KINSHASA, Zaire -- Bankrupt and riddled with corruption, Zaire is no longer the 'jewel of Africa' but one of the continent's most paralyzed states. Most people blame one man, President Mobutu Sese Seko.
The country's opulence during the 1960s, after the lengthy civil war that followed Zaire's independence from Belgium, has been transformed into national desperation with 100 percent inflation, vast foreign debts and a lifeless economy.
Mobutu, who has ruled with an iron hand since 1965, is accused of corruption on a massive scale, repression and cynical exploitation of Zaire's great natural resources.
In the squalor of its capital Kinshasa, a sprawling city teeming with 10 percent of Zaire's total population of 30 million, foreigners are advised not to walk the streets at night. Kickbacks to officials are a way of life.
Mobutu, 52, wears a leopard skin hat and always carries a tribal stick. He blames an international economic system based 'on injustice, inequality and exploitation' for Zaire's plight.
Former Prime Minister Nguza Karl-I-Bond, now living in exile in Belgium, estimates that Mobutu's personal fortune -- salted away around the world -- could almost by itself wipe out the country's vast external debts.
Bond, who was condemned to death for treason and then pardoned and invited to rejoin the government, calculated Mobutu's own fortune exceedes $4 billion. He said that on trips abroad the president would take with him up to $500,000 in cash in suitcases.
Since March, Zaire has defaulted on its loan repayments. A West German banker put in by the International Monetary Fund to oversee the Zaire National Bank reckoned the country owes more than $5.2 billion - up to four years worth of Zaire's total export earnings.
He accused Mobutu and his officials of diverting Zaire's riches into their own pockets.
The banker, Erwin Blumenthal, charged in a secret report leaked in Belgium that Mobutu and his government had established secret funds, bank deposits that were never revealed, and used double accounting procedures to milk the country.
A decade ago, bankers queued up to lend money to Zaire. The world's largest producer of copper and cobalt, rich in other natural resources, it seemed a safe and profitable investment.
But in 1971, the copper price plummeted and has stayed low ever since. In 1975, the Benguela railway that carried Zaire's products to Angola for export was closed, and commodity prices fell dramatically.
For most of the 1970s, Zaire lived off its reserves and loans. In 1980-81, an austerity program reduced its debts but brought the national economy to a standstill, with production down to 30 percent of capacity.
The IMF in 1981 nonetheless awarded Zaire the largest loan ever made to an African country, $1.06 billion. It stopped payments only months later as Zaire's economic and financial morass became apparent.
Since May, Kinshasa has had an acute gasoline shortage, brought about when imports of oil were cut back to save foreign currency. The oil bill accounted for more than 80 percent of Zaire's export earnings each month.
The oil shortage paralyzed the transport of goods around the vast country in central Africa.
Nothing works in Kinshasa -- the most recent telephone directory dates from 1971. Officials communicate with each other by walkie-talkie rather than through the broken-down phone network.
Mobutu hosted the annual Franco-African summit conference in October. It was designed as a diplomatic triumph for his beleaguered and mistrusted regime. But some 15 African heads of states, returning to Kinshasa from a riverboat trip, were left stranded when their bus broke down.
Black market commerce flourishes. Foreign currencies change hands at up to three times the official rate. Nothing can be done without paying money to officials.
Earlier this year, 20 tons of cobalt disappeared from a mine in Shaba Province and have never been traced. International dealers were puzzled by an influx of diamonds from Zaire's neighbor Congo, which has no diamond deposits. The diamond had been smuggled in vast quantities across the Zaire River from Kinshasa.
Prices of food, taxis and other services are higher than in Paris or London. Residents need more than 10 times the average income just to feed, clothe and house a family of four. The only way to survive is by carving out a niche in the all-important 'black economy' of shady deals and moonlighting.
Mobutu's own position is ambivalent, but well protected. He brooks no opposition but relies on outside help for his continuance in power.
Thirteen parliamentarians who criticised Mobutu's policies and tried to set up a party in opposition to the president's 'Popular Movement of the Revolution' -- Zaire's only legal political body -- were each jailed for 15 years.
Mobutu insists they are well treated -- they watch television and their wives bring them food. But he is adamant against an amnesty that would release them.
Two invasions of mineral-rich Shaba Province by Zairean exiles based in Angola almost brought down Mobutu in 1977 and 1978. With French and Algerian military help, the rebels were repulsed, but despite a reconciliation with Angola the danger of another invasion persists.
To protect his person, Mobutu is reputed to have French and Israeli security advisors. A French parachute unit is stationed in his country despite French President Francois Mitterrand's repeated statements that France will not intervene militarily in Zaire again.
Mobutu's policy of 'African authenticity' in the 1970s -- adopting non-Western dress, Africanizing place names and giving foreign-owned businesses over to Zaireans -- was designed to 'shake off colonial subjugation.' Critics see it as a means of reinforcing his own control.
Last September a 'people's tribunal' composed mainly of Western jurists and theologians, and presided over by American Nobel prize-winner biologist George Wald, met in Rotterdam, Holland, to discuss human rights in Zaire.
'We hold President Mobutu responsible for the systematic repression of the Zairean people,' the tribunal said.
Mobutu retorted that the tribunal had no legitimacy.
'I have not committed these sorts of crimes,' he said.
Mobutu insists his departure from power 'would not solve anything' and claims he has unified Zaire and given it an identity.
