Dr Vincent Sazita wrote a very interesting opinion piece under the above heading, which was published in the New Era edition of 25 August 2016.
The central thread of the article was that totalitarian regimes, which are underpinned by a personality cult around one powerful ruler, would eventually collapse. I think, in general, the article was a masterpiece.
However, in view of at least two of the examples cited in the article – Mobutu Sese Seko of the then Zaire and Saddam Hussein of Iraq – there is need to expand the debate a little bit.
The idea here is not to challenge the argument that both Mobutu and Saddam Hussein were dictators. I think that is beyond debate. In analysing the article, I am also not at all attacking my former colleague at IUM and a dear friend, Dr Sazita, at a personal level.
I highly respect him as a scholar and would never question his intellectual capacity. What I am trying to argue in this rejoinder is that historical figures should be understood within a broader historical, structural as well as system context.
Much as I agree with Dr Sazita that both Mobutu and Saddam Hussein were dictators, there is a need to put their regimes into proper historical and geopolitical perspectives. In the case of Mobutu, it is important to remember that he was a creation of the CIA when the Americans decided to overthrow the progressive government of Patrick Lumumba in 1960 – which had developed close ties with the then Soviet Union – much to the discomfort of the Americans.
This was during the Cold War era, an era that saw strong rivalry marked by rapid arms race between the two Superpowers (Soviet Union and the US), as they were trying to expand their respective spheres of influence internationally. The Western political system was based on multi-party democracy and a free market capitalist economy.
The most influential and powerful country in the West was of course the US. The East European socialist countries – led by the then Soviet Union – had a one-party system, dominated by the Communist Party, and a planned highly centralised economic system or the so-called command economy.
After the overthrow of Lumumba in the Congo, Mobutu was going to be useful to the Americans, not only in Zaire, but they also needed him to destabilise the Communist-leaning MPLA government in Angola, for example, which was perceived to be pro-Soviet Union.
As a result, Mobutuism as a sub-system marked by corruption, political patronage, autocratic rule and a personality cult came into existence and brought the Greek word kleptocracy (government or rule by thieves) back to common use again since the 17th Century.
However, this sub-system existed within a broad world system characterised by specific socio-economic and geopolitical structures and interests. Mobutuism was a strategic buffer zone or bulwark created to protect Western interests against perceived Soviet influence and “expansionism”. Therefore, the rise, ruthless rule, and fall of Mobutu should be understood within that broad context.
In the case of Saddam Hussein, I do not want to dwell on how he came to power, because that would be a spacious article in its own right. I want to rather focus on how he was overthrown. He was overthrown and killed by the Americans and their allies in 2003.
The Americans invaded Iraq – in broad daylight – in violation of the United Nations (UN) Charter and all norms in international law that guarantee the sovereignty of states (big and small) and should protect them against foreign aggression.
Regulatory norms in international relations are standards of appropriate behaviour that define what states can or cannot do. State sovereignty is thus premised on the norm that all states are equal subjects in International Law; and hence no state has any right to interfere in the internal affairs of another state – let alone overthrow and kill a leader of another state.
The pretext that the Americans used to invade Iraq was that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and he thus “posed a threat to international peace and security”. Thirteen years after the Americans overthrew and killed Saddam Hussein, no shred of evidence has been produced to date to prove that he indeed had weapons of mass destruction. The bottom-line is, the Americans overthrew and killed Saddam Hussein – a President of another sovereign UN member state – so that they could have easy access to the Iraqi oil fields; which they now have.
Towards the end of his reign, the West increasingly started seeing Mobutu as an embarrassing political dinosaur. It was therefore little wonder that in later years, the George Bush administration refused to give him visas to visit the US and after he was overthrown, France, another former close ally, refused to grant him political asylum.
By 1997 when Mobutu was overthrown, the West refused to come to his aid when his regime started to collapse like a deck of cards in the face of the rebellion led by Laurent Kabila and his troops.
Gerson Uaripi Tjihenuna is the Director in the Office of the Speaker of the National Assembly. The views expressed here are his own.