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The War in Zaire/Congo:

The South African Strategy

Giving Mugabe enough rope to hang himself?

The South African government has stated that it has no intention of sending peace-keeping or any other kind of troops to the Congo. The OAU has stated that there must be a negotiated resolution to the conflict. Kabila refuses to negotiate with the rebels, stating that they are part of a foreign invasion by Uganda and Rwanda. He states he will only negotiate with the rebels when these countries have pulled out of the Congo.

Emboldened by his new-found status as a Zimbabwean puppet, he has been acting even more arrogantly than usual. At the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Durban, his "people" had told the press that there would be a press conference with him. He never arrived at his own press conference and was seen going to his hotel room with a bottle of whisky and two glasses.

The ball is now firmly in Mugabe's court since South Africa indicated that it would not get involved. The rebels are reported to have been beaten back in western congo, and to have been pushed out of Kinshasa to the forest just south of the city. But they still hold Kisangani in the east. Zimbabwean and Namibian troops are heavily involved in defending Kinshasa.

If the rebels have any brains, and the Rwandan and Ugandan dictators are quite cunning, they will settle in for a long guerrilla war, and whittle away at the Zimbabwean and Ugandan troops keeping Kabila's dictatorship in power in Kinshasa. In this way they could turn the congo into Zimbabwe and Namibia's "Vietnam". Both these economies cannot take the strain of a war which lasts for as long as a year. Already Zimbabwe is spending USD $ 1 million *per day* to keep it's troops in the congo. This is cash the Zimbabwean economy can ill afford to fritter away on this pointless war.

Comrade Bob has painted himself into a corner with no easy way out, since the South Africans have now washed their hands of this entire affair, save to murmer sweet diplomatic nothings about a "negotiated solution". This silly little bit of adventurism by Mugabe could very well mean his downfall as the creaking Zimbabwean economy cracks under the strain of this pointless war.

VIEWPOINT

We have in this country (South Africa) the consummate machiavellian political operator who will be President of South Africa in 1999: Thabo Mbeki. He is now the Deputy President, but he actually runs the executive inpractice even at this stage. Despite his fulsome letter of "kiss-and-make-up" to Mugabe, I suspect he wants to encourage Comrade Bob to hang himself with his own rope. I suspect Mbeki was actually quite peeved at Mugabe's behaviour towards South Africa and Mandela, and would dearly love to engineer, or at least nudge, his downfall, to show the rest of the continent that South Africa is boss.

He is too sophisticated a politician to ever admit to this. Consummate operator that he is, he would probably be holding the widow's hand tenderly at the political "funeral" of Mugabe's regime. :) But don't cross him ! Some *big* political figures in the ANC have done so, and discovered their folly when it was too late.

I am sure Mbeki is smiling sweetly at the thought that Mugabe is probably engineering his own downfall in the congo, and that all his [ANC] government needs to do is step out of the way to let Mugabe careen over the abyss. So the South African government will continue to act the "civilised peace broker" while allowing Zimbabwe to basically tie itself in the congo quagmire.

Its a quagmire because its a a war with no exit. Both factions are venal thugs, and those of the kleptocratic "elite" which have always looted the congo will continue to do so. The phrase in Leviticus "Put not your faith in Princes" could not be more apt. As long as people believe in "leaders" they will continue to be treated by these "leaders" as the moronic lemmings that they are. Its enough to make one an anarchist ! ;)

You know, if the congolese people took charge of their own lives and evicted these charlatans, militarily if necessary, they would end the war tommorow, and have a chance to develop themselves. Whatever regime comes into power, the situation of the congolese will not change.

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