1997 Collapse of Mobutu regime (Newsweek report)
Soon
two of the African soldiers burst into the house where 16-year-old
Mukunda was making palm beer with his father, Marselle. They accused
Marselle of supporting rebel leader Laurent Kabila. Ignoring his
denials, they dragged him to a shady spot where three other villagers
were under guard. As Mukunda watched from hiding, Colonel Yugo took up
a machine gun and sprayed the four men with bullets. Next he grabbed a
knife and stabbed their lifeless bodies, pounding at them maniacally.
Then he calmly walked away, climbed into his white Toyota Land Cruiser
and roared off down the road.
The area around Bayanguna
is dotted with fresh mass graves containing at least 21 corpses.
Villagers told NEWSWEEK that all of them were victims of Colonel Yugo,
who seemed to enjoy slaughtering innocent prisoners with his own hands.
By last week, Kisangani had fallen to the rebels, and Colonel Yugo was
gone. Some villagers said they saw him leaving by boat down the Congo
River. Others said he was regrouping his forces. But Colonel Yugo's war
seemed to be nearly over. The government of Zaire had all but
collapsed. Even the return late last week of the country's
cancer-stricken dictator, Mobuto Sese Seko, did not stop thousands of
people–including some of Mobutu's relatives–from fleeing Kinshasa,
the increasingly chaotic capital. Everyone there seemed to be waiting
for Laurent Kabila. ""He's like Christ,'' said one resident, AndrE
LusE. ""We don't know where he will come from or when he will come, but
he will come.''
Things keep getting weirder in Zaire.
Opposition political leaders, loathed by Kabila, proclaimed themselves
his allies. Gen. Mahele Lioko, Zaire's chief of staff, said his troops
would defeat the rebels–and then publicly begged them not to riot. And
when Mobutu, 66, returned from his luxurious sickbed on the French
Riviera, the welcoming committee was sent away from the airport without
a glimpse of him, setting off more speculation about his physical
decline. ""He's extremely ill,'' said an informed source. And in case
foreigners have to be evacuated, the United States ordered more than
200 troops to nearby Congo and Gabon to prepare the logistics. If
needed, two Marine Corps vessels could reach waters off Zaire this week.
It
was unclear what Kabila would do if, as he promises, he marches into
Kinshasa by June. Until six months ago, when Rwanda and Uganda started
to support him, Kabila was little known. His ideology is a strange
amalgam of anarchy, socialism and free-market communism. And in the
areas he rules, ethnic tensions are rife; residents say members of the
Tutsi tribe get all the good government jobs. Kinshasans say they don't
care. ""Of course, we don't know what [Kabila] will do,'' admits
TimothE Zingawazinga, a 23-year-old student. ""First we'll bring down
the regime, then we'll see what happens.''
Mobutu
called for a truce, to be followed by negotiations with the rebels.
""We negotiate first,'' Kabila replied in Kisangani, unwilling to give
his enemy any respite. Zaire's political and business elites still
supported the dictator. ""Kabila cannot swallow Zaire whole,'' one
wealthy businessman said during a poolside lunch at his home in
Kinshasa. He was convinced that the French-trained General Mahele would
not allow a coup or looting. But just in case, he was sending his
family on holiday in Belgium and hiring 15 national guardsmen to
protect his home and business.