Rebel Chief Kabila Takes Over in Zaire

KINSHASA, Zaire — Guerrillas from Laurent Kabila’s rebel army marched triumphantly into this sprawling capital Saturday and quickly moved to take control of the city and the country, effectively ending a seven-month civil war in Africa’s third-largest nation.

A beaming Kabila told reporters at rebel headquarters in the southeastern city of Lubumbashi that he was assuming power immediately as the head of state of Zaire, which he called the Democratic Republic of Congo.

He said government military commanders had agreed to “answer to me,” and he urged remnants of the defeated army to lay down their arms. Many soldiers went further, stripping off their uniforms and melting into the city’s back streets and slums.

Mobutu Sese Seko, the strongman who had beggared and brutalized Zaire for 32 years, flew Saturday to Rabat, the Moroccan capital, a day after he fled Kinshasa for his jungle palace in northern Zaire, according to a family member here. He is expected to go into permanent exile in southern France, diplomats said. Switzerland said it is ordering a one-year freeze on any assets held there by Mobutu and his family--assets that could be in the billions of dollars.

Despite warnings that a takeover by Kabila’s Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire would spark a blood bath in this city of 5 million people, Mobutu’s once all-powerful regime ended with a whimper, not a bang. The long-feared assault saw surprisingly little bloodshed and no major looting.

Sporadic but sometimes fierce automatic-weapons and machine-gun fire and the sound of distant mortars and grenades echoed in the steamy air through a tense morning and early afternoon. But no serious resistance was mounted, and a Red Cross official reported total deaths “in the tens.”

Fall of Kinshasa Marks End of Military Saga

The fall of Kinshasa marked the final chapter in an astonishing military saga. Until recently, Kabila was an obscure former Marxist bush warlord. His rebel army was born in the jungles of eastern Zaire only last September.

But Kabila’s troops have routed Mobutu’s army and security forces since then, capturing city after city--often without facing any resistance. By the time the rebels reached Kinshasa, they had raced about 1,500 miles across thick rain forests, trackless swamps, rugged mountains and dozens of rivers.

“It’s over, for all practical purposes,” said a Western military analyst who monitored the day’s tumultuous events. “There are still some mopping-up operations, but with the capture of Kinshasa, the war is over.”

By nightfall Saturday, about 80 rebels held Kinshasa’s Congo River port, and 15 others guarded the iron gates of the giant Information Ministry complex, where the government television and radio station is based. Others held an unused airstrip in the city.

“We are very tired,” a youthful rebel said wearily at the Information Ministry. He cradled an assault rifle in his arms and wore dusty fatigues with an apple stuffed in the shirt pocket. He declined to talk more.

Several thousand Kinshasans drank beer and danced wildly around the rebels, singing and chanting “Victory!” and “Liberty!” Many had tied white sashes around their heads and waved palm fronds in signs of peace.

Even some soldiers joined the celebration. Four men in military garb cheered and waved white flags as they roared around downtown in a white pickup truck. Others gathered in groups by the side of the road.

“Today we are free,” crowed Lt. Roger Balinga, who fought the insurgents at the eastern city of Kisangani in March but now wore a white headband to welcome them. “We have been waiting to join Kabila.”

But some residents were clearly nervous about the country’s new and largely unknown rulers. “We know they’re coming,” said a worried Willie Mbenga, a security guard outside a downtown office building. “But we don’t know what they’re going to do. We don’t know if they’re going to kill people. We don’t know who they will put in government.”

Few actually saw the rebels Saturday.

Most of the estimated 1,500 to 2,000 guerrillas in the attacking force were still advancing on foot from the N’djili International Airport, 15 miles east of the city, or through outlying districts.

That meant the western half of the capital and the Gombe diplomatic enclave were still unoccupied late Saturday. But government soldiers had disappeared. At least some were reported fleeing toward the Atlantic port of Matadi in the west, the last unconquered corner of the country.

The Rebel Advance on the Capital

The advance on Kinshasa began about 8 p.m. Friday when the rebels attacked Camp Kibomengo, just east of the international airport. The camp was a base for Mobutu’s special presidential division, the army’s best-equipped and most dreaded unit.

The two sides traded mortar and machine-gun fire, but the rebels overran the base within an hour. At that point, the army abandoned the airport and its last hope of stopping the rebel advance. Kabila’s troops captured the airport without firing a shot.

As the army retreated, the rebels advanced. A reconnaissance patrol of several dozen guerrillas reached the city center on foot without opposition about 3 a.m. Saturday.

Meanwhile, the disintegrating army was at war with itself. Gen. Marc Mahele Lieko Bokungu, the military commander and defense minister, spent Friday night visiting military bases urging his troops to surrender the city without a fight. But Mahele, whom Western diplomats had praised as a moderate and a key to a peaceful transition, was killed shortly after midnight at the presidential guard headquarters at Camp Tshatshi, where Mobutu’s now-abandoned palace overlooks a bend in the Congo River.

“Some soldier accused him of being a traitor and shot him,” the military analyst said. There were unconfirmed reports that other high-ranking figures from Mobutu’s regime were also assassinated early Saturday.

Mobutu’s last prime minister, Gen. Likulia Bolongo, took refuge during the night at the home of the French ambassador. Other generals, politicians and businessmen frantically called the U.S. Embassy, pleading for asylum. All were refused.

“We don’t want to have a Saigon,” explained a diplomat there.

The relative speed and ease of the final assault meant that no evacuations were necessary by the five Western nations, including the U.S., whose troops have been positioned for weeks across the Congo River in Brazzaville, the Congo capital.

Mobutu’s Inner Circle Flees in Convoys

Instead, the final hours of Mobutu’s era saw the panicked flight of Zaire’s wealthy elite--and a final display of crazed rage from Mobutu’s son Kongolo, an army captain known as “Saddam Hussein” for his viciousness and venality.

He stormed into the plush Intercontinental Hotel with about 50 heavily armed soldiers about 3 a.m. Saturday in a futile hunt for one of Mahele’s aides. The soldiers kicked the hotel staff in their fury, but no one was badly hurt.

Kongolo returned to the hotel about 9 a.m. to help rescue terrified relatives and other members of the dictator’s once-feared inner circle. Dozens of grim-faced men and their families, plus vast mounds of luggage, had been brought to the hotel by military jeeps during the night.

Wearing a black uniform and a fierce scowl, Kongolo led them to the muddy banks of the river in two convoys of black Mercedeses and other sedans, guarded by an armored personnel carrier with a mounted recoilless rifle and two military trucks with machine guns.

Normal ferry traffic had stopped, so most of the fleeing families were forced to cross the fast-moving river on dugout canoes and rafts.

One of the last to leave was the son of a Zairian ambassador. He clutched two cell phones and wore an elegant blue blazer and a checked silk shirt. Asked why he was leaving, he appeared puzzled. “We’re part of the regime,” he said.

But he said he hopes to return in a week or so. “This is my country,” he said. “This is where my money is.”

Somehow left behind in the confusion was Sami Mobutu, the dictator’s niece. The young woman had dressed for escape in sandals, chic trousers and a sequin-studded T-shirt. But she waited in vain as the day wore on, nervously smoking and pacing the hotel lobby. A doll’s head poked from her backpack.

The green-and-yellow Zairian flag was lowered outside the hotel at 11:20 a.m., presumably for the last time. The hotel, explained the duty manager, “isn’t pro-Mobutu. We want to avoid problems.”

Kongolo crossed the river in a speedboat about 2 p.m. But before he left, he ordered his armored command car to stop outside the Bank of Zaire, an institution his father had used as his personal bank account during his long reign.

Witnesses said he then put a rocket-propelled grenade launcher on his shoulder and fired twice. The grenades shattered windows and blackened the white marble face of the five-story building. Left unscarred was a 10-foot-high tile mosaic of Mobutu’s glowering face on the side of the building, a reminder of the tyrant’s brutally enforced cult of personality.

When he fled, Kongolo abandoned the three military vehicles--all marked with his emblem, a winged serpent--plus two Peugeots and a gleaming black four-wheel-drive Hyundai on a back street by the river.

By late afternoon, a drunken mob of grinning men was playing with belts of ammunition, crates of bullets and sacks of grenades left in the trucks. Others siphoned gas or used rocks and tools to steadily strip the vehicles of lights, seats, wheels and paneling.

Problems Loom With Dawn of New Nation

Kabila, who said Saturday he would come to Kinshasa in coming days, now faces the far larger problem of creating a credible government and holding together the hundreds of ethnic groups and political parties in this Central African country.

But for now, most residents appeared ready to celebrate the creation of a new nation after decades of a dictator’s depredations.

“We woke up in the old regime, and now we are free,” exulted Alpha Kamolo, another government soldier. “We have waited a long time for this day.”