Waiting In Darkness
As Congo's civil war continues, its African neighbors disagree on how best to interfere
By PETER HAWTHORNE

It took decades for the late president Mobutu Sese Seko to turn the potentially rich Congo into a war-torn and looted Zaire. His nemesis and successor Laurent Kabila took barely a few months to turn Zaire back into the Congo, this time styled a Democratic Republic, but war and looting will not go away as quickly. Kabila's capital city, Kinshasa, was under siege last week and any hopes of peace were fading as the winds of war ominously drew other central African countries into the conflict. What seemed like a repeat of the fall of Mobutu has already sundered African solidarity in the region. Kabila's Congo now threatens to become an unprecedented battleground of African vs. African.

The rebel army of the so-called Congolese Movement for Democracy last week fought to the outskirts of Kinshasa and government sources were warning that "several hundred" rebels had infiltrated the city. The airport at Njili was closed and barricaded and military roadblocks were everywhere. Residents of the capital were under a dusk-to-dawn curfew, most of the city was still without electricity and food supplies from the port of Matadi, cut off by the rebels in the west. "We hear the gunfire," said Congolese journalist Donna Katemba, "and we wait in darkness."

Kabila's survival so far is thanks to neighboring Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia, with whose help he hoped to repel the rebels and isolate them in their bases in the east of the country. Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe last week pointedly ignored pleas from South Africa's Nelson Mandela for a regional diplomatic initiative to press for peace in the Congo and instead dispatched 900 troops and aircraft to Kabila's aid. From Luanda, President Jose Eduardo dos Santos gave the go-ahead for a motorized column of Angolan tanks and experienced commandos, with air support, to be deployed west of Kinshasa. The rebels claimed that Angolan and Zimbabwean warplanes had bombed Kisangani, the third largest city, and Kabila himself publicly paid tribute to "the brother armies of Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia, who have chosen the path of reason and good sense to assist us."

Brothers or not, each of the southern African states that have chosen to back Kabila has self-interest at heart. For Zimbabwe's Mugabe it is an opportunity to show his exasperation that post-apartheid South Africa has taken over the mantle as leader of the Southern African Development Community of which Mugabe was a founder in 1980. But there is also evidence that Zimbabwean business leaders, including Mugabe's nephew Leo, have been involved in deals and investments worth millions of dollars with Kabila's government. If it goes down the drain, so will the money. For Angola, the quid pro quo for its support of Kabila is his promise that he will act against UNITA, the militant movement which has bases in southern Congo and is threatening to embark again on a full-scale war against the Luanda government. The third supporter, Namibia, wishes to protect west coast trade and investment deals that have been made with the Kabila regime.

But the decision of the three African hawks to ally themselves with Kabila could be one that they will regret. There is no guarantee that Kabila can survive, even with their help. "It could become Africa's Vietnam," says a South African government adviser. There is little doubt that the rebels get substantial support from Uganda and Rwanda, although neither country admits it. In Kigali last week, a presidential spokesman verged on doing so by warning that the Rwandan government might intervene in the Congo crisis if Kabila continues his policy of the "termination"--some call it "ethnic cleansing"--of Congolese Tutsi who came originally from Rwanda and which was one of the reasons for the military rebellion in the first place.

Even if Mandela's diplomatic offensive--involving the Organization of African Unity and Zambia, Mozambique and Tanzania--can persuade Kabila and the rebels to call a truce, the Congo leader is a short-term prospect. If he remains, he still has to come to terms with a new coalition of opposition leaders, some of whom have been the figureheads of the rebel movement.

But whatever happens in Congo, the rift in southern Africa is going to take a lot of healing. In Harare, President Mugabe branded as "hypocrites" his fellow southern African leaders who he said were ostensibly going for a diplomatic solution but were actually "supporting the rebels." There could be fireworks this week as all come face to face in Durban, when South Africa takes over the chair of the 113-nation Non-Aligned Movement. That movement, which includes most African states, has as one of its principles "abstention from intervention or interference in the internal affairs of another country," an injunction whose flouting Mugabe et al may yet come to regret.END