Capping Victory, Kabila Lands in Zairian Capital

Guerrilla leader and self-proclaimed President Laurent Kabila flew into this conquered capital Tuesday night, ending the improbable political and military odyssey he launched more than 30 years ago.

Kabila arrived after dark from his southeastern military headquarters, and although the large, expectant crowds that gathered in daylight had dwindled, those still along the road cheered wildly as a heavily guarded motorcade rushed him to the residence of the former prime minister.

The revolutionary who wrested control from dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in a whirlwind seven-month civil war declined to talk to reporters at the airport. Aides said they were unsure when Kabila would address the nation he has renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Kabila, a veteran of bush wars and rebellions dating to the country’s independence from Belgium in 1960, landed three days after his rebel army completed a marathon march across the heart of Africa and captured this teeming city.

Members of Kabila’s wartime Cabinet and other civilian officials from his Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire spent most of the day in closed-door consultations with local politicians, community leaders and diplomats to prepare the groundwork for an interim government and what Kabila has promised will be a transition to democracy.

But their attempts to meet with Etienne Tshisekedi, the city’s most popular politician and opposition leader in the final years of Mobutu’s long reign, apparently stalled over prickly issues of protocol.

Aides said that Tshisekedi, who was fired as prime minister by Mobutu in March but still considers himself head of the government, insisted that Kabila’s aides come to his house. The emissaries wanted the talks held in their hotel suite, which has become the alliance’s temporary offices.

The alliance officials also took their first tentative steps to rebuild and reshape a civil administration eviscerated by years of neglect, corruption and mismanagement. Ministries and other government buildings are mostly crumbling, and many civil servants haven’t been paid in more than a year.

“There was embezzlement and graft,” said Kapuku Musumbu, an analyst at the decrepit government mining office, where doors hang off hinges, windows are broken and cobwebs shroud the walls. “It was decadent, like the Mafia. When the head is bad, everything is bad.”

Few institutions were as bad as the National Intelligence and Protection Service, known as SNIP, the dreaded secret police agency in Mobutu’s once-vast security apparatus.

For years, SNIP operatives terrorized this nation of 45 million people with unlimited authority and no accountability. Human rights groups and victims accused SNIP of conducting mass arrests, gruesome torture, summary executions and other atrocities to prop up the ruthless regime.

“SNIP must die,” said Benjamin Mukulungu, a trade union leader who was brutally beaten and partially blinded by its agents in 1995 after he was arrested for organizing a strike. “SNIP was only here to support Mobutu, and torture and mistreat people.”

Kabila’s security chief, Paul Kabongo, promised to rename and reform SNIP when he arrived early Tuesday at the bunker-like, white concrete headquarters and reputed torture chamber on the Avenue of Justice.

In a brief speech to about 200 worried agents and operatives milling nervously outside, Kabongo said SNIP will get a new mission: protecting the people rather than a dictator. “Everyone will go back to work,” he said.

Kabongo said SNIP will be renamed the National Agency of Information, or ANR. Despite the benign new title, he gruffly ordered two reporters to leave the building. “There are still secrets here,” he said.

Many in the crowd complained that SNIP agents have been among the chief targets of lynch mobs intent on revenge since the rebel takeover. In some cases, guerrillas have shot suspects or allowed furious mobs to beat and burn them.

“We are very afraid,” said one broad-shouldered SNIP agent wearing dark glasses, “because young men are bringing alliance soldiers to point us out. Our agents are being threatened.”

Kabila and his aides have assured diplomats that the new regime will adhere to international human rights standards as they consolidate control over the sprawling capital. But allegations that his men participated in massacres during the civil war have dogged his attempts to win Western support.

Those concerns resurfaced after a spate of executions and the televised mistreatment by the guerrillas here of 18 men who claimed to be Hutu refugees from Rwanda. The International Committee of the Red Cross was not allowed to see the group Tuesday.

“We have no access to high-ranking officials,” complained a Red Cross official. “We have no access to detainees.”

Meanwhile on Tuesday, two French citizens were killed in Kinshasa, said French officials, who were investigating the incident. French news media said the victims were businessmen shot by gunmen in uniform.