Background to the aggression against DR Congo (2) [Posted: 16.08.98] 3. ZAIRE: RECENT INTERVIEW BY 03.03.1997 LUDO MARTENS, PTB [Here are, in translation by me, some excerpts of an interview with Ludo Martens, chairman of the Parti du Travaille de Belgi- que (PTB) - and, btw, no relation of mine -, which appeared (ex- cerpts, not the full interview) in the 19.02.97 issue of that party's weekly (in French), "Solidaire".] [On important points, I don't agree at all with the views of the PTB, which i.a. states that the present revisionist and in fact fascist regime in China is a "socialist" one, but concerning the present situation in Zaire, I basically agree with my namesake, and have made propaganda in this direction since last November.] [I'm bringing the below as further argumentation why the AFDL in Congo/Zaire absolutely should be *supported*, which some other subscribers to this list have recently once more, wrongly, argued against. In Nov '96 and also later, I posted some other IMO good things on this subject from "Solidaire" to this list. - RM] LUDO MARTENS: FROM MULELE TO KABILA - "The revolutionaries must act when the reactionaries are divided" - Ludo Martens, the author of "Pierre Muluele ou la seconde vie de Patrice Lumumba" ["Pierrre Muluele and the Second Life of Pat- rice Lumumba"] and chairman of the PTB, compares the revolutio- nary experience in the '60:s and the present situation in eas- tern Zaire. Here are some extracts of an interview: (Note: The complete interview will appear in the next issue of "Solidarité Internationale". To order it or to order a copy only of the interview, you can contact the secretariat of the LAI [Ligue Anti-Impérialiste]. Phone: [+32] - 2 - 513 53 86.) *What is the importance of the experience of Mulele for the struggle of today?* Ludo Martens: Even at that time, there were two lines: that of Mulele and that of those who were conducting the armed struggle with the only aim of chasing away Adoula, Tshombé or Mobutu in order to take their place. That's the line that was followed by Kanza, Gbenye and Soumialot Mandungu. Since they didn't have any other per- spective, those three "leaders" of the revolution in the East, when seeing that the revolution had been defeated, said that they could do nothing else than join Mobutu and the Western camp. Only the road taken by Mulele could change the system itself. Only he had a quite clear ideology and applied it to the situa- tion in the Congo. He politicized and organised the masses, created a vanguard party and waged a protracted people's war. The others only waged armed struggle in order to get as quickly as possible into Kinshasa and reconcile themselves with those who, for various reasons, were opposed to Mobutu. Despite the Lumumbist verbiage, their project was to take Mobutu's place and...to do the same as he. Those two roads you can see appear again in the present movement in the East. *What will Kabila do?* Ludo Martens: Kabila and the people of his entourage, could they come to re- peat that which Gbenye or Mandungu said and did at that time? There are fo far only few elements that bear evidence of a real will to build a revolutionary project, to organise, to politi- cize the masses, to accept the perspective of a protracted people's war in order to found the basis for a fundamentally different system. There exists a tendency to wage the war and the armed struggle with the aim of knitting together, as quickly as possible, an alliance with Tshisekedi and other candidates for power. That's Gbeny's orientation. One cannot say anything yet and one shouldn't make a too hasty judgement, but it's necessary to know history and keep in mind different hypotheses. It would be a haughty and petty-bourgeois attitude to say: "I'm not certain, therefore I shall stay aside and not particiate." A Congolean who's revolutionary must be with the masses. He must be with Kabila and the Alliance [the AFDL]. He must prove that he's closer to the masses, that he understands them better, that he can educate them better than those who will make halt at a certain moment. It's necessary to gain the confidence of the masses and to go further, in a movement that's to be really revolutionary, that is, that would destroy the very basis for the imperialist power and for the Zairian big bourgeoisie. *Some people are presenting the war in Africa as a game of chess between the American and the French imperialisms. The peoples of the region would be nothing but dupes in this war, and one should thus neither support the Rwandan government nor the Al- liance, since this would mean supporting the American imperia- lism, according to them.* Ludo Martens: I judge this standpoint to be entirely wrong. One must first of all correctly define the central problem of the region. In eas- tern Congo, that's the presence of the Rwandan fascists, who are murderers such as have been rarely seen in history, braced up by the fascist Mobutu, who likewise is a murder of a kind rarely known in Central Africa. Every Congolese revolutionary, whichever language he speaks, has the task of getting rid of those two burdens which are lying heavily on the people. It's necessary to contribute towards destroying the war machine of the Rwandan fascists and that anti-people war machine which is Mobutu's army. For this, a revolutionary project is necessary: how to build a revolutionary power of the people? It's on this basis that the Congolese revolutionaries must work and must judge people. The revolutionaries must act when the reactionaries are divided and weakened, and create the basis for a people's power and army. It's true that the Americans are there and that they have their strategy. But he who doesn't struggle against the main enemy to- day and who doesn't have any revolutionary project, how could he struggle against the Americans? [So far the interview excerpts in "Solidaire", Belgium, 19.02.97] 4. CONGO: PEOPLE WINS! US GOVT., 24.03.1997 TROT ETC MUPPETS LOSE! To the subject line I should perhaps add: "So far, at least". I'm sending this to some newsgroups too, in addition to the Marxism-General mailing list managed by the Spoon Collective. On the latter, a debate on the situation in, and recent history of, Rwanda and Zaire / the Congo has been going on and off since last November, between above all Angie, - to whom I'm grateful for her pointing to the importance of that topic in the first place and for forwarding quite a number of reports and articles on it, and arguing "her" case in a materialistic manner - on the one hand, and myself, who knew very little on the sub- ject initially but who've had access to some additional, Bel- gian, French etc sources which I've studied and quoted from to that list, on the other. WHAT DID WE DEBATE? They main question we debated came to be: Does the AFDL (or AFDLCZ) - the Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Libéra- tion du Congo/Zaïre, led by Laurent Kabila, aka "the rebels in eastern Zaire" - basically represent the interests of the people of the Congo? Since last November, I've more or less consistent- ly argued that the answer to that must be YES, and have urged that these forces be *supported* internationally, while at the same time recognizing that it's still an open question in which direction they will develop, and not forgetting, I hope, the considerable difficulty there is of course for us "outsiders" of seeing through the whole situation in that country and that re- gion. The theory behind the "NO" to that question, argued both by Angie and by several other people I think are sincere such as Karl Carlile, has been the one saying that "behind the rebels" there in reality all along "has stood US imperialism", the main imperialist force in the world, which has been "playing a double game", "indirectly supporting the AFDL" because of an interest which it has of "replacing" (the of course much weaker) French etc imperialists as "main force of influence" in the Congo/ Zaire. Reports, in US etc media, of "foreign troops" intervening on the side of the rebels, this supposedly "explaining" their military successes - and, as it happens, making the fighting a case not of a just insurrection against a reactionary regime but, if true, one of an assault on the territorial integrity of a coun- try - have made up one part of the basis for this theory. At least formerly, up until a week ago or so, these media were con- stantly talking about such troops "from Rwanda", "from Uganda", "from Burundi" and, more recently, also "from Angola" - all countries which in fact, it seems, i.a. have held thousands of exiles from Mobutu's Zaire. And here the role of a whole number of phoney"left", phoney- "Marxist" publications and "experts" comes in, all chiming in with the openly-reactionary media in maintaining that, yes, there was such intervention in favour of, or at least an impor- tant influence on, the AFDL on the part of the Rwandan, Ugandan etc governments, and describing these governments as, basically, "obedient tools of the US imperialists", whose "tool", then, the AFDL in fact had "long been" too - these last-mentioned purpor- ted "facts" making up the rest of the basis for the "pest-or- cholera" theory concerning the present civil war in the Congo, the one saying that there was, and is, "NO" reason for people elsewhere to support the AFDL. WHY HAS NOBODY EXCEPT ME ON THIS LIST SO FAR SUPPORTED "THE REBELS"? It obviously has been not least the "weight" of those recipro- cally agreeing "analyses" in all those phoney"Marxist" and above all Trotskyite publications, such as the "Militant" and, lately, for instance, one called the "Workers' Voice", Detroit, that has influenced Angie and, I imagine, quite a lot of other people in- to thinking that "none of the sides in that war deserves our support". And Angie herself recently put her thinking this in part down to a doubt that the people of the third world, those obviously quite destitute masses of people in backward, economically even declining Central Africa, for instance, would ever "be allowed" by the US and other imperialists, armed to their teeth, really to get out of their grip on these countries. An understandable idea, but all wrong! "Imperialism is a paper tiger", is a famous and very correct saying by Mao Zedong. Experience shows it! To maintain in people's heads the idea that this isn't so, that's what the imperialists have all their ("own") media for. That's what they have their Trotskyite (*etc*) muppet organiza- tions for too. (By this I *don't* intend to say that all who today regard them- selves as Trotskyites are basically insincere or stupid. There are some explicable reasons why this in reality bourgeois ideo- logical trend, for instance, continues to have some adherents in several countries.) LOOK WHAT'S HAPPENING IN THE CONGO / ZAIRE JUST NOW! LOOK HOW VARIOUS FORCES ARE REACTING TO IT! Then you'll see, I think, the correctness of what I wrote in the second-last paragraph above. What do you say, Angie and others? Doesn't the situation look quite favourable to the people? Of course, much may still happen either way. I don't want to advo- cate "selling the fleece before the bear has been shot". But re- cent events, as all know, have been that Kisangani (among whose population, one Swedish reporter wrote, some at least would pre- fer renaming it "Stanleyville" again, since the Mobutuist /etc/ "Kisangani" "has no real basis in history", they say) was libe- rated a week ago (Sat. 15.03), a crowd of some 15,000 people most joyously greeting Kabila, when he later arrived in that city, and massively answering the US imperialists' miserable - and revealing - "ceasefire" proposal with: "No! We want the whole country to be liberated!" Recent reports also show that most people in the capital Kinshasa too want the corrupt and reactionary government of Mobutu out and the AFDL in. HOW HAVE THE US IMPERIALISTS REACTED? On 16.03, I sent a brief posting to the M-G list, headed: "Kisangani liberated! Now what will US media say?" I thought that a look at this might now be quite informative, to many. Would there be comments reflecting a secret rejoicing, at this success of "that in reality US muppet" the AFDL? Wouldn't there in fact, on the contrary, be visible at least a little bit of *foaming at the mouths* of the US imperialists, of rage at that quite important *setback* which they had now suffered? No "rejoicing" at all, but some very clear and heartening "foaming" there was. For those who haven't seen it already, I shall quote some passages from a CNN report on Mon, 17.03 - to be found on - on a press briefing held that day by US State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns. The CNN:s headline at once sets the tenor: "U.S. troubled" [sob!] "by reports of aid to Zaire rebels". No joy here! - Well, perhaps, in view of what recent events have shown even more clearly, there isn't much need for me to bring any details on this, but I shall bring some anyway - they're still instructive. 'WASHINGTON (Reuter) - The United States is troubled [once] by reports that rebels in Zaire are getting help and weapons from the governments of neighboring Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda and An- gola...' '"This is an extremely troubling [twice] development ... that Zaire is threatened [sob!] on all sides," State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said at a briefing. "The territorial integrity [just think of it!] of Zaire, its sovereignty [you see], is terribly important for stability [a codeword probably nobody knows we use for "oppression and exploitation"!] through- out Central Africa," he said.' [Foam!] '"We're still concerned [a variation on "troubled"] by the flood[!] of reports that there is assistance flowing to the re- bels by the government in.......' [Floods of tears! Foam!] 'Burns' comments followed the rebel takeover Saturday of Zaire's third largest city, Kisangani. The central government based at Kinshasa told its citizens not to panic[!] despite the military defeat.' [That's a good one too: When "your" people are *re- joicing*, tell them "not to panic".] 'Burns reiterated U.S. calls for a cease-fire...' ["time out", when you're losing, that figures] 'but also said: "The fall of Kisangani over the weekend is an extremely troubling [third time, and now with feeling] indicator of instability [i.e. the opposite of "stability", see above] in Zaire."' In brief, the US imperialists are "hopping mad". Now what has later happened to those "foreign troops" about which there was such a "flood" of reports? In later CNN reports, there's nothing about them at all; they seem somehow to have vanished. This perhaps is because none of those reporters from a large number of other countries who have since arrived in liberated Kisangani have had anything to say about such troops. US TROOPS, WARSHIPS RECENTLY DEPLOYED NEAR THE CONGO TO PREPARE FOR "EVACUATION" ETC The reports on this development, in the last few days, probably are known to most readers of this. For instance, CNN Fri 21.03: '"Several hundred" U.S. troops are being sent to Africa for the possible evacuation of Americans from strife-torn [sob!] Zaire, the Pentagon said Friday.' '...the amphibious assault ships U.S.S. Nassau and U.S.S. Pen- sacola have been "released" from the evacuation operation in Al- bania and will move from the Adriatic to the western Mediter- ranean Sea, closer to Africa.' 'The two ships carry a force of 1,500 Marines as well as heli- copters that could be used to transport civilians. In addition to transport helicopters, the ships bring wih them AH-1 Super Cobra attack helicopters and AV-8H Harrier "jump jets".' 'Earlier Friday, Defense Secretary said the Zairian situation was being given a day-by-day and hour-by-hour assessment.' And this already is rather old "news". It's quite clear that the AFDL, which has the most massive and entusiastic popular sup- port, *by no means* is any US imperialist puppet - not that there isn't always a risk that eventually, it might be trans- formed into one, since those imperialists are always backing more than one horse in any given situation and always strive to work "from within" no less than "from the outside" - but is to- day a force which US imperialism hates and fears, and is prepa- ring to oppose perhaps directly with military means too. So, once more: SUPPORT KABILA'S AFDL IN THE CONGO / ZAIRE! and: OPPOSE US IMPERIALIST INTERVENTION IN THE CONGO! Rolf M.