FINALLY, THE END

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The stiffest resistance Kabila confronted came not from the Zairian army but from the Angolan rebel group UNITA, led by Jonas Savimbi, a cold war ally of the U.S.'s and great friend of Mobutu's. One of the hardest-fought battles of the civil war was two weeks ago in the southern town of Kenge between Kabila's troops and UNITA rebels, who have long depended on Zaire as a pipeline for weapons and other supplies. UNITA fighters were also among the last defenders of Kinshasa's international airport. But by Friday they too bowed to the inevitable and headed home.

Before he began his remarkable military campaign, Kabila had been dismissed as what a Clinton Administration official called a "bar revolutionary," who spent most of his time drinking in taverns far from the front or negotiating shady gold and diamond deals. A former Marxist who once held a group of Americans hostage, Kabila is still considered ideologically suspect in Washington. While he is reported to have restored law and order and welcomed foreign investment to the areas he has conquered, he has also begun "social re-education" programs. And so far, U.S. analysts say, he has shown a worrisome antipathy to elections and political parties other than his own.

Whatever his program, Kabila could not be worse than Mobutu, who reduced a nation that should be among the richest in Africa to utter penury. Meanwhile, Mobutu and his cronies looted the treasury of billions of dollars. In addition to his many secret bank accounts, Mobutu owns nine villas in Belgium, an estate on the French Riviera and an apartment in Paris; property in Johannesburg, Dakar, Abidjan and Morocco; a coffee plantation in Brazil; and, in the cellars of his estate in Portugal, 14,000 bottles of past-its-prime wine from 1930, the year of his birth. The dictator, who is suffering from prostate cancer, will thus not be inconvenienced by the Swiss seizure of one of his estates.

In welcoming Kabila, will Zaire be trading one corrupt despot for another? No one is sure. "The jury is still out on Kabila," says Richardson. "But he has potential, so we should give him a chance." In the region, some of his supporters have doubts about his political skills and are monitoring his progress with some concern.

In Kinshasa, the concerns about the new leader are purely practical. "I just want to be able to eat and drink," declares Celestine Mumdobu, who lives in a small block house with her two daughters and three grandchildren. "I want the leaders to compromise, so that the people can have peace, so that the people will have cassava bread and we will be fed until we die."

--Reported by Peter Graff/Kinshasa and Douglas Waller/Washington, with other bureaus