AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to move from the Caribbean right now to Zaire, what will be called the Congo. The 32-year-long rule of Zairian dictator Mobutu Sese Seko appears to be over. The ailing president flew to neighboring Gabon yesterday as the rebel alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo, led by Laurent Kabila, threatened to move on to the Zairian capital Kinshasa. Meanwhile, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson as well as U.N., British and French officials have been maneuvering to manage the political transition from a government led by their longtime ally, the 66-year-old Mobutu, to one headed by Laurent Kabila, a longtime guerrilla leader and foe of Mobutu.

Joining us to talk about events in Zaire, which is considered one of the richest countries in the world, are two guests. We’re joined by Rakiya Omaar, the co-director of African Rights, a human rights organization based in London, England, and we’re joined by Ron Walters, a professor of African American studies and government and politics at the University of Maryland, in College Park there. He’s also the vice president of the Constituency for Africa, a nonprofit group now headed by former New York City Mayor David Dinkins that seeks to educate Americans about Africa.

Rakiya Omaar, let’s talk with you first. Do you see this, the leaving of Mobutu Sese Seko from Zaire, as the end of his 32-year rule?

RAKIYA OMAAR: Well, I certainly hope so. But I think Mobutu’s ability to manipulate events should not be written off. I mean, he says he’s coming back. He says he’s, you know, getting arms from the other French-speaking countries in the region. I hope he fails, for the sake of the Zairian people and for the sake of peace and stability in Africa. But I think it would be unwise to write him off completely. He’s a man of immense wealth, and he’s a man whose thirst for power has brought his country to its knees. So, I certainly hope it is the end. And I think everything should be done to make sure that he is in no position to undertake any further adventures, but I would be cautious.

AMY GOODMAN: Rakiya Omaar, you wrote an interesting piece in The Guardian just recently called “A Bitter Harvest: Could the Latest Horrors in Zaire Have Been Prevented?” And you argue, yes, and you accuse the U.N. High Commission of Refugees of denying justice to the innocent. Can you talk about what the latest horrors have been and why you’re pointing the finger?

RAKIYA OMAAR: Well, the latest horrors, of course, refer to the suffering of the Rwandese Hutu refugees in eastern Zaire whose plight has been immortalized on television screens around the world and in newspaper articles, some of whom have been killed, some of whom have died from hunger and are malnourished and tired and exhausted. And I believe that there have been two kinds of Rwandese in eastern Zaire since 1994. One set of people are fugitives from justice, the people who planned and implemented the genocide of 1994, who fled in July 1994, not because they had a well-founded fear of persecution, but a well-founded fear of justice. And then there were the refugees, people who had not been killed in the genocide, but who were terrified out of their country through a well-organized political flight by the same people who committed the genocide, who wanted to frighten the Hutu population out of Rwanda, essentially as a strategy of war by other means, having lost the — having won the genocide against the Tutsi population, but having lost the war against the Rwandese Patriotic Front. They wanted to empty the country of the Hutu population, who are the majority in Rwanda, to deprive the Rwandese Patriotic Front of a population to govern, therefore of a sense of legitimacy and, of course, of international recognition and support.

And these same people turned the camps into extremely violent places where they continue to kill and to threaten refugees who wanted to go back to Rwanda, where they continue to launch very devastating attacks against Rwanda, killing survivors of the genocide, targeting Hutus, who were prepared to work with the new government, destabilizing the country and sowing panic and insecurity and instability. And they did this from camps that were established by the international community. They did this in an area essentially governed by the international community. And they did this with the resources available to them, made available to them by the United Nations agencies and by the relief organizations. And I believe that by — of course, they could not have considered the political asylum rights of each refugee as hundreds of thousands of people were fleeing in July 1994. But I think once the emergency was over, justice — that is, engaging with the mechanisms that would have brought the fugitives among the population to justice — should have been the overriding responsibility of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, whose responsibility is international protection of refugees, not the distribution of medicines and blankets for all and sundry who happened to have crossed an international border. And I believe it is their decision to stay in the camps no matter what, to turn a blind eye to the murderous activities of genocidal criminals, that is responsible for what has unfolded in eastern Zaire today.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Rakiya Omaar, co-director of African Rights. We’re speaking to her in London. Professor Ron Walters, do you share Rakiya Omaar’s beliefs in who’s responsible here?

RON WALTERS: Yes, I do. Certainly I think she has the correct analysis on it, and intimately involved in looking at that situation in eastern Zaire. I think, as we talk today, the situation in eastern Zaire, some people are even saying, in the midst of military action, is being turned into a bloodbath. So there’s even increased, I think, urgency and attention to that region needed as we look at the events in Zaire today.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Professor Walters, let me ask you, on a slightly different subject, though, of course, related, about Laurent Kabila right now, who’s moving in on Kinshasa. Can you talk about what he has done most recently? One is the nationalization of the railroads, and yet also the signing of massive multimillion-dollar agreements with major mining corporations.

RON WALTERS: Yes. Well, it’s unclear exactly what all of this means. Of course, the signing of many of these agreements with multinational corporations took place before he moved in and nationalized the railroads. And many thought that what he was doing was to try to shore up the economic health of the country and to give confidence to many of the Western countries that might have been concerned about his position toward their role in a new Zaire — to give them some confidence to support his revolution, so that he signed these agreements. The most cynical, of course, interpretations of that was that he was seeking to enrich himself, put himself in a position, in fact, to be another Mobutu. So, there was some concern about, and there still is some concern about, these agreements with multinational corporations.

On the other hand, his nationalization of the railroads, many people thought, was either an attempt to actually shore up this line of concern with an attention to economic problems primarily, because in any large-scale scheme of economic development, from the Gécamines mining complexes to others that are a part of European and American consortia, they need the railroads. And therefore, I think what he might have been trying to signal was that not only was he going to make it possible for these deals that he’s worked out to actually work by seizing the railroads, but that he was also sending a signal that he wanted to use these railroads in his military campaigns.

RAKIYA OMAAR: Yeah, I think that’s — yeah.

RON WALTERS: So he was able to cut off the lifeline of the Mobutu government by seizing these railroads. The political act of nationalization wasn’t anything. He was saying that I have the power to actually take this railroad, especially the southern half of it. And that, I think, was the more convincing point.

RAKIYA OMAAR: I think I agree with that completely. But I also think, you know, people forget that Kabila is actually engaged in a war, that his —

RON WALTERS: That’s right.

RAKIYA OMAAR: — overriding concern has been to win, to show that he can win the war decisively on the battlefield, thereby essentially forcing Mobutu either out of the country or to stumble towards the negotiating table. And he wanted to do that, as so many other political leaders in the world have done, by showing that he has the cards in his hands militarily. And so, I think one of the other obvious reasons for signing the agreements with the multinationals was he needs to finance his war. And I think anyone who expects somebody in the midst of a war to, you know, not to give primary consideration to having the resources to sustain that military objective, I think, is being somewhat naive under the circumstances.

RON WALTERS: On the other hand, I think it might have been a political miscalculation. And again, this has led some people to question his politics — that is, his political acumen, not his politics, primarily because, traditionally and historically, South Africa has owned part of the railroad. And as a matter of fact, the trade between South Africa and Zaire has been conducted partially by that railroad. So, here is Nelson Mandela who is playing a role in the negotiations on both sides. And I’m sure that this issue of the future of this railroad has been one of the issues on the table.

RAKIYA OMAAR: Yeah, no, I mean, I think that’s possible, absolutely.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Rakiya Omaar, co-director of African Rights, and professor Ron Walters, professor of African American studies at the University of Maryland. About a week ago, there was a piece in The New York Times about U.S. intelligence sources saying that the French are continuing to support Mobutu Sese Seko with mercenaries through secret covert operations in Zaire. Do either of you know anything about this?

RAKIYA OMAAR: Well, my contacts with the secret services anywhere in the world is nonexistent, so I have no idea what the — you know, what those reports are based on. But I am absolutely 100% sure that the French are continuing to search for every possible means to shore up Mobutu, rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding, and that they are not going to give up on their anti-Kabila and anti-Rwanda politics, even if, you know, Kabila gets into power and it is a fait accompli. The victory of Rwandese Patriotic Front in Rwanda was a severe political shock for the French and, of course, a devastating embarrassment for them. To, in inverted commas, “lose” Zaire so soon afterwards to the same sort of alliance, if you like, of political leaders that are very critical of French policy, you know, whether the Rwandese Patriotic Front, President Museveni of Uganda and, of course, Kabila, is something that is extremely difficult for the French government and many members of the French opposition and even, you know, many people among the French media, etc, to accept. And I think the French are trying, even through some of the NGOs that they give money to and support, through journalists, in every possible way, to try to undermine the prospect of a political victory for the anti-Mobutu forces in Zaire, and not necessarily because they continue to think that he is genuinely the best leader for the people of Zaire — they can’t possibly think that — but because their own narrow political interests in Zaire. And much more importantly, the wider implications of yet another political defeat for the French in West Africa, I think, is something they absolutely cannot swallow.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, the West is very much coming out, it seems, in many ways, with a kind of disinformation campaign or — I want to get your sense of it — a sort of critical look at Laurent Kabila. They’re already calling for democratic elections. They’re saying that he could be worse than Mobutu Sese Seko. Professor Ron Walters, what’s your take on this?

RON WALTERS: Well, I think that we have to be clear about one thing, and that is that as you see the political transition taking place in Zaire from Mobutu to the Kabila forces, I think that you also are experiencing a political transition from French patronage to United States patronage. And I think that, going back here to — I very much agree with the analysis of the Rwandese Patriotic Front, as a matter of fact, the objectives of the French. I was in Paris last fall, and the French were absolutely angry about any hint of the United States’ interest in the situation and the role that they were playing with the Ugandans and so forth. Now, of course, you have the United States playing a very intense role in the negotiations. Bill Richardson, of course, was just in Gabon; as we read in the papers today, is on his way to Paris. The French are reported to be saying that they and the United States are on the same page with respect to the objectives here. One really wonders. And I think that it’s certainly clear that given the long patronage of the French in this area, they certainly do not want to lose what has certainly been considered to be their largest prize, in Zaire. So, while I think that, on the surface, they probably have no recourse but to go along with what’s happening on the ground, because that’s the reality, I think, by other means, they probably are working to try to retain —

RAKIYA OMAAR: Yeah, absolutely.

RON WALTERS: — whatever a residual influence they have.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both very much for joining us. Next week we are going to take a look at the effect of Mobutu Sese Seko leaving on the rest of Africa and what this means to have a Mobutu-less Africa. We’ve been speaking with Ron Walters, a professor of African American studies and government and politics at the University of Maryland, and also Rakiya Omaar, the co-director of African Rights, a human rights organization based in London, England.

You’re listening to Democracy Now! When we come back, we’re going to remember a great educator, the Brazilian radical philosopher Paulo Freire. Stay with us.