DRC: Third Republic: 1990 - 1997

Updated June 2005

The state, as it is commonly understood, had ceased to exist in the Congo and had been replaced by a complex and ever shifting array of personal relations of patronage centred on Mobutu himself. This entire network was sustained by the continual flow of jobs, business concessions and government contracts and gifts of money and other assets from Mobutu personally to the key strongmen who cemented his control (Library of Congress 1997, Reno 1997).

As the formal economy of the country progressively wound down and the economic life of the country, such as it was, went underground to escape the extractions of the government, so internal resources for patronage dried up. The virtual disintegration of the state left those nominally in its employ, the soldiers and civil servants, to secure their own income. Under conditions of economic collapse they could only do so by emulating Mobutu and setting up, on a smaller scale, corrupt networks of extraction and patronage, so doing for the economy on a local level what Mobutu had done on a national level, and his subordinates had done on a provincial level.

By the end of the Cold War the goose that had laid the golden eggs had been killed, cooked and eaten. The ever diminishing flow of patronage progressively loosened the ties that bound subordinates to Mobutu and increased the numbers of those outside the web of wealth and power who sought his downfall. The exigencies of the Cold War had ensured Mobutu of foreign resources and troops necessary to prop up this decaying order. The flow of aid and resources augmented the ever diminishing internal flows and extended the life of the patronage network that had bolstered Mobutu's power.

As the army, paid little or nothing at all, degenerated into a mafia-style protection racket; it became increasingly and visibly incapable of suppressing armed rebellion. American military aid, mercenary expertise and the occasional influx of foreign troops to suppress this or that rebellion were essential for the continued existence of the régime. As William Reno (1997) points out, the end of the Cold War threatened the end for Mobutu himself:

Yet from at least 1990, Mobutu discovered that the contradiction between the exercise and consolidation of political power, on the one hand, and economic inefficiency, on the other, rapidly decreased his capacity to reward loyalty among associates. Changes associated with the end of the Cold War aggravated this.

With the end of the Cold War the Congo lost its strategic significance in the center of the African continent and Mobutu was no longer able to exploit West-East tensions to secure support from the Western powers. Moreover, in late 1989 and early 1990, international criticism of Mobutu intensified in the face of growing evidence of human rights abuses and a gutted economy. The foreign aid dried up overnight and offers of troop support were withdrawn. After almost three decades of mismanagement and kleptocracy, Mobutu was compelled to introduce political reforms to placate his foreign backers and disarm his opponents.

In this context the proclamation of the Third Republic was, in essence, a holding maneuver by Mobutu. As it turned out it was successful and the life of his rule was prolonged by a further seven years.

The Third Republic placated neither the opposition within the country, nor that in exile. In May 1990 students at Lubumbashi University were massacred while engaging in anti-government demonstrations. In November 1990 a political rally in the capital was violently suppressed and furthers public demonstrations occurred in February the following year, as well as a three-day general strike (Gregory Mtembu-Salter 2002, Country Watch 1998).

In mid-1991 Mobutu convened a national conference that included some 2 842 representatives from various political parties and civil society organisations. The Zaïrian National Conference had a lengthy duration (August 1991-December 1992). The forum gave itself a legislative mandate and elected Archbishop Laurent Monsengwo as its chairman, and Etienne Tshisekedi (leader of the UDPS) as prime minister. In the meanwhile looting by soldiers escalated into prolonged and widespread riots resulting in huge numbers of deaths and large scale destruction of property (Gregory Mtembu-Salter 2002).

Mobutu had no intention of allowing power to slip from his hands and he set up a rival government with its own prime minister. While his manoeuvres were condemned by foreign powers the opposition in the National Conference was paralysed by infighting among its members. The ensuing stalemate produced a compromise merger of the two governments into the High Council of Republic-Parliament of Transition (HCR-PT) in 1994, with Mobutu as head of state and Kengo wa Dondo as prime minister. Although presidential and legislative elections were scheduled repeatedly over the next 2 years, they never took place (Gregory Mtembu-Salter 2002).

The creation of the National Electoral Commission in May 1995 with a mandate to manage the electoral process did not bring about significant progress towards the holding of elections; consensus decision-making ham-strung the functioning CNE, a lack of resources made the work of the Commission difficult and the absence of a legal framework rendered the planning and the implementation of electoral operations nearly impossible.

By the time civil war erupted in the Great Lakes region, the transitional process initiated in the Congo had failed to make substantial progress toward a democratic system. In fact, by the end of 1994, the civil war and genocide in neighboring Rwanda had overflowed into the Congo. Crowds of refugees, including thousands of members of the militias responsible for the massacres in Rwanda, fled to the eastern provinces. This significantly exacerbated many long-concealed political and ethnic tensions in the eastern part of the country. Besides, Hutu civilian authorities of the defeated regime and militia forces, commonly called Interahamwe, were using refugees' camps as bases for sporadic raids against the Tutsi-dominated government established in Kigali (Country Watch 1998).

In October 1996, Rwandan armed forces invaded the Congo. This coincided with the emergence of a rebel coalition led by Laurent-Desire Kabila, the Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo-Zaïre (AFDL). Supported by Rwanda and Uganda, the AFDL aimed at ousting Mobutu by force and advanced rapidly until it was poised to take Kinshasa. Following the failure of peace talks initiated by Nelson Mandela between Mobutu and Kabila in May 1997, Kabila proclaimed himself president and Mabuto fled, and the country was renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The Third Republic was at an end (Country Watch 1998).

References

COUNTRY WATCH 1998 "Country Information for the Congo (DRC)", [www] http://www.countrywatch.com/country_profile.aspx?vcountry=40 [opens new window] (accessed 10 Mar 2010).

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 1997 "The durability of the patrimonial state" IN Country Studies, [www] http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+zr0046) [opens new window] (accessed 10 Mar 2010).

MTHEMBU-SALTER, G 2002 "Recent History", IN Murison, K (ed), Africa South of the Sahara 2002, Europa Publications.

RENO, W 1997 "Sovereignty and personal rule in Zaïre" IN African Studies Quarterly 1(3), [www] http://web.africa.ufl.edu/asq/v1/3/4.htm [opens new window] (accessed 10 Mar 2010).