Kabila, Laurent Desire

▪ 1998

      After having dropped out of sight for nearly a decade, Zairean opposition leader Laurent Kabila reemerged in October 1996 as leader of the newly formed Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire. Supported by a nation outraged by the dictatorial leadership of Mobutu Sese Seko, Kabila rallied forces consisting mostly of Tutsi from eastern Zaire and marched west toward the capital city of Kinshasa, forcing Mobutu to flee the country before their arrival. On May 17, 1997, Kabila installed himself as head of state. He also rejected the name Zaire, which Mobutu had given the country in 1971, and reverted its name to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In September Mobutu died in Morocco after having squandered the country's mineral-rich resources and having left it poorer than it had been since before independence in 1960. As the country's leader, Kabila inherited an economy that by 1994 had shrunk to 1958 levels, although the population had tripled. By 1997 commercial banks had recorded only about 8,000 accounts from a population of more than 46 million.

      Kabila was born in 1939 into the Luba tribe in Jadotville, a city in the Belgian Congo's southern province of Katanga. He studied political philosophy at a French university and attended the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanz., where he met and formed a friendship with Ugandan Yoweri Museveni (Museveni, Yoweri Kaguta ) (q.v.). In 1960 Kabila became a youth leader in a political party allied to Congo's first postindependence prime minister, Marxist-Maoist Patrice Lumumba. Lumumba was deposed in 1961 by Mobutu and later killed. Assisted for a time in 1964 by guerrilla leader Che Guevara, Kabila helped Lumumba supporters lead a revolt that was eventually suppressed in 1965 by the Congolese army led by Mobutu. Mobutu seized power that same year. Kabila then founded (1967) the People's Revolutionary Party, which established a Marxist territory in the Kivu region of eastern Zaire and managed to sustain itself through gold mining and ivory trading. When that enterprise came to an end during the 1980s, he ran a business selling gold in Dar es Salaam until he resurfaced in Zaire.

      Kabila charged that under Mobutu's rule the country had been sold out to international capitalists who sought to plunder Zaire's resources. In August 1997 he pledged, "We came to rebuild the country. We will . . . halt the intolerable interference of foreign powers in our internal affairs." Kabila publicly stated that his model for Congo's future was the one fashioned by Museveni, who as president of Uganda had turned around the economy by embracing capitalism. Regional support was swelling for the new Kabila government, but international bodies raised several reservations. Reportedly, Kabila's troops had been responsible for the murders of thousands of Hutu refugees who had fled Rwanda into Zaire in 1994. In addition, many international aid agencies had been denied access into the country to assess the needs of the people. Although it was too soon to be certain what direction the Kabila government would eventually take, the United States government offered aid and believed that Kabila could be encouraged to accept elections soon.

ANTHONY L. GREEN

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