Word: mobutu
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When it was over and the rebels had retreated from Zaïre to the Angolan border, the vastness of Africa seemed to swallow them up. For Johannesburg Bureau Chief William McWhirter, who had flown north to enter devastated Kolwezi on the private plane of Zaïre President Mobutu Sese Seko, that vastness was a large part of the challenge. The complications of communication and transportation made the job of staying with the news especially difficult for this week's cover story (see WORLD...
...that story is familiar: Cuban troops with Soviet aid helped the MPLA repel the invasions, and stayed in Angola to prevent further incursions by Zaire and South Africa. But Mobutu continues to aid the FNLA, which occasionally conducts raids into Angola. That is the real reason Angola has a sympathetic attitude towards the Katangan rebels--the Katangans serve as a diversion force, a counter to Mobutu's designs through FNLA on Angola...
...South Africa; they support black liberation throughout southern Africa. Meanwhile, as one black South African told Harvard students this year, "The U.S. is not just on the wrong side, the U.S. is the wrong side"--with its corporate interests in South Africa, its military aid to dictators such as Mobutu, and its consistent support of the status quo in southern Africa...
...French and Belgians have shown their willingness to intervene in southern Africa to protect their interests--interests in Zaire's copper mines that are run by French and Belgians, interests in propping up the shaky regime of a "safe" pro-Western-exploitation dictator, Mobutu. The future looks grim for the people of Zaire: Mobutu has wiped out all possible opposition, except for the Katangans; the worldwide recession and drop in copper prices has left Zaire's economy in a shambles; and the International Monetary Fund is imposing "austerity" on Zaire. We can be sure, however, it will not mean austerity...
...Carter, Brzezinski and the CIA have their way, Mobutu will continue to oppress his people. If American policy-makers succeed in firing up the Cold War again, the MPLA may be prevented from ever establishing true independence for the Angolan people. Worst of all, however, as Rhodesia's white foreign minister pointed out this week, America's blind anti-Soviet knee-jerks can only help the racist white regimes in Rhodesia and South Africa...