(Here are two articles that deal with the role of foreign investment in rebel held territory in Zaire. The first is from an ultraleft sect called Workers World that has a record of working with former Attorney General Ramsey Clark on various anti-imperialist projects that they run from behind the scenes. They conclude that Kabila is a tool of imperialism because of foreign investment. The second article is from the NY Times. It worries that foreign investment gives Kabila the power to resist "democratic" pressure.) A STRANGE "LIBERATION": FOREIGN INVESTORS WELCOME ZAIRE REBELS By Deirdre Griswold There is joy in much of Zaire that the rule of Mobutu Sese Seko is coming to an end. During Mobutu's long rule, this puppet of imperialist interests became very wealthy while the people suffered enormously. Mobutu came to power in 1965 with the help of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency after a cabal of foreign imperialists engineered the assassination of President Patrice Lumumba and the crushing of the national liberation struggle in what was then called the Congo. In what may appear perplexing at first, there is also joy at Mobutu's imminent downfall in the boardrooms of some of the very corporations that have been exploiting Zaire. Take an article in the April 9 Journal of Commerce, a New York business newspaper. The two-step headline reads: "Western investors anxiously wait for the dust to settle on war-torn Zaire so they can reap... A MINING BOOM." "Western mining interests are keenly awaiting the outcome of the latest rebel movement that this time threatens to bring down the 31-year reign of President Mobutu Sese Seko," wrote the Journal. It explained that Zaire is "rich in minerals coveted by industries in the West: cobalt, copper, cadmium, gold, silver, zinc, manganese, tin, germanium, uranium, radium, bauxite, iron ore and coal, as well as 90 percent of the world's small industrial diamonds." The article quoted Bruce Brady, a Zaire expert and mining consultant from Toronto. "Those deposits are fantastic, but the country didn't work," he said. "When are they going to get their act together?" U.S. EXPLOITERS NOT SATISFIED It seems that Zaire's mining policies haven't been to the liking of some foreign investors, especially in the U.S., for many years. It's a classic case of how the interests of the comprador bourgeoisie can grow more and more in conflict with those of the rapacious imperialists, who are never content with less than the whole loaf. "Last year," says the Journal, "Zaire revised its mining policies to attract capital, going so far as to allow foreign equity stakes in production, which brought several foreign investors back to Zaire after years of absence. ... "`The state-owned mining concern, Gecamines, went belly-up three or four years ago,' said Philip Michelini, the U.S. Commerce Department's desk officer for Zaire. `They're still there but they can't function.' U.S. and other foreign investment has also declined over the last decade, to the point where it has become difficult to measure, he said." Much of this decline of U.S. investment in Zaire seems to reflect a deliberate policy of putting the squeeze on the Mobutu regime in order to force a "liberalization" of its investment policies. This is part of the strategy of "privatizing": forcing all developing countries to sell off any state-owned industries to private--usually imperialist--buyers. Since 1990, there have been U.S. economic sanctions on Zaire that have helped lead to the paralysis of the economy. LIBERATION FOR WHOM? The rebel forces that have swept across Zaire from the eastern border are presenting themselves as a liberation army. They call themselves the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire and they have chosen as their most visible spokesperson Laurent Kabila, who in the 1960s was involved in the liberation struggle and even called himself a Marxist. However, the real power in this movement appears to reside elsewhere. "After three decades in power," says the Journal of Commerce article, "Mr. Mobutu has made many enemies, while Mr. Kabila seems to have gained the active or tacit support of the governments of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia and Angola." Kabila, says Kitenge Ngambwa, a Zairian who is a professor of African Studies at York College in New York, "seems to have the backing of the mining interests. He's already promised some mine concessions to some foreign groups." This was confirmed in several Reuters and Associated Press news reports from Lubumbashi as the rebel army approached the center of the mining region. A spokesperson for the Alliance recently attended a high-profile mining conference in Toronto, and Kabila himself met with representatives of South Africa's De Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd., which controls the world trade in diamonds. "We have been told that they [the rebels] are free enterprise-oriented and they respect foreign investment," a satisfied Adolf Lundin, chair of Canada's Tenke Mining Corp., told Reuters. There is a great deal at stake for Tenke, which now has rights to the largest undeveloped copper and cobalt deposit in the world. It has "proven reserves of 222 million tons of ore that is 4 percent or 5 percent copper, compared to 0.6 percent for the copper mined in the United States," says the Journal article. In December, Tenke became owner of 55 percent of these deposits; the other 45 percent belongs to Zaire's Gecamines. This is the kind of wealth the imperialists will gladly kill for. MINING COMPANIES `WELCOMED' REBELS After the fall of Lubumbashi to the rebels, President Ted Webb of Tenke told the London-based Association of Mining Analysts on April 10: "We have lost just three hours of work in total, and that was welcoming the Alliance soldiers. ... We don't see any delays or interruptions happening there." Webb also said that the Alliance "seems to be a body of people who want Zaire's economy to go forward, and privatization is on its agenda." Payments to Gecamines from its foreign investors are now being made directly to Lubumbashi, bypassing Zaire's capital of Kinshasa. This is the surest sign that the imperialist investors are finished with Mobutu, even though they still technically recognize him as head of state. The U.S. government couldn't have made this any clearer. White House spokesperson Michael McCurry, right while Lubumbashi was falling, told reporters that "we have to move beyond President Mobutu." That's an invitation to overthrow him--coming from the biggest power in the world. Is there no other prospect on the horizon than a transfer of power from one group of imperialist agents to another? To think so would be to leave out of consideration the class interests of the majority of the Congolese people. They are workers and peasants whose labor provides the super profits grabbed by both foreign and home-grown exploiters. One group that has been fighting in their interests for many years is the Workers and Peasants Movement of the Congo--MOP. STATEMENT OF WORKERS AND PEASANTS MOVEMENT In a statement released on March 31, they said: "In the Congo things are getting to the point where the working class of the Congo, in particular, and the people in general are asking themselves the question: Is it worth getting rid of one puppet and replacing him by another one controlled by the same sources or should we take a radical departure from this state of affairs and assert our right to national and social liberation? "... Anything short of total emancipation of our people will prolong the war regardless of negotiations. Any negotiations between remote-controlled puppets will lead nowhere. "The rivalry between the U.S. and France through their proxies is the other reason why the working class of the Congo has to fight under its own banner for its own sake. The wedge that is being drawn by the U.S. between the MOP and the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Zaire is the other convincing proof of how the working class is still a threat to the imperialists' interests in the Congo. "The U.S. is using the ADF in an effort to crush working class forces led by the MOP. It has led to many military clashes between us and them that has forced the ADF to withdraw from many areas we controlled jointly.... "... The West put Mobutu in power. They financed him, armed him, intervened militarily in his behalf, in league with some African countries when Mobutu was threatened by the people. The consequence of this intervention on the socio-economic conditions of the people is devastating: people eating once every 48 hours, wages at $3 per month, no jobs for most, no schools, no hospitals, women delivering babies on concrete floors, etc. "Today, again it is the U.S. with some African states that have hand-picked another `Desire.' They support Kabila, finance him, arm him so he can continue the work that the useless and hated Mobutu started. We can also predict the same consequences on the lives of our people if they succeed in imposing this `Desire' Kabila on us. "This is something we will fight tooth and nail." (Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprintgranted if source is cited. For more information contactWorkers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://workers.org) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Analysis: Mining Concerns Court Zaire Rebels Even Before Mobutu's Ouster By HOWARD W. FRENCH, April 18, 1997 KINSHASA, Zaire -- Even before the leader of Zaire's rebellion can finish off the dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko and seize this country's capital, a series of major business deals may enable him to resist Western pressures for economic change and democracy. The most spectacular of these deals, an $885-million contract between the rebellion and an American mining company, American Mineral Fields, announced on Wednesday in the rebel-held city of Lubumbashi, would rehabilitate zinc, copper, and cobalt mines in the country's southern Shaba Province. Zairian economic experts, former government officials and diplomats here now say that business like this has dramatically increased the leeway for the leader of the rebellion, Laurent Kabila, to decide whose aid and advice to accept, even when he has not won power outright. In recent weeks, as Kabila has drawn closer to his goal of unseating Mobutu, many Western governments have taken the view that the impending change here is bound to bring improvement to Africa's worst-governed country. Far from a statement of faith in Kabila, a lifelong revolutionary with a checkered past, this optimism is based in large part on the notion of leverage. Although Zaire is richly endowed with natural resources, its economy is near collapse, and many assume that rebuilding the country will require huge amounts of foreign assistance. Mobutu has been cut off from foreign aid and lending during this decade, and there has been an assumption throughout this war that Kabila, or whoever succeeds the longtime president, would be eager to ingratiate himself with Western governments in order to have access to development loans and other assistance. "You are not going to see any kind of American aid program here before we have elections," said a senior Western diplomat. "We will not support dictator Kabila." But starting late last year, almost imperceptibly at first, and quickly gathering steam, there has been a rush of mining companies and other economic operators out of Kinshasa, where corruption has always made business difficult, into rebel-held areas rich in minerals, where Kabila's associates have been quick to offer advantageous terms to adventurous investors. The first of Kabila's major deals involved the huge Kilo-Moto gold field in northeastern Zaire, which is commonly referred to here as Mobutu's personal gold mine. At Kilo-Moto, a senior Zairian mining official here said, a Belgian-South African company that was turned down last year for a $162 million in World Bank financing to rehabilitate the mine is now raising money for the project by buying gold from free-lance miners, which is exported at a handsome profit. Officials here said that another company, the Canadian-controlled firm Sominki, which formerly mined tin in Zaire, is now investing in gold production in the region of the rebel-held east-central city of Kindu. Where Zaire's official gold mining registry used to show receipts for several major foreign mining firms, today, in a reflection of the loss of most of the country's mineral rich zones to the rebellion, there is only one Western company that still declares its gold production -- about 200 pounds each month -- to Mobutu's government. Most of the other operators are believed to be already active in rebel-held zones. Mining experts say that in recent years Zaire has had fraudulent exports of about 900 pounds of gold each month, and by sanctioning the official corruption that has been a way of life here, the rebels stand to gain an even bigger windfall from this. "The east of our country is so rich that is does not need to have huge investments to restart the economy," said Willy Katupa, editor of the Zairian economic review Perspectives. "Just by controlling the borders and diminishing fraud, the rebellion can expect to start receiving large sums of money. The foreign investment will certainly follow." The story here is much the same for diamonds. Until recently, Kinshasa was averaging about $20 million a month in revenues from small-scale diamond producers, and an additional $8 million a month from the state-owned industrial mining company, Miba. But with the fall of East Kasai Province two weeks ago, all of that wealth, and the cash flow it generates, is controlled by the rebels. Many here fear that Kabila's treatment of Miba's wealth may be indicative of his broader approach to power. Although the charges are unproved, it is widely believed in diplomatic and business circles that when Kabila swept triumphantly into the diamond-mining capital of Mbuji-Mayi recently, he forced Miba's managers to hand over all the production on hand. The director of the company, Jonas Mukamba, a longtime partner of Mobutu, was reportedly flown off to Goma where he is said to be under house arrest. "The March diamond production was already packed up and awaiting transport to Kinshasa," said one senior mining official here, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "Kabila just carted it off." In the 1970s, long after Zaire's other early insurrections had collapsed, Kabila reportedly thrived with a small band of rebels in the Fizi-Baraka mountains of eastern Zaire by mining gold and paying off soldiers sent to wipe them out. "This is a guy who knows a little bit about gold and corruption," said one regional military analyst. Little, meanwhile, is known about Kabila's philosophy of government. Based on his movement's statements so far, it can be said that there is no inclination toward Western-style elections presided over by international observers. In fact, the strongest outside influences on Kabila now come from Uganda's president, Yoweri Museveni, whom he calls a "good friend," and the Rwandan vice president and strongman, Paul Kagame. Both leaders took power by force. Neither Uganda nor Rwanda bear much resemblance to Western democracies, and Kabila seems to have followed Museveni's early political blueprint by saying that he will not tolerate opposition political parties during a transitional phase in power. During Kabila's early years in revolt against Mobutu, he was known as a committed Marxist. The beliefs that he seems to have carried through the years come from Patrice Lumumba, a hero of African nationalism who was Zaire's first prime minister. Lumumba, who was assassinated in 1961 with the direct encouragement, if not participation, of the Central Intelligence Agency, strongly believed that African countries had to find their own paths and could not have their futures dictated by outside powers. Many of those who watch Kabila expect that he will bear this same trait, making him highly resistant to demands to implement Western-prescribed economic liberalization programs or install a political system with generous guarantees of political freedoms and effective checks and balances of state institutions. More importantly, with vast mineral wealth that is relatively easy to pluck, and foreign investors already beating at his door, he may feel no compulsion to do so. "We are standing here watching Kabila sweep up our country, promising changes that he hasn't bothered even to describe to us," said a Zairian banker who has opposed Mobutu in the past and now fears the unknown under Kabila. "The international community has just stood by watching this, and by the time we figure out where this man is taking us, it may be too late to change the course of history." Copyright 1997 The New York Times Company ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Louis Proyect
