Since the sixties, Museveni has wanted to overlay the modern map of Africa, which was drawn up in 1885 by European colonial powers in Berlin, with more organic regional common markets and political federations. Of course, Mobutu's Zaire always stood in the way, and behind the obvious concerns about military and political stability the pan-African involvement in the Congolese revolution was spurred largely by economic motives. "America can live without the Congo, Rwanda can not," an adviser to Kagame said to me. "By itself, ours is a nonviable country." Everywhere I went in central Africa, I heard talk of forging a regional political and economic federation, which might include as many as six of today's countries. An Alliance political officer called this dream state the Democratic Republic of Lumumba, and Kabila has spoken enthusiastically of a United States of Africa. Rwanda's Kagame told me he would not stand in the way, and when I asked Museveni what he thought about such a transnational federation he said, "It's not that it could happen. It will happen." Zaire, he said at Kabila's Inauguration, had been "the big hole in the middle of Africa," and now that the hole was filled again, by the Congo, the time had come to construct an African common market, to run open roads through the continent, and to prove the Alliance's victory "has liberated not only the Congo but also all of Africa." [From "Continental Shift" by Philip Gourevitch in the Aug. 4 New Yorker Magazine. Gourevitch not only understands the importance of the victory over Mobutu, he is careful to debunk the US State Department propaganda about the Hutu "refugees" in Zaire, whom he regards as murderers.] Louis P.
