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DRC State Corruption and the International Response: Selected References

In the literature on political corruption in the former Zaire, discussions tend to link the domestic and international aspects. In the following, however, we will first point to sources focussing on the how the phenomenon of state corruption has been expressed internally in the Congolese context over the last two decades, and secondly, provide references to some works on the international response to the 'Congo crisis' - including on issues of corruption.

(1) State Corruption

The following ten sources give a closer idea of the main forms and the impact of state corruption in the former Zaire and the current DRC, as well as of the institutional arrangements that allowed the corrupt practices to flourish.

What emerges from the literature is a picture of a state in which corruption has become a commonly used tool to pursue personal and group agendas. During the first decade of Mobutu's rule from 1965 onwards, the economy remained strong and public sector relatively well organised. However, since the nationalisation policies of the mid-1970s, the oil crisis, and the fall in the world market price of key export commodities such as copper, economic crisis eventually led the state itself to start imploding - to the point of eventually becoming synonymous with Mobutu himself. For public servants to remain in office, or in fact, for anyone to have a share of state resources, the only way to manage was to accept the premises made by the people connected to Mobutu (Askin and Collins 1993, De Herdt 2002). Mobutu's slogan 'débrouillez-vous' or 'fend for yourselves' thus speaks volumes about how people not only were forced, but also encouraged to live in contravention with the law. In any case, the law was rendered relatively meaningless as the state and its enforcement agencies slowly but steadily withered away (Bayart et al. 1999, MacGaffey 1991).

As the literature reveals, the forms of corruption in the Congo over the last two decades have thus been extremely numerous and varied, and the impact of corruption pervasive - both at the structural and agency levels. The main 'institutional weakness' that has allowed corruption to flourish is thus the weakness, or at times the virtual inexistence, of the state itself.

When Kabila gained power in 1997, he thus faced an immense challenge - not primarily of state or legal reform, but rather of state building. In stead of focussing on building institutions and institutional capacity, however, Kabila reproduced the personality cult around the presidency - and was unable to confront external bids for influence without triggering an armed conflict. The situation of war broadened the scope dramatically for practices of corruption (Samset 2002, Kabemba 2003). This legacy will have to be addressed most seriously if the Congo today is to succeed when confronting its double challenge of building the state and building peace.

References

1. Askin, Steve, and Carole Collins. 1993. External Collusion with Kleptocracy - Can Zaire Recapture its Stolen Wealth? Review of African Political Economy 20 (57):72-85.

Authors' abstract: For 28 years, Mobutu Sese Seko has carefully and thoughtfully refined his system of transforming the public resources of Zaïre into private wealth, while using bribery, coercion and violence to thwart all movements for change. The consequences of his system commonly known as 'kleptocracy' or government by theft, are well known: impoverishment of the people; destruction of infrastructure; enrichment of Mobutu and his collaborators; the transformation of Zaire into the prime staging ground for foreign intervention against other African nations. This article will focus neither on the consequences of kleptocracy nor the growing opposition which, for the past 3 years, has aggressively but so far unsuccessfully challenged Mobutu's rule. It will instead examine questions of causation and culpability. It will identify some of the architects, beneficiaries and allies of kleptocracy; analyse the methods used for misdirecting Zaire's wealth, and catalogue the benefits Mobutu, his domestic associates and his external sponsors drew from this system. It will also discuss the legal mechanisms a post-Mobutu government might use to recapture stolen assets or set aside debts arising from loans whose proceeds were stolen.

2. Bayart, Jean-Francois, Stephen Ellis, and Béatrice Hibou. 1999. From Kleptocracy to the Felonious State? In The Criminalization of the State in Africa, edited by J.-F. Bayart, S. Ellis and B. Hibou. Oxford: James Currey and the International African Institute.

Comment: Although general in scope, this chapter of a much-acclaimed and influential work devotes itself in large part to the Congolese example. Its main argument is that the crisis that countries like the former Zaire has been exposed to, have been tackled in tremendously inventive ways. It thus highlight that 'corruption' not necessarily should be unilaterally condemned, but be seen as a survival strategy that demonstrates the adaptability of African people and societies to the circumstances of globalisation.

3. De Herdt, Tom. 2002. Democracy and the Money Machine in Zaire. Review of African Political Economy 29 (93/94):445-462.

Author's abstract: Whether or not Mitterand's famous thesis that 'there can be no democracy without development and no development without democracy' is correct, Zaire during the 1990s was a clear case demonstrating the absence of a close relationship between development and democratisation. On the contrary, the announcement that political leaders might be facing electoral defeat could be considered as one of the most important background elements determining the climate of sauve qui peut during the early 1990s. The dynamics of such an end-game situation are well-known in the literature on experimental game theory: only the most stubborn or naive actors will still abstain from using all the means at their disposal to maximise their short-term interests. We document this situation by studying Zaire's monetary politics during the early 1990s. First, we describe the most impressive phenomena creating the monetary landscape: hyperinflation, monetary games, a fake monetary reform and counterfeit money. We then analyse these phenomena in connection with the dynamics of the political arena of the period and, in particular, the prospect of democratisation.

4. Kabemba, Claude. 2003. Central Africa. In Global Corruption Report 2003, edited by R. Hodess, T. Inowlocki and T. Wolfe. London: Profile Books, for Transparency International.

Comment: This is the most updated outline of corruption-related challenges facing the Congo. It deals with how the war has broadened the scope for corruption, how the private sector is affected by it, and with international and national efforts to promote anti-corruption reform.

5. Samset, Ingrid. 2002. Conflict of Interests or Interests in Conflict? Diamonds and War in the DRC. Review of African Political Economy 29 (93/94):463-480.

Author's abstract: This article explores how the exploitation of key natural resources, diamonds in particular, has contributed to prolonging the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It affirms that the motivation and feasibility of resource exploitation largely explain why external military contingents have remained active in the country since August 1998. Driving forces of war can be identified among elites of Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe, for whom DRC resources have proven decisive to sustain positions of power. Although most exploitation has been carried out at gunpoint, the use of existing networks suggests that withdrawal of forces will not necessarily stop the massive resource diversion. While a lasting resolution to the crisis needs to ensure due benefits to the local population from their resources, it also requires that stakeholders see peace as a more attractive option than continued war

6. MacGaffey, Janet. 1991. The Real Economy of Zaire: The Contribution of Smuggling and Other Unofficial Activities to National Wealth. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Comment: This book, written by an anthropologist, provides a detailed picture of Zaire's multi-faceted economy of the 1980s - by going beyond the formal, regulated economy, which came to stand for only a minority of economic activities. It undertakes a comparative study of unrecorded trade in three border regions of Zaire and a household study in Kinshasa, and assesses the consequences of what it terms 'the second economy', and the nature of transformation it brought about in Zairian society. The book was published just before the World Bank broke its relations with Zaire due to the country's catastrophic performance on macro-economic indicators.

7. Ndikumane, L., and J.K. Boyce. 1998. Congo's Odious Debt: External Borrowing and Capital Flight in Zaire. Development and Change 29 (2):195-217.

Authors' abstract: During the dictatorship of Mobubu Sese Seko, Congo (or Zaire, as Mobutu renamed the country) accumulated a public external debt of roughly $14 billion. At the same time, Mobutu and his associates extracted wealth from the country. By 1990, the real capital flight from Zaire amounted to $12 billion. With imputed interest earnings, the accumulated stock of Zairian flight capital was nearly $18 billion. Congo's successor governments may be able to repudiate liability for the Mobutu regime's debt on the basis of the doctrine of odious debt. Creditors could then seek to recover their losses by identifying and impounding flight capital which was extracted from the country.
Comment: This article becomes particularly interesting in light of the World Bank's and the IMF's recent decision to reschedule Congo's debt. For more information see article on DRC debt service relief at the WB web site.

(2) THE INTERNATIONAL RESPONSE

Out of the international actors present in the Congo, the US and Belgium have been in the forefront over the last two decades, also on the issue of corruption - whether it has or has not been addressed. As the following references reveal, the Carter administration did attempt to address some criticisms of Mobutu's regime in the late 1970s, while Belgium also opted for a strategy of dialogue in the early 1990s (Nzongola 2002, Lanotte et al. 2000). Both efforts failed, however, and hardly went beyond matters of human rights abuses and multi-party democracy, and thus avoided the more delicate and intricate issues of corruption. Given that Kabila's advent to power soon gave way to a massive armed conflict, current international efforts to promote anti-corruption reform in the Congo do, in fact, not have much of a precedent.

The following three references provide more detail about the involvement of the international community. Schatzberg and Lanotte et al. deal with the US and Belgium in particular, while Nzongola also discusses the roles that the UN, the IMF and France have played vis-à-vis the Congo over the last two decades.
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8. Schatzberg, M.G. 1991. Mobutu or Chaos? The United States and Zaïre, 1960-1990. Lanham: University Press of America.

9. Lanotte, Olivier, Claude Roosens, and Caty Clement. 2000. La Belgique et l'Afrique centrale: De 1960 à nos jours. Bruxelles: Groupe de recherche et d'information sur la paix et la sécurité (GRIP).

10. Nzongola-Ntalaja, Georges. 2002. The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People's History. London: Zed Books.