Michela Wrong - In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz - Living on the Brink of Disaster in the Congo

Given the steady ratcheting of tension, it was no surprise that on 15 May anyone who owned a television sat glued to their set. Since mid-afternoon a message had been running across the screen, promising an important press conference. The word on Radio Trottoir was that Mobutu had been meeting with his generals and his departure was about to be announced.

The hours ticked by and nothing happened. The message continued to unroll. Finally, after midnight, a nervous newscaster appeared. To a rapt audience he read out a bland summary of the day’s events, rounded off with a piece of homely advice: viewers should watch out for the small beetles emerging after the recent seasonal rains, which packed a particularly nasty bite.

Whatever talks had taken place in Zaire’s upper echelons, commonsense had not triumphed. Mobutu, who had always warned his countrymen that ‘ma tête vaut cher’ (‘my head won’t come cheap’) could not let go. When he drove to the airport the following day, heading for the jungle palace where, it was said, he planned to exhume his ancestor’s bodies to save them from desecration by the rebels, he stole away in silence, having taken none of the hard decisions demanded.

And so it was that six hours after the death squad’s first unwelcome visit to the Intercontinental, I found myself peering over the balcony, watching as the parking lot below filled with gleaming jeeps and flashy sports cars. Kongulu and his men were back, and this time they had arrived in force.

The lifts filled with panicking women, their hair in a mess, juggling sleepy children in pyjamas, bulging holdalls and plastic bags full of documents. Not only had we been sleeping alongside the regime’s fifth columnists for the last few days, it emerged, we’d been unwitting neighbours of the DSP chiefs’ extended families.

I could see their menfolk patrolling nervously up and down, toting sub-machine guns and draped in cartridge belts. They were wearing their trademark sunglasses, those gold-rimmed feminine accessories which should look comic on a man but instead manage to look as sinister as the wedding dresses and blonde wigs worn by Liberia’s drugged fighters. They are the modern equivalent of the wooden masks donned around night fires by warriors preparing to do battle, which turn their wearers into something utterly alien – faceless instruments of violence capable of unspeakable acts.

We had chosen the Intercontinental because of its track record of safety. But in a shifting world order, yesterday’s guardians could turn into today’s hostage-takers. Looming all too vividly now was the possibility that the DSP might choose to make its last stand at Mobutu’s hotel. Did our nosy room cleaner and nervous taxi driver, neither of whom had made an appearance that day, know something we didn’t?

I called the British head of a security company downtown. ‘Just let us know if you get too concerned and we’ll come and get you,’ he said breezily, as though it was the easiest thing in the world. But word came that a camera crew trying to leave the hotel had been roughed up by the DSP and turned back. Summoning assistance might simply precipitate a crisis. More hopeful news came from journalists trapped at the Hotel Memling, that other de facto media headquarters in the centre of town. Closer to the action, they were watching retreating Zairean soldiers streaming along the boulevards, a retreat turning into a rout. As they surrendered ground, the men were removing their uniforms to emerge as harmless civilians.

Down in the lobby, a similar remarkable metamorphosis had taken place, almost without our noticing. Uniforms and weapons had all disappeared. Scores of muscular young men were lounging about in modish tracksuits, not a hint of camouflage or khaki in sight. The Hotel Intercontinental suddenly appeared to be hosting a well-attended sports convention.

The truth dawned: the Intercontinental was not going to be the stage for a new Alamo. The DSP had laid their plans in advance and were using the hotel as a way station where they could round up their families and change into civilian clothing before heading for the river. From cursing the inaction of the Western force in Brazzaville, we went to praying they would keep away. The last thing we needed now was for the DSP’s exit to be blocked.

Indeed, the DSP were encountering something of a logistical problem, as the first to flee had left their boats on the wrong side of the river. And this was when the Hotel Intercontinental suddenly justified its outrageously inflated prices, making up for all the suspect salads and blue feet, the years of skittering cockroaches and terrible muzak. From his office, our hotel manager called up his Lebanese friends and explained the situation. Swiftly a small fleet of Lebanese-owned motor-launches was assembled to ferry the new-found sports enthusiasts and their families across to Congo-Brazzaville. One convoy after another headed out, the limping wounded bringing up the rear. The hotel miraculously emptied and we heaved a sigh of relief. A showdown that could have cost hundreds of lives had been averted.

Across the deserted city, the Western security experts were at their work. On one street corner, a Belgian sharp-shooter took careful aim as a colleague ushered out a group of terrified nuns. Roaring around Kinshasa in a UN jeep, another leathery veteran had set himself the task of persuading what few soldiers remained to disarm. In the patronising tones you might use with a naughty toddler, he was telling teenagers so drunk they could barely focus to drop their rocket-grenade launchers before they did themselves a mischief.

By the river’s edge lay what remained of Kongulu’s sports car. Abandoned when he boarded a speed boat, it had already been stripped by looters of tyres, seats and spare parts. Along the same waterfront, Prime Minister Likulia Bolongo had also made his escape, ushered by French commandos onto a helicopter. Driving past the Hotel Memling, we noticed a dozen camera tripods laid out in a surreally neat row. The Japanese journalists, it seemed, had decided that the rebels would oblige them with a historic photo opportunity by marching down Kinshasa’s main boulevard. In fact they were being a little more unpredictable, fanning through the surrounding districts. We finally stumbled upon them near the sports stadium: a group of quiet, disciplined Tutsi youths allowing themselves to be appraised by a curious crowd while they rested near a shot-out BMW. Its DSP passengers had abandoned their uniforms, but the strategy had not saved them. Riddled with bullets, they lay face-down in pools of blood.

Back at the Intercontinental, the Belgian sun-worshipper was already in her bikini, catching up on missed rays. But the hotel’s official liberation did not come until the following day. Leaving the breakfast table, I had gone to see whether our taxi drivers had returned to their normal spot under the trees. And suddenly, there the rebels were. In flip-flops and bare feet, most of them no more than boys, staggering under the weight of shells and pieces of equipment, the column of AFDL fighters stretched as far as the eye could see down the Avenue des Trois Z.

Housewives ran in their dressing gowns across the lawns, brandishing cartons of Kellogg’s Cornflakes and Cocopops as placatory offerings. But the adult commanders kept chivvying the exhausted ‘kadogos’ (little ones) along, afraid they would fall asleep as soon as they stopped moving. ‘You must be tired,’ sympathised an onlooker. ‘Yes. I’ve walked all the way from Kampala,’ replied one boy, artlessly spilling the beans on Uganda’s involvement in the rebel uprising. ‘Sshhh,’ remonstrated his superior.

Abandoning their coffees, the hotel guests emerged to watch. There was a smattering of excited applause as the khaki procession wove its weary way up the hill to Binza, home of the mouvanciers and the site of Camp Tsha Tshi, Mobutu’s last bolt-hole. From start to finish, the capture of a city of five million people, climax of the rebel campaign, had taken less than twenty-four hours. For the first time in history, a group of African nations had banded together to rid the region of a despot. The event was hailed as the start of an African Renaissance, spearheaded by a ‘new breed’ of African leader.