Laurent-Désiré Kabila

Statue of Laurent-Désiré Kabila

Laurent-Désiré Kabila (born November 27, 1939 in Moba , Katanga , † January 16, 2001 in Kinshasa ) was President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1997 to 2001 .

Life

origin

Laurent-Désiré Kabila was born in 1939 in the north of the province of South Katanga , in the port city of Moba (on Lake Tanganyika ).

Followers of Lumumbas

In the 1950s he became a member of the youth organization of the Balubakat party , a party closely related to Patrice Lumumba , which stood up for the interests of the Baluba people of Katanga. Shortly after Congo's independence on June 30, 1960, the province of Katanga declared itself independent under Moïse Tschombé - supported by Belgium and France . Its representatives saw it as a bulwark against the anti-colonial policies of Prime Minister Lumumba, who was overthrown and murdered a little later, which ran counter to their economic interests. This was followed by an uprising of the Balubakat against Tschombé, in which Kabila participated as a military leader. Lumumba, who was venerated as a national martyr after his assassination in 1961 , was regarded as Kabila's model.

Kabila supported Pierre Mulele , Minister of Education in Lumumba's cabinet, who organized a new uprising in Bandundu province. The National Liberation Council (Conseil National de la Liberation), led by Christophe Gbenye (Deputy Chairman of the Lumumbas Party, MNC), gave Kabila the task of inciting the East Congolese populations in the south of what is now the Sud-Kivu Province and in the north-east of Katanga to rebellion .

In his capacity as leader of this front, the Lumumbist Kabila offered the revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara shelter for nine months in 1965 . Guevara tried to restabilize the already collapsing Congolese revolution. In Guevara's view, the Congo was the third front of a tricontinental liberation struggle, alongside Vietnam and Latin America. Kabila made little impression on Guevara, who was of the opinion that Kabila was a bon vivant, but not a revolutionary and “knew more about drinking and fornication than about fighting”.

After the defeat of the rebellion and the withdrawal of its foreign support, Kabila, unlike other leading men, stuck to his opposition to the emerging regime of the new President Mobutu . In 1967 he founded the Parti de la Révolution Populaire (PRP) , whose armed arm - the FAP - continued the fight in South Kivu and North Katanga until the 1980s. Kabila saw the failure of the uprisings so far as being based on "seven misconceptions": lack of political education, excessive dependence on foreign countries, neglect of the peasants, tribalism, lack of discipline and self-denial, lack of cooperation between fighters and people, lack of a revolutionary party.

In 1984 the PRP captured his hometown of Moba on Lake Tanganyika, which was recaptured a short time later by Mobutu's troops. Another attempt to occupy Moba in 1985 failed. This success of the Zairian army led Mobutu to enact an amnesty, which resulted in the PRP losing some of its members as well as foreign support. Kabila left Zaïre for the time being and his trail was lost until October 1996, when he, supported by his political friends in Kampala (Uganda) and Kigali (Rwanda) at the suggestion of the Americans, headed the newly founded “Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Liberation” du Congo (AFDL) ”entered.

The AFDL, founded on October 18, 1996 by four political parties, was an alliance of convenience between various opponents of Mobutu, the direct emergence of which went back to “the armed uprising of the Banyamulenge Tutsi in South Kivu against the Zaïr regime, which they regarded as foreigners wanted to drive out of the country from the summer of 1996 - just as in the years before that, Banyamasisi Tutsi in North Kivu had been the victims of displacement to Rwanda ”. The AFDL and its leaders never believed that a dictatorship would voluntarily turn into a democracy. This explains Kabila's non-participation in the national conference held between 1991 and 1992 in Kinshasa to initiate a democratic system in Zaïre.

Presidency

After an eight-month triumphal procession through the country, the AFDL put an end to Mobutu's dictatorial regime on May 16, 1997. The negotiations for Mobutu's resignation were moderated by Nelson Mandela , among others . The country was renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and on May 17, 1997, Kabila car proclaimed himself president .

President Kabila, who was hailed as a savior and liberator when he entered Kinshasa, gambled away his popularity with a policy that was characterized by improvisation and amateurism. One year after taking power, he banned the political parties and any political activity, with the result that the democratization process initiated by the Sovereign National Conference was blocked.

On August 2, 1998, after President Kabila had terminated the agreements with his former allies, Rwanda and Uganda, the Second Congo War broke out in the east of the country and spread to the north of the country. While this rebellion was supported by Rwanda and Uganda, the regime in Kinshasa Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia stood militarily by the side. The Lusaka Peace Agreement , signed in July and August 1999, was not implemented during Kabila's reign due to the lack of will of the conflicting parties and the lack of interest on the part of the international community.

The deterioration in the socio-economic situation of the population increased steadily. Chaos, galloping inflation , the dissolution of the state, corruption , illegal enrichment, nepotism and the arbitrary arrests of opposition members are the results of President Kabila's three-year term in office.

Kabila was always connected to the traditions of Central Africa. He held a talisman in one hand for years without interruption to protect himself from harm.

attack

Laurent Désiré Kabila was assassinated on January 16, 2001 by Rashidi Mizele, one of his bodyguards. The assassin was immediately killed by other bodyguards. According to official reports, Kabila was flown to Zimbabwe and died on January 18. The background to this attack has not yet been clearly clarified. In January 2003 the alleged mastermind Colonel Eddy Kapend, a cousin of Kabila, was sentenced to death . However, the sentence has not yet been carried out.

Kabila's son Joseph succeeded his father in the presidency.

literature

• Peter Scholl-Latour : African death lament. Bertelsmann, Munich 2001, ISBN 978-3-442-15219-3 (eyewitness reports)

swell

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Bartholomäus Grill : Laurent-Désiré Kabila: The closer his victory comes, the fewer people in Zaire want him to come Die Zeit, May 16, 1997
2. ^ Taz , April 9, 1997