Thank you very much.
President Laurent-Desire Kabila was assassinated on Tuesday January
16
and his son Joseph was installed as President last week. DR
KLAUS
STEINIGER, editor of Rotfuchs (Red Fox)* gives the
background
to imperialism's interest in the country and the assassination of
its
President.
Since August 2, 1998, the Democratic Republic of Congo,
under President
Laurent-Desire Kabila, has been the target of extensive
imperialist
aggression. Involved are neighbouring Rwanda and Uganda, who wage
a proxy
war on behalf of the United States, France and Belgium. To-date this
has
cost the lives of 1.7 million people - 200,000 through direct
military
action, and 1.5 million (in the wake of the total collapse of
health
services in the Eastern provinces) from epidemics and
hunger.
Since its initial colonial subjugation this strategically
significant
country in the heart of Africa, with its immense riches, has not
managed to
escape the clutches of imperialism.
This became manifest 40
years ago, when, on June 30, 1960, the Belgian
"possession" Congo gained its
independence, and the first sovereign
government of the republic was formed
in Kinshasa, the former
Leopoldsville.
Its left-leaning premier,
patriot and anti-imperialist, Patrice Lumumba,
immediately became a thorn in
the side of the former colonial rulers.
He could not hold on to his
position for longer than six months. Then,
together with his closest
collaborators, he was brutally assassinated by
mercenaries in the service of
the CIA.
Others who courageously continued the resistance to Western
proxy dictator
Mobutu, met with a similar fate. Foremost among them was
Pierre Mulele, the
Education Minister under Lumumba. He formed a partisan
army, but when he
was captured by the enemy, he was cut to pieces -
alive.
Yet the resistance did not yield. In 1996/97 the troops of the
resistance
traversed Congo, and in nine months of fighting (with Kabila at
their head)
the American puppet Mobutu was overthrown and Laurent Kabila
became
President.
Kabila said a year later: "We refused to accept
masters and patrons. We
decided to be ourselves. That was not the country's
tradition. However,
sovereignty was needed if it was to
develop."
Initially imperialists welcomed the end of the Mobutu
dictatorship in the
hope of quickly coming to terms with Kabila.
The
transnational American super-corporation Bechtel presented a
"development
plan" for the Congo. Its fundamentals were "respect for the
international
financial community" and "the exploitation of natural
resources".
At
stake were no less than the world's largest raw material reserves,
including
gold and diamonds, as well as rare metals such as wolfram
and
nickel.
The Kabila Government refused and submitted to the people
its own
development plan, pointing out that Congo could produce 20 times as
much
food as was needed to feed its present population - and that in a
country
where, today, the average person cannot get more than one daily
meal.
Such a plan, which presupposed large investments in agriculture,
invoked
the ire of the imperialist mining giants.
By late 1997 the USA
had worked out a secret plan for the removal of
Kabila.
The Rwandan
army, which initially supported Kabila, was brought "on side".
Suddenly
Kabila was accused of having committed "genocide" against the
Hutus of Rwanda
in the country's eastern part.
Assassination plans were prepared against
the new President in Kinshasa
and then a revolt was launched, firstly in the
capital.
Congo defended itself and has held out for the past two
years.
On April 9, 1999, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution
whereby
"forces which had not been invited into Congo" were asked to
withdraw
their troops forthwith.
The US vetoed the resolution. Its
goal was to remove the undesirable
politician associated with the Congolese
left, who stood against
imperialism in the tradition of Lumumba and Mulele.
Just as it happened 40
years ago when Lumumba was assassinated.
Kabila
is not a figurehead of those five American-British mega corporations
which
have controlled the mining regions since the reign of Mobutu and
treat then
as their private fiefs.
Behind all this stands the International Monetary
Fund and the World Bank,
both of whom extend special lending terms to Rwanda
and Uganda.
According to Ludo Martens, (Chairman of the Workers’ Party of
Belgium who is
thoroughly familiar with Congolese problems), writing in the
Brussels paper
Solidaire: "Without the support of the United
States, France, and
Belgium two small countries which produce nothing more
than tea, coffee,
and bananas, would have never dared to attack a huge
country of 55 million
inhabitants and immeasurable extractive
wealth".
* * *
From: The Guardian
(Australia)
February 7,
2001
Thanks to Vera Butler for translation from the German
original.
Source: Rotfuchs, No 34, November 2000, Bulletin
of Northeast
Berlin Branch of the Communist Party of
Germany.
