Zaire’s Elite Seek to Keep Positions--and Wealth

Fresh flowers fill crystal vases. Recessed lights shine on rich rugs and marble floors. Silk pillows hug leather couches. Beethoven plays softly from speakers hidden in the walls.

The plush hilltop villa, and the shiny Jaguar parked outside, belong to one of Zaire’s most powerful men. He is a Cabinet minister, a former ambassador and a key member of ailing President Mobutu Sese Seko’s tottering regime.

But these days, he and hundreds like him in this country’s political elite are desperately scrambling to retain their power and fortunes as the anti-Mobutu forces of rebel leader Laurent Kabila steadily sweep across Zaire. Many officials are distancing themselves from Mobutu in hopes that they won’t be swept aside as well.

“Mobutu’s regime is dead,” the minister, who asked not to be named, said calmly as he sipped champagne at noon Saturday. “It is gone for sure. But Kabila cannot come here and start from scratch. . . . He cannot come to Kinshasa and ignore what is already here.”

What is here is less a government than an autocratic network of bribery, graft and patronage. During Mobutu’s 32-year reign, he and his cronies grew fabulously rich while their nation became one of the world’s poorest.

“A government minister here is not a minister as we know it,” explained a European ambassador. “He’s the receiving end of a funnel for revenues.”

Public anger at the official plunder, and the brutal security forces who enforce it, has driven millions of Zairians into Kabila’s camp since he launched the rebellion in October. But what began as a tiny revolt over local grievances has grown into a popular uprising with national support.

Few here in the capital have failed to notice the sea change in public opinion.

“In the headquarters of the political parties, people are watching very closely,” said Bruno Lokuta Lyengo, vice president of a human rights group called Voice for the Voiceless. “Everybody is repositioning. . . . They want to be saved before the boat sinks.”

To be sure, what Kabila will do if and when he takes power here is unknown. Some speculate, or perhaps hope, that he will be content with the capture of the country’s eastern provinces. That part of the country holds billion-dollar deposits of gold, diamonds, copper and other minerals as well as the nation’s best railroads, electrical network and agricultural areas.

So far, Kabila has created transitional governments dominated by his aides and followers in the one-quarter of the country that his forces have captured. But he also has promised national multi-party elections at some stage after his army has toppled Mobutu and “liberated” the country.

That gives hope to politicians like Banza Mukulay, one of Mobutu’s closest confidants. He is minister of mines, second in command of Mobutu’s ruling party and one of four vice prime ministers.

“We support taking power through elections, not through the power of a gun,” he said. “I’m a democrat. I accept the one who wins the elections.”

Such claims would be more credible if Mobutu, who seized power in a 1965 coup, had not repeatedly postponed polls he first promised in 1990. For the last seven years, he and his aides have successfully sabotaged democratic reforms and delayed any elections.

Kabila’s opponents warn that a rebel takeover of Zaire would unleash fierce ethnic bloodshed across the country. They say that the ill-disciplined army that has repeatedly fled from the insurgents would bitterly fight to save the capital.

So far, however, initial international concerns that the rebellion could cause the violent breakup of Zaire and destabilize the nine nations on its borders have proved groundless.

Indeed, rebel-held areas appear peaceful and united behind Kabila.

And even rivals in the political elite are quietly seeking audiences and alliances with Kabila in hopes of convincing him that they are indispensable in his bid to consolidate his authority and eventually rule the nation.

“They’re all talking negotiations,” a Western diplomat said, laughing. “. . . And more and more are saying, ‘I’ve always been a friend of Mr. Kabila’s.’ ”

For his part, Mobutu is saying nothing. Mobutu, who returned to Kinshasa on Friday from months of treatment for prostate cancer in France, was whisked away from the airport in a limousine.

Mobutu remained closeted with his inner circle in his heavily guarded palace Saturday. No ambassadors, journalists or other outsiders have yet seen him, although aides said he will meet South African Deputy President Thabo Mbeki today to discuss efforts to end this country’s crisis.