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Kabila and his political career
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PRESIDENT Laurent Desire Kabila, reportedly killed by one of his bodyguards, has been in power for almost four years but has been unable to bring peace to his vast, troubled country.
The little-known Kabila emerged from the bush after an eight-month campaign to topple Mobutu Sese Seko, the dictator of what was then called Zaire, in May 1997 at the head of an anti-Mobutu coalition assembled by Rwanda and Uganda.
But shortly after he kicked out Rwandan troops who had helped him during his bush war, Tutsi-led rebels backed by Rwanda and Uganda took up arms against him in August 1998.
A peace deal signed in Zambia's capital Lusaka in 1999 has all but collapsed amid ceasefire violations on all sides. Rebels hold much of the east and parts of the north of the country.
Born in 1939 in Jadoville in what was then the Belgian Congo, Kabila studied political philosophy at a French university and became active in politics when Congo gained independence in 1960. Stocky and shaven-headed, he once counted among his comrades the late Argentine-born revolutionary leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara, who fought in eastern Zaire in the early 1960s.
In 1965 Kabila joined a rebellion in the east led by Pierre Mulele, a minister in Patrice Lumumba's government when the former Belgian Congo just avoided breakup after independence.
Mobutu crushed that rebellion, but Kabila stuck to his mission.
Some African states argued at the time that Kabila -- who was not an ethnic Tutsi but had forged close links with Tutsis over the years -- was at the head of a plot to carve out a "Tutsiland" in central Africa.
Married with six children, Kabila fulfilled a 30-year-old dream when he toppled Mobutu at the head of his Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (AFDL), spearheaded by Banyamulenge ethnic Tutsis.
Immediately after coming to power, he banned all political parties except the AFDL, alienating the opposition. He promised elections for April 1999. April came and went without polls.
His relations with the international community quickly soured after a row with the United Nations over its efforts to investigate the suspected slaughter of up to 200,000 Hutu refugees by his troops or allies during the fighting that brought him to power.
On the economic front, Kabila's government refused to restart repayments on the US$14 billion debt incurred by the Mobutu government. International financial institutions reacted by isolating him, dealing a severe blow to the government's plans to embark on badly needed reconstruction programmes.
Whatever messages Kabila's decisions sent to the outside world, he had fostered the idea of himself as a staunch African nationalist, using the rhetoric characteristic of many first post-independence governments across Africa.
(SD-Agencies)
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