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"The Democratic Republic of Congo has suffered from chronic lack of Leadership"- Oscar T. Manata former Ambassador to the USA
By Ajong Mbapndah L
The Democratic Republic of Congo known as Zaire until 1997 is the third largest country by area in Africa but is arguably one of the richest in terms of resources. In terms of development the story is different as the country has been embroiled in conflicts considered among the deadliest in the world since world war two. Its vast resources have served more as a source of conflict than development. Ambassador Oscar T. Manata was the last Ambassador of the DRC to the United States prior to the collapse of the long rule of President Mobutu. He now serves as President of the Congolese Reform Movement and Chair of the African Affairs Committee of the African Leadership Empowerment Council. A lot was heard and said about the enigmatic late President Mobutu. In an interview with Ajong Mbapndah L for Pan African Visions, Ambassador Manata gives greater insight into the working of the Mobutu political machine. Lashing out at successive leaderships for betraying the Congolese people, Ambassador says the leaderships of both Kabillas that succeeded Mobutu have not fared any better. Sharing his frustration at the way the vast wealth of the DRC has been plundered for decades; Ambassador Manata urges Africa and the world to help put the country back on the rails. Interesting to learn from Ambassador Manata too that for almost a century of colonial rule, Belgium achieved the feat of leaving behind nine university educated Congolese at independence!PAV: For long, you served as Ambassador of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to the United States under President Mobutu. What is your relationship with the present government of the DRC?
Ambassador Manata. Sorry to let you know that there is no "government" in Kinshasa as we speak today. Mr. Antoine Gizenga resigned few days ago and there is an intense fight and struggle to replace him. To answer your question, let me simply add the following: Yes. I served my country as its Ambassador during the whole period of transition, one of the most difficult period in our history. I was appointed by President Mobutu. However, I'm a native of Kenge (75 km from Kinshasa, in the Bandundu province, while Mobutu was from the North Ubandi, Equatorial province. I'm proud of my achievements since I predicted that there will be some kind of chaos after the military incursion and invasion funded by some Western countries to get rid of Mobutu. To get rid of Mobutu alone, there are almost some 5 millions deaths in the DRC with an ongoing blood war that was not needed. As we all know, Mobutu was already dying of prostate cancer when the Congo was invaded in order to replace him. I'm not surprised by the current catastrophic situation since it was predictable and well planned in order to destabilize and weaken the DRC. My relationships with the current regime in Kinshasa are no different from its relations with my colleagues ambassadors and diplomats abandoned all over the world by the DRC. Sad to say: since 1997 to the present, most ambassadors and diplomats, their wives and children, have been abandoned without salaries, travel tickets back to Congo, under the pretext that they are Mobutu's ambassadors or diplomats. In fact, there has been no working government or responsible leadership to solve our problems. We have no choice but to adjust our status and take care of our families wherever we are. In my case, I'm an international lawyer educated in Louvain (Belgium) and here at the Washington College of Law, at the American University. I'm able to compete on the international job market. I have the skills and experience to do so, I am doing fine personally but I feel the pain for the Congolese People and my personal relatives and friends in this messy Congo today.
PAV: A lot was said about Mobutu. What kind of leader was he and how was like to work for him?
AMB Manata; I am not an expert of "mobutism." I became involved in Mobutu's politics and familiar to his entourage through my outstanding performance as Chair of the Political, Administrative, Judicial Committees and the Foreign Affairs Committee in the National Parliament during eight years (1982-1990). As Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, I traveled a lot with President Mobutu. In 1989, for example, I was part of the Mobutu's Delegation in an official Visit to President Bush in the White House. I accompanied Mobutu in his official visits to Paris, Brussels, to Morocco where I was co-signer of the Rabat Accord ending the Belgo-Congolais conflict and economic contentious dispute. As a result of my performance and negotiation skills, President Mobutu appointed me to serve as Ambassador of our the country here in Washington. It was a terrible experience working for Mobutu. I am proud of my accomplishment in serving so many years under Mobutu. As you may
know, Mobutu inspired fear and terror even to his entourage because his decisions were unpredictable, unreasonable and without appeal. His strategy was to move his ministers, ambassadors, officers from one place to another, from the top to the bottom to create some kind of fear, uncertainty and therefore dependency to him in order to survive. Otherwise, Mobutu was a leader who constantly wanted things to be done as expected especially with regard to his political survival and longevity. I believe that it was more important to work for Mobutu than for the country in order to survive during his entire regime. As a former journalist, Mobutu was well informed. As Ambassador, it was a 24/7 position with all sort of request for information. However, I learned a lot from him and his deep understanding of the country, its tribes, its regional and international alliances.
Unfortunately, Mobutu's leadership and experience did not serve the DRC and its People. Mobutu's great sin remains his well-documented "kleptocracy" and mismanagement of the financial resources of his country. was present when in response to an interview question, Mobutu acknowledged that "Frankly, I would be lying if I said I do not have a bank account in Europe, I do. I would be lying if I said I do not have a fair amount of money. However, I would estimate it to total less than $50 millions. What is that for a head of state?" Meanwhile, as his Ambassador here in Washington, I had no money to pay the electricity, the gas bills, the local employees, including my own salaries for years. Mobutu spent more money in lobbying efforts than in caring for his own people in the country and his diplomats abroad. I believe that some Senegalese Marabous got richer with Mobutu's money than competent professionals like me who spent years working under his regime. To be fair, Mobutu was a generous man who shared his wealth with others but he was so egocentric that he could not allow people along him to get rich for fear of making them financially independent from him. You must feel the need of depending on Him. He was a pleasant boss who would spend the whole day telling jokes to make you laugh; however, don't commit the mistake of believing that Mobutu is your friend! You may be gone professionally and physically. Mobutu's reactions and decisions were simply not predictable.
The pre-Mobutu political regimes and the post-Mobutu regimes were exactly the same. The same causes produce the same effects. From 1885 to 2008, the entire political spectrum of the Congo history gives the same picture characterized by three important factors: personal power, personal wealth, and military force. Mobutu learned the looting and predatory practices in the Congo from King Leopold and the Colonial regimes of Belgium. Evidence shows that Mobutu was deeply inspired by the excessive accumulation of personal wealth by King Leopold (1885-1908) when the entire Congo, then Congo Free State, was his personal " private property." King Leopold's predation resulted in numerous atrocities and human rights violations forcing him to give this vast country to the Belgian People in 1908 under the international pressure. The following colonial regime was exactly the continuation of this same looting and predatory practices with forced labor and lack of education to the point of leaving the Congo with only 9 college graduate on June 30, 1960, the date of its independence. Mobutu took over this predation from 1960 to his overthrow in 1997. The Kabila regimes are not acting for the well-being of the people. They don't care about raising everyone up. Since 1997, the Kabilas emphasized also themselves and their trapping of power and money. There is a personality cult, the father as well as the son. They banned all political parties when they came to power by military invasion to overthrow one single individual Mobutu. When Mobutu overthrew Kasavubu in 1965, he did not invade the country and he did not start a bloody civil war with the involvement of over nine (9) neighboring countries. In short, power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and it did in the RDC.
PAV: Did Mobutu ever claim while in power that after him there will be no Zaire as it was claimed in his days?
AMB Manata: Yes. Mobutu was sure to stay in power for life. Unfortunately for him, he did not anticipate dying of prostate cancer. He did not prepare anybody, even from his family, to succeed him. As I said above, he was playing, appointing and removing from offices a large number of qualified professionals, lawyers, economists, engineers, and others just to use them to consolidate his regime and get rid of them whenever he wanted. However, Mobutu was surrounded by very competent and skilled congolese intellectuals who had no choice but to carry out Mobutu's wrong policies.ome who challenged Mobutu were arrested, jailed or even killed.
Again, Mobutu's failure to prepare his succession is also a legacy of a colonial wrong strategy of preventing Congolese people from getting educated and prepared to take their country over one day. Remember that during almost one century of colonial period, the Belgians educated only nine (9) college graduates in the Congo and on the day of independence,30 June 1960, the Belgians were still planning for more thirty (30) years of colonial domination. They also were surprised by the independence movement and left the country massively without preparing any credible leadership for the Congo.
PAV:Is there any comparison that you can make between the years of President Mobutu i power and the government of Kabila, father and son that succeeded him?
AMB Manata. I was in Washington when Kabila father took over the country in 1997. I went on FOX NEWS Television to congratulate the new leadership and to request the end of economic and financial sanctions against the DRC now that Mobutu has become a thing of the past. I was disappointed by the subsequent events when it became more and more clear that the Kabilas did not really know why they have taken this country over? Their decisions and behavior were exactly like the Mobutu's dictatorship: arbitrary arrests, killings, suppression of constitutional rights, mismanagement of the country's financial and natural resources, cult of war and widespread violence... in one word, they acted like warlords." The implementation of the Sun City Agreement and the Global Inclusive Accord through the installation of Transitional Institutions was an organized looting of financial resources by the three or four warlords who were fighting each against another for years and therefore incapable to carry out a credible agenda in favor of the Congolese People.
The Transition was a messy transition that failed to carry out several tasks, including the national reconciliation, the re-establishment of the State authority, and the formation of a restructured and integrated national Army. The most important failure of the Kabilas is the introduction into the DRC of the culture and weapons with the assistance of some neighbouring countries known for their own culture of genocide and mass killing. The Congolese are a peace-loving people enjoying music, hard work, sharing, and being proud of their rich and large country. The Kabilas introduced the fragmentation of the Army that resulted in fragmented militia groups with widespread terror and large scale violations of basic human rights in the Eastern Congo by bandits like this crazy Nkundabatware supported by Rwanda and some international predators.
As I said earlier, Mobutu was not perfect but at least the country was at peace and governed. Congolese were happy traveling peacefully through their vast country. This is not possible under the Kabilas. While Mobutu was surrounded by competent professionals, the Kabilas are fearful of competent intellectuals who are their easy target. The country is under the reign of institutionalized mediocrity . Selected and pre-selected groups of puppets are elected as planned even if it means creating special mode of power-sharing to accommodate them in accordance with arrangements between influential members of some political parties and the international community, especially some Belgians involved in the looting of mineral and natural resources. So, the 2006 electoral process in the DRC was a fraud. It has been a process of political laundering of the post-Mobutu Warlords. The DRC has no credible leaders as we speak. The 600 or more elected members of Parliament are incapable of helping implement a single reconstruction project among the so-called "Five Chantiers" from their official agenda. Instead, they are enjoying to share the national financial resources with high salaries and other privileges at the expense of the Congolese people who have elected them some times under the pressure of military tanks in the streets of Kinshasa.
PAV: You are head of Congolese Reform Movement (MRC) when your party was created, why and what contribution had it to make to the political development of the DRC?
AMB Manata: This is the best question of this entire interview. I thank you for it. First, let me remind you that I'm a lawyer by professional, an international lawyer to be exact. Since 1997, when my diplomatic duties ended, I have stayed in the United States, working hard to raise my children who all graduated from the best universities and college of this great country, including the University of Virginia, Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, and Temple university to name a few. I am able to make my living without any involvement and outside the congolese messy politics. However, I decided to create the "Mouvement Reformateur Congolese," a year ago, in response to the need for substantial institutional change in the DRC.
I am very proud to continue an exciting mission initiated a century ago by some good people from England, the United States and elsewhere, who challenged in very courageous terms, all forms of abuses and atrocities that were then taking place in the Congo under the regimes of King Leopold. The Congo Reform Movement was created here in the United States, not in Congo, to fight against the widespread violation of human rights and the protection of Congolese People against terrorist and dictatorial regimes. An American journalist such as Mark Twain along with people like George Washington Williams devoted their entire lives to defend the Congolese people against tyranny and terror. They wrote books, held conference, met with Western leaders to help end these atrocities in the Congo. They had an intense interest in the Congo without being of Congolese origin.
I believe that now is the time for Congolese people to continue that noble mission of speaking out against tyranny and terror from their own local and internal leaders. The MRC's mission is to conceive and implement substantial institutional and legal reform in the DRC. As clearly indicated above, all successive regimes in the Congo have managed to loot, mismanage, and abuse power under diverse pretext and covers. They are, all, motivated by power, money and force. Therefore, changing the individuals at the top of this country's management is not the desirable solution to protect the Congolese People's rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. What is needed is strong legal and institutional framework, checks and balance, good governance, rule of law, accountability and performance evaluation and skilled manpower at local, provincial and national levels.
The MRC will also end the militarization of politics in the DRC giving voice to the People through their legitimate political bases and communities in villages, counties, zones, districts and provinces. The DRC does not need 600 members of Parliament voting laws that are never implemented or understood by the ordinary people. As a result of my presence and experience here, I am fully informed of the predatocratic leaders' strategy of developing regional and international alliances in order to facilitate their looting of national and/or regional resource -material, financial, and natural with the clear purpose of obtaining and maintaining power as well as scandalous personal wealth at the expense of the Congolese People.
In conclusion, it is time to end some 122 years of shameful tyranny, looting, exploitation of the Congolese People, by all its leaders of all color and creed, generation and race. It is time for Africa and Africans to speak out in favor of the Congolese People as Africa did to end the shameful apartheid regime in South Africa.
