the Rwandan army?”20 Day and night the population of Kisangani had to endure these insults being flung back and forth over the airwaves, raising tensions to a fever pitch.21

The two sides traded insults over a shared walkie-talkie frequency. General Kazini taunted his Rwandan counterpart: “Just wait. I’ ll send just one company of men for you—they will bring me back your balls on a plate.”

“You have to understand, the Tutsi are like a wounded leopard; it’s like they’re brain-damaged after what happened to them,” he said. “They lash out at anything.”

The minister unclasped his hands and looked at me. “I saw him bleed to death in front of me. I buried him in my compound, right next to Sophie.” He paused for a long time, but his voice was steady. “There was no time for a proper funeral. Actually, you can find hundreds of bodies buried in people’s gardens around the city for the same reason. We are living on top of our dead.”

It was clear to Hrvoje that the Rwandans were better organized than their enemies. “They were motivated and followed orders. The Ugandans didn’t seem to know why they were fighting.” The Rwandans were cut off from their base at the airport but quickly organized an air bridge with helicopters and infiltrated their soldiers through the jungle. The Rwandans, used to years of guerrilla warfare, fought their way from house to house with their AK-47s, dodging bullets. After battles, the Rwandans would always make sure to gather their dead and bury them, whereas the Ugandans often left their soldiers on the streets, leaving the impression that hundreds of Ugandans had died and almost no Rwandans. The Ugandans, for the most part, stayed in their trenches and in their armored personnel carriers. “The Rwandans won the battle with guts,” Hrvoje said.

The Rwandans certainly did not know how to make themselves loved.

The feuding had all the characteristics of typical sibling rivalry; camaraderie was never far from one-upmanship.

At night, in th...

Dancing Club—a dingy, dark bar decorated with Christmas lights and cigarette advertisements—Ugandans and Rwandans mingled, sometimes even dancing together and paying for each others’ drinks. The bar was a study in stereotypes: the Rwandans were dressed in spotless camouflage fatigues and were reserved, clustering in small groups. The Ugandans were boisterous in their plain green uniforms and Wellington boots, mingling with the sex workers and singing along with the music. Their ...

The festivities could quickly turn sour, however. An altercation over a woman led to recriminations over who had won the last round of fighting. “We can’t figure whether you Ugandans are real soldiers or just Boy Scouts,” one Rwandan teased. “Have you seen our T-55s?” the Ugandans retorted, referring to their Soviet tanks. “Maybe we should show you.” To make matters worse, the Rwandans sometimes paraded a...

vitriol

The strong friendship between Rwanda and Uganda had soured into a toxic brew. Museveni belittled his former allies as “those boys,” while Rwanda’s government spokesman fired back: “For a man surrounded by marijuana addicts and drunkards, Museveni has chosen the wrong analogy.”

He paused again for a long time. “I was also angered by the arrogance of these two countries. Coming to settle their differences 300 miles from home, killing innocent civilians. What did we ever do to them?”

I asked him whom he blamed for their deaths. He shrugged. “There are too many people to blame. Mobutu for ruining our country. Rwanda and Uganda for invading it. Ourselves for letting them do so. None of that will help bring my children back.”

The number of deaths is so immense that it becomes incomprehensible and anonymous, and yet the dying was not spectacular.