Laurent Kabila, a former businessman, stood at the head of an armed rebellion that in May 1997 ousted--with extensive military support from the governments of Rwanda and Uganda--the already crumbling regime of Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. He rapidly consolidated a plundering bourgeois regime that brought few changes for workers and peasants in the country.

A little more than a year later, in August 1998, a military rebellion opened against the new regime in Kinshasa, this time with the Rwandan and Ugandan armies opposing Kabila alongside a fractured lineup of rebel organizations. Today they control more than half the country. In response, the governments of Angola, Namibia, and Zimbabwe sent troops to back the Congolese army.

The current war is basically being fought for land and loot. Various businessmen and military figures in Zimbabwe, for example, have won rights to exploit diamond concessions in the Congo. Press reports indicate that peasants in areas under control of both pro- and anti-Kinshasa forces are routinely subjected to brutality and theft by soldiers.

An additional aspect of the war is the continuing presence in eastern Congo of former Rwandan army and Interahamwe militias, of which there are estimated to be 30,000–40,000, or about 20 percent of Kinshasa's frontline army. These forces were driven out of Rwanda in 1994 after playing a key role in the slaughter of up to 1 million people, most of Tutsi origin. The Rwandan government says it is involved in the war because these rightist militias remain active across the border and still seek to regain power. Kabila's government also vilified Tutsis from the days the war broke out.

The two-and-a-half-year war has displaced up to 2 million of the country's 50 million people and sent 250,000 more across Congolese borders.  
 
Contradictory death reports
Reports of Kabila's death were murky, with some officials in Kinshasa denying for days that he was killed. Other reports said fighting had erupted in a meeting between Kabila and army officers. Latest press reports state that one of Kabila's bodyguards, unhappy with pay and working conditions, walked into his office and shot him--and was then himself killed by other bodyguards.

Congolese officials now suggest that "foreign forces"--the implication being a plot by the governments of Uganda or Rwanda--were responsible. However, it is just as likely that the ruling apparatus imploded upon itself. A report in the January 25 East African, published in Nairobi, cites unnamed Congolese sources as saying Kabila had planned to purge some of his generals, who got wind of this and had him killed instead.

The nomination of 29-year-old Joseph Kabila as the new president has not met with universal approval. Working people interviewed on news reports screened in South Africa pointed out that their country was supposed to be a republic, not a monarchy: by what right was Kabila's son taking over? A report in the January 21 New York Times stated Joseph Kabila "does not speak the national language and is expected to face a potentially explosive power struggle from the moment his father's body is put in the ground."

Laurent Kabila, dead or alive, was flown to Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, after he was shot. At his funeral in Kinshasa on January 23, security was provided exclusively by Zimbabwean troops, of whom there are reportedly 12,000 in the Congo.

A report in the January 25 issue of The Namibian, printed in Windhoek, said: "Regional military sources told Reuters that as many as 6,200 fresh allied troops had arrived in the Congo to reinforce the capital Kinshasa, the copper and cobalt city of Lubumbashi, and the diamond center of Mbuji-Maji in response to the vacuum created by Kabila's death.... The troops are accompanied by medium-to-light field armor, fighter planes and attack helicopters."  
 
Colonial and imperialist plunder
Congo is a former Belgian colony. It was the Belgian king, Leopold, who launched the late 19th century colonial carve-up that became known as the Scramble for Africa. Congo's labor and natural resources--copper, cobalt, diamonds, gold, and other metals--were brutally exploited for decades by the Belgian rulers, who slaughtered millions of Congolese while capitalist mining houses built massive fortunes.

Working people in city and countryside rebelled, and through mass struggle conquered independence in 1960. Patrice Lumumba, the central leader of the fight for national liberation, became prime minister. Washington and Brussels, however, employing Congolese agents and United Nations troops, organized to smash the new government. They ordered Lumumba's arrest and organized for him to be shot while preparing the coup that brought Mobutu to power.

Mobutu, in turn, made sure that Congo's mineral wealth was open for exploitation. Its location, size, wealth, and large population made the country a key ally of imperialist interests in the region. Mobutu used his military forces at the behest of Washington and Paris. For example, he sent troops to invade, along with the apartheid regime in South Africa, the newly independent country of Angola. His successor Kabila, despite rhetoric about national sovereignty, also ensured that the imperialist powers saw a "for sale" sign whenever they came knocking on Congo's door, though he often angered them by playing off competing interests.

The first imperialist official to hold talks with Joseph Kabila was Belgian foreign minister Louis Michel, on January 23, when he asked Kabila to make "signs of opening," according to a South African Press Association dispatch. But many working people and youth would like to see signs of something else. According to the January 24 New York Times, "A group hurled stones at two buses carrying Belgian officials to the funeral. 'Belgians, killers!' the youths yelled. 'Diamond thieves!' "

Congo has the third-largest population, and the second-largest land area, in sub-Saharan Africa. The colonial legacy, brutal capitalist rule, imperialist exploitation, and the current war have devastated the country. According to the World Bank, per capita gross national product is about $110. Out of every 1,000 children born, 141 die before they reach the age of five. "The country's formal economy has virtually collapsed in the last few decades," says the imperialist financial institution, which puts the blame on "mismanagement and instability." Per capita Gross Domestic Product in the 1980s was only a third of that in 1962, and it declined even further in the 1990s. Congo's foreign debt is $12.2 billion.

The UN has given initial backing to a so-called peace plan brokered in 1999, which nearly all the contending governments and rebel groups have signed, but which, as a report in the Financial Times put it, is until now a "dead letter." The plan calls for the introduction of thousands of UN troops to enforce its provisions. Washington, London, and Paris--the competing imperialist powers that dominate the UN Security Council--have delayed the troop deployment until they see a clear advantage.  
 
 
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