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http://www.suntimes.co.za/suntimesarchive/1998/08/09/insight/in06.htm
Renaissance words do not stop dictators
WHEN Laurent-Desire Kabila's gum-boot army, backed by Rwandan and Angolan troops,
marched into Kinshasa in May last year, it seemed the tide of bloodletting had
finally turned in central Africa.
He represented, it was believed at the time, a new generation of central African democrats who had finally replaced the corrupt and repressive post-colonial order represented by Mobutu Sese Seko.
Now, barely a year later, the wheels have come off. Kabila has shown himself - depending on your perspective - incapable of, or unwilling to, democratise his vast country.
The result has been that central Africa is once more the continent's most dangerous flash point, with the armies of Congo, Rwanda, Uganda and Angola on the brink of a messy inter-state war.
The international community and, it must be said, South Africa, must take some of the blame for this state of affairs.
They put their faith in Kabila's promises of transformation and turned a blind eye when he failed to meet their expectations. The seeds of future instability were, in fact, sown shortly after he came to power when he imprisoned veteran opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi.
And more alarm bells rang when he refused the United Nations access to Congo's eastern territories, where his troops were said to have embarked on mass killings.
But, instead of heeding these warning signs and increasing pressure on Kabila to democratise, the South African government appeared to be taken in by Kabila's decision to impose stability at all costs.
In a bizarre move, the Minister of Safety and Security, Sydney Mufamadi, sent Kabila a consignment of old South African riot equipment, which was no longer needed at home since the democratic elections of 1994.
It is now clear that the stability Kabila was seeking was not a platform for a democratic election so much as a precondition for the continuation of Mobutism by other means.
This is clearly the view of his former foreign minister, Bizima Karaha, who spent a great deal of time shuttling between Congo and South Africa on Kabila's behalf.
Karaha is now part of the rebel movement challenging Kabila's authority in the east of the country.
As the prospects of democratisation in Congo have crumbled, so too has South Africa's diplomatic standing in central and southern Africa.
This weekend, at Zimbabwe's Victoria Falls, southern African leaders are at a summit discussing the crisis from which South Africa has been pointedly excluded.
South Africa has responded by launching its own mission, sending Defence Minister Joe Modise and Foreign Affairs Minister Alfred Nzo to Lubumbashi to talk to Kabila.
We are now a long way away from those heady days in early 1997 when President Nelson Mandela personally brokered the coming to power of Kabila aboard the SAS Outeniqua.
In global terms, we are at risk of placing ourselves on the margins of conflict resolution. We have declined the American offer of assistance in an African crisis response force, saying we will work with our neighbours on a regional peacekeeping project.
Nothing concrete has yet come of this initiative - and we now find ourselves without a peacekeeping role and without much leverage in diplomatic initiatives under way to solve the Congo problem.
While South Africa has talked the talk of the African renaissance, it has yet to show it can walk the walk.
South Africa now has the difficult task of rebuilding its diplomatic credibility by leading the world in finding a lasting settlement to the central African conflict.
It must do so by making a rapid transition to democracy in central Africa its primary goal.
Instead of banking on those who promise stability but deliver hardship, we must focus on building the institution democracy needs most to survive - elected government.