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Africa Confidential www.africa-confidential.com 1 September 2000 Vol 41 No 17 AFRICA CONFIDENTIAL CONGO-KINSHASA 2 CONGO-KINSHASA Bemba’s boys The opposition MLC was formed A losing gamble between late 1998 and early 1999 Under renewed military pressure President Kabila’s regime does not around the huge figure of Jean- understand the strength of its opponents Pierre Bemba. He used to run an airline and a cellular telephone President Laurent-Désiré Kabila had hoped that his opponents’ quarrels would bring him a quick company; now he heads the most victory. After the Rwandan forces had defeated their former Ugandan allies at Kisangani in June, Kabila successful opposition militia launched heavy attacks against the armed opposition in Equateur province. The result was a military and fighting the Kabila government’s forces. diplomatic disaster, and made a fiasco of the latest Southern African Development Community summit in Lusaka on 14-15 August. The meeting brought together the leaders of the SADC states, and of Rwanda and of Uganda, in an SOUTH AFRICA 3 attempt to get the peace process back on track. Yet none of Kabila’s fellow Presidents, not even his Namibian ally Sam Nujoma, could persuade him to accept Botswana’s former President Ketumile Calling labour’s Masire as official facilitator of the inter-Congolese dialogue, or to accept United Nations’ peacekeepers bluff in government-held areas. Black union militants plan new Then just ten days after Kabila had announced that the Lusaka peace accord was obsolete and had to clashes with the ANC government be completely renegotiated, he added that he would now agree to the deployment of blue-helmeted UN over jobs and labour law reform. peacekeepers across the country. No one claims to understand this volte-face. Friends of former Nigerian But many union leaders would head of state and newly appointed UN envoy to Congo-Kinshasa, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, prefer a compromise that maintains suggest it was Nigeria’s negotiating prowess that helped convince Kabila. Those who know Kabila better their old alliance with the ANC and the SA Communist Party. This see it as yet another gambit by the presidential conjurer in Kinshasa. Refusing UN deployment had taken argument between militants and the force out of Kabila’s continuing complaints about the invading forces from Uganda, Burundi and leaders is set to dominate a Rwanda in his country. national trades union policy conference on 18 September. The Kabila-Mugabe chill Kabila was under pressure from his Zimbabwean allies, and other SADC states, to make some ZAMBIA 5 concessions on UN peacekeepers. Unquestionably, commercial and diplomatic relations between Kabila and Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe have deteriorated in the past few months. Kabila senses Copper politics Mugabe’s resolve is weakening as his own domestic crisis worsens; equally Kabila knows that handing The Chiluba government's bungled out diamond concessions to Zimbabwean businesses and their allies is currently a political liability in sell-off of the copper mines has Congo (AC Vol 41 No 11). already prompted political fall-out. Making concessions to the UN also allows Kabila to press Burundi to sign the Lusaka peace accord, Opposition parties, including the allowing him to expose the involvement of Major Pierre Buyoya’s forces in Eastern Congo. But above new Republican Party led by ex- Defence Minister Ben Mwila, are all, Kabila is playing for time. Granting access to UN peacekeepers and probably directing them towards trying to stir up the mining unions the battle-zones in the north-west may dampen the military operations of Jean-Pierre Bemba’s who were formerly loyal to Mouvement du Libération de Congo. Chiluba’s multi-party movement . Kabila is fundamentally opposed to the dialogue proposed in the Lusaka agreement, signed in July and August 1999, which stipulates that the country’s constitutional future should be settled by consensus BURUNDI 7 among government, ‘civil society’, the rebels and the unarmed opposition. The determination not to share power was strengthened in April, when Belgium issued an international arrest warrant for his Foreign Under Kilimanjaro Affairs Minister, Abdoulaye Yerodia Ndombasi, accusing him of having called for the massacre of Tutsi in Kinshasa in April 1998. Civil complaints laid before the Belgian courts make similar charges President Buyoya assured Burundians that the accord signed against Kabila, Information Minister Didier Mumengi, Communications Advisor Dominique Sakombi in Arusha on 28 August was the Inongo and Kakudji, though no arrest warrants have been issued. Kabila and his cousin, Interior Minister 'first step' to peace and that Gaetan Kakudji, gradually coopted, in June and July, the members of his ‘parliament’, whose President, negotiations would continue. Tshamala wa Kamwanya, called on 18 August for the formation of peoples’ self-defence forces. All this has made Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel’s attempted rapprochement with Kabila more embarrassing. POINTERS 8 Kabila met Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame in Nairobi on 3 June. On 12 June, as soon as the Ugandans had lost the Kisangani battle, his troops launched an offensive against Kampala’s ally in Somalia, John Equateur, the MLC. The MLC’s troops, then at Buburu on the Oubangui River, were forced back to the Vernon & Ghana positions they held before last year’s ceasefire, signed by all parties in Lusaka and respected by none. On 12 June, the day of the Equateur offensive, government aircraft - two MiGs and one Antonov - 1 September 2000 Africa Confidential Vol 41 No 17 CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC SUDAN supplemented by heavy artillery mounted on four (later six) barges u angu m b i Bo belonging to the parastatal Office National des Transports (Onatra) u CAMEROON O Gbadolité ele Libenge U and operated by Zimbabwean soldiers. The Kinshasa government had Gemena Isiro RCD- Dongo MLC Buta Lisala BUNIA requisitioned the fuel stocks held in the capital by the Central African Imese L.Albert go ORIENTALE company Petroca at the end of May, and the Congo-Brazzaville Impfondo Con Bunia Buburu Basankusu ÉQUATEUR Kisangani Beni company Hydrocongo in June. The aim was to relieve the fuel shortage REPUBLIC Mbandaka L. Edward in Kinshasa, while making supplies difficult for Jean-Pierre Bemba’s GABON OF DEMOCRATIC U N- CONGO Ikela KIVU REP. Goma Ugandan-allied MLC (see box), which controls the entire border with RWA. OF CONGO V Bukavu L.Kivu the Central African Republic and part of that with Congo-B as far as RCD-GOMA KABILA I SUD- Cabinda KASAI KIVU Impfondo, whence it got its oil. BUR. TANZANIA (Ang.) Bandundu ORIENTAL Kindu K Uvira as KINSHASA ai Ilebo MANEIMA L BANDUNDU KASAI Lusambo K a OCCIDENTAL k Rebel victory go BAS- Kikwit e on Kalémi Boma Kananga e Ta C CONGO Kabinda a b i n a At first, the offensive brought some success. In mid-July, Bemba’s l d g Tshikapa a a Maquela Mbuji- a K t u n a w L do Zombo Mayi y troops were pushed back to Imese, 200 kilometres north of Libenge, a Manono M i n k g a o Pweto mainly because they were short of fuel, brought in from Uganda by air KATANGA in the MLC’s sole Antonov. This made it harder still to supply the Kamina (SHABA) L.Mweru KABILA Armée de Liberation Congolaise with food and ammunition while it ANGOLA L. Ocean Atlantic Kolwezi Likasi Bangweulu was dug in under enemy fire at Imese. On this front the ALC, whose zi be am Lubumbashi heaviest weapons are mortars and rocket propelled grenades (RPGs), Z 0 Kilometres 800 had no ground-to-air missiles for use against an airforce that Kabila ZAMBIA 0Miles 400 has laboriously strengthened over recent months. According to the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie dropped bombed a school-yard, a church and other civilian areas at (RCD), the pro-Rwandan rebel group based in Goma, by mid-August Libenge, also on the Oubangi river, missing their real target, the Kabila had at his disposal 13 aircraft: two MiG-21s, two Su-25s, four airstrip. The government’s bombing along the Oubangui intensified, Antonov 32s, two Ilyushins, one Douglas DC-8 and two MI-24 attack Bemba’s boys The Mouvement de Libération du Congo was formed between late 1998 General or ‘Prime Minister’, Olivier Kamitatu, is 38 and was born in and early 1999 around Jean-Pierre Bemba, a huge man who stands Brussels. His father, Cleophas Kamitatu from Bandundu, is now in some 1.90 metres tall and weighs perhaps 120 kilogrammes, and once gaol in Kinshasa for having been a minister under Mobutu and refusing ran an airline and a cellular telephone company. Since his business to be one under Kabila. The MLC National Financial Secretary is interests were in Uganda, he refused the protection of General Paul François Muamba, a 48-year-old from Kasaï, once a member of Kagame of Rwanda, and in September 1998 asked President Yoweri Etienne Tshsekedi wa Malumba’s Union pour la Démocratie et le Museveni to give him and some 150 Congolese some military training. Progrès Social and a minister under Premier Leon Kengo wa Dondo. After the MLC was set up Laurent Kabila appointed Bemba’s father, The movement’s economic policy is strictly free-enterprise; it says ex-Mobutu Sese Seko minister Jeannot Bemba Saolona, as Economy it won’t copy Kabila and get into business itself, and owns no mines or Minister. He sacked him two months ago. plantations. It levies export taxes of ten per cent on diamonds and 20 Although a product of the golden days of Mobutisme, Bemba Junior per cent on coffee, which raises half its revenue, it says.
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