Divided Zairians Unite in Blaming U.S.

KINSHASA, Zaire — There’s anger to go around in the destitute streets of Kinshasa, and it is not all directed against President Mobutu Sese Seko or rebel leader Laurent Kabila, the two men locked in a dance of death over who will lead this country of 45 million people.

Much of it is directed elsewhere: at the United States of America, that distant but powerful entity that, from the viewpoint of a typical Zairian worker--scraping by and not knowing when he can afford his next meal--is at or near the root of this country’s problems.

From politicians to peddlers, Zairians are quick to lay at least a share of the blame for the poverty and civil war that have engulfed them on the cynical manipulations of a faraway superpower.

The anger was reflected Thursday when several hundred government supporters protested in a downtown square and in front of the U.S. Embassy here, accusing the United States of orchestrating their country’s civil war to get rid of Mobutu. But criticism is almost as likely to come from Kabila’s supporters, who say the U.S. tilt against Mobutu came too late.

“America has been supporting Mobutu for more than 30 years, and everybody in Zaire knows that. If the Zairian people are suffering, it is because of the Americans,” shouted auto mechanic Major Mbankana, unable to contain his anger when he saw American journalists conducting interviews near his place of business, an oil-spattered sidewalk.

Even now that U.S. policy seemingly has turned against Mobutu, he said he fears that the United States aims to install another puppet rather than bring the democracy that Zairians want.

“Americans are like a razor blade. They can wound you on one side or the other,” he said.

He later explained how he came by his anger: When he went to work that morning, he’d left behind five hungry children.

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At the Palace of the Nation, the old Parliament building overgrown by weeds and now favored by members of Mobutu’s ruling Popular Movement of the Revolution, or MPR party, the privileged of the regime are also seething--and wondering if they should run into exile before the expected arrival in coming days of Kabila’s rebel forces.

To them it is clear that the fall of the Soviet Union meant that Zaire, and its longtime anti-Communist head of state, was no longer of any strategic value to the United States.

“[Mikhail] Gorbachev is responsible for what is happening in Africa,” said one party operative who refused to give his name, referring to the former Soviet leader. “If we were still in the Cold War, this would never have happened.”

To Zairians, it is an article of faith that the United States created Mobutu, the king of African kleptocrats, to rule over Zaire for more than 30 years and now is throwing him out because his usefulness has been exhausted.

It is also an article of faith that Washington has armed Kabila and dispatched him to conquer Zaire and thereby install a pliable leader in this nation at Africa’s rich heart.

In a world of one superpower, there is widespread belief that Zaire’s current drama is mostly an American production--that Bill Richardson, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who has just passed through on a 10-day diplomatic shuttle, has been pulling the strings--deciding when Mobutu will go and when Kabila will arrive.

“Everybody believes we are supporting the rebels and running the whole show,” one U.S. official in Zaire acknowledged. “There is a bit of a love-hate thing. They have put us on such a power pedestal.”

But he dismissed the notion that the current emotions will be reflected in lingering anti-American sentiment after Zaire goes through what Washington is calling its “transition.”

Try to convince Zairians that the United States cannot dictate facts in their country, however, and they will answer that you are the one who is naive.

Mobutu rose to power during the first turbulent years of independence for Zaire, then known as the Republic of Congo and a former Belgian colony.

The United States was fearful of Communist expansion into the Third World, and Mobutu was favored by the CIA and every U.S. administration from Kennedy to Reagan. Throughout the Cold War, he aided U.S. efforts to quell Marxist insurgencies on the continent and was handsomely rewarded with U.S. foreign and military aid.

The United States broke with Mobutu at the end of the Cold War.

His plundering of Zaire’s wealth and disregard for political freedoms or the material needs of his own people had made him an embarrassment.

The United States does not admit to supporting the rebels, but some of its diplomats will admit to, in the wry words of one, “crushing neutrality.”

And although there is no proof of U.S. military help to the rebels, there are ample indications that several African states friendly to the United States--such as Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia--have been assisting Kabila.

But in recent weeks, U.S. officials have become more critical of the rebels, especially for alleged massacres of Rwandan Hutu refugees and other alleged human rights violations in the two-thirds of Zaire they now control.

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The U.S. position has been that there should be a transition in Zaire. Washington would prefer a negotiated, peaceful transfer of power to an “inclusive” transitional government including Kabila and representatives of the democratic opposition to Mobutu’s regime that has arisen during the past five years.

But any transitional government will have to move quickly to stage the first democratic vote in Zaire’s history. Foreign aid will be dependent on that, Western diplomats said.