IT WAS NOT DIFFICULT TO find someone to go into Zaire with me. I had already struck up an acquaintance with Gilles Hertzog, a young French journalist freelancing for Le Monde and today, very much a part of the French literary establishment (he’s the author of Le Séjour des Dieux). The grandson of Marcel Cachin, co-founder of the French Communist Party, and related to the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy (with whom he subsequently co-authored), Gilles had been in Angola at about the same time as I was. That, unfortunately, was his first trip to Africa and mistakenly, he believed that I knew what lay ahead. That said, he was French, which was essential for our exploit because almost nobody speaks English in Zaire and my own knowledge of the language was derisory.
When I suggested the prospect of going in, he accepted straight away. I was only to discover too late that the man was about as radical as they come on the Left Bank. In his bags he carried several tracts of Marxist propaganda, some of it from Cuba. There was certainly enough of it to get us tortured and executed.
It was a stupid move because Zaire at the time was probably the most anti-communist country on the African continent. Anybody espousing a radical creed was given short shrift by Mobutu’s secret police. South Africa under the old apartheid regime was similarly minded, but at least your fate didn’t rest on the whims of some obscure functionary with a pistol tucked into his belt.
However, all that still lay ahead. Meanwhile, bubbly with enthusiasm, we reported to the local UNITA headquarters in Lusaka the next morning certain that a remarkable African adventure lay ahead. We wanted to accompany UNITA forces into the field in their war against the Luanda regime, we told a small man dressed in a tight-collared Chinese tunic, which had become accepted as a kind of formal uniform within the movement. It was probably the least practical dress for the tropics, but Savimbi favoured it, which meant that everybody else had to as well.
‘Impossible’, the little fellow stated in flawless English and totally without malice. ‘If you enter Angola without the authority of the Allied Supreme Military Command and you are picked either by UNITA or the FNLA, you will be treated as a spy… you will be suspected of working for the MPLA. Worse, you will be executed. The same will happen if you try to enter through Zaire’, he warned.
Gilles suggested to the man that he must be joking. He wasn’t, he assured us. ‘If you want to die, try going into Angola without our blessing.’
He added that neither he nor his superiors had much control over combatants in the field in day-to-day affairs during the hostilities then going on. Since black soldiers were mostly ‘ignorant’ – his words, not ours – they were hardly likely to respect any press card that we might bandy about. He threw in a rather convincing rider about most of them being illiterate anyway.
‘Your media accreditation would mean about as much to the average UNITA soldier as a press release… very few have heard of or seen either’, which was when he smiled…
Then he said something that worried us: ‘The same applies to the enemy… anyone associated with Western nations will, if they get their hands on you, be treated by the opposition, the people in Luanda and the MPLA as a hostile agent.’
His closing words were forthright: ‘Be well aware of the risks my friends… Angola is now in a state of total war and as we all know, in wartime, solutions tend to be final.’ It sounded like an edict out of the Nazi era.
In view of this, he suggested, why not just be sensible and go home? Forget the whole thing? What was it to us, he asked, that there was war in Angola?
Some foreign correspondents took his advice. After a week or two with too much time on their hands, far too much hooch and too many black girls, the majority went back to Europe, America or South Africa. Others routed their return tickets through Nairobi and Kinshasa. Gilles and I thought about it over a few beers and then headed north by road, later the same day. We’d made up our minds and decided to go in overland.
In spite of warnings, we thought the risks had been exaggerated. In any event, we’d taken the precaution of asking the Zairean Embassy in Lusaka for transit visas and had been told that there would be no problem whatever. ‘Just roll up and everything will be fixed up on the border’, the official told us enthusiastically.
He was actually quite keen that we should go. I already had an FNLA press card, which meant that politically I was ‘acceptable to the cause’. I should simply ask at the point of entry to be taken to the local FNLA commander and all would be arranged, he suggested.
The border between Zambia and Zaire at Kasumbalesa in the extreme north of what, not very long before, had been Northern Rhodesia, was not one of the most impressive of Africa’s gateways. Apart from the mines, the region never readily accepted progress.
Outside the copper-producing towns, it was as thickly forested and primeval as it had been when the first white interlopers arrived in the 19th century. What struck us immediately about the area adjacent to the Zairean frontier in which we travelled was the number of roadblocks and troops among a mainly listless civilian community, the majority it seemed, out of work. The place exuded a profound melancholy begotten by an economy in total disarray.
Zambia by the mid 1970s had been independent barely a dozen years, yet the rot caused by Kenneth Kaunda’s hare-brained socialist schemes had taken effect. Even so, as we were soon to discover, it was not as bad as Zaire, not remotely so.
The twin border posts – one on either side of the frontier, a few hundred yards apart – were a series of small ramshackle buildings reminiscent of an earlier era. Like the adjacent town of Kasumbalesa, this was a peculiar sort of place in the middle of the bush. The imperial powers a hundred years before had decided exactly how the borders should be drawn on the map of Africa, regardless of whether they cut across tribal or traditional land. On the face of it, someone had walked into the forest at Kasumbalesa and decided that that was where the border post would be.
Thousands of Zaireans and Zambians crossed there every month. Because of shortages of most essentials in Zaire, the traffic – both legal and contraband – was significant. Controls were strict, but you could soon detect that it needed more than just documents to hurry a consignment through. American dollars in the right hands made things work in double quick time. In Zairois, the local lingua franca, such a gift was, and still is, called matabish.
Gilles and I arrived at Kasumbalesa on foot, after taking a taxi from the bus station. We walked to the border post carrying our luggage but were beaten to it by a busload of Zaireans going the other way. The immigration official on the Zairean side ordered us to the back of the line. In Africa, when a functionary in uniform with a rifle singles you out for attention, you never argue. In fact, it is often good policy to smile and thank him for abusing you. At a roadblock a corporal suddenly becomes a colonel, or possibly even a general, if it suits the purpose.
When, at last, we finally got to this officious little shit and gave him our story, he shook his head, slammed his fist down on the desk and said: ‘Pas possible’. We asked, still smiling, to see Monsieur le directeur. That was a mistake! We were proposing to go over his head.
The directeur was not there, he declared firmly. He’d gone to lunch, even though it was only ten in the morning. He would not be back before six that evening. It would be better if we came back next week; or preferably, next month. We said we would wait, to which he replied, so graciously that it surprised us both and in English, ‘Welcome to the Republic of Zaire’.
Towards dusk the directeur himself appeared. He listened courteously to our story and his questions were concise. He later told us that he had spent two years at Louvain University in Belgium. The man was friendly and not consumed by a need to prove anything.
No, he said, with a friendly pat on Gilles’ back, there would be no problem. However, we must understand that Zaire was on a war footing. He simply couldn’t let anybody through without a visa because that was the law. A visa could be obtained only in Lubumbashi. War dogs of an older generation will remember the town as Elizabethville. From there, he suggested, we would be able to cross the border into Angola at Teixeira de Sousa. There might, of course, be a little delay. ‘The war’, he smiled grandly, nodding his head.
Gilles and I looked at each other. What was all this rubbish about Zaire being unfriendly? This guy had just disproved all those notions. We were pleased because it all seemed to be coming together…
However, he said, still smiling, there was one little problem. We smiled back inquiringly. He declared in his friendliest mién that he simply could not let us go on to Lubumbashi on our own: somebody would have to accompany us, and it would be his personal responsibility. The problem, he added, was that he’d only come off duty at about nine that evening, in about three hours.
In a country as hard-pressed for foreign exchange as Zaire – even though it produces so much wealth in copper, uranium, cobalt, gold and diamonds – it came as a surprise when, promptly at nine, a brand-new French station-wagon arrived to take us to our destination. It was driven by the big man’s chauffeur. We’d be accompanied by another member of his staff, an athletic-looking soldier who introduced himself as André.
We had seen André around during the afternoon. The man was clearly military in appearance, and a toughie. Then he had hardly spared us a glance, far less a greeting: no twinkling sense of fun with this guy. André appeared to have no particular function, but he obviously had direct access to the director’s office, which indicated rank.
So we set off. I travelled in front with the driver. André and Gilles were in the back. About a mile down the road, André told the driver to stop at a roadside bar: the only one on the two-hour drive to Lubumbashi.
It was a typically African bush joint. A speaker blared out loud local pop music and the only lights were a row of paraffin lamps. Two black whores came over, but André told them to fuck off. They didn’t argue, but retreated to a safe distance.
The beers arrived with a selection of dirty tin mugs and our escort promptly ordered two more; for the road, he said. He indicated that we should pay. André moved aside to talk to someone he knew.
I was about to say something about the noise when another man came to our table. He spoke to me in English, his voice hardly audible above the din. ‘Listen, my friend,’ he said leaning across. ‘I am sympathetic towards you because I am Zairean. I was educated in Zambia and I have an English friend… a good friend.’ He looked around furtively to see what André was doing.
‘I am a member of the police here on the border and I saw you at Kasumbalesa today. I must tell you that you are both in very deep trouble. You think you are going to the FNLA, but in fact you have been arrested. Do you understand me?’
Even in that bad light, the colour must have drained from my face for Gilles could see that something was wrong. He tried to interrupt but I raised a hand to let the policeman continue. He obviously knew what he was talking about; how else would he have been privy to our connection with the FNLA?
Gesturing over his shoulder towards André, the man said that we were being taken to a military barracks in Lubumbashi. ‘It’s the worst in the country. They are taking you to the place of killing. They think you are agents of the MPLA.’ André returned at this point and we talked of other things. Our informant’s manner warned us not to mention a word. In any event, more beer had arrived and we were again expected to pay. André told us to drink up. I hastily told Gilles to stall him.
Gilles explained that since we had been on the road all day, we were very thirsty. Could he order another round? I produced another tendollar bill and the Zairean’s eyes lit up. Each round so far had cost ten dollars, three or four times the usual price, our escort pocketing the change each time. When André went off to fetch the drinks, I quickly told Gilles what the policeman had said. I then asked the border guard: ‘What the hell can we do?’
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Don’t try to escape or you will be shot.’ André and the driver were armed, he warned. They were professionals. We were in Shit Street, he suggested, big time…
On my own, I knew, I could probably have made it to Zambia. I was aware that the road followed the border for some distance before turning inland. I calculated it to lie about a mile south of us, perhaps two. In any event, I was fit and could outrun most others my age. However, Gilles was an innocent in a hostile world and I could hardly leave him.
It was an immediate decision and there was no other way. We were in this together, and anyway, the Frenchman from Paris knew almost nothing about Africa. If I had gone off, he would almost certainly have been killed.
Our options, just then, were limited. Somehow though, I thought, there was hope. There was a Japanese mine nearby – we could see the lights from where we sat. Possibly we might be able to ask permission to stop the car for a piss in the bush and disappear into the heavy forest that hung over the road in clusters. When I mentioned my thoughts to Gilles, I suddenly realized that neither of us knew the area. Worse, for the little we could see of the jungle, it was obvious that much of it was impenetrable. Also, there might be rivers to cross. Besides, Gilles had already told me, he was terrified of snakes.
Then, even if we were to get away, André still had our passports. Lusaka and our embassies were hundreds of miles to the south. If the Zaireans raised the alarm, the Zambians would also be after us once we’d crossed the frontier.
Anyway, we were not yet under close arrest, I said, taking a loftier approach. Then we noticed our driver sitting on the other side of the bar watching our every move. He hadn’t touched a drink. Moments later André waved us towards the car.
The 20 minutes or so that we spent at the bar seemed like hours. The two hours on the road to Lubumbashi might have been a whole night. Every mile seemed like ten and every promise of distraction offered relief.
After we had passed through the second roadblock, Gilles leaned forward and, in English, asked what he should do with the set of Ché Guevara’s writings that he had in his baggage? ‘Christ!’ was about all that I could utter just then. I turned my head in his direction.
‘You serious?’ The revelation was absurd and I was incredulous.
There are about six books, he whispered. I could hear that he was breathless as he whispered and suddenly I was too. It was like asking an airline pilot what you should do with the bomb we had brought on board. Could things get any worse?
To me it was incomprehensible that a Frenchman with a modicum of sense should enter Zaire, one of the most reactionary countries in the world, with a bag full of revolutionary tracts. Had he intended converting the locals? Everybody, everywhere, knew who Guevara was. Ché had actually visited the Congo clandestinely some years before and Gilles Hertzog knew it. He was innocent all right; with the kind of stupid, unthinking naïveté that could get us both killed.
We drove on in silence. I could see no solution. Then Gilles leant over once more and told me that he could reach his baggage with his one hand and that perhaps he could get at the books, one by one, and throw them out of the window.
We were travelling at about 80 miles an hour. In my imagination I could hear the wind ripping open the pages of a half-a-dozen Marxist dissertations as they tore apart in the dark. There was no way that André and his friend would not hear the noise and obviously, they’d investigate. That would be inviting disaster!
In as few words as possible I told the Frenchman not to be a total fucking asshole. ‘Don’t even think about it!’ I spat the words out under my breath. Anything like that would be tantamount to suicide, I quietly inferred. Which was when I asked myself whether this idiot had rocks in his head?
The driver slowed again; another roadblock. Soldiers came forward and one couldn’t miss their weapons. For a few seconds we were blinded by headlights. André spoke in Lingala, the Zairean language of the north and I recognized only one word, an aside in French: mercenaire. So did Gilles.
We were being represented to the others as a captured pair of mercenaries! My French colleague was in a state of apoplexy, sweat running down his face and I wasn’t faring much better.
It didn’t help to recall that only a few years before, Hoare’s mercenaries had ravaged the old Congo. Those irregulars had sometimes killed more innocents than guilty parties. Consequently, any hired gun in Zaire was a hated breed, especially if the subject happened to be white.
Not long before our visit a dozen Italian airmen, all members of an ‘aid’ group in Zaire, had been hacked to death in the belief that they were mercenaries. An apology of sorts was offered to their families by Mobutu, but what galled was the fact that at the time, no one had bothered to ask them who or what they were. Or what they were doing there. They were murdered without questions asked.
Now we were in that galere and we had Ché Guevara’s lucubrations in our baggage to prove it.
It was a time for some quick thinking. André was obviously the man in charge; dour and uncompromising. Yet, I sensed, somehow, he was a man of contradictions: he clearly had authority and hadn’t yet abused us in any way, even though his mind was made up about who we were supposed to be. Our only hope lay in trying to win him over. Money was part of the answer. What else? I had a jack of whisky in my bag.
‘Could I have a drink?’ I asked in my fractured French. ‘I have some Scotch in my baggage.’
‘Whisky?’ the man sounded interested. If I had known then that Scotch was selling for $50 a bottle in Lubumbashi – if you could get your hands on it – I’d have been better prepared. He stopped the car.
The bottle went round, I took a large swig myself because I needed it and then it went round again. The alcohol warmed me, even though the temperature outside was a stifling 35 degrees with humidity to match. It was even hotter inside the vehicle because there was no air conditioning.
Two more swigs and André had become talkative. By the next roadblock he was garrulous, but by then the bottle was empty. At least I had achieved a small victory because the man guarding us was tipsy.
He spoke of many things, with Gilles translating. His real name, he told us, was Betué Robert. His position at the border was that of military policeman. His rank in the Zairean Army was lieutenant and he’d been trained in military intelligence by the Israelis, spending three months at a camp for airborne forces in the Negev.
Then he said something that knocked us sideways: ‘My name among my friends is l’Assassin. I am the official assassin for General Mobutu in these parts.’ This was a real shock to us because the man was obviously proud of his dubious role as executioner.
Gilles asked him what he got paid for ‘eliminating’ someone. ‘Five hundred Zaire’, he answered (then about $1,000). That was for killing an important person, he added. ‘Less for someone like you’, he smirked, which didn’t help. It was his first joke and he enjoyed it. His laughter was like a fury unleashed. God knows, I suddenly felt we’d already been condemned! The assassin was playing with us; a cat with two captive mice. Meanwhile, my palms were sweating. Gilles’s eyes, I could see whenever I swivelled round in my seat, stood out like saucers in the half-light.
As we approached Lubumbashi, André turned to Gilles after he had asked where we were being taken and answered with a raucous laugh: ‘Don’t worry. I’ll see you through to the end. Right to the very end’, were his words. The driver smiled and I felt like puking. I asked André if we could stay at the Park Hotel in Lubumbashi. I didn’t expect him to consent, but I wanted to gauge his mood. He replied blandly that that wouldn’t be a problem. ‘But first we must report to the barracks.’
I knew then that it was vital to get the man to take us to some place where we could notify our consulates, the most obvious being the hotel or a restaurant. But it was already well after midnight and there was little chance that anybody who mattered would be about. Our only salvation, I decided, was to make contact with another white man; possibly one of the British or Belgian expatriates working in the copper mines.
Speaking English and no longer caring whether the driver could understand or not, I suggested to Gilles that if all else failed he should try to bribe the man, which might have been a mistake. If l’Assassin had spent any time in Israel he’d have picked up some English. We talked quietly for a few moments and by now the car was on the outskirts of town. Our driver was being signalled to stop at the last roadblock. While André was busy with the soldiers, I told Gilles to offer him $50 to stop first at the hotel.
André got back into the car. The main road into Lubumbashi stretched ahead, past wrecked cars and derelict buildings that still bore the marks of the civil war a dozen years before. One had taken a direct mortar hit on the roof and, after all this time, there were still broken tiles lying scattered about beside the road.
A sign indicating that we were entering Lubumbashi appeared out of the dark. There were no street lights and for all we knew, there might never have been. Worse, the place seemed deserted because there was no other traffic. There was clearly a curfew in force.
Gilles again spoke hastily to André about the hotel. I could see out of the corner of my eye that money had changed hands. The bribe was working! Thank God.
The car passed down a long avenue of trees and we passed a big barracks, the first of several. I had been to Lubumbashi several times before and I knew that we had a mile or two to go before we reached the centre of the ville.
André leaned forward and again spoke to the driver in Lingala. The car slowed. He pointed towards a dirt road on the right and both our spirits sank. Looking back on the events of the previous 12 hours, that specific moment was the most chilling of all: we suddenly realized that we were heading for the unknown. Nobody was even vaguely aware that we were even in Zaire, never mind in the hands of people who could do us harm. Nobody was likely to know either. It was a sensation like nothing else I had ever experienced, not even in Nigeria at its worst, and the darkness didn’t help.
From the direction we were travelling, I sensed we were being taken out of town again, on the far side of the city. I turned round to Gilles and voiced my fears but he could only nod. ‘Ask him where we’re going’, I urged. ‘This isn’t the fucking way to the hotel!’ Gilles uttered a few hasty words in French but André stared fixedly ahead. Then he mumbled something about having to report in first. Suddenly the man was sober.
We turned on to a better road, and a row of lights shone ahead. A turret with a heavy-calibre gun loomed out of the darkness. André motioned to the driver to turn left at a big building guarded by a sentry and answered the challenge when called. A set of steel gates opened outwards.
We didn’t know it then, but we’d arrived at a Zairean military camp. Our fate was totally in the hands of a man who’d earned his spurs with a select group of Israeli security forces in which he’d been awarded his honorary title: l’Assassin!