Manejo del efectivo

In the late 1980s, following internal socio-political crises, a popular consultation initiated by President Mobutu was organized all over the country, including the centre and the peripheries.

All things began with the end of the Cold War which materialized with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the breakup of the Soviet Union. The consequence of both world events was the snowball effect of the implementation of democracy in Eastern Europe. This had implications for the states of Africa, including Zaīre.

In the 1990s Zaīre experienced a deepening economic crisis. Economic, social and international pressure on the government intensified. Zaīre remained a one-party state until the beginning of 1990. Political space for other political parties opened when, in a speech of April 24, 1990, President Mobutu announced the end of the one-party system. This meant the opening of the period of transition towards democratic, free and transparent elections. The international pressure on the Mobutu government together with the internal opposition, which included civil society movements for democracy, but particularly the Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS) – a political party of a Luba from Kasai, Etienne Tshisekedi (once an ardent adversary of Mobutu) had strong support from the Kasaian community. A number of political parties have been created mostly in Kinshasa. Some political parties of the 1960s, namely ABAKO, PALU and MNC-Lumumba, re-entered the political scene.

On February 28, 1991 at N'Sele, 53 opposition parties held a dialogue with President Mobutu in order to reach consensus and to form a government of national unity. Tshisekedi was appointed Prime Minister by President Mobutu in October 1991⁵⁵ in accordance with the political agreement reached between the opposition and the mouvance présidentielle to attenuate the political tension in the country. Tshisekedi was removed from office by Mobutu soon after. Later in October 1991, the pro-Mobutu Bernadin Mungul Diaka - the leader of the Rassemblement Démocratique pour la République (RDR) (registered as an opposition party) was appointed Prime Minister by President Mobutu to replace Tshisekedi. In turn, Diaka was soon replaced by Nguza Karl-I-Bond. There was a succession of short-lived governments until the fall of Mobutu in 1997, with Tshisekedi, for example, serving an additional two brief periods as prime minister.

55 The precision of the dates of appointment of the prime ministers come from the list of Governments of Zaīre from 1990 to 1997 found on <http//www.metafro.be/grandslacs/grandslacsdlr500/0618.pdf/download/>

[Accessed on August 09, 2015].

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However, after Tshisekedi’s dismissal in 1991, President Mobutu appealed to an old ethno-regional grievance between Kasaians and Katangans. He used the Lunda ethnic group, which he previously discriminated against and violently oppressed in the wake of the two Shaba rebellions, for this purpose. He persuaded the Lunda that their hardships were due to the Luba-Kasaians dominating the economy in Katanga Province.

Given the struggle for power in Zaīre that came with the announcement of the return to multipartism and the emergence of ethnicity as a means to access political positions at the centre, Putzel, Lindemann and Schouten (2008) argue that the 1990 return to multi-party politics facilitated a large scale reactivation of ethno-regional mobilisation. Ethnicity, regionalism and tribalism were, subsequently, important in the emergence of new political parties that competed for power. More than 200 new political parties were acknowledged by mid-1991. ‘Essentially socio-economic problems like unemployment and land access were recast in tribal terms, as in Katanga and the Kivus. Mobutu continued to attempt to pit one tribal group against another. In an effort to weaken his then strongest political opponent, Etienne Tshisekedi, Mobutu’s supporters in Katanga, where unemployment was rife due to the implosion of GECAMINES, blamed the urban Luba population for stealing jobs, leading to ethnic conflict resulting in some 5,000 dead and 1.3 million people displaced in 1992-93’ (Putzel et al.

2008: xxii).

With regard to this context, Dieudonné Tshiyoyo (2002) explains that the single-handed approach used by Mobutu to control and delay the democratic transition compelled the opposition and civil society to demand the convening of a Sovereign National Conference (CNS) through which all parties could have the opportunity to express themselves and decide on the transition process towards democracy (Tshiyoyo 2002:4).

Opened on August 7, 1991, the CNS established a parliamentary government. This decision did not please President Mobutu who had acquired the habit of ordering people around. Although Etienne Tshisekedi was elected Prime Minister by the CNS participants and appointed by President Mobutu in August 1992, he could not stay in office for long (see the reason in second part of the footnote no.56). After that, on April 2, 1993, President Mobutu appointed Faustin Birindwa, a member of UDPS, to replace Tshisekedi. Mobutu, however, through all these

‘reforms’ remained in control of most key institutions, such as the military, security services and the central bank. He was also able to divide the population along ethnic lines in order to dilute any strong opposition. It can therefore be concluded that the centre was increasingly becoming weak, but was only able to hold onto power, because of Mobutu’s personalized strategies to remain in power.

169 5.4.2.2 Implication on the centre-periphery relations

That painful episode of the expulsion of Lubas from Kasai led them to be disobedient towards the central authority. Thus local populations of Kasai Oriental undertook to reorganize themselves next to the rest of Zaīre. Callaghy (2001) argues that Tshisekedi and many of his followers were Lubas. With Mbuji‐Mayi (formerly Bakwanga) as its capital, Kasai Oriental in particular acquired considerable autonomy as its informal governors - Jonas Mukamba, head of MIBA, the local state diamond parastatal, and Monsignor Tharcisse Tshibangu, Bishop of Mbuji‐Mayi - walked a political tightrope with Mobutu. The region maintained its own currency⁵⁶, refusing to use ‘pro‐state’ bills from Kinshasa, formed its own university, and lived off the diamond wealth not controlled by Mobutu. This process of ‘creeping independence’

began with the 1992 expulsions of Lubas from Katanga. As one Luba intellectual put it, ‘The kinds of secessionist movements that we have seen in the past are simply outmoded. Kasaians are as much a part of Zaïre as anyone else. But that Zaïre is not functional, and we realize that in order to survive we have to take responsibility for ourselves’ (Callaghy 2001:119). Finally, autonomy was not formally sought by the former South Kasai which represents a great part of Kasai Oriental of the present time as previously discussed in section 4.2.2.2.

This episode suggests that in terms of President Mobutu’s priorities, his concern with national unity was secondary to his quest for power. Moreover, conflict among the leaders at the central level affected the peripheries by exploiting ethnic differences and sentiment - as was the case with regard to the post of prime minister between Tshisekedi and Nguz that Mobutu managed to oppose. The seriousness of ethno-regional conflict discussed in this sub-section is similar in nature to that which has given rise to the attempted secession of South Kasai after the independence of the DRC. Although the violence in 1992-1993 against the Lubas from Kasai in Katanga was provoked by the centre, various factors played a role in the change of Lubas’

attitude regarding secessionism. Some of these factors are: the absence of a secessionist leader in the peripheral area who could push them towards seceding from the DRC; the integration of the Lubas with the populations of the other provinces; the involvement of members of the Luba elites in various institutions of the country; and the nationalist vocation of their charismatic leader Etienne Tshisekedi.

56Lubas from Kasai refused to use the new bank notes of 5 million Zaīre launched by President Mobutu in protest against the dismissal of their leader from the post of prime minister of the transitional government. When Tshisekedi was elected Prime Minister by the Conférence Nationale Souveraine (CNS), he has demonetized the new bank notes of 5 million Zaīre because of their potential inflationary impact on the economy. These bank notes were printed and put into circulation by the central bank under President Mobutu’s order. The bank note of 5 million Zaīre was called ‘pro-state’ (prostate) with derision by the population by referring to sickness of Mobutu.

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Paradoxically, although he promoted national unity from the outset of his coming to power and during his political career, on the ground President Mobutu was able to divide the inhabitants of the peripheries in order to protect his power.