Things Are Looking Bad for Mobutu

ZAIRE

Is Zaire's autocratic ruler Mobutu Sese Seko soon to be a President in exile? That was one possibility being considered by Western diplomats in Kinshasa last week as the 2,000 to 5,000 Katangese exiles invading Zaire's Shaba region continued to gain ground easily. In a strange war without battles, the exiles seemed to be conquering sizable swatches of what was once called Katanga province without effective opposition from Mobutu's forces there.

At week's end the Angola-backed rebels were less than 50 miles from Kolwezi, where the Belgian-run Gecamines Co. extracts more than half of Zaire's vital copper. U.S. construction workers on a $500 million power line were airlifted out.* Should Kolwezi fall, Mobutu's government would be hard pressed to survive. French officials are said to have begun talks with anti-Mobutu rebels in Paris--presumably in an effort to reach a compromise.

"Mobutu is a survivor," says one Western diplomat in Kinshasa. "He may pull it off as he has in the past. But things look bad." If Mobutu fails to control the insurgency in Shaba, he will likely face rebellion from dissatisfied factions elsewhere in the country. Although the U.S., Belgium and France have airlifted supplies to Zaire, it is unlikely that any of Mobutu's traditional allies would try to mount a rescue operation. One reason: his crumbling, corruption-riddled army seems unable to repel the invaders.

The Katangese are skillfully using classic guerrilla tactics--infiltration and surprise, cabled TIME Correspondent Erik Amfitheatrof from Kinshasa. According to sources, by the time Zaire's barrel-chested General Bumba Moaso Djogi arrayed his 2,000 troops and a small contingent of armor west of Mutshatsha, Katangese vanguards were already slipping past his lines.

By day, the guerrillas hid in dense, 5-ft. jungle grass. At night, they bicycled and walked down narrow dirt paths flanking Bumba's roadblocks. Dozens of Katangese stole into Mutshatsha, hiding in the homes of sympathizers who are outraged by the army's looting. Others perched in trees near the town and dropped grenades into crowded troop trucks as they went by.

Meanwhile, the main body of Katangese circled Bumba's positions to join the infiltrators in a lightning attack that erupted everywhere in Mutshatsha at once. Within an hour, they had seized the army command post, the rail yard and a trainload of U.S.-and Belgian-made arms and ammunition. When Bumba's edgy battalions realized they had been bypassed, they simply streamed away through the jungle. After the loss of Mutshatsha--which the government denied for six days--Mobutu replaced his local commander with General Singa Boyenge.

Open Enthusiasm. The Kantan-gese invaders are drawn mainly from the Lunda tribe, traditionally among Central Africa's fiercest warriors. Shaba villagers have received them with open enthusiasm. Government troops, who speak Lingala--the language of the Congo River basin--rather than the local variant of Swahili, are, by contrast, feared and shunned.

Besides familiarity with the region's terrain and people, the grizzled Katangese boast over a decade and a half of combat-tested savvy. They originally fought for the late Katangese separatist leader Moishe Tshombe. After his defeat in 1963, they were forced into exile in Angola, then adopted by Portugal's secret police to fight Angolan liberation groups. Following Lisbon's 1974 revolution, which led to the dismantling of Portugal's African empire, the Katangese were virtually forced to side with Agos-tinho Neto's Marxist Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola in the Angolan civil war. Admiral Rosa Coutinho, the left-leaning Portuguese high commissioner of the colony, offered them a subsidy if they would serve under Neto--and threatened to hand them over to Mobutu if they refused.

Last-week Zaire officials claimed that the invaders were fighting under new bosses--leftist Portuguese mercenaries--and were armed with Soviet-made mortars and missiles. Meanwhile, the pro-Moscow National Liberation Front of the Congo, a Paris-based exile group, took responsibility for the invasion. Its aim, F.N.L.C. spokesmen said, was to overthrow Mobutu's "neocolonialist tyranny."

The Katangese have raised the sharpest challenge yet to Mobutu. A Belgian-trained soldier and former journalist, Mobutu has managed to unify a nation with a bloody history of chaos and tribal war. Parceling out privileged positions and sinecures to leaders of Zaire's 200 ethnic groups, Mobutu in return demanded and got almost feudal loyalty. High-living and profligate, he tried to burnish his image as a 20th century chief by such flamboyant stunts as the "Rumble in the Jungle" between Heavy-weights Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in 1974, which lost the government $4.1 million.

Le Guide, as Mobutu is called by the

FRANCE government-run press, flopped badly in managing Zaire's economy. Sinking millions into costly prestige projects when world copper prices peaked in early 1974, he led the nation to the edge of bankruptcy. Zaire's copper travels 43 days from Shaba mines to Congo River ports on rickety Victorian-era railways and barges reminiscent of the African Queen. Swollen prices of bread, rice and other staples have led to widespread discontent.

Mobutu's own corruption-fueled life-style has angered many of his people. Still, le Guide gave the country a decade of stability. If his government is toppled by the Katangese, Zaire could slide back into the butchery and division that scarred its birth.

* There are still 152 other Americans, most of them missionaries and Peace Corpsmen, in the threatened region.

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