Mobutu Research Articles

Mozambique’s Neglected Nationalists in Exile: Retracing Coremo’s Relations with the Congolese Government and the FNLA

Even though the Mozambique Revolutionary Committee (Coremo) was Mozambique’s second largest liberation movement, historians have neglected its role in the struggle for Mozambican independence. This neglect has resulted in an imbalanced understanding of how Mozambicans fought to overthrow Portuguese colonial rule throughout the second half of the 20th century, including how Mozambican liberation movements navigated the precarious exile environment. By retracing and examining Coremo’s relations with Joseph Mobutu’s Congolese government and the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA), this article adds to the growing literature on competing anti-colonial movements during Mozambique’s liberation struggle. Coremo’s relationship with these two actors is intertwined with and was founded on the earlier relations that Paulo Gumane’s reconstituted National Democratic Union of Mozambique (Udenamo) had established with the FNLA and Cyrille Adoula’s Congolese government. Reconstructing the story of this relationship deepens our understanding of the different transnational and transregional strategies that smaller liberation movements like Coremo employed in exile. The story of Coremo’s relations with Kinshasa and the FNLA highlights the importance of and difficulties in establishing support structures in the context of competitive liberation politics. The history of these long-standing relations also adds to our understanding of the formation and development of working relationships between lusophone African liberation movements, which have traditionally focused on the Conference of Nationalist Organisations of the Portuguese Colonies, and brings to our attention the role of alternative African support hubs in southern Africa’s liberation struggle.

Present Pasts of Colonial Modernity: Embroideries by Lucie Kamuswekera

Present Pasts of Colonial Modernity: Embroideries by Lucie Kamuswekera

East Africa after Liberation: Conflict, Security, and the State since the 1980s by Jonathan Fisher

Only a small number of Africa’s many civil wars since independence have ended with rebel victory, and an even smaller number of those victories have seen rebels transition into successful rulers able to create durable political systems that persisted for decades following the ouster of the ancien regime. In East Africa after Liberation, Fisher considers several flagship cases from the 1980s and 1990s—Uganda’s National Resistance Army (nra), the Rwandan Patriotic Front (rpf), the interlinked Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (eplf), Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (eprdf), and Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front. With compelling theoretical insight and rich empirical detail, Fisher shows how, after these “post-liberation” insurgencies won their wars, their leaders then renovated regime politics in the states that they captured and became new governing elites. He also shows how they shaped Africa’s regional politics, both in conjunction and, ultimately, at odds with one another.At its heart, this book is about how revolutionary ideologies about state–society relations were refracted through social relationships within and across insurgency movements both during and after victory. It is about how movement leaders sought to invest their liberation mindsets not only into building cohesive rebel organizations but also into the development of pragmatic solutions to the domestic and regional challenges of maintaining their regimes after victory.In the book’s substantive chapters, Fisher develops this story across three periods, which also serve as key conceptual categories. Taking each rebel movement in turn, Chapters 1 and 2 examine the first category of “insurgency,” the initial period when rebel leaders acquired their liberation ideologies and deployed these ideas in building and sustaining their movements during their wartime experiences. This section also shows how leaders developed relationships across movements based on shared characteristics, ultimately leading to the formation of what Fisher describes as a “collective.”In the second category, “Liberation” (Chapters 3–4) refers to how this distinct category of actors—victorious rebels now rulers—consolidated new regimes at home and built their collective affinities into a formidable regional power bloc in East and Central Africa, while continuing to wear strident revolutionary ideology on their sleeves. Chapters 5 and 6 deal with the culmination of these events into a regional “crisis,” when these four regimes meddled in the Great Lakes and sparked a complex and protracted regional conflict following their ouster of Mobutu Sese Seko, Zaïre’s dictator. Very soon after this episode, by virtue of shifting priorities of regime security and competitive jockeying for regional dominance, the liberation alliance unraveled and issued into the “wars between brothers”—Rwanda vs. Uganda, and Ethiopia vs. Eritrea—still packaged as ideological battles.The main strength of this book is its effort to take seriously the notion that “ideas matter” and to operationalize it theoretically and empirically. Fisher successfully weaves the cases through time while providing conceptual markers for how the ideological frameworks of East African leaders elided and collided with rebel, regime, and regional governance. Yet although the stories of Uganda, Rwanda, Eritrea, and Ethiopia are important to tell, their convergence into a similar theoretical stream deprives the book of comparative leverage vis-à-vis the stories of political development in other African states. This shortcoming is not, however, a deal breaker by any means.Another core strength of this book is Fisher’s ability to build relationships in the field, establishing credibility with key actors and penetrating networks of elites that often refuse to tell outsiders about the inner workings of their politics. For all its refreshing audacity, however, this methodology also points to potential pitfalls, among them the uncritical reproduction of elite narratives. Although Fisher discusses the challenges that accompany this kind of research, the next step should be a more thorough attention to the distinct caveats involved in talking to Africa’s politico-security elites.East Africa after Liberation makes critical contributions to our understanding of the intersections between domestic and regional politics in four pivotal East African states. Whereas the prevailing literature tends to focus on the instrumental motivations of Africa’s political actors, Fisher’s more sociological approach considers the frames of meaning that guide the behavior of the revolutionary elites who had to govern fragile states within contentious neighborhoods. It also has broader implications regarding political order in Africa more generally. This book is essential reading for the study of contemporary African politics.

Did the cia Kill Lumumba?

Abstract Williams’ White Malice: The cia and the Covert Recolonization of Africa is a crusading examination of what the cia did in Africa in the 1960s, and it suggests that the cia, working closely with Congo army chief Joseph Mobutu and coordinating with secessionist leaders in Katanga, was responsible for Patrice Lumumba’s assassination. Recently uncovered hard evidence from cia files reveals the Agency’s connivings in, with, and against Africa and Africans during the first years of independence, involving cia station heads, accomplices, the many shady characters tasked with nasty deeds against African leaders, and those many miscreants who supplied information and surveillance about African political and industrial personalities. The book is a reminder of our misconceptions, our failures to read Africa well, our willingness to let ends dictate means, and a testament to blinkered policy making.

Lumumba in the Arts

Lumumba in the Arts

Towards Making Responsive Development in Governance of African States in the 21st Century and Beyond: Lessons from John Pombe Magufuli

Africa in the lenses of the developed economies is a continent that would not develop. The former USA president Donald Trump called Africa shithole. Africa it is agreed is the richest continent in the world yet the poorest. Africa's underdevelopment is the product of poor leadership since independence. The few good and pragmatic ones were either terminated by the agents of developed economies or eased out through questionable elections. In this group are revolutionaries. The non-revolutionaries but focused were the likes of Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Nelson Mandela, John Magufuli of Tanzania whom this paper is addressing. Others fall into despotic and authoritarian and by extension agents of neo-colonial masters and hydra-corrupt. They would do all things to milk their countries dry and repatriate the funds either for building of castles in developed world or stash it in Swiss banks and other banks abroad while their people are wallowing in poverty and underdevelopment. In this group are found Mobutu Sese Seko of Congo Democratic Republic (Zaire), Marcias Nguema of Equatorial Guinea, Omar Bongos of Gabon, Gnassingbe Eyadema of Togo, Houphouet-Boigny of Ivory Coast, Sekou Touré of Guinea, Idi Amin Dada of Uganda, etc. Again, most African heads of state believed that development cannot come to their countries except they rely on the western aid and or borrowing, and of recent from China. Nigeria under Mohammadu Buhari fall under this category. Late John Magufuli had proved that 'theory' wrong. He developed Tanzanian people and economy without western aid, fought corruption and if death had spared him, he would have led Tanzania to greater height than where she is now. The paper concludes that other African leaders should emulate the foot-prints of John Magufuli - for African development. The paper uses historical and multi-disciplinary approach as methodology.

Doran H. Ross: His Fabulous Fowler Years

Doran H. Ross: His Fabulous Fowler Years

Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present by Ruth Ben-Ghiat

Many scholars of authoritarianism noticed striking similarities between dictatorships of the past and President Donald Trump’s rhetoric, policies, and style of rule. Ben-Ghiat’s study of authoritarians from Benito Mussolini to Trump approaches the problem through the lens of a strongman “playbook,” providing a detailed and often intimate history of how these men win, exercise, and lose power. Although heavily focused on European figures—including Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Francisco Franco, Vladimir Putin, Silvio Berlusconi, Recep Erdoğan, and Victor Orbán—Strongmen also examines, to varying degrees, dictators from Africa, Asia, and the Americas, including Idi Amin (Uganda), Mohamed Barre (Somalia), Muammar Gaddafi (Libya), Saddam Hussein (Iraq), Augusto Pinochet (Chile), Mobutu Sese Seko (Zaire), Rodrigo Duterte (Philippines), and Nahrendra Modi (India). The book’s strength lies in the connections drawn across cases, providing “a long view of the authoritarian style of governance, which highlights baseline features that recur in different circumstances” with the goal of helping “us to understand authoritarianism as it manifests today” (7). The book should appeal to a very broad readership, who will find Ben-Ghiat’s insights revelatory and provocative.The book’s first section opens with an examination of how Mussolini established the strategies and employed the rhetoric that strongmen have used to come to power ever since. Ben-Ghiat writes, “Mussolini prepared the script used by today’s authoritarians that casts the leader as a victim of his domestic enemies and of an international system that has cheated his country” (22). Indeed, she notes, “For the strongman, politics is always personal” (51). Mussolini established a myth that became a standard authoritarian mechanism, wherein the nation faced an apocalyptic crisis that could be solved only by “the male leader as savior” (58). Although the strongman alone can save the nation, failure and accountability belong solely to others. Indeed, as Ben-Ghiat explains, “From Mussolini onward, making sure you have immunity while those who have done your dirty work go to jail has been an essential strongman skill” (50).The book’s central chapters focus on the strongman’s “tools of rule.” National greatness, which, Ben-Ghiat argues, “is the glue of government,” is predicated on identifying an existential crisis, stoking nostalgia, and promising utopia. In most cases, the solution has involved some form of violent cleansing or constricting of rights, especially the persecution of minorities, whether political, ethnic, or religious. Propaganda, not surprisingly, has been critical to strongman regimes, but a leader’s fostering of an apparent direct connection to his followers, through rallies, speeches, or, in recent years, Twitter has also been important. Ben-Ghiat shows in illuminating detail how strongmen personality cults are not only infused with hyper-masculinity but also with boasts about sexual transgressions (some of them illegal), such as “hosting sex parties with underage women in attendance (Berlusconi), being spanked by porn stars (Trump), or keeping the twin sister of your wife as your mistress (Mobutu)” (121). Although the discussion of Hitlerian violence as redolent of Trump’s policies and threats creates a bit of a disconnect, Ben-Ghiat’s compendium of Trump-inspired violence is sobering.Because the book is intended for a broad audience, Ben-Ghiat does not frontload a heavy social science, comparative analytical framework. Readers interested in interdisciplinarity may be disappointed not to read more about how Ben-Ghiat chose her case studies. The book focuses on “forms of personalist rule” wherein power is concentrated “in one individual whose own political and financial interests prevail over national ones” (7), thereby creating a system of rule in which loyalty to the strongman, rather than expertise, qualifies people for administrative positions. Fair enough, but why include Franco, for example, and not Hugo Chavez? Similarly, more could be said about typology or degree. Some of these authoritarians utterly dominated the state and civil society, murdering thousands and even millions along the way, whereas others, like Berlusconi and Trump, committed dangerous but much less egregious attacks on democracy and the rule of law.Overall, Strongmen is extraordinarily successful at revealing how the ideas and practices of personalist, authoritarian rule have been borrowed, handed down, and imitated throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. The similarities are truly striking. Moreover, looking at how men like Trump and Putin, or Gaddafi and Berlusconi, have interacted with one another, the book persuasively demonstrates how strongmen encourage and support their counterparts in other countries, politically, diplomatically, financially, and even personally. Ultimately, Ben-Ghiat is not necessarily equating these case studies but pointing out the warning signs that, for example, Trumpism could easily evolve into something infinitely more sinister and destructive.

Smoke, Dust, and Blood

Smoke, Dust, and Blood

A forgotten decade? Politicking and war for the ANC/FAZ 1967-1977

ABSTRACT The history of the Congo’s Armée nationale congolaise (1960–71) and Forces armées zairoïses (1971–97) between the ‘mercenaries’ mutinies’ of 1967 and the two Shaba incursions is worthy of further research. President Mobutu wished to make sure that the ANC/FAZ presented no threat to his rule, against the backdrop of scores of military coups going on across the breadth of Africa. Three key themes are evident in the history of the ANC/FAZ from 1967 to 1977, and are examined here for the first time. Mobutu controlled his armed forces mostly through divide and rule tactics, and most of the first theme discussions will focus on those affairs. The second theme is connected in a way to the first; the succession of favored praetorian guard formations. Thirdly the military linkages between the Zairian Angola incursion of 1975 and the following attempted Katangan exiles’ return to Shaba in 1977 and 1978 are sketched more strongly. A link between the second and third themes is provided by a solid background, for the first time, for the establishment of the Kamanyola Division, long an anomaly amongst Mobutu’s favored forces.

The Moving Parts in Michèle Magema's Body of Work

The Moving Parts in Michèle Magema's Body of Work

Brothers in Arms: Morocco’s Military Intervention in Support of Mobutu of Zaire During the 1977 and 1978 Shaba Crises

This article focuses on the Moroccan intervention during the Shaba crisis of 1977-1978 when invading rebels from nearby Angola were destabilizing the Zairean regime of Mobutu Sese Seko. The direct Moroccan military intervention prevented a collapse of Mobutu’s rule. This article sheds light on the motivation of the Moroccan ruler, King Hassan II, to support a fellow African leader. Part of the motivation lies with the important historic role played by Morocco in the first year of independence of Congo. Morocco’s involvement in 1960-61 extended beyond the delivery of a large number of troops for the UN mission, and included direct contact with key decision makers in newly independent Congo, chief among them, a young Mobutu. The analysis adds to the existing Cold war studies, by explaining how a non-Western actor behaved and what motivated this behavior. It helps in understanding the cooperation taking place between leaders in the Global South. It also places the intervention within the larger Cold War context. This comes at a time when Middle Eastern states, among them Egypt, Iran and Saudi Arabia were linking up with Morocco and France to fill the void left by the United States in the 1970s.

MANUFACTURING SOVEREIGNTY AND MANIPULATING HUMANITARIANISM: THE DIPLOMATIC RESOLUTION OF THE MERCENARY REVOLT IN THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO, 1967–8

AbstractIn 1967, European and Katangese mercenaries revolted against the rule of Mobutu Sese Seko in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) intervened to try to have the rebels peacefully leave the DRC. Katangese troops who fled to Rwanda with white mercenaries were forced by the Organization of African Unity and the Rwandan government to return to the DRC, where they were eventually executed. White mercenaries, under the protection of the ICRC and Rwanda, ultimately escaped Mobutu's wrath. Congolese and Rwandan leaders skillfully employed the ideal of African sovereignty and humanitarian rhetoric with its Western and African allies to ensure their consolidation of power.

The Problem of Bad Governance as a Determinant of State Dysfunctionality in Sub-Saharan Africa

Bad governance can very quickly ruin the economic situation of the whole country. However, in the conditions of the Western world, even though they can cause a lot of damage, more or less developed administrative apparatus is able to minimize the effects of bad decisions, and the society has a chance to rebuff the rulers in the next elections. In so-called dysfunctional states bad governance can damage an already weak country’s economy. Most researchers dealing with the issue of the state in Sub-Saharan Africa believe that, once the decolonisation was over, the power in the region was mostly taken by people whose leadership must be evaluated negatively, represented by such dictators as Jean-Bédel Bokassa, Mobutu Sese Seko or Idi Amin. The paper is trying to explain the interconnection between bad governance experienced by Sub-Saharan African countries and state dysfunctionality phenomenon from which they suffer. The author formulated the analysis and assessment of bad governance presented in this article on the basis of his own field studies carried out in African countries and research of specialist literature related to African and political studies.

‘The Privileged Friendship’: Reassessing the Central Intelligence Agency Operation at Zaire’s Kamina Airbase

ABSTRACTFrom 1986 to 1991, the United States Central Intelligence Agency funnelled arms to the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola through Zaire’s Kamina Airbase. Recently declassified documents cast new light on the ways that facilitating this operation and protecting its covert status provided invaluable bargaining leverage for Zaire’s president, Mobutu Sese Seko, who demanded political and economic concessions from Washington. As a rare Cold War precedent for the types of covert, temporary basing agreements that the United States is now establishing throughout Africa, the Kamina case thus warrants a substantive reappraisal.

Authentically African: Arts and the Transnational Politics of Congolese Culture

September 01 2018 Authentically African: Arts and the Transnational Politics of Congolese Culture Authentically African: Arts and the Transnational Politics of Congolese Culture by SarahVan BeurdenAthens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2015. 372 pages, 12 color plates, 64 b&w ill., bibliography, index. $34.95 paper/$80 cloth Author and Article Information Online Issn: 1937-2108 Print Issn: 0001-9933 © 2018 by the Regents of the University of California.2018The Regents of the University of California African Arts (2018) 51 (3): 92–93. https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_r_00423 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Search Site Citation Authentically African: Arts and the Transnational Politics of Congolese Culture. African Arts 2018; 51 (3): 92–93. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_r_00423 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAll JournalsAfrican Arts Search Advanced Search Authentically African: Arts and the Transnational Politics of Congolese Culture is an important and timely book given French President Emmanuel Macron's declaration in November 2017 that he was committed to “temporary or permanent restitution of African heritage to Africa” (Dagen 2017). Restitution has a history in Africa and one that both politicians and museums would be wise to study. Already in 1973, Mobutu Sese Seko launched a demand before the UN in New York for return of cultural heritage to the Republic of Zaïre (now Democratic Republic of the Congo). In the end, the Zairian leader won the transfer of 1,042 ethnographic and art objects from the Belgian Royal Museum of Central Africa (Tervuren) (p. 123). In Authentically African, Sarah Van Beurden argues that Belgium began to search for a more humane rationale for colonialism after World War II and began to frame stewardship over the collections... You do not currently have access to this content.

Histoire du politique au Congo-Kinshasa: Les concepts à l'épreuve (1) Mobutu (2)

This review article analyses two publications which deal with the history of the independent Democratic Republic of the Congo/Zaire, emphasising the reign of President Mobutu Sese Seko. In comparing the two publications, originating from two decidedly different traditions, the pre- sent article concludes that, twenty years after the fall of the Mobutu regime, there is not (yet) a historiographic consensus on the character of the Mobutu regime. Jean-Pierre Langellier, com- ing from the world of journalism, emphasised in his biography of Mobutu the importance of the President’s friendship ties with the West, and the influence of the Cold War. Conversely, scholar Gauthier de Villers relativised the deterministic character of the Cold War on the regime, as well as the unconditional amical ties of Mobutu with his Western allies. Key words: Congo, DRC, Mobutu, Zaire

Les Images Contrastées Des Femmes Émergentes De La Société Civile Et Transformation Des Rôles Sociaux Sexués En Province Orientale Post-Mobutu

This article approaches the subversive dimension and performative gender in women awakeness in Oriental Province post-Mobutu era. Their ambition wobbles between maintaining feminine leadership status (their high-flying female) which takes its subsistence from the implementation of their capability and their sufferance from social representation in an environment dominated by patriarchal stereotypes and a political system less disposed to take actions in gender matters. However, feminine elite’s capability procreates social transformations across a social deconstruction not only in role of sexes in the society (structural transformations) but also in transformations observed in man to woman and woman to woman relationship. Under this optics, these civil society women really become actors of change in women well-being in their area. Their way of thinking, acting and being make them convinced feminists. But, the opposite is also possible when some of them resign themselves to break the wall of glass sheltering inequalities between sexes for other aims, notably political. They are selective in their involvement. In that case, they are common feminists of use, most often, as footbridge for politicians. It is on base of the analysis model socio dynamic model analysis which we had achieved in better reconciling structural complexity of those social representations and their insertion in plural social and ideological contexts in Oriental province after President Mobutu reign.

Czechoslovakia and Congo/Zaire under Mobutu, 1965–1980

This study deals with the complicated relationship between the former Czechoslovakia and Congo/Zaire during the period of Mobutu Sese Seko's rule, 1965–1980. Czechoslovakia was very active in Africa during the cold war period and tended to develop economic and diplomatic relations with the majority of African countries. The countries were divided into several categories: priority countries, which were socialist or Marxist-oriented; countries of economic importance, and countries under the influence of former colonial capitalist powers. Despite being in the latter category, Congo/Zaire was of great importance due to its natural resources and economic potential. The Czechoslovak government sought to identify ways of strengthening its position there. Due to several administrative obstacles, direct economic exchange was impossible and all economic contacts had to be channelled via Belgium and Belgian companies. Nevertheless, in spite of such obstacles, both states tried to develop fruitful economic relations.

Entre noésis et praxis: le renouveau de la prise de parole poétique en RDC au début du nouveau millénaire

Flourishing quantitatively and qualitatively in the early 60s, the poetic production of the DRC experienced a crisis until the end of the Mobutu era. In the fiftieth anniversary of independence, poetry seems to refresh around the themes of homeland and its reconstruction. The reflections proposed in these pages are not limited to the presentation of some Congolese intellectuals and their works - poets, filmmakers and musicians who live in the country or elsewhere, speaking in French, but also in some local or world languages. The intention is rather to show how Congolese poetry in the recent years invites to a mental decolonization and an anti-systemic utopian project.