Death of a Rebel

In the bizarre, rebellion-plagued history of the Congo since independence, Pierre Mulele authored one of the bloodier chapters. Almost five years ago, he launched a revolt against the "profiteers of independence"--the central government--and within months led his ill-equipped but relatively well-disciplined bands to control much of rich Kwilu province in the interior.

Mulele's men, who called themselves the Jeunesse, were fired by a strange mixture of leftist dogma and African magic, which they used time and again to put the superstitious Congolese National Army to flight. With shouts of Mulele mai (Water of Mulele), they threw themselves into battle, convinced that bullets fired at them would turn to water. Eventually the rebellion collapsed, partly because the Congolese army grew somewhat more efficient, partly because the geographical isolation of Kwilu province made it impossible for Mulele to replace the bows and poisoned arrows of his followers with modern weapons. Last week the Congolese government of President Joseph Desire Mobutu squared accounts with the former rebel leader by executing him.

Under Amnesty. Mulele, 39, once Education Minister for the late Patrice Lumumba and later an ambassador for the secessionist Stanleyville regime of Left-Winger Antoine Gizenga, had returned to Kinshasa in late September after nearly four years in hiding and in exile. Foreign Minister Justin Bomboko announced that Mulele had rallied to the Mobutu government and thus came under an amnesty proclaimed last August. He personally escorted the former rebel across the Congo River from the neighboring Congo Brazzaville, while Mobutu was on a private visit to Morocco. On his arrival, Mulele was feted over champagne and caviar. But Mobutu had hardly returned to Kinshasa when he announced that Mulele was not covered by the amnesty and that he would be tried as a war criminal. A military court of three judges--their names were not revealed--convened at Camp Tshatshi, Kinshasa's paracommando garrison, and after 15 hours of deliberation sentenced Mulele to death before a firing squad. The government's official explanation of the trial: Mulele had planned a Communist revolt against Mobutu with the aid of Cuban-trained rebels.

Whether the Congolese army had forced Mobutu to have Mulele removed or whether the whole affair was a Mobutu plot remained unclear. But the execution cracked the veneer of stability and national reconciliation under which Mobutu has lately ruled. Across the Congo River, Brazzaville broke relations with Kinshasa over the Mulele affair. Its radio warned that "rebellion has not died with Mulele."

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