DICTATORSHIP AND KLEPTOCRACY
MADE IN THE USA:
HOW MOBUTU SERVED NINE AMERICAN
PRESIDENTS, FROM LYNDON JONHSON TO BILL CLINTON.
HERE HE COMES, THE STOOGE OF AMERICAN PRESIDENTS
On a visit to the US a year after Ronald Reagan took office, Mobutu travelled with an entourage of 80, including 21 children - his own, their cousins and friends. They went first to Disney World in Florida and later to New York, where they took over the entire 35th floor of the Waldorf Astoria; and Reagan like George Bush years later, proclaimed that he was honored to have this good old chap as the first African president to visit the White House during his administration. President Reagan called called Mobutu "a friend of democracy and freedom, a voice of good sense and goodwill."
That is because Mobutu served significant US interests, just as Bin Laden did when the CIA helped him to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
The following are the remarks of President Reagan and President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire following their meeting on August 4, 1983:
President Reagan: President Mobutu and I have just had a warm and useful discussion. And I am pleased to have been able to meet again with President Mobutu, who's been a faithful friend to the United States for some 20 years. The President and I took this opportunity to review the state of U.S.-Zairian relations, and we found a large area of agreement on the major points we discussed. I expressed our admiration for President Mobutu's courageous action in sending troops to assist the Government of Chad in its struggle against Libyan-backed rebels.
On the home front, the President has informed me of progress on his government's economic stabilization plan. Zaire is taking the difficult but necessary steps to ensure sustained economic progress, and it's important that we and Zaire's other friends do what we can to help. President Mobutu and I also discussed his country's political situation, and I told him of the positive reaction in the United States to his recent decision to offer amnesty to his political opponents.
This visit has permitted the President and me to reaffirm our common desire for peace and stability in Africa. And I am confident that the close relations between our two countries, based on shared interests and perceptions, will advance the cause of peace and development in Africa. And we're very pleased to have him visit us once again as he did a year and a half ago.
President Mobutu: I have expressed to President Reagan during our meeting, first of all, my thanks for the wonderful and warm welcome extended to us in the atmosphere of great friendship that we have experienced throughout our stay in Washington. We surveyed world events. We talked about the economic situation in Zaire, about the program for financial and economic recovery which is being worked out with the IMF. We talked of Chad, of the aggression against that country, a founder of the OAU and a member of the United Nations.
We talked also of Namibia, South Africa, and Central America. In brief, we surveyed
world events. Some decisions have been made for economic aid to Zaire, and some more decisions will be
made in that context. I extended to President Reagan and to his associates my congratulations and thanks for all they have done to facilitate our stay in every way during our visit here.
Thank you.
Note: President Reagan spoke at 12:02 p.m. to reporters assembled on the South Grounds of the White House. President Mobutu spoke in French, and his remarks were translated by an interpreter. The two Presidents and U.S. and Zairian officials had met in the Oval Office.
There followed another meeting on 1 December 1981, 1981 between the President Ronald Reagan and President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire. The following was White House Statement about the meeting:
"President Reagan met for 45 minutes this afternoon with President Sese Seko Mobutu of Zaire in the Oval Office. He welcomed the opportunity to learn more about the interests and concerns of this important African country and friend of the United States. The meeting was friendly and open. Among the issues discussed were Namibia and Chad, where the President praised Zaire's contribution to a peaceful solution. They also discussed Zaire's need for the cooperation of friendly states, including the United States and our European allies, as well as international organizations in working to develop its economy and reinforce its national security.
"There was a mutual understanding of the need for strengthening Zaire's economic institutions and the armed forces. The President told President Mobutu that the United States is prepared to help Zaire achieve its development and security goals while recognizing that those goals require some difficult decisions, such as those now being taken and planned by the Zairian Government, particularly in improved administration. There was agreement on the importance of the private sector as a force for economic development. The President wished President Mobutu well during his meetings with Members of Congress and the business community and visits to other parts of the United
States.
"Present at the meeting in addition to the two Presidents were: Zaire's Foreign Minister Yoka, Zaire's Ambassador to the United States Kasongo, Vice President Bush, Secretaries Haig and Weinberger, Counsellor to the President Meese, Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Nance, U.S. Ambassador to Zaire Oakley, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Crocker, Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs Dyke, and Fred Wettering, senior NSC staff member on Africa."
THE CURSE OF THE STATE OF ZAIRE
The story of Mobutu is a story that stands for many others across the globe, where 'American interests' took precedence over basic morality, with results so terrible it is hard to take them in.
"It was the Kennedy administration that helped to elevate Mobutu Sese Seko to power in what became
Zaire…Republicans, for their part, would toss the more memorable rhetorical bouquets at Africa's most notorious despot. In 1976, Henry Kissinger, during a stop in Kinshasa, cooed about the "respect and affection that lie at the heart of the relationship between the United States and Zaire; he assured Mobutu that 'the United States will stand by its friends." It was President Reagan, in a felicitous phrase undoubtedly screened if not crafted by his assistant secretary of state for African Affairs, Chester Crocker, who called Mobutu "a voice of good sense and good will."
President Bush Senior called Mobutu "one of our most valued friends [on] the entire continent of Africa." By then the United States has ponied up $1 billion for Mobutu's predatory regime."
The CIA recruited and groomed Mobutu in Belgium, where he was exiled as a member of the opposition to Belgian rule. Eisenhower ordered the murder of Lumumba, first prime minister of newly independent Congo, fearful of another Cuba. CIA operative Larry Devlin brought Mobutu back to Congo to lead the coup. Lumumba was murdered. Mobutu was supported by every president from Kennedy to Clinton.
Here are the fruits of Mobutu:
· Per capita income in 1980 1/10 of what it was at independence in 1960
· In the 1990's poverty "dropped below measureable levels".
· One paved road in ten that existed at independence made it to the 1990's
· The only reliable surface transport was the Congo River, but there were no boats to travel it
· Half the country's children die by the age of five
· 6,000% inflation in 1992 (24 million Zaires to the dollar). When Mobutu ran short of funds for his various pleasure palaces and escapades, he simply minted more.
· 80% unemployment
· in 1986 schools received $8 million of the $73 million budgeted for them, health programs $8 million of $24 million
· Zaire received 1 $billion in US aid during the Reagan years
· Mobutu's personal wealth was estimated at over $5 billion, roughly equivalent to the national debt. He opened his own Swiss bank.
· All of this rampant gangsterism was of course accompanied by brutal repression of all opposition.
Mobutu's Mafia-style 'kleptocracy' began sagging under the weight of the monstrous corruption, and so he pulled the 'ethnic card', just as Charles Taylor did in Liberia. The IMF and World Bank pulled their support from Mobutu. As in so many other places in Africa, the end of the Cold War meant that the US and Europeans suddenly dropped their pet dictators like hot potatoes, having no use for them anymore. It is at this point that the desperate despots resorted to fanning the flames of ethnic conflict.
Like the Tutsis in Rwanda, the Kasaians in Zaire were enlisted as favored groups by the whites and used as 'proxy agents of domination'. They had been cultivated by the Belgians, and Mobutu used the long-standing resentment of them as a tool of his tyranny, fomenting mass slaughter, promoting the ensuing chaos to his own advantage by using hostility against the Kasai to deflect it away from himself.
The armed rebellion by Laurent Kabila in 1997 finally toppled Mobutu after 37 years, but the chaos and ruin Mobutu left behind have ensured 7 years of a war of invasion and foreign incursions by an anglo-american-rwandan-ugandan-burundian coalition with horrific suffering for the Congolese people, 5 millions of whom have already been massacred since 2 August 1998. The economy is moribund; the men are unemployed, or in one or the other army. At least two million people, mainly women and children, are displaced. For many, prostitution is the only survival mechanism, and HIV/Aids is epidemic.
Republican Howard Wolpe had been a scholar of African affairs before he went to Washington. He clashed repeatedly with Chester Crocker for eight years as Africa subcommittee chairman. Woolpe is quoted as having said that "he had no quarrel with the legitimacy of protecting American interests in the Cold War".
But every time America stood up for dictators, it did very little to advance American interests. It stood up for regimes that were inherently unstable. It was complicit in their crimes. It fed instability on the entire continent….This engagement or walk away analysis - it's a false dichotomy. It ended up creating self-fulfilling prophecies. Mobutu especially. American people were always told that there was no alternative to Mobutu.
In the end America ensured there was nothing left behind.
It is important to remember Congo today. As Americans try to take in the Abu Ghraib revelations, they should understand that it is all of piece with American conduct throughout the world for the past 50 years at least. There is no doubt about it, and if Americans don't like it, then they should do something about it.
Even apartheid's securocrats, never hid the fact that they took pains to describe their close relationship with British and American. "It's a brotherhood," General Joe Buchner, the notorious covert operative and torturer who was at the heart of the "black-on-black". violence in South Africa, said wistfully:
"We in the police of the various offices overseas-everybody knew Who the Americans were. Our training came mostly from you Americans -and the Brits."
There is no distinction between Americans training torturers, financing and sanctioning torturers, and doing the dirty work themselves. As the situation intensified, Mobutu temporarily seized power with US backing. In December 1960 Mobutu--working closely with the CIA--arrested, beat and tortured Lumumba to within an inch of his life. In January 1961 Mobutu--again with CIA assistance--transferred Lumumba to Katanga. This move was a guaranteed death sentence. The local CIA station sent off a cable saying: "Thanks for Patrice. If we had known he was coming we would have baked a snake."
The night of his arrival in Katanga, Lumumba was murdered in the presence of Tshombe and his reactionary secessionist army.
THE MAKING OD A US STRONGMAN
The murder of Lumumba showed the U.S. gaining the upper hand in the Congo. However, the U.S. still faced a widespread revolutionary upsurge of the people. Tens of thousands of peasants and youths under the leadership of Pierre Mulele and Laurent Désiré Kabila had taken up arms against the government. The U.S. brought in Tshombe as prime minister in 1964 in an effort to control the situation. But the U.S. was forced to intervene directly. The U.S. troops, along with the Belgian military, South Africa mercenaries and Congolese puppet troops, carried out a bloody campaign, killing many thousands of peasants, workers and anti-government activists.
When a few U.S. citizens were killed in the Congo during this period, Malcolm X reminded people in the U.S. about the CIA assassination of Lumumba and pointed out sharply: "The Congolese have been killed year after year after year, and whatever the United States gets in the Congo, she is getting what she asked for; the Congo killings is like the chickens coming home to roost."
Mobutu, meanwhile, was being groomed as the main U.S. strongman. With the help of U.S. military aid and advisers, he built up his faction of the army into the strongest military force in the country. The Zionist government of Israel also pitched in, developing a special training program for 200 paratroopers from Mobutu's army.
By 1964 Mobutu's army had been molded into a powerful force, equipped with modern arms and having the upper hand over all of his opponents. The other Western imperialist powers had no choice but to get in line behind the U.S. and their man in Zaire. In 1965 Mobutu seized sole control of the government through a coup--and the first real U.S. neo-colony in Africa had been firmly established.
ZAIRE UNDER THE MADE-IN THE USA DICTATOR
One mark of the long and close relationship between the U.S. and Mobutu is that he was given face-to-face meetings with every U.S. president from Lyndon Johnson to George Bush. Reagan praised him as "a friend of democracy and freedom."
With this U.S. seal of approval, Mobutu has headed a brutal regime that has
brought nothing but horrors and misery to the Zairean people. Those considered a threat to the Mobutu regime have been shot down in the streets, imprisoned, executed or forced into exile. Mobutu and his clique have been raking in an estimated $400 million a year--while the masses of people starve and live under the constant threat of murderous rampages by the government troops.
The entire economy has been severely distorted and warped to serve imperialist needs and interests. In over 30 years of ruling Zaire, the Mobutu regime has not built so much as one hospital or school. Roads and electricity are non-existent in most of the country.
The few infrastructure projects that have been built serve the capitalist mining operations,
bypassing the towns and villages. This was once an extremely fertile farming area. Today, all but 1 percent of the farming in Zaire is subsistence farming--which barely feeds those working the land.
For the U.S. and other imperialists, their interests in Zaire focus on two aspects. First, Zaire sits smack in the middle of an area sometimes called the "Persian Gulf of Minerals." The country supplies the U.S. and other powers with huge quantities of non-fuel minerals which are crucial to military and industrial production--from copper to cobalt, gold and industrial diamonds.
Second, Zaire--which borders on nine other countries--has been used as a key
player in, and a springboard for, U.S. economic, political and military maneuvers throughout Africa. This was especially important during the period of fierce contention between the rival U.S. and Soviet imperialist blocs in the 1970s and 1980s. The U.S. sent billions of dollars in aid and loans during that period to build up Mobutu's military and prop up his regime. And the U.S. imperialists--along with France--sent troops
several times to come to the direct rescue of the Mobutu regime when it was
threatened by supposedly "Soviet-backed" secessionist forces in Katanga.
Mobutu played a key role in helping the U.S.-backed forces in Angola, and Zaire was used as a supply conduit and base for the efforts to destabilize the Soviet-backed Angolan government throughout the1980s.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Zaire has held less strategic significance for the U.S. But because of its size and central position in the continent, Zaire is still seen as an important part of any U.S. moves in Africa. Zaire and the nearby areas have also become a focus of intensifying contention between the U.S. and the French imperialists, who see Central and West Africa as their main stomping ground.
And the mineral deposits of Congo continue to be a target of the big power
vultures. The British newspaper Financial Times wrote, "Congo may be short of many things, but untapped mineral wealth is not one of them."
This callous remark reveals how the imperialists have no interest in the plight of the people of Congo --but their cold hearts beat faster at the prospect of making big bucks off of this oppressed country.
Since they first set foot in Zaire, the U.S. rulers have claimed that their
actions and policies are motivated by a desire to "help the people", "defend
human rights", "promote democracy" and so on. History
shows the reality: Behind all U.S. actions and policies have been the
naked imperialist interests of profits and domination. Today, as the
U.S., France and other powers talk once again about coming to the "aid" of the people of Congo, this history lesson must not be forgotten.
Now that liberal forces have succeeded in forcing U.S. economic sanctions on South Africa, they have shifted their focus to other areas of current Reagan administration policy toward Africa. In a move reminiscent of Jimmy Carter's days as president, they
have raised the banner of "human rights" in a new campaign to destabilize U.S. allies in Africa. Early this year, they took the opportunities afforded by Mobutu Sese Seko's visit to Washington to focus attention on a critical U.S. ally in Africa - Zaire.
Mobutu, who took power in Zaire in a bloodless coup in November 1965, has been a faithful U.S. ally for virtually all of his uninterrupted 37 years in power. He supported U.S.-backed democratic resistance forces in Angola during the 1975-1976 civil war, reestablished diplomatic relations with Israel at a time when few other African nations would do so, and was the only African leader to send combat forces to support the governments of Chad and Togo against Libyan-backed insurgents. Currently, he plays a major diplomatic role in regional affairs, and he has been very responsive to U.S. geostrategic concerns in southern and central Africa.
Mobutu's record is not spotless, however. He has been guilty of human rights violations - as have many other Third World leaders - and reputedly has also enriched himself off international loans, to the detriment of the Zairian people. In this sense, Mobutu represents the classic problem for U.S. foreign policy in the Third World: what to do about the friendly but corrupt strongman? The ruined Democratic Republic of Congo is a country that best exemplifies the dramatic consequences of 40 years of US foreign policy in the third world. The DRC is one of the largest and richest countries in Africa, but today the vast majority of its 50 million people live on roughly 20 cents per person per day, and eat less than two-thirds of the calories needed daily to maintain health.
THE REAGAN LEGACY IN LATIN AMERICA: TWO CASE STUDIES
"Reagan Was the Butcher of My People":
Fr. Miguel D'Escoto Speaks From Nicaragua
Tuesday, June 8th, 2004
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/08/1453219
Fr. Miguel D'Escoto, is a Catholic priest who was Nicaragua's Foreign Minister under the Sandinista government in the 1980s.
According to him, the 8 years Reagan was in office represented one of the most bloody eras in the history of the Western hemisphere, as Washington funneled money, weapons and other supplies to right wing death squads. And the death toll was staggering - more than 70,000 political killings in El Salvador, more than 100,000 in Guatemala, 30,000 killed in the contra war in Nicaragua. In Washington, the forces carrying out the violence were called "freedom fighters." This is how Ronald Reagan described the Contras in Nicaragua: "They are our brothers, these freedom fighters and we owe them our help. They are the moral equal of our founding fathers."
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
FATHER MIGUEL D'ESCOTO:
"First of all, let me start out by saying that, of course, Reagan is now dead. And I, for one, would like to say only nice things about him. I'm not insensitive to the feelings of many U.S. people mourning president Reagan, but as I pray that god in his infinite mercy and goodness forgive him for having been the butcher of my people, for having been responsible for the deaths of some 50,000 Nicaraguans, we cannot, we should not ever forget the crimes he committed in the name of what he falsely labeled freedom and democracy.
"More perhaps than any other U.S. President, Reagan convinced many around the world that the U.S. is a fraud, a big lie. Not only was it not democratic, but in fact the greatest enemy of the right of self-determination of peoples. Reagan, as you mentioned just a few minutes ago, was known as the great communicator, and I believe that that is true only if one believes that to be a great communicator means to be a good liar. That he was for sure. He could proclaim the biggest lies without even as much as blinking an eyelash. Hearing him talk about how we were supposedly persecuting Jews and burning down non-existent synagogues, I was led to believe really, that Reagan was possessed by demons. Frankly, I do believe Reagan at that time as much as Bush today was indeed possessed by the demons of manifest destiny.
"Of course, as I say this, I'm quite aware that to the people of say for example, Project for a New American Century, that is counted as a big plus. Because of Reagan and his spiritual heir George W. Bush, the World today is far less safe and secure as it has ever been. Reagan in fact was an international outlaw. He came to the Presidency of the United States shortly after Samosa, a Dictator that the U.S. has imposed over Nicaragua for practically half a century; had been deposed by Nicaraguan Nationalists under the leadership of the Sandinista Liberation Front.
"To Reagan Nicaragua had to be re-conquered. He blamed Carter for having lost Nicaragua, as if Nicaragua ever belonged to anyone else other than the Nicaraguan people. That was then the beginning of this war that Reagan invented, and mounted and financed and directed, the Contra War. About which he continually lied to the People. Helping the United States people to be the most ignorant people around the world. I said i! gnorant, I don't say not intelligent. But the most ignorant people around the world about what the United States does abroad. People don't even begin to see -- if they did, they would rebel. And so, he lied to the people, as Bush lies to the people today and as they push on, thinking that the United States is above every law, human or divine. And we took the United States, Reagan's United States, his government to court, the World Court.
"I was Foreign Minister at that time here in Nicaragua. I was responsible for that. And the United States government received the harshest sentence, the harshest condemnation ever in the history of world justice. In spite of the fact that the United States since the early 1920's has been proclaiming to the world that one of the proofs of its moral superiority as compared to other countries around the world is the fact that it abides by the international law and was obedient to the world court when the United States was brought to the world court in Nicaragua and received the condemnation that the United States failed to heed the sentence and they till owe Nicaragua by now must be between 20,000 and $30,000 million at the time when we left government that the damages caused by that Reagan war was over $17 billion, and this, according to very moderate estimators of damage, people from the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America, people from Harvard University and from Oxford and from the University of Paris basically this is the team that was pulled together to estimate the damage. The United States was ordered to pay for the damage. Bush never even wanted to talk to me about it. I said: "Well, let's have a meeting so that you comply with your sentence of the court." He said to me in two different letters that there was nothing to talk about.
"So, Reagan did damage to Nicaragua beyond the imaginations of the people who are hearing me now. The ripple effects of that; criminal murderous interventions in my country will go on for what, 50 years or more."
2. How Ronald Reagan changed my life
By Greg Butterfield
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the June 17, 2004 issue of Workers World newspaper (Contact John Catalinoto)
President Ronald Reagan figures mightily in my own political development. I was a junior-high and high school student during his regime.
My first memory of genuine political consciousness is sitting in front of the television in the early 1980s, listening to Reagan attack welfare mothers. My own family was on welfare, like millions of others, not because of any personal failings, but because of the cruel workings of the capitalist economy Rea gan championed. There were no jobs.
As a child in a rural, virtually all-white area of Northern Wisconsin, I couldn't yet understand the racist implications of Reagan's welfare bashing for millions of oppressed families in the ghettos from Los Angeles to New York. But I knew an attack on poor people when I heard it. That night he, and capitalism, made an enemy for life.
I remember the humiliation my parents felt at the time, forced to grovel every few months to keep the meager government assistance coming so my brothers and I could eat. I remember what happened a few years later, when Wisconsin Gov. Tom my Thompson (now a Bush cabinet member) followed Reagan's lead and eliminated assistance for thousands of poor families. I remember how that winter we had to eat raccoon carcasses meant for dog food because there was nothing else.
Spurred by the painful crisis of my family and others I knew, I went on to learn about the Black liberation struggle of the 1960s, about the civil war in Nicaragua, and the enormous Cold War arms buildup designed to run the Soviet Union into the ground. The ever-increasing military budget was the flip side of Reagan's vicious attack on programs to aid the poor and unemployed. Money was being stolen from the poor to build the rich man's war machine. Now 32, I have spent half my life in the progressive movement. I consider myself pretty hardened to the hypocrisy of the big-business media. What could be worse than post-Sept. 11, after all? Still, their fawning over Reagan and his "legacy of freedom" sickens me.
Just like after Sept. 11, there are millions upon millions of people in the United States who know better--who know that Reagan was no hero, but one of history's worst criminals. But they are made to feel isolated by the full-court press of slavish media coverage.
The truth about Reagan and his legacy must be told.
Ronald Reagan was a scab. His political career began when, as a leader of the Screen Actors Guild in Hollywood, he ratted on fellow union members and others before the McCarthyite House Committee on Un-American Activities.
Ronald Reagan was a racist. As governor of California in the 1960s and 1970s, he joined the FBI in waging war against the rebelling African American community and those heroic advocates of Black liberation, the Black Panther Party. He was responsible for the deaths of many young Black freedom fighters. Only a worldwide movement saved his personal nemesis, Angela Davis, from unjust imprisonment. In the 1980s, his administration was responsible for CIA-sponsored drug running in Black communities to fund the contra war against Nicaragua.
Ronald Reagan hated the poor. He knew that capitalism creates armies of poor and unemployed workers, and that they constitute the greatest threat to the profit system. Over decades, first as governor of California and then as president for eight years, he missed no opportunity to wage war on the poor--their image in society as well as their material well-being. He was a prime mover in the post-civil-rights-era rollback of public perceptions of the poor as less than human. He was an early champion of the "Cadillac welfare mother" myth, and continued to use it throughout his career. Reagan blazed the trail for none other than Democratic President Bill Clinton, who smashed the federal welfare system in 1996.
Ronald Reagan also hated gays, lesbians, bi and trans people--and he promoted a vicious homophobia to characterize AIDS as a "gay disease" and stigmatize people with AIDS, a disproportionate number of them people of color. Reagan blocked funding for AIDS education, prevention, treatment or care, here and in other countries. The AIDS crisis exploded during the Reagan presidency. He let it. The president now being lauded as a swell fellow, a kind, good-hearted, decent guy you just couldn't help but love, was in fact a callous killer. He is directly responsible for the HIV/AIDS deaths of tens of thousands of people then--and millions around the world since.
Ronald Reagan was a union buster. He broke the PATCO air controllers'strike in 1981. This act, at the beginning of a reactionary period in world history, dealt a body blow to the labor movement from which it is still struggling to recover. Workers in the United States pay the price every single day when they face off with the boss on the job, when they collect their paychecks, when they are told they must pay for their health benefits or lose them.
Ronald Reagan was a warmonger. The idea of people being free of U.S. imperialist domination was anathema to him, especially if they were people of color. His war crimes--from the funding, arming and training of some of the very forces today called "terrorists" to wage war on the pro-socialist revolutionary government of Afghanistan, to the invasion of tiny Grenada--are too many to list. But mention should be made of the death squads his regime promoted in El Salvador, and the reactionary contra army and invasion threats that undermined the Nicaraguan Revolution.
Ronald Reagan was a bitter enemy of all poor and working people. What is it that the media and political establishment are celebrating as Reagan's "legacy"?
It is his role in helping to destroy the Soviet Union, the great achievement of the workers' and peasants' revolution of 1917, and setting back the world movement for socialism. The unrelenting nuclear arms buildup and aggressive threats that were the hallmark of his presidency laid the groundwork for the USSR's demise.
The USSR's existence for over 70 years had the effect of challenging imperialist aggression in many areas of the world. The existence of a major alternative economic and political system helped countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America to achieve a measure of independence from the former colonial powers. In the Western imperialist countries, it helped the labor and civil-rights movements win and hold onto hard-fought gains, because workers knew there was another system that guaranteed jobs, food, housing and health care for all people.
There are many other crimes that bear Reagan's stamp: the continuing rollback of women's right to choose, the war on immigrants, the speech at a Bitburg, Ger many, cemetery honoring Nazi SS troops, and so many more.
The history of the last decade-plus is Reagan's real legacy: more war, more occupations, a return to openly colonialist methods and ideology, more racism, more vicious attacks on women and the lesbian/gay/bi/trans communities, fewer rights and falling living standards for workers, more people hungry and homeless with no safety net.
Of course, Ronald Reagan was only an individual. If he had not existed, the reactionary social forces he represented would have thrown up someone else in his place. But it is hard to imagine that they could have found someone more treacherous, hateful and vicious to represent them. Just because he died of a lingering illness that cruelly affects millions of people doesn't give him a "Get Out of Jail Free" card in the hearts and minds of those who lost so much through his cruel actions--actions he clearly relished.
History will judge Ronald Reagan as one of the bitterest enemies of the people. His name will rightly be reviled, and his terrible legacy of racism, war and brutality will be undone by people united in solidarity to build a world that puts people's needs ahead of profit.
And me? I'm sorry that I'll never see the man face justice for his crimes. I have this one consolation: Ronald Reagan helped make me a communist. I know he'd really hate that.
APPENDIX:
HOW MULTINATIONAL MINING COMPANIES ARE STEALING CONGO'S PATRIMONY
Behind the aggression by a Rwandan-Ugandan-Burundian coalition - supported by well-known superpowers and facilitated by Congolese rebel puppets - under which the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has been since 1998, there is an important stake for transnational mining companies and corporations, as a report by a UN panel of experts on the plundering and exploitation of Congo's mineral and natural resources has just indicated. Mining resources in other countries of the world have already been heavily exploited, not to say exhausted, and those, which are being exploited, are associated with tremendous costs.
The collapse of the Soviet Union has put an end to bipolarity and this has favoured the rise to power of the multinational corporations, whose expansion and global strategies today can no longer be stymied, even by national governments themselves who must ensure their investments. From now on multinational mining companies are nurturing the ambition of creating a new world order, as they operate free of any competition, by proceeding to the creation of new state entities - by dismantling the strictures of a former state or annihilating it altogether and setting up in its stead a new state entity operating as a simple subsidiary or a trivial post, which will be their own replicas and will operate as one of their own organs.
Africa finds itself at the centre of these new planetary stakes. With almost one third of the world raw materials, abandoned by the former metropolitan powers, which have been disengaging gradually, both from the point of view of cooperation and of military assistance, African countries have become easy prey of multinational corporations. Today no African leader can dare put up some noticeable resistance against these new masters of the world, I mean the powerful multinational corporations, which through successive mega-mergers are increasing their size as well as their powers to do harm against trivialised populations. In fact, to better control their capital investments, these multinational corporations are imposing upon African populations political leaders of their own choosing, who very often are badly known to the people, and thus are destabilising the continent, and giving through the hypocritically so-called pacification, the opportunity to the UN armies to push on the throats of the people a de facto secession, which they do not want. They can thus manage to create their own state within the state.
The size of the Democratic Republic of Congo (which is as big as the whole of western Europe), its geological strategic position in the heart of the continent, the sharing of its borders with nine (9) other countries, along with its mineral resources, had destined it as first target and the site of choice for the pursuit of this world strategy in Africa.
Accordingly, the great financiers of this world, hunters of mineral resources, have their eyes targeted on Congo, once described by the Belgian occupants as 'a geological scandal', where discovered mineral deposits are still virgin or ill exploited and likely to open markets to big capital gain investments.
That is why mining transnational corporations are fighting over the most juicy bits and pieces in one or the other part of Congo, and this in keeping with the political tendencies or 'rebellions', which are associated with them and sometimes even created by them. The attempt to appropriate to themselves the Congo through war should allow these multinational corporations, if victory chooses the camp of Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, which are fighting on their behalf, to take over the Congolese mineral resources and use them for their interests.
Congo has copper and cobalt reserves, which would be the most important in the world for several years. It was the first producer of these red metals, pumping 500,000 tons a year into the market from 1978 onward. But in 1985, this production dropped to 30,000 tons as a result the deterioration of the mining infrastructures of the major mine of Kamoto in Kolwezi, a section of which collapsed in 1990 while its production represented 33% of Gecamines, Congo's giant mining parastatal and a major supplier of foreign exchange for Congio's public treasury; as well as the fall in copper prices and the mismanagement of the state portfolio by successive governments of the Mobutu regime.
In 1996, Kabila, a long-time opponent of Mobutu led a rebellion backed by Rwanda and Uganda to overthrow Mobutu, taking advantage of the geo-political changes in the region. The replacement of Mobutu was approved by the United States of America, determined to confine their old Cold War ally into the dustbin of history. Transnational mining companies were always hustling between the rebels and governmental authorities in order to seize their shares, by making sure that they were on the side of the winner and by forcing destiny, if need be. In March 1997, as soon as Kisangani fell to Kabila's Alliance Democratique pour la Liberation du Congo-Zaire (ADFL), the leaders of American Mineral Fields Inc., a metals giant multinational company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (symbol -AMZ) as a junior mining company set up their office in Goma to enter in contact with the authorities of ADFL. AMZ was formed in 1995 to develop Brazilian diamond interests and was operating from Arkansas in the US, and subsequently shifted its focus to the vast mineral opportunities in the former Zaire. The contact was made thanks to a retired Belgian Colonel, Willy Mallant, military advisor of ADFL and former military advisor to Mobutu as well. AMZ succeded in taking over the bid for the exploration of copper and cobalt in Tenke - Fungurume, Katanga, a mining concession belonging to Gecamines, at the expense of its competitor, South African mining company Anglo American Corporation Zincor and Belgium's Union Minière who was granted licences by the outgoing Mobutu regime to extract and process copper and cobalt in Kasomba and Kolwezi.
But according Pierre Baracyetse, a French mining civil engineer, AMZ was at that time implicated and interested in the contract for the construction of the orbital platform around the world that is destined to replace the Russian Station, MIR after its demise. It is a question of a $60 billion market, which will end in 2004 with the launching of the last module. Enterprises and industries from 60 countries are participating in it. Special alloys, which enter into the composition of numerous parts of this special engine require enormous quantities of rare and precious metals, such as cobalt, coltan (colombo-tantalite or niobium), tungsten or gold. All these metals are found in the Congolese underground.
The agreement between the AFDL and AMZ was described by Jean-Raymond Boulle, AMZ's key shareholder as 'a new era lurking out in the former Zaire'. 'There is a risk, but for us it is logical,' Boulle said. The agreement consisted of a transfer of Gecamines, the giant of Congolese economy to AMZ under a form of privatisation.
It dealt with three sites, including:
1. A first project worth US$200 million in Kolwezi for the extraction of copper and cobalt;
2. A second project worth $30 million for a plant for the extraction of cobalt from copper residues in Kipushi; and
3. A third project for a zinc processing plant, requiring more than US$550 million in investment in Kipushi.
The mine of Kipushi is unique in that it contains a strong concentration of the mineral on a small surface area, and that this mineral is located, in addition, into an underground layer more than 1,000 metres deep. Germanium and almost all the other minerals associated with copper are extracted there, beside copper itself and zinc.
Kabila is also said by his detractors to have signed another agreement with his Ugandan, Rwandan and Burundian backers, consisting of a revision of the border drawings in favour of Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi as a price to be paid by Congo for the aid given to him during the war of liberation and for the problem of security in the border with the four countries.
As soon as he settled in Kinshasa, Kabila re-distributed concessions of the different mining sites to different mining companies to allow him to honour his short term obligations and also to pay the daily costs of his politico-administrative apparatus. He courageously renounced to the privatisation of Gecamines which AMZ had negotiated in April 1997 with the new ADFL Congolese authorities.
He also revised all the contracts signed with the American-Canadian consortium AMZ. Instead he signed an agreement with AMZ and Anglo American Corporation of South Africa under which the two companies would form a joint venture to put the Kipushi and Kolwezi tailings copper and cobalt deposits into production in partnership with Gecamines. In 1999, a new management team was appointed and Belgium's Union Minière, the world's largest refiner of cobalt and zinc, acquired 11% interest in the joint venture with the option to increase this investment to 20%.
But Kabila was unaware of the stakes in the hands of his new masters and their objectives: to invade the country, balkanise and partition it into antagonistic micro-states and plunder its riches. And so by revising all these contracts, Kabila thus signed not only his own fate but that of his country as well. The rest is history. On August 2, 1998, The Rwandese wing of the ADFL rebelled against Kabila, and as a result, Congo was, once again, solicited from either of the two classic poles: in the east, the rebels who are masterminded by Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi, with superpowers and multinational mining companies as major funds providers in addition to the plundering of Congo's natural and mineral resources which is also sustaining the aggression; and in the west, the government side officially assisted by three countries, including Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia. Note that every time the aggressors announced the capture of a major Congolese locality, the Western media hurried to state precisely its economic importance.
The aggressors and their backers expected to swiftly eliminate Kabila, underestimating his start. But finally they got him. President Kabila was assassinated on 17th January this year - the same day Lumumba was massacred and this is not mere coincidence - his death executed by 'an African hand', including his own entourage (the inquisition is about to end, and the results made public. But so far several of Kabila's former close aides, including Colonel Eddy Kapend and General Yav, have become the known fall guys) - and decided by Americans so irritated by Kabila's nationalism, in the words of Colette Braeckman, journalist with the Belgian daily, Le Soir, and expert on Congo and the Great Lakes Region issues.
Joseph Kabila who succeeded to his father faces pretty much the same challenges. His priority of priorities, he says, is to make sure that Rwandan, Ugandan and Burundians troops withdraw from Congo. Then an inter-Congolese dialogue followed by general elections will take place. But Joseph Kabila has pursued a peaceful resolution of the conflict as stipulated by the Lusaka accord despite its numerous biases against Congo's national sovereignty and territorial integrity, thus presenting the international community and multilateral agencies, including the IMF, the World Bank, the UN and the OAU with a challenge to take action swiftly given the stakes involved the war and the aggression which the Congolese people - 2.300.000 of whom have been massacred by the invading troops - are victims.
Soon after he came to power Joseph Kabila announced the 'liberalisation' of the economy - to the satisfaction of the IMF, the World Bank and multinational mining companies - and the removal of certain exchange control, creating a new incentive for foreign investment, particularly from Europe and America.
Two multinational mining giants are particularly upbeat about what they call 'a new atmosphere of heightened optimism surrounding the political development in the Democratic Republic of Congo'.
Firstly AMZ which recently announced that it has just scooped a new contract with the new government of the Democratic Republic of Congo worth $300 million for Kolwezi cooper-cobalt tailings project in the southern rich in minerals Katanga province, and which it calls 'potentially the largest direct investment in the war-torn central African country.
It soon will enter into a framework agreement with Gecamines to evaluate the Kipushi zinc/copper mine, and says it has won a tender to develop the Kolwezi copper/copper tailings deposits in partnership with Zincor of South Africa.
Secondly, the Tenke Mining Corporation based in Vancouver, British Columbia is due to start work at the Tenke Fungurume, the company's world class copper/cobalt project in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Tenke Fungurume concessions are located in Katanga province in the southernmost part of the country. The concessions host large, high-grade copper/cobalt deposits that are world renowned and considered as one of the largest and richest underdeveloped copper/cobalt deposits. Tenke Mining Corporation has initiated meetings with Gecamines to discuss plans for the proposed development of Tenke Fungurume.
I interviewed Tim Read, AMZ's Chief Executive based in London. Mr Read said 'he was very optimistic about the new political developments in the Democratic Republic of Congo and consequently, our two projects in that country, Kolwezi and Kipushi'.
Here is the integrality of the interview:
ARL: The honeymoon between the new leadership in Kinshasa and AMZ was short-lived and relations soured almost immediately as soon as President Laurent Désiré Kabila settled in Kinshasa. What went wrong between your company and the regime of the late President Kabila?
TR: I think there were probably misunderstandings on both sides. It was a very different management group to the management group that we have at America Mineral Fields now. The management of AMZ changed radically at the end of 1998 but before that time, there had been some degree of dispute (…) between the government and AMZ. But in the middle of 1998, AMZ established a joint venture with Anglo-American. And then in November 1998, they concluded a convention, and they concluded a contract of association with the government and with Gecamines and an agreement on the project was then effectively reached. The problem of course, was first of all that, at the time the joint venture between Anglo-American and AMZ was put in place, and the original approach to government made - and that would be about July 1998 -the war started, an invasion took place. That made it extremely difficult to finance a major scale project in Congo because of the war and concerns by the banks.
ARL: You refer to some degree of dispute between the government of President Laurent Désiré Kabila and AMZ. Was President Kabila to blame as we read it in the media here?
TM: No, I don't think that President Kabila was to blame. Once the joint venture was structured between Anglo American and AMZ, I don't think President Kabila was responsible for holding down the project or having it delayed. The issue for me I would say was the fact of a much more fundamental problem which was caused by first of all the invasion. Secondly, the fact that there was not a good relationship between the government of Congo and the multilateral agencies, I mean the IMF and the World Bank. There was a combination of raisons there, and I wouldn't wish to blame the government of Congo. It was a very difficult situation. But I think I would prefer to look forward rather than review some of the history of the situation. What we have at the moment in the Congo is a new president with a new cabinet and a new set of policies, all of which give potential investments a great deal more confidence into the country.
ARL: So what sort of new agreements have you reached with Gecamines and the new government of President Joseph Kabila regarding the project?
TR: Over the course of the last years, we have worked closely with Gecamines, that is Anglo American and ourselves, in trying to find a very sensible and practical way of moving the project forward. And that meant a number of things. On the one hand, we scaled down the size of the project. On the other hand, there has been a re-negotiation of some of the commercial terms of the project and that has required a degree of give and take on both sides between ourselves and Gecamines and the government. Under the new terms of agreement, both AMZ and Anglo American will hold 60% of the joint venture company called Congo Mineral Developments (CMD) and Gecamines earning 40% of it. But we are also agreeing to make payment to Gecamines over the life of the project in addition to their 40% interest exceeding $200 million. Those payment were agreed between ourselves and Anglo American and Gecamines. Having agreed all these terms with Gecamines, we are now going through the process of completing the convention, getting the council of the ministers to sign the convention and then we will wait for a series of either constitutional or presidential decrees to put in place a number of things. The first thing is that there will be a very small modification of the mining code. In order for us to complete this transaction very quickly, the government has agreed to make an interim amendment to the mining code which provides us with protection and allows us to achieve security of tenure on the project which is very important, notwithstanding the government's fundamental revision of the mining code in about six months'time.
ARL: How do you feel about the political and security risks which are still there, namely that the invading troops have not pulled out completely and the intercongolese dialogue has not taken place yet?
TR: We are aware of all these political risks. We are in contact with the government and a lot of the players. We met with the new prime minister and former governor of Katanga Augustin Katumba Mwake in January this year and we have a close relationship with a lot of the politicians there. And one of our senior executive is currently in Kinshasa in discussion with the government. So we are following the situation closely. I met with President Joseph Kabila in February and I was very impressed with the young man. I thought he had a great deal of understanding of the issues and he was obviously very strong about the need for disengagement by all the belligerent nations. And yet he gave us a very strong reassurance that he was looking to pursue a policy of first of all good governance for the Congo but also to create an environment which will be attractive for foreign investors. And I strongly believe that this project will be the first major project to be started and to be financed in the Congo.
ARL: How long do you think this government will last?
TR: I think we have to deal with the government and take it completely at its face value. I think that this government is very well supported by the United States, France, Belgium and Great Britain on the basis of the policies and the actions that has been taken by President Joseph Kabila which have also impressed the IMF and the World Bank. To be honest this government is much more open than the previous one. So we are very hopeful that we will not be disappointed. Progress is being made. Congo will recover its territorial integrity national sovereignty because that is what the people really want. It is amazing that they have never fudged about it despite all the troubles since the 60's.
ARL: A commission formed last year by the UN Security Council to verify the extent and methods used by the invading armies present in Congo in exploiting Congolese natural resources. Do you feel concerned?
TR: No, we are not concerned. I have not seen the report but I would be surprised if we were mentioned because our involvement has really been one of monitoring what has been taking place so far. We have been in a phase of negotiation. We haven't produced any metal over that time since the war broke out. Most important of all, we have absolutely no dealings with the invaders or any of the rebels. We have taken an absolutely consistent approach. We have dealt with the government of President Laurent Désiré Kabila and after his murder, we are dealing consistently with the government of Joseph Kabila. And we haven't dealt with any other parties. We have been approached by people. We have a number of contacts that have been made with us by some of these parties but every time we repeated the same thing to them that we can only continue with our involvement - as a mining company not involved in politics - with the legitimate government that is in power. And that legitimate government at the moment is the government of Joseph Kabila. But I think the report has clarified what the motivations were behind what has taken place over the last two and half years in Congo.
ARL: Can you tell us how long this project is likely to last and when you are actually going to start?
TR: We have probably a matter of a month to resolve all outstanding documentary issues and paper work but we know there is a great pool of good will in government to see this done very quickly. We will then put in place a feasibility study which will take about six months. We have done a great deal of work over the study already. We have had a small pilot plant running in Johannesburg treating this material. So we fully understand what the process chemistry is. We know the reserves. They are fully substantial and the project can take up to 30 years. We are completely confident about the geological and mining aspects.
If feasibility study is completed by the end of this year, then it will probably take up to a year to organise the finance of this project. And you have to remember that this project will be the largest project in mining and metals undertaken outside of South Africa in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. It is a very major project. It will not be easy given the political risks in the country to get this financed quickly. It is going to be a challenging process. The way it will be financed will be partly by our shareholders and those of Anglo American. But it will also be financed by the lending banks and you have to satisfy the lending banks that their money is not at risk. That will depend to a great deal on President Joseph Kabila being able to deliver peace and a stable economic regime to the country.
On the 2 August 1998, Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi launched a war of aggression against the Democratic Republic of Congo with the blessing of Washington, London and South Africa, on the pretext that Laurent DésiréKabila whom they supported to chase long-term kleptocratic dictator Mobutu Sese Seko from power, was not doing enough to curb rebel activities from the Congolese territory into Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi and worse he was not allowing them a free reign in the Congo to track down and massacre all Hutus present in the Congo. A UN Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of Congo, has proved that the reasons advanced by the aggressors as an alibi. This invasion provides a smoke screen for and is closely linked to another invasion of Congo' mining properties at the heart of which are American and Canadian mining companies and the Openheimer family-run South Africa-based Anglo American Corporation. These mining companies represent forward beachheads for the London-centred Club of the Isles, an Anglo-American global raw materials cartel.
The opening shot of what is commonly known in business circle as the 'Second Great Scramble' for Congo's strategic mineral grab, took place in 1996 when under Mobutu regime, Banro Corp. of Toronto bought 36% of Société Minière et Industrièlle du Kivu (Sominki). Sominki was formed in 1976 as an amalgamation of nine companies that had been operating in Kivu, the second richest in minerals Congolese province after Katanga, since 1900s. It operates 47 mining concessions, encompassing an area of 10,271 square kilometres. Banro raised some of its money for the purchase by floating shares in Singapore. Banro was previously a small financial institution, with little apparent aptitude for mining. It was reconfigured as a company for the special purpose of this purchase, or acting as a front for someone.
Another large chunk of Sominki was bought by the then Belgian-based mining company Mines d'Or du Zaire (MDDZ). Now 60% of MDDZ's shares were owned by Cluff Mining CO. of London whose 65% of shares are controlled by Anglo-American Corp., the world's largest mining company and a key component of the Club of the Isles. On September 1996, Banro and MDDZ announced their merger, with Banro selling its shares to MDDZ. The new Banro-MDDZ company consolidated a 72% stake in Sominki, while Mobutu's government held 28%. The Banro-MDDZ entity subsequently announced that it planned to acquire that 28% from the government, the last nail in the coffin for Sominki.
In 1997, Kabila took advantage of the geopolitical change in the region, whereby Rwanda vowed to root out the Interahamwe (= those who kill together), perpetrators of the 1994 genocide, harboured by Mobutu in the east of the former Zaire, to ensure its stability. Uganda and Angola were equally concerned, given the fact that Mobutu also harboured Angolan UNITA rebels who had important bases in the south western part of the former Zaire; Ugandan Lord's Liberation Army rebel movement was also operating from the north eastern part of the former Zaire and posed a constant threat to President Museveni's regime.
Congo's neighbours decided to do away with Mobutu and readied their military and logistic support to Mobutu's arch-foe: Laurent Désiré Kabila.
But in reality Banro was anxious to get its mining operations started as quickly as possible. However, the Sominki mining zone that Banro acquired started in the town of Bukavu, the centre for the major camp of Rwandan refugees who had fled to the former Zaire, with nearly a million people. To get mining started, the entire zone would require clearing. Suddenly in mid-October 1996, firing started on the Bukavu refugee camp, supposedly against 'Hutu rebels' who were hiding there. The military attack on the camp forced hundreds of thousands of refugees to flee Kivu province, back to Rwanda.
But who did the firing? While a clear answer was not forthcoming, it may have involved portions of the newly acquired Sominki apparatus itself. For, in acquiring Sominki, Banro did not just acquire a company; it acquired the effcetive governmental structure of the entire Kivu province.
A Banro Corporate press release said at the time: 'Sominki owns an extensive infrastructure which includes repair shops, machine shops, electrical shops and large fleet of Land Rover vehicles. In addition, it operates six hydroelectric sites, a number of airstrips, and 1,000 kilometres of Roads. Sominki is virtually self-sufficient.' This self-sufficiency covered security matters. As a mining company, Sominki had its own explosive supplies and access to weapons, that is it had the capability to carry out such an attack, or was in a commanding position to influence Rwandans and Ugandans to fire on the refugee camps.
In 1996 Barrick Gold joined hand with Hollinger Corp, and purchased the 'Mines d'Or de Kilomoto' a huge gold concession in Congo's northeast Oriental province, which covers 83,000 square kilometres. Already in May 1995, the Canada-based Barrick Gold Corp. created an international advisory board around the personal leadership of former American President George Bush, then designated as 'honorary senior adviser'.
Also during 1996, the tiny Vancouver-based raw material company, Consolidated Eurocan, headed by international wheeler-dealer Adolf Lundin, began work on exploiting the Tenke-Fungurume copper-cobalt mines in Congo's southern Katanga province, near the border with Zambia, which has the richest cobalt reserves in the world. Cobalt is a strategic metal, crucial in forming alloys with steel, and other metals, giving them great strength and heat resistance. Some 40% of cobalt's use is in aircraft gas turbine engines, and 10% is in magnetic alloys. Consolidated Eurocan in joint-venture with Anglo-American, set to purchase the mining property in phases, for a quarter of a billion American dollars, which is joke for a property that could yield many tens of billions of dollars in revenues.
At the same time, American Mineral Fields (AMF), now trading under the initials AMZ (American Mineral Zincor, since it is in joint-venture with Zincor of South Africa), had acquired from Gecamines, Congo's state mining company, the Kipushi copper-zinc mine, one of the world's premier copper-zinc mines, located in Katanga province (copper and zinc are often mined together). The Belgians developed Kipushi and began mining in 1925. At its peak in 1988, the Kipushi mine produced 143,000 tons of zinc, and 43,000 tons of copper. Its total known and probable reserves stand at 22.6 million tons, grading 2.1% copper and 13.8% zinc. AMZ is the brainchild of its owner, Jean-Raymond Boulle, a former execuitve for De Beers's Diamonds. In turn, AMZ signed an agreement with Anglo-American, which would allow Anglo to invest up to $100 million in any AMZ venture in Katanga province, representing up to a 50% equity stake in the venture, including the Kipushi mine.
After seven months of a swift war, Kabila's 47,000 men helped by Rwandans and Ugandans made it to Kinshasa on 17 May 1997 and chased Mobutu from power. Right after the fall of Kisangani. Congo's third largest city which symbolises Lumumba's struggle for independence, Kabila auto-proclaimed himself the new President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, thus short-circuiting the ambitions of those who helped him win power. Kigali and Kampala wanted to put in Kinshasa someone malleable they could totally remote control and so draw massive political, military and economic dividends in the process. This ambition did not materialise.
As soon as Kabila settled in Kinshasa, and started to articulate clearly the aspirations of his people and summoning them to take their own destiny into their own hands, politically and economically, this was perceived by his sponsors as a covert declaration of independence. Kabila's nationalist stance immediately clashed with their interests, as he eventually reviewed all the contracts - including with Bechtel - Congo had signed with American and South African mineral companies under Mobutu (and when Kabila was a rebel?). Kabila re-nationalised all the mines. De Beers subsequently pulled out of Congo in 1999. Earlier on he had enlisted the support of Zimbabwe to enlarge his circle of friends, should he fall out with the first ones. During the third summit of Comesa (common market community of central and southern African countries) held in Kinshasa on 29 June 1998, Kabila clearly tabled out what role Congo would play within the common market and in Africa as a whole.
He explained that 'more than 40 years of African independence have offered to the world a sad spectacle of a continent looted and humiliated with the complicity of its own sons and daughters'. He expressed the wish 'to see Africa entering the 21st century totally independent of foreign interference' and declared that the battle for Congo's independence and sovereignty is fought in the interest of Africa as a whole.
'Our country,' he said, 'has a vocation of exporting peace, development and security to the rest of Africa. A weak Congo means a vulnerable Africa from its centre, an Africa without a heart.' The stakes were then raised! Even President Thabo Mbeki was prompted to say: 'The more time goes, the more we will loose control of Kabila.' The rest is history. Shortly after President Kabila's assassination, Colette Braeckman of Le Soir, a Belgian daily, wrote: 'The people of Congo have no illusion as to who killed Kabila. They know that his death was conspired by Western agents put off by Kabila's nationalist stance and anxious of loosing their interests but executed by an African and Congolese hand.'
There is now discussion of opening up the major Congolese government-owned diamond mining company, Société Minière de Bakwanga (MIBA), to foreign investors. President Joseph Kabila has ended a unilateral monopoly of exploitation granted to IDI, an Israeli mining company granted by his father, the late President Laurent Désiré Kabila. MIBA accounts for 40% of the Democratic Republic of Congo's official diamond exports. The remaining 60% are developed by artisanal miners, that is, prospectors, who then sell the gems exclusively to Israeli diamond buyers and to international gem dealer Maurice Tempelsman, a former president of US Africa Society, a group that is influential in the shaping of US government Africa policy.
Tempelsman is no stranger in Congo, according to Janine Farrell Roberts, an American Human Rights activist and author of 'Blood Stained Diamonds'. In April, she made a presentation at a roundtable discussion organised by Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-Georgia), at the Rayburn House Office Building to discuss American foreign policy toward Africa, in which she said: 'Maurice Templesman, a private American citizen and businessman, served the De Beers diamond cartel by promoting foreign policy decisions that favoured its access to and control of African diamond fields. This led to the US covertly supporting undemocratic and corrupt regimes in Africa to the great detriment of the African people.'
Roberts further revealed that when Lumumba, Congo's first elected leader spoke of using Congo's resources to benefit the Congo, De Beers feared it would lose access to the one third of world's diamond supply in the Congo - as would also Tempelsman. Shortly after this, the CIA facilitated Lumumba's assassination. Evidence on this came before the Church Intelligence Commission. Immediately after Lumumba's death, the Acting Prime Minister of Congo, Adoula announced support for a very major Tempelsman diamond deal, telegramming this to President Kennedy. The historian Richard Mahoney claimed that the Adoula regime was receiving funds from Tempelsman. A State Department memo headed 'Congo Diamond Deal' stated 'The State Department has concluded that it is in the political interest of the US to implement this proposal.' (2 August 1961).
Immediately after Mobutu came to power, Tempelsman became an even bigger player in Congo - recruiting his own staff from those CIA staffers that Mobutu most favoured that put him to power. Mobutu also at this time gave Tempelsman, as a 'Christmas Gift', rich mineral reserves.
According to Tempelsman's staff interviewed, they had a wonderful time running the Congo - to secure funding for Mobutu. He succeeded in persuading the White House to secretly buy a vast number of diamonds for the US startegic reserve - at a time when Adminstration officials were protesting that the reserve was over full. The reason for this deal given in secret US government memos was to support Mobutu and his partner Adoula. This Tempelsman plan made much profit for him and De Beers.
A State Department Cable of 23 December 1964 warned about the need of secrecy over this Mobutu diamond and South African uranium deal because 'it could outrage the moderate Africans we are trying to calm down.' It suggest South Africa Foreign Minister Muller would understand the need for secrecy since the US was 'doing a job' in the Congo that South Africa could not do. This covert support for Mobutu gave the US a gross excess in the strategic diamond stockpile that was still being sold off in 1997.
In 1967 the State Department reported: 'Tempelsman is playing an increasingly central role as GDRC (Congo's) technical advisor and mediator.' But these deals and other deals done throughout the following decades with a corrupt Mobutu government left the Congolese people in absolute poverty.
I interviewed Simon Guilbert, De Beers's London-based Corporate Affairs Manager who spent 12 years in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
This is what he had to say:
NA: When the late President Laurent Désiré Kabila granted a unilateral monopoly of diamond mining to IDI, an Israeli mining company, where did that leave De Beers, which has the biggest player in the diamond market not only in DRC but also in Angola for donkey years?
DB: We were not affected because we weren't active there anymore at that time. We were buying diamonds from other markets and so we were not competing with anyone. We ended our operations in the DRC since the end of 1999 because we could not sustain to buy diamonds profitably as the war escalated. Since then we have not bought any single diamond from the DRC and that still remains so at the moment. Secondly with the conflict diamonds issue with a UN resolution coming through, we could not guarantee that any diamond we bought in Tsikapa or Mbuji Mayi would not contain conflict diamonds. That is the reason we closed all our offices. We maintain a dwarf presence of six or seven people in Kinshasa and about four or five people in Mbuji Mayi where we still have properties to be maintained.
NA: The invasion took place one year earlier than the time you closed your operations. Does that mean you were still trading during the first year of war?
DB: You must know that we controlled only 10% of the DRC diamonds market at the best of time. There were other players bigger than us. But in 1998, Ambassador Fowler from the UN was looking at the UNITA situation to see how UNITA was able to carry on with the war without diamond connections. And then the same situation transferred itself almost to the DRC where the rebels who then controlled Kisangani were using diamonds to fund that war. We said then that if there is going to be any kind of UN Security Council resolution against diamonds coming from the DRC , we are morally - not legally - obliged to stop trading because we could not then guarantee that if we carried on buying diamonds from the DRC, there wouldn't be conflict diamonds from Kisangani coming to our clients line. That was the overriding moral factor that topped everything for us in deciding to leave. No matter how easy doing business was, we would still have left because of the morality of conflict diamonds.
NA: President Joseph Kabila has ended has put an end to that monopoly as part of the economic liberalisation he has advocated since coming to power. Does that represent a new window of opportunity for De Beers?
DB: We have been approached recently by the government of the DRC to resume diamond purchases. I think what we are looking for is a stable legal framework from which to operate and establish businesses. A new mineral code or 'Code Minier' as they refer to it needs to be established and the conflict diamonds issue needs to be resolved.
NA: How is that going to be resolved since the war is still going on and half of the country still occupied by a Rwandan-Ugandan-Burundian coalition, backed by well-known superpowers and the complicity of so-called Congolese rebels?
DB: That is a good question. All the diamonds coming from Kisangani and other occupied territories are still deemed to be conflict diamonds. And until the conflict is resolved it is going to be very difficult for us to give absolute guarantee to our clients that all the diamonds we will buy in the DRC remain conflict-free. And therefore we have to be completely sure of the sources of the diamonds. In the current situation in the DRC, it is quite difficult for us to do that. We have a zero-risk attitude. We cannot afford the risk of having conflict diamonds coming through our system.
NA: What do you expect from the 'Code Minier' then?
DB: A solid legal framework from which to establish businesses. We are extremely cautious but of course we want to talk to everyone, we want to maintain relations. As soon as there is that guarantee there, as well as peace and security, then we will take negotiations a step further. We need to help this country going again not only by buying diamonds which are one of its main resources but also prospecting in new areas. We have the expertise and the resources to do that.
NA: So, you will deal only with the government, not the rebels?
DB: I wouldn't imagine anybody wants to deal with the rebels. We would only deal with the legitimate government of the country.
NA: But you dealt with Laurent Désiré Kabila when he was still a rebel?
DB: I think we had talks with him and when he took over the whole country, he was recognised as leading a legitimate government. Only then did we open our buying offices from that point onward. But to be honest we had a conflictual relationship with him since some of the decisions he took were not conducive to our business agenda. I refer particularly to the law forbidding the use of all other currency in transactions in the country except the Congolese Franc, which, he said was an instrument of national unity, political and economic sovereignty. I think it generally agreed that he was not pro-West and trading conditions particularly for the diamond companies became extremely difficult if not impossible for us to operate.
NA: Don't you think Kabila was absolutely right here? After all you maintained your presence in the former Zaire throughout Mobutu's rule despite the fact that his was a bloody, dictatorial and kleptocratic regime where there was no rule of law?
DB: We had a contract with MIBA to buy the diamonds and to be involved in diamond production from the mine. We mined and bought diamonds from the MIBA mine. We were involved in the security of that mine and we knew where the diamonds were coming from. We purchased those diamonds by De Beers. We paid MIBA what we considered to be the market price for diamonds at that time and that was our legal obligation. What MIBA did afterwards is their own business. In 1987 we bought $66 millions worth of diamonds. That money went into the Zairean economy. We paid taxes on all those exports. What the government did with all that money is not our business. We could not control that. Moreover, We contributed to schools and local farming, our national support clients had properties, they could send their children to school and they travelled. That was part of our corporate social responsibility.
NA: Historically speaking, it is said that De Beers played a leading role in Lumumba's downfall and the propping up of Mobutu by Western powers, especially through the then De Beers's agent Maurice Tempelsman. Can you corroborate that?
DB: I don't think you can mix up De Beers with Lumumba in any way. I personally was not around in those days but I am not aware of the Maurice Tempelsman we know of and we communicate with to have acted or negotiated a deal on our behalf. I would doubt it. I don't think we were even there in Congo in 1961. I have to verify that on our records to see when we started prospecting diamonds in Congo.
NA: Finally, the UN set up a panel of experts to report on the 'illegal exploitation of natural and mineral resources and other forms of wealth in the DRC by invading countries and multinationals. Does De Beers feel concerned?
DB: I think any serious and educated person would be concerned about a report such as this, telling of how other countries are looting another country for financial gains. As far as we are concerned we are not there. We are not involved in those activities simply because we are no longer active in the DRC. But I think countries who have combatants inside the DRC should pull them out and DRC's territorial integrity and national sovereignty upheld. There is an internationally recognised Lusaka peace accord and cease fire and we are all aware of Rwanda's security concerns, which hopefully will dealt with by the UN by placing blue helmets along Rwanda's borders with its neighbouring countries. There must be an internationally recognised political solution to this problem. In case of private companies, any individuals proved to be contravening the law of any country and illegally exporting natural and mineral resources should be prosecuted as well as the companies they work for. With global certification in the diamond industry coming up it will be very difficult for anybody to deal in conflict diamond, especially if they come from war torn countries such as the DRC.
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