Mark says:
> > >Most surreal...Richard
>> >Gott, who republished Guevara's Congo diaries as a blast against Kabila
>> >at the same time charges him with having 'alienated foreign investors by
>> >refusing to make payments on the gigantic foreign debt of $14bn incurred
>> >by his profligate predecessor' (Guardian January 19, 2001).
>
>More surreal still is Hreatfeild pretending to be pro-black Africa.
>This is the man
>who vocally supported Larry Summers' desire to dump shit there.
>Richard Gott, per
>contra, is not only a real marxist and revolutionary, and a man who worked
>successfully for the KGB while employed as a journo at the Grauniad,
>he is also a
>man who put his life where his money is not once but at least twice.
>Of course, this
>validates nothing in his views about the Congo.
Right. Stellar revolutionary credentials in the past do not validate
Gott's opinion in the present that implies the need to pay the
foreign debt & heed "UN demands" below:
***** The Guardian (London)
January 19, 2001
SECTION: Guardian Leader Pages, Pg. 27
HEADLINE: Obituary: Laurent Kabila: His lifelong quest for power in
Congo was destroyed by ineptitude at home and abroad
BYLINE: Richard Gott
Laurent-Desire Kabila, president of the Democratic Republic of Congo,
who has been assassinated aged 61, was a cheerful, rubicund rogue,
portly in middle age, who spent most of his life in exile, engaged in
the illegal diamond trade and wild schemes to overthrow the
dictatorship of Joseph-Desire Mobutu, his immediate predecessor.
Along the way, he briefly recruited Che Guevara in 1965, and the
armies of Uganda and Rwanda, which helped bring him to power in 1997.
Kabila's survival skills served him well in exile, but deserted him
once he had moved into the presidential palace. He had hoped that
his wide international contacts would enable him to play the role on
the wider African stage that the intrinsic size and importance of
Congo would seem to indicate. But political errors on the home front
soon brought internal dissension, arguments with his foreign backers,
and a return to Congo's endemic civil war. Soon, he was turning to
other foreign friends with desperate appeals for military assistance.
At his death, wide areas of the country were outside his government's
control.
At the dawn of Congo's independence from Belgium in 1960, Kabila was
one of the bright young men who might have become a star in his
country's politics. Yet after the United Nations intervention and
the 1961 assassination of the independence leader Patrice Lumumba,
the cream of the radical Congolese were exiled. Kabila, who came
from the secessionist southern province of Katanga, studied briefly
in Paris and Belgrade, before returning home in 1963.
Briefly an elected assemblyman for North Katanga, when parliament was
closed down later in the year, he joined with other Lumumbists in
staging a widely-supported rebellion, backed by both the Chinese and
the Russians, and half a dozen radical African states.
The rebellion attracted the attention of the United States, then
panicking about possible Soviet gains in newly-independent Africa.
Averell Harriman and Cyrus Vance masterminded a plan that involved a
coup to install a reliable western ally, Moise Tshombe. As well as
weapons, the Americans recruited Belgian officers, exiled Cuban
pilots, and white southern African mercenaries.
Kabila, who had established himself at Albertville (Kalemie), on the
western shores of Lake Tanganyika, was soon forced by the mercenaries
to retreat to the borders of Rwanda and Burundi. In Stanleyville
(Kisangani), resistance was destroyed by Belgian paratroopers,
airlifted in by a joint US-European operation in November 1964.
Forced to retreat, Kabila and his friends turned to the Cubans, and
Che Guevara arrived on the Tanzanian-Congo border with a small
contingent of guerrilla fighters in April 1965; Guevara recorded that
Kabila "made an excellent impression", though he subsequently
reconsidered this view.
Although Kabila appeared "quick and charming" - when he deigned to
turn up - he was usually engaging in conspiratorial politics in Dar
es Salaam, or negotiating with China's Chou En-lai or North Korea's
Kim il-Sung. When he did meet Guevara, holed up on a bleak
mountain-top, he came with ample supplies of whisky and bevies of
attractive women. After six months, the rebellion petered out, the
Cubans went home, Mobutu overthrew Tshombe, and Kabila began 30 years
in the political wilderness.
He moved between Dar and Kampala, and made occasional forays into the
Kivu region of Congo, re-establishing the "liberated zone" of which
Guevara had dreamed, and funding his political activities by gold and
ivory trading. Later, when finally driven from Congo, he made
friends with Yoweri Museveni, then preparing to lead a rebel movement
in Uganda.
Kabila did not reappear on the international stage until May 1997,
when his forces captured Kinshasa after a 10-day campaign. He was
greeted as a liberator as his rebels moved south, supported by the
eastern Congo's Tutsis and Rwandan and Ugandan army units.
Mobutu fled before the fall of Kinshasa, and the new President Kabila
renamed the country - Mobutu's Zaire - as the Democratic Republic of
Congo, and indicated that he would follow in the footsteps of
Museveni, who had created a liberal and competent Ugandan government.
He then promptly fell out with his Uganda and Rwandan backers, who
assisted a new Congolese rebellion in August 1998.
Ugandan-backed rebels again advanced from the north-eastern borders
and threatened Kinshasa. Kabila invoked his friendship with Angola,
Zimbabwe and Namibia's erstwhile leftist governments, and their
troops fought off the rebellion.
But the war continued and had an inevitable impact on his style of
government. Deeply influenced by Congo's tragic history of foreign
intervention, Kabila resurrected nostrums from his 1960s leftist
past. He established a one-party state, promised - but never
delivered - elections, and alienated foreign investors by refusing to
make payments on the gigantic foreign debt of Dollars 14bn incurred
by his profligate predecessor. He also ignored UN demands for an
inquiry into the massacre of Rwandan refugees in eastern Congo in
1997.
Well-meaning brokers like Nelson Mandela sought to mediate an end to
the war, but Kabila refused to take any notice. His mercurial
temperament, and his ability to change sides, left him with few
friends either at home or abroad. In the end, his early promise was
dissipated in his futile attempt to retain Congo as his personal
fiefdom, much as Mobutu had done before him.
He is survived by his wife, and his son Joseph.
Laurent-Desire Kabila, politician, born November 27 1939; died
January 17 2001 *****
>As for Kabila, he was just another slave-selling SOB and we should
>not make a martyr
>out of his fat carcass. IMHO.
Kabila was, in my opinion, an opportunist. It was Congo's tragedy
that it only had Kabila to defend it from the U.S.-backed Kagame &
Museveni: a common tragedy on the periphery.
In the following article, the New York Times accuses Zimbabwe of
meddling in the Congolese affairs, while remaining silent over
Washington's role as the backer of Kagame & Museveni & their
invasions of Congo:
***** The New York Times
January 20, 2001, Saturday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section A; Page 6; Column 4; Foreign Desk
HEADLINE: Zimbabwe Says It Stands By Congo in Conflict
BYLINE: By RACHEL L. SWARNS
DATELINE: HARARE, Zimbabwe, Jan. 19
Behind the red-brick walls of the military barracks, Zimbabwe's
presidential guard marched the gleaming white coffin of President
Laurent Kabila of Congo into a tiny chapel crowded with Congolese
dignitaries and cabinet ministers today.
But when the coffin was opened, the first man to view the body of the
assassinated leader was President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.
Mr. Mugabe bowed solemnly over the body and assailed this week's
killing of Mr. Kabila, a man he described as "a comrade in arms, a
friend, a brother, a revolutionary colleague."
As hundreds of mourners wept at their first glimpse of the fallen
president, Mr. Mugabe pledged his country's continued military
support for the shaken Congolese government, which has been
devastated by two and a half years of war.
It was a gesture of respect and remorse, but it was also a striking
indication of the powerful role that Mr. Mugabe is playing in Congo
and will continue to play even as the country shifts to a new
government.
Mr. Kabila's son, Joseph, is officially in charge now. But
government officials and Western diplomats say Zimbabwe is quietly
keeping a close hold on the levers of power and will remain a crucial
force in determining the course of the transition in that vast,
troubled country.
That reality was clear today as Mr. Mugabe met with a delegation of
more than 20 Congolese ministers and senior officials. It is no
secret that Congo's government would have fallen long ago to rebels
and foreign armies who invaded the country were it not for Zimbabwe's
12,000 soldiers fighting along with Mr. Kabila's troops. This week's
crisis has only made Congo's military, economic and political
dependence on Zimbabwe even more evident.
When Mr. Kabila was shot by a bodyguard at the presidential palace in
the capital, Kinshasa, on Tuesday, it was to Zimbabwe that his
officials rushed his body early on Wednesday morning. It is still
unclear whether he died in flight, as some reports have said. When
African leaders attending a conference in Cameroon discussed the
Congo situation, it was Mr. Mugabe who then met with the United
Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, to discuss the attack and the
prospects for peace.
Congo's national airline, which has no operating passenger aircraft,
relies entirely on Air Zimbabwe's Boeing 737 and 767 jets to carry
people between its major cities and to Europe, Air Zimbabwe officials
said today. And the economies of the two countries have become
increasingly intertwined as the Congolese government has given
Zimbabwe's government significant interests in its diamond and copper
mines and timber fields to help cover the costs of the war.
Government officials here take pains to emphasize that they respect
Congo's sovereignty and defer to its leaders' independence. It is
certainly true that Mr. Kabila, who sometimes frustrated even his
allies with his reluctance to accept aspects of the peace
negotiations, did not always agree with Mr. Mugabe. As for the
economic links, Zimbabwean officials insist that their business
ventures in Congo have yet to bear much fruit.
But as the crisis in Congo unfolded this week and it became
increasingly clear that the two countries were coordinating behind
the scenes, some Zimbabwean officials were also startlingly candid
about the enormous power they wield.
"Up to now, they are still asking for our assistance," Defense
Minister Moven Mahachi said of the Congolese authorities in an
interview two days after Mr. Kabila was shot. "If Zimbabwe pulled
out today there would be chaos. Lives would be lost."
George Charamba, a spokesman for Mr. Mugabe, said the president
continued to play a crucial role in coordinating a regional response
to the war, which has drawn in half a dozen African nations and
destabilized all of Central Africa. "Zimbabwe does play some
considerable role in determining the way forward," he said.
Sir Ketumile Masire, the former president of Botswana who is
overseeing the peace talks, was not surprised to learn that Mr.
Kabila's body had ended up in Zimbabwe, given the two leaders' strong
personal ties. "President Mugabe has always supported President
Kabila," Mr. Masire said in an interview. "And in times like this
you run to your friends."
State television here finally broadcast videotape of Mr. Kabila's
body tonight. In the evening news, soldiers saluted the dead leader,
who was dressed in a cream-colored suit, while women curtsied before
his coffin.
Abdoulaye Yerodia Ndombasi, the leader of the Congolese delegation,
said it was fitting that Mr. Kabila was lying in the country that had
supported him in his battle against rebels supported by Rwanda and
Uganda. Angola and Namibia also support Mr. Kabila's government, but
the two countries have only 1,000 to 2,000 soldiers each in Congo.
"The last breath of the president came out here in Harare, showing
the link of brotherhood between President Kabila and his comrade and
brother President Mugabe, and between the Congolese armed forces and
the Zimbabwean armed forces," Mr. Yerodia Ndombasi said, his voice
breaking as he offered the official version of Mr. Kabila's death.
Relatives of Mr. Kabila also wept. Mr. Kabila's son, Joseph, is
believed to have remained in Kinshasa, where his father will be
buried on Tuesday after his body is returned from Zimbabwe on
Saturday. But analysts say there is little doubt that he, too, has
been in touch with Zimbabwean officials.
"They're the most important force, in military and economic terms,"
said Erik Kennes, a researcher at the Africa Institute in Brussels,
who is writing a biography of Mr. Kabila. "The whole survival of the
regime depends on them." *****
Imperialism today presents itself as if it were a neutral &
well-intentioned arbiter of a "local" conflict among "natives."
Silly liberals get suckered into believing this imperial pose of
"being above the fray," hence their calls for "peace-keepers," etc.
Marxists need to present a better analysis that dispels the liberal
view.
Yoshie
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