Prueba de hipótesis

President Mobutu Sese Seko, immensely popular in the early years of his rule for the return of peace, reacted against the idea that the autonomy of the provinces is supposed to pacify secessionist leaders. The rejection of the ‘provincettes’ meant the restoration of the central authority in a state that lived in fear of attempts at secession and civil war especially in the restive peripheries.

The centralization of power, according to Byong-Man Ahn (2003), means a pattern of power distribution that sees ruling and administrative power vested with the central government. In this case, hierarchical relations are established between the central and local authorities, whereby the former oversees the latter in the administration of local affairs. The local authorities administer local affairs in accordance with standardized rules or prescriptive procedures of the central government, with the authority to make decisions or initiate planning kept to the minimum level. Such a centralized mode of administration hardly leaves room for the participation of local residents in the process of decision-making concerning their own affairs (Ahn 2003:226).

By 1967, President Mobutu was ready to give institutional form to his new government. Sandra W. Meditz and Tim L. Merrill (1994) explains that in running parallel to the efforts of the state to control all autonomous sources of power, important administrative reforms were introduced in 1967 and 1973 to strengthen the hand of the central government in the provinces (Meditz and Merrill 1994:52). At the centre, effective power was concentrated in the office of the president. President Mobutu had undertaken to bring the peripheries (regions, sub-regions,

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zones, sectors, chefferies³⁴ and villages) to the heel of the Central Government. For this reason the Constitution of June 24, 1967 drafted in the beginning of the era of Mobutu, reduced the number of the provinces inherited from the First Republic. Thus Article 1 stipulated that the Democratic Republic of Congo is a unitary, democratic and social state. The Republic includes the city of Kinshasa³⁵ (the capital) and the 8 administrative provinces: Bandundu, Equateur, Kasai Occidental, Kasai Oriental, Katanga, Kivu, Kongo central and Oriental Provinces (Constitution of June 24, 1967). The DRC was thus a centralized unitary state until 1982. The sub-section 5.4.1.4 indicates what happened after this period. Moreover, Article 3 mentioned that any act of racial, ethnic or religious, and propaganda liable to affect the internal security of the State or territorial integrity of the Republic are prohibited. All Congolese public authorities have a duty to safeguard the unity of the Republic and the integrity of its territory (Constitution of June 24, 1967, paragraph 2).

The representation below shows the hierarchical level of the territorial structure during the era of Mobutu.

Table 4: Administrative structure under the Second Republic

Centre located in the capital city Kinshasa (seat of the institutions)

Central Government

↓

Peripheries located in the Régions (previously called Provinces)

Régions

↓

Sous-régions

↓

Zones

↓

Secteurs

↓

34 Chefferie (chiefdom in English) is generally a set of homogeneous traditional communities organized on the basis of custom and headed by a chief appointed by custom, recognized and invested by the Government (Organic Law no. 08/16 of October 7, 2008, Article 7).

35 In 1966 Leopoldville was renamed Kinshasa, after the name of an early village that occupied the site.

132 Chefferies

↓

Villages

Source: Adapted from Pascal Nsundi Mbambi 2006:35

President Mobutu reverted to a form of strong centralized and oppressive administration that was reminiscent of the Belgian administration of the Congo. Thus Meditz and Merrill (1994) argues that the unitary centralized state system thus legislated into existence bore a striking resemblance to its colonial antecedent, except that from July 1972 provinces were called regions (Meditz and Merrill 1994:52). This oppression was particularly directed to dissidents and others who opposed his regime.

According to Meditz and Merrill (1994), once in power, Mobutu aimed at reversing the process of territorial fragmentation that had begun in 1960. From twenty-one provincettes in 1965, the number of administrative divisions was reduced first to twelve provinces (known as regions after 1972), then to eight, plus Kinshasa. These divisions represented a nearly complete restoration of the colonial boundaries³⁶. Under Mobutu ‘the regions, once quasi-federal political units with their own governments, were reduced to administrative subdivisions of the unitary state’ (Meditz and Merril 1994: xli). The governors of the administrative divisions were no longer elected by provincial assemblies, but instead were named by the President. They were rotated frequently, and usually were assigned outside their home area to limit the risk of collusion between the Governor and the people in the peripheries. Thus, to prevent uprisings in the peripheries and possibility of secession, President Mobutu appointed his own supporters to the position of Governors of the provinces. The aim was the neutralization of any source of uncontrolled power. The principle of centralization was then extended to the Sous-régions and Zones, with public servants totally reliant on Kinshasa. Consequently, the influence of the central power (centre) on the provinces (now called régions) (peripheries) was increased. The

‘only units of government that still retained a fair measure of autonomy but not for long were the so-called local collectivities, i.e., chiefdoms and sectors (the latter incorporating several chiefdoms)’ (Meditz and Merrill 1994:52). The heads of the administrative sub-divisions (Régions, Sous-régions, Zones, Secteurs, chefferies and villages) all had essentially the role of representing the central state.

36 In the early 1990s, the most populous region, Kivu, was divided into three regions – North Kivu, South Kivu and Maniema, corresponding to the three provincettes of the 1960s.

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The central objective of the 1967 reform was to abolish provincial governments and replace them with state functionaries appointed by the central government in Kinshasa. The principle of centralization was further extended to districts and territories, each headed by administrators, again, appointed by the central government. Mbambi (2006) argues that with the reforms of June 1973, an additional stage was reached in increasing the centralization of the state (Mbambi 2006:35). The power of traditional authorities at the local level was also curtailed and hereditary claims to authority no longer recognized. Instead, all chiefs were to be appointed and controlled by the state via the administrative hierarchy (Meditz and Merrill 1994:52). As a consequence, ‘the reform seriously blocked the power of the traditional authorities at the local level. This authority was allocated only to persons put in charge by Kinshasa and controlled by official channels. Consequently, the process of centralization had formally eradicated any form of preexistent local autonomy’ (Mbambi 2006:35). By then, the process of centralization had theoretically eliminated all preexisting centers of local autonomy (Meditz and Merrill 1994:52).

From a territorial management perspective, law no. 73-015 of January 5, 1973 instituted a very centralized and hierarchical unitary system. The objective was to carry out a complete fusion between the administrative and political structures by making each administrative leader the head of the corresponding section of the party³⁷ .

Another major political measure to centralize power was the reduction in the number of political parties. Thus the following sub-section pays attention to the institutionalization of a single party in a country where 223 political parties had contested for power in the Central Government at the end of the first legislature in 1965.