kagablog

I grew up in a military state. I can’t explain to people what it was like going to bed one night with one head of state and waking up the next morning and being told that during the course of the night there had been a coup and new head of state was in power.

I almost did not get in to see Thierry Michel’s documentary Mobutu-King Of Zaire, an African Tragedy, when it was playing at the Sterkinekor cinema in Rosebank. So much for African films don’t bring in the audiences. The audience was there in full effect and according to the guy behind the till the cinema had been packed the whole week. People had come to watch one of Africa’s son’s on the screen. A man who seemed larger than life. A man who managed to make his people think he was a god. Who won’t, if every night before the news, you saw your president emerging from the clouds? I had read in a magazine that before the news there was a shot of Mobutu coming down from the clouds. At the time I thought this was ridiculous. Watching it at the cinema was eerie. The clouds are parting and Mobutu’s image starts to appear. He seems to float above the clouds. He looks like a god, the music praising him may as well be saying ‘welcome to earth o mighty one’ and this happened every night before the news! There were a lot of Congolese people in the audience that night. When Sakombi Inongo, Mobutu’s former Minister Of Information tells the filmmaker how he came up with the idea and how much Mobutu loved it, there were scattered laughs in the audience. But what I noticed was the silence. The silence of the people that remembered what that image meant. The image of their President descending from the skies. Of course all they needed was someone to take them on a crash course of the tricks of the visual medium and all would have been solved.

I grew up in a military state. I can’t explain to people what it was like going to bed one night with one head of state and waking up the next morning and being told that during the course of the night there had been a coup and new head of state was in power. That’s like going to sleep here with Thabo Mbeki as President and waking up the next morning to hear that Tony Leon is the new President! People here would take to the streets. The people in 1961 didn’t seem to have much choice. After independence when the charismatic Patrice Lumumba as Prime Minister is put under house arrest a few days after the ceremonies I could only imagine what the people were thinking. And there is Mobutu rounding up the army and there is Lumumba looking totally confused. After all, this is the man who he brought into the corridors of power. “Personally I don’t understand his action. He must keep his own conscience” Lumumba tells a journalist. Lumumba wants to seek help from foreign sources but with Mobutu having the backing of the former Belgian colonialists and the United States, Lumumba has no hope. A cockroach can’t win in the court of fowls. When he is caught trying to escape, Lumumba is taken to Katanga with the rest of his former cabinet ministers. I have seen the footage before. Lumumba’s hands being tied behind his back and a soldier slapping him. The van drives off. And with it drives a man who from now until the end of time we will wonder what sort of leader he would have been. He had all the makings of the great African President. He said all the right things to his people but he wasn’t speaking the language of the West. Larry Devlin, the CIA chief in the Congo at the time, says there was an order that said, “Patrice Lumumba should be physically removed”. Mobutu stepped out of the wings and unto the stage and carried out this ruthless demand. The newspaper reported that a horde of villagers killed Patrice. We know much better.

I feel like I am trapped in The Matrix watching this documentary. A certain sense of de ja vu. Like in Animal Farm, the animals discover the pigs are no better than the humans the documentary shows that Mobutu was no different from the colonialists. He held the country at ransom. It began and ended with him. Mobutu attempts to defend some of his actions by saying that his people aren’t in Europe so the same rules don’t apply in his country. As far as he’s concerned democracy can be applied in the country but not to the letter. He takes his position as king quite seriously and he goes the same way most African leaders carry on. The presidency is not a right. It’s a responsibility. What is it about African leaders that make them want to stay for so long in power, doing sweet bugger all except lining their pockets and plunging their countries into greater trouble? Mobutu would ask the prime minister for a million, the prime minister will tell the central bank the President wants two million. The bank’s governor will withdraw three million. By asking for a cool mill, three mill leaves the bank! Not to build schools or roads but to add to Mobutu’s fortune that is, we are told, more than Zaire’s debt! There is a story about a Nigerian minister who was given a certain amount to fix the electricity problem in Nigeria. He took the money and put it in his bank account! When students rioted, Mobutu closed the University and sent them into the army! Great, another generation of uneducated African people.

I was moved to tears as I watched this documentary. I cry for our continent. I have always maintained that we have been let down by leadership. Where is the leader who understands what the demands of the state are? What is it about post colonial African leaders? Most of them have let us down and Mobutu is a prime example. How many people are going to die before we have some sort of checks and balances? That Mobutu carried on for thirty years is a tragedy. He should have been stopped in his tracks way before I was born. But when you see him shaking hands with George Bush and other such leaders in the West you realise that that is where the power is. “Mobutu is among America’s oldest friends,” George Bush tells the press conference. There is laughter in the audience. Not one from the heart. A laughter that betrays something deeper. It’s a laughter of disgust. Disgust at this betrayer. A betrayer of his people and the African people.

The fascinating thing about this documentary is that when you walk out of the cinema you feel you have got to know Mobutu. He grows up before your eyes. From the skinny journalist to the robust man to the frail almost pathetic figure that inhabits the last few scenes in the movie. When the first shot of Kabila is shown, everyone’s heart skips a beat. When Nelson Mandela emerges from one of the official cars to mediate the peace talks between Mobutu and Kabila there is applause in the cinema. Finally a leader! Having being watching the betrayer for the past two hours, the sight of Mandela is a welcome relief. I don’t think anyone was happier to see such sight because slowly the depression started lifting. There is hope after all. We do have a few great leaders. What we want however is not a few but a lot. Maybe it is a selfish request. Maybe it is an unrealistic request. Kabila signalled hope but look what happened to him. He was worse.

When Mobutu and his family are finally forced out of the country by Kabila’s troops the signs are all too familiar. A leader taking flight. Idi Amin ran. Samuel Doe tried to run but he was caught and tortured in front of the camera. His ears were cut off with a blunt knife and fed to him before he was eventually killed. And here we see Mobutu running away with his family. His son in law tells the filmmaker that at the time Mobutu had to be forced to go. He was lucky he went. God only knows what they’d have done to him and his family. The documentary shows footage of the trial of Rumanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu and his wife Elena, friends of Mobutu. They are sentenced to death. A few frames later we see their lifeless bodies in the streets. The documentary tells us that those images bothered Mobutu because he felt that’s how he will go. Well, he shouldn’t have worried because he fled. Seeing those images of him leaving the country my mind flies back to the beginning when he was at the height of his power. You could see his arrogance all over the screen. I am untouchable. The Congo hasn’t finished picking up the pieces the man broke all over the country. A country he had to leave when he realised that he won’t rule forever. The National Party thought it would rule forever. Sani Abacha of Nigeria thought he would rule forever. This documentary shows that they don’t rule forever, but do we have to wait forever to recover from their damage? And to stop others from doing the same?

this article first appeared on coffeebeans.co.za