It’s been over 20 years since the assassination of the DRC’s former president,
Laurent-Désiré Kabila, at the hands of his child soldiers. Kabila was the leader of the rebellion
that overthrew President Mobutu of Zaire in 1997 and restored the country's name.
What many don’t know about him is how he spent most of his life in exile,
engaged in the illegal gold and diamond trade as well as wild schemes to overthrow the dictatorship
of Mobutu, his immediate predecessor. Along the way, he briefly recruited Che Guevara
in 1965, as well as the armies of Uganda and Rwanda, which helped bring him to power in 1997.
In this episode of African Biographics we look at the life story of Laurent Désiré Kabila the former
president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo who was assassinated by his child soldiers.
Laurent-Désiré Kabila was born in the province of Katanga, a part of what was then Belgian
Congo. This was in 1939. He completed his studies in high school in Elisabethville
now Lubumbashi, in the DRC and then studied political philosophy at a French university.
It is also said that Kabila attended the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania.
In 1960 when he was 21 years old, Kabila became a leader in political movements allied to the first
prime minister of independent Congo, Patrice Lumumba. At the dawn of Congo's independence
from Belgium, the young Kabila was one of the bright young men who may have become a
star in his country's politics at the time. Yet after the United Nations intervention and the
assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the cream of these young Congolese politicians were exiled.
The army also chased Kabila and other Communist sympathizers away into the bush,
where they formed a guerrilla force. These young Congolese then formed a rebellion that was backed
by both the Chinese and the Russians, and half a dozen other African countries.
The rebellion by this group of fighters including Kabila attracted the attention of
the United States. The United States was panicking about possible Soviet gains in newly-independent
Africa. The Americans recruited Belgian officers, exiled Cuban pilots, and mercenaries.
Forced to retreat, Kabila and his friends turned to the Cubans and Che Guevara for support.
So Che Guevara and his squad arrived on the Tanzanian-Congo border with a small contingent
of guerrilla fighters. This was in April 1965. However, in his diary, that was published in 1999,
Che Guevara noted Laurent Kabila’s lack of involvement in the party and the general
lack of organisation in the group. Guevara judged Kabila, who was 26 years
at the time, as "not being the man of the hour" and that Kabila was too distracted.
This, in Guevara's opinion, accounted for Kabila showing up days late at times to provide supplies,
aid, or backup to Guevara's men. Guevara also discovered, to his dismay, that
Kabila was given to drinking traditional potions that he believed would protect him from bullets.
and sometimes Kabila also turned up quite drunk. The revolt of the rebels that were led by Kabila
was suppressed in 1965 by the Congolese Army with support from the United States.
Mobutu took control of the nation in 1965, established a dictatorship, and in 1971,
renamed the country, Zaire. In 1967 Kabila founded the People’s
Revolutionary Party, fighting to establish a self-sufficient Marxist territory in the eastern
section of Zaire. This group carved out an enclave on Lake Tanganyika, in the distant Kivu province.
There Kabila’s rebels supported themselves by killing elephants, trading in ivory as well as
gold mining. They also received occasional help and funding from China and Cuba.
But the Kabila’s rebels also gained international notoriety
in 1975 when they kidnapped two American students and one Dutch researcher for ransom.
Mobutu, who was now firmly in control of the country, ordered his troops into the region
and they managed to suppress Kabila’s forces who had no choice but to relocate to Tanzania,
where they regrouped. Kabila Regrouped
In the 1970s, Kabila moved his family to Tanzania after years of leading the unsuccessful rebel
movement in Congo. At that point in time Laurent- Désiré Kabila was a wanted man,
and the Kabila family would go on to live discreetly in exile in Uganda and Tanzania.
While in Tanzania, Kabila’s Family members used assumed names, often versions of one
of Laurent-Désiré's pseudonyms, Francis Mtwale, and ran several small businesses
including restaurants , bars, and markets. Kabila and his family imported food, and imported
and exported other commodities from the Congo through the ports in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
The family was protected by the Tanzanian government and moved from house to house
in the city's affluent neighborhoods to escape detection by Mobutu's intelligence agents.
In 1979, when the Ugandan exiles, supported by Tanzania, decided to overthrow Idi Amin Dada,
Kabila was incorporated by the Tanzanian troops among several armed groups to get
a first hand experience of modern warfare. According to Ugandan exiles, Kabila stayed in
Uganda and became close to the group of Yoweri Museveni until they went to the bush in 1980.
In Kabila and Museveni's first meeting, Kabila is said to have asked for arms, in order to attack
Mobutu, but was given a condition which was not to operate on the Uganda-Congo border.
Unfortunately for Kabila, the arms deal fell through,
but Museveni gave Kabila a modest financial contribution
and linked him with Libya to see if they could assist in any way without involving Uganda.
Meanwhile in Tanzania, Kabila would have a falling out with then Tanzanian President,
Julius Nyerere, because of their disagreement over Kabila's lifestyle. Nyerere criticised Kabila for
being too autocratic in his guerrilla movement and being too involved in illicit business activities,
which later led to Kabila being cut off of contacts with the Tanzanian security services.
At the time, by 1985, while Kabila was living in Dar es Salaam,
he had been involved in smuggling gold and diamonds as well as timber on Lake Tanganyika.
His other businesses included running a bar as well as a brothel in Tanzania. After all of this
drama, Kabila disappeared from public view for the next 15 years and did not reemerge until 1994.
So Kabila only surfaced again in 1994 when the Rwanda Patriotic Front, the RPF,
took power in Rwanda. Ugandan President, Yoweri Museveni, introduced Kabila to the
then Rwandan Vice-President, Paul Kagame, who had a sharp conflict with President Mobutu.
Kagame was cross with Mobutu over the presence of Rwandan refugees on the Rwanda-Congo border, who
were being held hostage by Interahamwe militias, who were Hutu militiamen that had led the genocide
back in Rwanda, as well as elements of the former Rwandan Army and the former Rwandan government.
The presence of the interahamwe in Congo, as well as Mobutu's continuing support for
his old Hutu allies, sowed the seeds of much of the upheaval that was to come and the Zairean
leader's own downfall. The Interahamwe and former Rwandan government officials used the
refugee camps in the Congo as bases to launch attacks against the new government in Rwanda.
By 1996, Rwanda decided that it could no longer tolerate the refugee camps.
The Tutsi of South Kivu in Zaire, who were called the Banyamulenge, staged an uprising in the summer
of 1996 against Mobutu’s government. This was with the support of the Rwanda government.
By the second half of 1996, the alliance of Banyamulenge,
Tutsi of North Kivu, Kabila’s rebels, Rwanda, Uganda and Angola formed to overthrow Mobutu.
So here are the reasons why the different countries and the different
groups supported Kabila. Uganda apparently supported him as a means of eliminating
Ugandan opposition groups on Congo-Zaire border, and perhaps to also punish Mobutu.
And in the case of Rwanda as I said earlier, they wished to eliminate the Hutu refugee forces
in Congo-Zaire, and perhaps to punish Mobutu. The Angolan government was motivated by a wish
to punish Mobutu as well as to strike a blow against its opponents, who were the separatist
groups as well as Jonas Savimbi's UNITA. The coalition chose Kabila as spokesman, probably
in part because he was the oldest among the founders of the AFDL, but more importantly he
divided. Initially, the leadership of the AFDL was supposed to be collegial
with Kabila only being the 'spokesman'. But when he started calling himself President of
the alliance, other leaders are reported to have objected, especially Kisase Ngandu who I spoke
about earlier. Unfortunately for Kisase Ngandu, Kabila felt threatened by him and so consolidated
his power base by organising Kisase Ngandu’s assassination. It is said that this assassination
displeased the kadogos and this might be the reason why they assassinated Kabila in 2001.
Meanwhile, with the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, Mobutu had lost much of the Western
financial support that they had provided in return for his intervention in the affairs of Zaire’s
neighbours. Marginalized by the new multiparty system in Zaire as well as ill-health, Mobutu
finally relinquished control of the government in May 1997 to Laurent Kabila and his forces.
Mobutu died in exile a short time later. President
When the AFDL forces took control of Kinshasa, on 17 May 1997, they were initially met with an
enthusiastic welcome. Kabila would go on to be sworn in as the president of the newly renamed
Democratic Republic of the Congo on 31 May 1997 and officially commenced his term as president.
However, after perhaps one of the shortest honeymoons any victorious revolutionary
leader has enjoyed, Kabila found his policies being challenged and his association with his
foreign supporters, especially the Rwandan Government, being viewed with suspicion.
During his presidency Kabila suspended the constitution and changed the country’s name
to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Some saw him as a new breed of leadership while others saw him
as a continuation of the authoritarianism and corruption that he was purportedly replacing.
Kabila wouldn’t allow people to form the political parties that they wanted to form, and the
elections he had promised for April 1999 became a distant dream. Kabila retained power to throw into
prison those who dared to demand that he fulfil his promises. And he used this power very often.
He also placed his leading opponent, Etienne Tshisekedi,
under house arrest. However, in May 1998, Kabila authorized a legislative assembly. During this
supposed period of political liberalization, his opponents continued to be arrested.
So it came as no surprised when in August 1998, some of the groups in the Eastern Congo that
helped place Kabila in power began to oppose him and began a rebellion against his government,
accusing it of numerous human-rights abuses, including large-scale massacres of civilians,
as well as the president’s apparent favoritism toward his own ethnic group for political posts.
Furthermore, his former national allies, Uganda and Rwanda, began supporting these rebels
after his forces invaded both of them in pursuit of guerilla fighters. Kabila,
however, found new allies in Angola, Zimbabwe, and Namibia, all of whom sent troops into the Congo
in order to support Kabila’s repression. All of this was the Genesis of the Second
Congo War, which devastated the country with its effects still felt across the DRC.
For Laurent Kabila, his survival skills served him well in exile,
but deserted him once he had moved into the presidential palace.
Rather, Kabila's kadogos, that I mentioned earlier, were the ones that pulled the trigger
that led to their boss's death. It is said the Kadogos believed that Kabila had betrayed them.
Kabila had believed that the kadogos who had served him loyally since his rebellion in 1997
against Mobutu were utterly loyal. He even told a visiting foreign businessman: 'They will never
do anything against me. They have been with me since the beginning. They are my children.'
However, he overestimated their loyalty. Some of the kadogos that had marched in support of
Kabila in 1997, had never pardoned him for killing their former leader, Kisase Ngandu.
One of them is quoted to have said, 'I marched with Kabila, but I knew he was a traitor.'
So the plot to kill Kabila started in early January of 2001 when a dissident group of kadogos
went to Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo and drew up a document setting out Operation Mbongo
Zero. 'Mbongo' is a Swahili word for buffalo, a reference to Kabila's physical stature.
It is said that the plan was that the conspirators would infiltrate strategic positions in Kinshasa,
the capital of the DRC, including the presidential palace, the national radio and television station
and the headquarters of the country's electricity company. The whole plot involved some 75 members
of Kabila's bodyguards at the presidential palace, many of whom were arrested after the killing.
Of course there was a hidden force supporting them, but there are many
theories as to whom that may have been. The day before Kabila’s assassination,
he had witnessed the execution of 47 kadogos, all believed to be plotting against him.
So here is a version of the events that transpired on that fateful night of 16 January
2001. It is said that Kabila's young killer entered the president's office at the Marble
Palace in Kinshasa, as the increasingly paranoid and isolated Kabila was discussing with an
economics adviser about a looming summit with France he hoped would be his political salvation.
The assassin bent over Kabila, and the president, assuming the teenager wanted to talk to him,
leaned towards him. The kadogo then produced a revolver and shot the president four times,
and then escaped with other conspirators while the palace resounded with gunfire.
At least three of those involved in the plot, including the unnamed killer himself,
fled Kinshasa, may have gone into hiding in Brazzaville, the capital
of the neighbouring Congo. Two days later Congolese officials announced Kabila’s death.
His son, Joseph Kabila , then aged 28, became the next president of the country.
After the events of that fateful night, on 16 January 2001,
a former aide to the late Congolese President Laurent-Desire Kabila, Colonel Eddy Kapend,
was sentenced to death for killing the president. Although Mr Kabila had been shot by his bodyguard,
two of his senior officials, Col Eddy Kapend and Georges Leta, were implicated in the killing.
Col Kapend was Laurent Kabila's right-hand man and the army chief of staff.
Eddy Kapend and Georges Leta were found guilty of having been the mastermind of the assassination,
along with several other members of the late president's security team.
20 years later in Jaunuary of 2021, the men convicted over the assassination of Laurent Kabila
were pardoned by DRC’s current president Felix Tshisekedi. However, the case of who exactly was
behind Kabila’s killing hasn’t been resolved. Let me know in the comments section below
about the versions of Kabila’s killing that you have heard or read about.
Don’t forget to like and share the video if you enjoyed it. Thank you all for tuning in. This
has been Tatenda for African Biographics, until next time. Cheers have a good one.