What is zaire

Agriculture is the base of the economy, but mining generates much revenue. Zaire's extractive industries have provided the main impetus for economic development. During the s, Zaire was hit hard by the worldwide decline in prices for copper and its other main exports. Despite recent high copper prices, formidable obstacles to economic recovery remain.

Zaire pursues a policy of moderate nonalignment between East and West and plays an important role in international and regional forums. Some anti-Mobutu politicians and grassroots activists feel inadequately represented in the new government. The Congo will need ongoing dialogue and mutual accommodation among the new government, other former opposition politicians, and civil society to reconcile competing views and to create the basis for long term stability.

How can the U. First, the U. The new government has stressed its desire to end corruption and rapidly rehabilitate the economy but lacks expertise in many areas. Others, including Nelson Mandela, argue it deserves more time to develop a vision and strategy for national reconciliation and recovery. It should, however, insist on international access and humanitarian aid to those refugees still in the Congo.

It is vital that negotiations on the transition to a democratic, post-Mobutu era not be limited to dialogue between Kabila and Kinshasa-based politicians alone. Second, accountability for human rights abuses in the Congo must be evenhandedly, not selectively, applied. Many actors—including rebel and splinter groups, Zairean army soldiers, armed Rwandan refugees implicated in the genocide, Mobutu-allied mercenaries, and Rwandan or Ugandan ADFL allies—have been implicated in such abuses.

Genuinely impartial inquiry into all human rights violations by all parties through international or national truth commissions is vital. This will help counter the culture of impunity in a region already awash with reciprocal killings and ethnic cleansings, while contributing to national cohesion.

Coming to power after 32 years of dictatorship, the new ADFL-dominated government will be closely scrutinized on human rights. Lastly, the U. They all lent money to Zaire by the millions, carefully monitored Mobutu and his friends as they stole it, then cynically demanded its repayment. Their presence is an insult. They are arrogant and don't hide it. It is not possible for the tribes to live side by side. Mostly unemployed, illiterate thugs from rural villages, the JUFERI provided a violent accompaniment to Kyungu's menacing radio broadcasts.

Attacks on Kasaian homes in rural towns and villages began in late Witnesses said the JUFERI were sometimes supplied with gasoline to set houses afire and with beer and marijuana to stoke their aggression.

Some Kasaians fought back. The proverbial cycle of violence was set in motion. Meanwhile, on February 16, , hundreds of thousands of people marched through the streets of Kinshasa, a thousand miles away, in support of the national conference on democracy, which Nguza had ordered closed.

Mobutu's troops opened fire on the marchers; according to the human rights monitoring group Africa Watch, more than thirty were killed. Mobutu deftly blamed Nguza and soon afterward allowed the national conference to resume. In August the conference nominated Tshisekedi to be Prime Minister again.

Kasaians in Shaba celebrated. Some threw stones at the governor's residence. Most Kasaians fled to the train station or to the homes of relatives in town. Those I spoke with had no doubt about who was ultimately responsible for their predicament. He needs someone who is malleable. He uses others, like Kyungu—a pawn of Mobutu. Kasaians were quick to remind me that not all Katangese approve of what is happening: "It's a false problem," I was told repeatedly; "it's a manipulation by the politicians.

In fact the majority of Kasaians in Shaba have suffered as much as most Katangese under a regime that has plundered the province's resources for the benefit of a few. But Katangan leaders have made a pact with the devil, calculating that, as one put it, "we have to ally ourselves with the finishing dictatorship in order to resist the permanent dictatorship of the Kasai. Before, he attacked the Katangese using the Kasai, who were among his closest collaborators.

Now he realizes that there were radical political oppositionists among the Kasai. He uses old enmities to destabilize his new enemies. Now he uses Katangese to destabilize the Kasai.

A judge interrupted to clarify: "It was not exactly his goal to dominate the Katangese. Mobutu put Kasaians at the head of many enterprises. But this was so that he could enjoy the riches of the province with the help of the Kasai. Now he says it wasn't he who was the cause of the Katangese's unhappiness—it was the Kasai. If you look at the situation more closely, both Kasaians and Katangese are in indescribable misery.

Those who benefited are Mobutu and his acolytes. It's just that most of his acolytes were Kasaians, especially here in Katanga. This is a region that he has pillaged a lot. Soldiers and the police, who might be expected to intervene if Mobutu ordered them to do so, appear in accounts of the violence only intermittently, most often as criminals engaged in thefts and assaults that provoke reprisals, which merely reinforce the cycle of violence.

Lawlessness in general, and lawless soldiers in particular, have been a chronic problem in Zaire ever since independence, when the entire army dissolved in mutiny within a week.

Armed shakedowns are commonplace. On a single night in Kolwezi, while driving to and from a restaurant in town, my companions and I were held up at gunpoint five times by soldiers who emerged like apparitions in our headlights, pointed their rifles menacingly at the windshield, and then gruffly accepted yet another proffer of five or ten million zaires—just under a dollar at that week's rate.

Anschaire Moji A Kapasu, told me that the authorities had done "everything possible" to stop the violence. I asked if anyone had been arrested and prosecuted. He looked at me with a blank expression, as if the idea had never occurred to him. C'est difficile. On the edge of downtown Kolwozi, past the teeming train station, lies the Gecamines mining installation, a vast, rocky landscape of open pits and coppery waste dumps.

In better days this facility produced up to 80 percent of Zaire's copper and cobalt. Belgians built the mines early in the century, and Belgian spies, financiers, and mercenaries known as les Affreux —"the Dreadful Ones"—backed Moise Tshombe's ill-fated secession movement in , hoping to maintain de facto Belgian control over the lucrative mining industry.

Mobutu nationalized the mines in At its high point, in the mids, Gecamines produced , tons of copper a year with 35, employees, earned three quarters of Zaire's foreign exchange, and educated , children in company run schools. Today Gecamines is eerily subdued.

In the two weeks before my visit roughly 7, Kasaian workers—half the work force and most of the skilled employees—had been chased from their jobs at these mines. In all, 40, to 50, Kasaians in Kolwezi have been rendered homeless. The mines still function, I was told, but expatriate company officials doubt that this will last.

The production of copper had already declined to , tons or less in the previous year, because of rampant corruption and mismanagement. A mine collapsed a few years ago owing to negligence.

Most of the skilled expatriates fled after the pillage. The company is bankrupt. A week before my visit ten trucks lined up along the wall surrounding the plant.

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