Re: Assassination of Laurent Kabila

["Patrick Bond" <pbond@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> From:          "Nestor Miguel Gorojovsky" <Gorojovsky@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
>... the moment the French and Belgian consulates were spreading
> notice of Kabila's death, Kabila was still on a plane and alive

I may have some details slightly wrong because of all the confusion.
What I've seen in the Zimbabwe press is that he was shot at 2:30PM
on Tuesday and was dead within a half-hour, and declared so by local
doctors, even before the flight carried his corpse to Harare. That
flight was a delaying tactic arranged by Mugabe to buy time, and the
denial by Kinshasa and Harare of Kabila's death until a day and a
half later is simply a reflection of their cover-up mentality.
Mugabe's minister of information (once a Ford Foundation liberal and
now a venal nationalist) even revoked the Zim defense minister's
acknowledgement of the murder, saying it "was taken out of context."
(This same Zim government tried, in 1989, to cover up for two days
the suicide of the #3 politician in the country.) In other words, the
episode of Kabila being shot and there being confusion surrounding
exactly when he died, is a terrible terrible reflection of the
systemic state of misinformation within which progressives in Africa
must conduct their various struggles. It's an embarrassment, and not
something, cde Nestor, with which comrades on this side are taking
glee in whacking imperialism over.

> b) _Clarín_ of Buenos Aires pointed out, on an article not at all laudatory of
> Kabila, that while he had made many of his Congolese friends happy, he had not
> been able to arrive at good relations with foreign capitalists.

Kabila's Congolese `friends' were not the masses, ok? (There was
great working-class celebration in Kinshasa, according to reports, on
news of his death.) In order to stay in power, Kabila had to play all
manner of games with the few assets--control of mines,
especially--that he could physically gate-keep. That led to some
foreign capitalists--the disgusting Anglo American Corporation and
DeBeers, for example, whose headquarters are a few km to the west of
me here in Jo'burg--having extremely friendly relations (for a
wee while) with Kabila, in the wake of his dismissal of American
Minerals (the company whose plane he flew around on during the final
stage of the campaign to unseat Mobuto). But Kabila ultimately needed
a different set of mine managers: generals from Zimbabwe, Angola and
Namibia (the Zim troops vastly outnumber the other mercenaries, while
it appeared that one reason for Kabila's death was his failure to pay
his own troops... so it's not an exaggeration to consider Harare
amongst the most powerful determinants of DRC's future given the
military balance of forces).

> c) the troops now invading Congo are backed by pro-US regimes.

Yes, Rwandan and Ugandan troops have allegedly been given the
go-ahead by the yanks to loot and pillage DRC from the East. But from
the South and West, it's a similar story, without US backing. I don't
know the public opinion sampling in Angola and Namibia, but
progressive Zimbabweans argue forthrightly that Mugabe's 12,000
troops in the DRC are not there on behalf  of the people, but as part
of a loot/pillage project that is channeling funds into the worst
(mainly militarised) elements of the Harare regime, while bankrupting
that country (the budget deficit has soared since troops were
deployed in the DRC in mid-1997). (As a trivial aside, I spent last
week in Zimbabwe, and barely found petrol to drive the 1200 km from
and back to the Limpopo River border with SA, in part because of the
waste of forex on the DRC adventure.)

The great joy in urban Zimbabwe over Kabila's murder reflects a
desire--no doubt absurdly overoptimistic--that this now is the basis
for an end to Mugabe's capacity to loot the DRC's cobalt and diamond
wealth. When, a couple of months ago, Zim and DRC-loyalist troops
were being mauled in the Lubumbashi area by rebels, and had to flee
into Zambia, there emerged a sense that only a devastating military
defeat would bring Mugabe to his senses... and I suspect that this,
tragically, is still the case.