Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No.137, June/July 1997
As the 37-year-old Mobutu regime in Zaire finally comes to an end, EDDIE ABRAHAMS examines a sordid story of greed and thievery on part of the major capitalist powers.
During the eight-month long battle between the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Zaire (ADFL) and the disintegrating Mobutu dictatorship, the capitalist press, with the unashamed confidence and arrogance of the powerful, speaks brazenly of US and European powers battling it out to grab for themselves the largest portion of Zaire’s fabulous wealth. The concerns of the people, their hopes and aspirations, do not figure at all. The British Observer referred to the great power rivalry in Zaire as ‘a latter-day scramble for the mineral wealth of Africa.’ (19 January 1997)
The US Wall Street Journal was even less abashed: ‘Despite chaos and disintegration, Zaire is wide open for business…Zaire’s vast mineral resources are beckoning foreign companies, prompting a scramble that recalls the grab for wealth 120 years ago …American, Canadian, South African [and Belgian] mining companies are negotiating deals with the rebels [hoping] to win a piece of what is widely considered Africa’s richest geological prize – and one of the richest of the world.’ (15 April 1997)
In April the bells began to toll even louder for Mobutu. The ADFL captured Mbuji-Mayi and Lubumbashi, respectively the main sources of the country’s diamond and copper deposits. Whoever controls these areas controls Zaire. So the mining multinationals, after 37 years of mutually beneficial collaboration with Mobutu, deserted him, just as he lay in hospital dying of cancer. With bags full of money and reworded contracts they have been rushing to shake hands and sign deals with ADFL leader Laurent Kabila, temporarily headquartered in Goma. All the major players are there: De Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd, Anglo-American Corporation, Tenke Mining Corporation, American Mineral, Diamond Field Resources. Even the notorious Belgian Union Miniere, dominant in colonial times, is seizing the opportunity to re-establish itself. These companies are engaged in a ruthless behind-the-scenes war to secure the best contracts for themselves. As for issues like a decent wage for the mine workers, a decent pension, health and safety, a welfare and education system – all of which could easily be financed by the country’s wealth -nothing is planned to change. The poor will remain poor whilst their labour will enable the multinationals to make enormous profits.
American Minerals was one of the first to close down headquarters in Mobutu-controlled territory and reopen in Goma. Alexander Boulle of American Minerals and a power behind Diamond Field Resources, with an eye on the future, also put his chartered Lear jet at the disposal of ADFL leaders. In return, when De Beers, still anxious about a possible Mobutu comeback, refused to open offices in ADFL-controlled Kisingani, Boulle was offered the diamond-buying licence for $25,000. It used to cost De Beers $150,000. Boulle now runs the only licensed diamond-buying office in Kisingani. The ADFL also offered Boulle a captured consignment of diamonds scheduled for De Beers. De Beers protested but were nevertheless forced to bid for them, eventually paying $5m. After ADFL captured Lubumbashi, Tenke Mining quickly switched its loyalties. A London company representative noted: ‘We have lost just three hours in total, and that was welcoming the Alliance soldiers.’
Imperialism has always sought to control Zaire, either through colonial or neo-colonial means. Since independence in 1960, Zaire has also been a constant sphere of contention for supremacy among the major powers.
The new scramble for Zaire is driven by the country’s enormous natural wealth and its strategic position in Africa. Zaire is estimated to have 60% of the world’s cobalt and the largest supply of high-grade copper. After Australia it is the world’s largest producer of industrial diamonds. Its gold reserves are huge. If utilised to the full, Zaire has the potential to produce 13% of the world’s electricity. Its fertile land can sustain large-scale cotton, coffee, rubber, oil palm, sugar, maize, tea and groundnut production. Combined with this natural wealth, the fact that Zaire has common frontiers with nine states makes it of vital strategic military and political importance too. In the words of Kwame Nkrumah; the size and pivotal position of the Congo [as it was then) furnishes the greatest military advantage, either for the purposes of attack or defence when fighting in Africa…The Congo is the area from which the domination of Africa can be assured.’
Imperialism has therefore always sought to control Zaire, either through colonial or neo-colonial means. Since independence in 1960, Zaire has also been a constant sphere of contention for supremacy among the major powers. The struggle has been particularly sharp as the US strove to undermine French influence founded on decades of French support for Mobutu. Up to April the French continued to support Mobutu, even facilitating the supply of mercenaries to his regime. They abandoned him only after the ADFL seized control of the country’s mineral wealth deposits. The Financial Times noted that ‘though now working in tandem with Washington in supporting the Zairean negotiations, French officials remain irritated, and a little bitter, at what they claim is evidence that the US had earlier armed and trained Mr Kabila through Uganda.’ (18 April 1997)
Indeed Kabila is a product of an alliance of various African countries, such as Rwanda, Uganda and Angola, whose efforts to topple Mobutu were endorsed by the US. The Financial Times claims that `many Zaireans assume that only funding by a US…greedy for its mineral riches’ accounts for the ADFL’s successes. It adds that through Kabila the US has ‘dealt an irreversible blow’ to French influence in the region.
The ADFL is led by factions totally committed to capitalism and ‘free market liberalism’, but has secured a degree of popular support by promising material improvements for the people through the installation of a ‘social market economy’. If Kabila becomes head of state he will be under pressure to meet popular demands. To minimise such pressure, and to prevent any popular insurrections or disintegration which could call into question the new imperialist plunder of Zaire, the major imperialist powers have pressurised Kabila to enter negotiations with the old regime and with discredited ‘establishment opposition’ figures such as Ettienne Tshisekedi. And the nearer Mobutu’s end, the greater are the number of leading scoundrels from his administration preparing an opportunist switch to Kabila as security for their privilege. In this exercise they have received the invaluable support of the South African ANC government, whose success in securing the stability of capitalism in South Africa is much admired by imperialism. By means of negotiations the imperialists are hoping to secure an orderly, bourgeois, non-revolutionary transfer of power to the ADFL, thus assuring that the post-Mobutu era will be business as usual for the multinationals.
