From Africa Recovery, Vol.11#1 (July 1997), page 19

Reconstruction a priority for Congo

New leaders confront legacy of economic collapse

By Ernest Harsch

With the end of its seven-month civil war, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) has begun turning its attention to the daunting challenges of reconstruction and development. Meanwhile, the international community, in addition to considering how to assist this effort, is highlighting the plight of Rwandese refugees (see box).

"This is the beginning of a new era," Mr. Laurent Désiré Kabila declared to a crowd of tens of thousands in Kinshasa on 29 May, upon taking the oath of office as president. He pledged to hold a referendum on a new constitution by December 1998 and legislative and presidential elections by April 1999. In the meantime, the new government has banned all political party activity, a move that has aroused some public protests.

After President Kabila's warm welcome at the Harare Summit of the Organization of the African Unity (OAU), UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan noted that there was "quite a lot of sympathy" among the assembled heads of state for the work required to "rebuild the nation, get the infrastructure going, and eventually organize elections at an appropriate time." The World Bank estimates that infrastructural rehabilitation alone will cost some $3 bn annually.

Some donor countries had initially pressed for national elections to be organized quickly. But Congolese officials said their first priority would be to overcome the administrative and economic collapse left behind by the ousted regime of Mobutu Sese Seko.

Most government employees have not been paid for several years, while many schools and health clinics were forced to close down. Although the country has some of the world's richest cobalt, diamond, copper and other mineral deposits, the state mining enterprises were often plundered under the Mobutu regime. The gross domestic product shrank by an annual average of 8.9 per cent during 1990-94, while inflation reached 750 per cent last year (down from a peak of 8,800 per cent in 1994). Meanwhile, the foreign debt has climbed steadily to $14 bn with few tangible results due to years of massive corruption.

During Mr. Kabila's inauguration speech in Kinshasa, he said the old currency, the zaire, would be replaced by new Congolese francs. The first cabinet meeting in late May announced that a reconstruction plan would be drawn up for renovating the roads, overhauling the health system, coordinating labour supply and demand, and undertaking other key economic and social rehabilitation tasks.

The prospects for developing the country's vast mineral wealth have aroused much interest among foreign mining companies, with many delegations arriving to negotiate or sign prospecting and exploitation contracts. "We want a market economy," Finance Minister Mwana Mawampanga has said. "But we want to ask those companies who come to invest in our country to be good corporate citizens." In particular, he said, the government would seek to avoid the type of mining monopoly South Africa's De Beers Consolidated Mines had previously enjoyed in diamond marketing. Other officials have reported that the government is considering selling large chunks of its equity in the two state mining enterprises.

Whatever foreign investments eventually may come in, the financing requirements for rebuilding Congo's dilapidated economy and administration are immediate. In part, the government hopes to recover some of the vast sums believed to have been embezzled by Mobutu and his immediate associates -- which by various estimates may range between $4 bn and $8 bn (see page 26). But such a process, even if partially successful, will likely take some time. In the shorter term, the UN Development Programme and other UN agencies are drawing up assistance packages to tackle some of the most pressing priorities. World Bank Vice-President for Africa Callisto Madavo led a delegation to Kinshasa on 23 June, and agreed to set up two commissions with the government, on the domestic economy and the foreign debt.

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BOX 1:

UN seeking to probe reports of refugee killings

Despite reluctance on the part of the new government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the United Nations is pressing ahead with its efforts to investigate allegations of massacres of Rwandese refugees by troops of President Kabila's Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (ADFL). "What is important here is to get to the facts," UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on 8 July, shortly after briefing the Security Council on the investigation team the UN plans to send to the country.

President Kabila had said at the OAU summit in Harare that a UN investigation team would be permitted to look into possible massacre evidence. The Congolese authorities, however, subsequently raised objections to both the composition and mandate of the team. They rejected the participation of Mr. Roberto Garreton, the UN Human Rights Rapporteur for Congo, and suggested that the team extend its scope to cover earlier atrocities by Hutu militiamen. Concerned that further time might be lost in haggling over such issues -- risking the loss of evidence and perhaps the lives of surviving refugees -- Mr. Annan said that the UN had to be flexible in order to get a team into the field "as quickly as possible" and that he would name a team.

The urgency of such a probe was dramatically highlighted on 2 July when the UN Commission on Human Rights released a report citing evidence of killings of refugees and other civilians in the eastern part of the country from September 1996 until the downfall of the Mobutu regime in mid-May. "Such crimes seem to be sufficiently massive and systematic to be characterized as crimes against humanity," the report concluded. While most parties to the conflict, including former Hutu militiamen interspersed among the Rwandese refugees, appeared to have committed violations, noted the report, some two-thirds of the incidents were attributed to the ADFL and its allies.

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