Many in Congo Disdain New Rulers

There is contempt in the voices of many residents of this capital city after they are asked what they think of the country’s new ruling elite. They are soldiers of fortune, the answer goes, with little or no experience in politics. They have lived abroad too long to understand the country’s problems, needs and wishes.

Seven months after toppling the late dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, Congolese President Laurent Kabila is still struggling to gain support for an administration that many complain is not up to the challenge of rebuilding a nation ravaged by three decades of economic mismanagement.

Several of Kabila’s key ministers and advisors are members of the Congolese diaspora who settled in the United States, various parts of Europe or elsewhere on the African continent during the Mobutu era, when the country was called Zaire.

Kabila’s cronies are criticized for being arrogant, having an appetite for big feasts, fancy clothes and flashy cars, and looking down on Congolese professionals who have never had the opportunity to travel or live abroad.

In a country where telecommunications is a luxury, critics say one of the diaspora’s favorite symbols of power is the cellular phone.

“We thought that these people coming back would bring in new breath,” said Congolese comedian Jean Shaka, who is starring in “Diaspora Mania,” a satirical comedy that ridicules Congo’s new breed of “expatriate” ministers.

“But we noticed that the true intellectuals, those who could really give their services to the nation, didn’t come back,” he said. “Instead, it is just adventurers who have come back, people in search of power.”

Supporters of Congo’s fledgling administration say the criticism is unjust but that it does not surprise them.

“What do you expect? They are Mobutuists--they don’t want change in this country,” said Andre Novo Mondo, a lawyer who last March returned to the country from France to assist with the legal affairs of Kabila’s rebel alliance in the eastern city of Goma. “They would like to continue under the same old system.”

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Defending the new regime, Jean Munyampenda, political advisor to the country’s ruling alliance, said that Kabila’s revolution got its initial backing from peasants and rural people--the grass-roots community in the country’s east. The hope was that intellectuals, students and professionals would gradually throw their weight behind the revolt.

“This did not happen, because of Mobutu’s propaganda [that the war was being waged by Rwandans] and the opposition’s propaganda,” Munyampenda said. “The only people who joined us were the people of the diaspora.”

Among the key Cabinet members who have returned to help govern Congo are Foreign Minister Bizima Karaha, a pediatrician who was living in South Africa; Interior Minister Mwenze Kongolo, a former criminologist who worked for eight years as an investigator in the Philadelphia district attorney’s office; Finance Minister Mawampanga Mwana Nanga, who was teaching university economics in the U.S.; and Etienne Mbaya, the minister of reconstruction and public works, who was living in Germany.

In addition, Pierre Victor Mpoyo, the minister of economy, industry and trade, came home to Congo from France, while Justice Minister Celestin Lwangi and Information and Cultural Affairs Minister Raphael Ghenda had been dividing their time between France and Belgium.

Many critics of Congo’s new administration, including journalists, professors and politicians, have been intimidated, arrested and even jailed for bad-mouthing their government. This has raised doubts about the Kabila regime’s commitment to democracy.

Shaka, the comedian, said of “Diaspora Mania”: “As we couldn’t speak out freely, we decided to express our views on stage. We thought it was high time to say what we feel, by all means necessary, even if it was risky. We say serious things in jest. Under Mobutu, people waited until it was too late to speak out.”

During a recent performance of the 90-minute show, which has played to packed audiences since September, several spectators left the hall as soon as the actors began to give their scornful imitations of new ministers, much to the amusement of the majority of the crowd.

One Kinshasa-based Western diplomat concluded that much of the political haggling has resulted not so much from the fact that many members of the diaspora obtained key government posts as from the knowledge that at least 60% of Congo’s political elite--including Kabila--originally came from the eastern part of the country. In the past, the government was dominated by people from the western provinces, which include the capital.

“This goes against Kinshasa being the brain trust of the country,” the diplomat said.

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But some observers say Kabila has excluded many smart and capable civil servants from positions of power not because they have proved to be corrupt or dishonest but simply because they held jobs under the former regime.

“In their minds, the people they found here on the spot were simply incompetent,” said Celestin Shabani Bin-Biteko, a professor of chemistry and a former interior minister in the Mobutu-era opposition parliament. “They have been treating all members of the internal opposition as Mobutuists to avoid working with them, and so keep the power for themselves.”

This has left the government filled with a bunch of yes men, opposition politician Joseph Olenghankoy said. “When Kabila says hallelujah, his ministers say amen. While they were in foreign countries, many were doing petty jobs. Now, without any effort, they are ministers, and to them Kabila is just God.”