Mobutu must go
An American State Department official was quoted as saying, all by himself, without first consulting an opinion poll: "The level of concern is significant. This is a situation that will not lend itself to external prescription."
Not to be outdone, the insightful Richard Bogosian, Mr. Clinton's coordinator for Rwanda and Burundi, explained that "Zaire is in a very difficult period."
Abdication of responsibility on the part of the U.S. foreign policy establishment in the face of famine and chaos is nothing new. Mobutu Sese Seko, arguably the most corrupt of all African tyrants, has for many years been seen by America as indispensable.
He was supported with cash and military aid throughout the Cold War. Now that the Soviet Union no longer exists, one would hope for fresh ideas from the United States, but these have not been forthcoming.
The Clinton administration appears to have no plan at all for responding to a dislocated Zaire whose survival is in doubt. The American response is likely to be that Mobutu must be rehabilitated in the interests of Zairean unity.
The decrepit dictator, though hated by large numbers of his countrymen, has a certain rotting grandeur. For a few, such as those who turned up to meet him at the airport this week, he has a talismanic quality.
They believe "the Guild" is their savior and can end the anarchy and corruption of a crippled and wretched country. Some believe he will live up to his promise to resurrect a nation torn apart by civil war and bring stability in the midst of a humanitarian crisis.
"Even if he is sick, even if he is weakened, his mere presence will energize the nation," is how one courtier put it. Possessed of a superb cunning, Mobutu has been compared to Ceaucescu of Romania. He has been proclaimed the greatest African leader the continent has ever seen.
TV footage of Mobutu granting an audience to some of his subjects at his luxurious villa in Roquebrun-Cap-Martin in the south of France (one of about a dozen properties he owns around the world) is believed by the very naive to have had a calming effect on his troubled people.
A credible government in Kinshasa will be essential if the European Union is to implement an aid program, but Mobutu is no longer seen as in any sense credible. The country needs stability and its eastern provinces need to be put back in order. Mobutu is not the man to do this.
The truth is, Mobutu is the darkness, looking out, from the safe vantage point of his villa 10,000 miles away, onto the darkness of the Zairean tyranny and madness he has created. If Zaire is to continue to exist as a nation, Mobutu must go.
-- The Bangkok Post