
By: RIC CARTER
Re: Robertson & Mobutu

Date: Thu, 7 Nov 1996 10:57:59 -0700
from: AMERICAN.ATHEISTS@listserv.direct.net
Subject: [Atheist] AANEWS for November 7, 1996


   MOBUTO-ROBERTSON ~~ A CHRISTIAN ''DANCES WITH DICTATORS'' SAGA
     The Chaos In Zaire Highlights Links Between Televangelist
          Pat Robertson And A Thuggish African Dictator

                                  **

   When the "soft money" scandal linking President Clinton and the
Democratic National Committee to foreign interests like the powerful
Riady family hit , the media all but ignored similar ties involving
powerful televangelist Pat Robertson.  While Robertson's Christian
Coalition was calling "foul" over a Buddhist temple fund-raiser which
funnelled money into DNC coffers, few people realized that Robertson's
International Family Entertainment, Inc. was a partner with the Riady
Family, the Indonesian dynasty which runs the Lippo Group, to market
television programming in China and other Asian countries.  Now,
Robertson's international connections are once again highlighted due
to the avuncular preacher's links to Zaire's megalomaniac dictator,
Mobutu Sese Seko.  To borrow  a Christian Coalition phrase, Zaire is
now in "meltdown" following decades of strongman rule by Mobuto, and
ethnic civil war, along with  the influx of over a million refugees
displaced by fighting in the eastern part of the country.

   If anything, Mobutu is just another example of the penchant of
religious right leaders -- in this case Robertson -- to involve
themselves with figures and causes which represent the most repressive
social and political agendas.

                         The "Great Leopard"

   A former army commander, Mobutu seized power in a 1965 coup and
immediately began to nurture a "cult of personality" around himself.
He ordered schools to replace Christian crosses with his portrait in
every classroom, and he appropriated the title of Mobutu Sese Seko
Kuku Ngfbendu Wa Za Banga, which roughly translated means "the all-
powerful warrior who, by his endurance and will to win, goes from
conquest to conquest leaving fire in his wake.."  His promises of
African populism quickly turned sour.  A tribal secret police force
was soon jailing and executing political dissidents, and money was
flowing from government coffers into foreign accounts belonging to
Mobutu and his cronies. Bizarre laws instructed the 40 million
Zaireans how to dress, even what names they could use. The Christian
Science Monitor notes in today's edition that "His influence is such
that many Zaireans fear him even when he is thousands of miles away.
A network of spies and secret police keeps residents  in the capital
looking over their shoulders when they talk of the 'Great Leopard,' as
Mobutu is known."

   Despite this, Mobutu served as a key U.S. ally on the African
continent during the cold war, and attracted the interest of both
foreign intelligence services and the American religious right.  For
both groups, the dictator was seen as a check on socialist Angola;
both Zaire and the United States supported the rebel movement UNITA
under the leadership of Jonas Savimbi.

   In the early 1980's, Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network was
already a key player in an alliance of business interests,
intelligence operatives and "private aid" networks propping up
"anti-communist" mercenary forces throughout the world, especially in
Latin America.  Robertson was rubbing shoulders with this  cabal of
freebooters, which included the Unification Church (Rev. Moon), John
Singlaub (World Anti Communist League) and paramilitary outfits like
the Civilian Military Assistance.  CBN was beating the drums on behalf
of "contra" efforts in Nicaragua, and groups like Committee for a Free
Afghanistan which backed the Islamic Mujahadeen alliance against the
Soviet invasion of that country, and the Free Angola Committee which
boosted Savimbi.

   When the Angolan government reached an agreement with foreign oil
interests including the giant Chevron firm, it was a major blow to
Robertson and the interests who had been using Mobutu and Zaire as a
rebel staging area.  In 1986, Robertson was calling for renewed
support of UNITA, and joined with Howard Phillips' Conservative Caucus
to launch a boycott campaign against Chevron.  Phillips was still a
Republican operative and was a key figure in the burgeoning religious
right movement, and was already well on the way toward embracing the
extreme Christian Reconstructionist dogmas that he holds today.

   For his role in allowing Zaire to be used as a staging area for aid
to Savimbi, Mobutu became a cause celebre for Robertson and the
Christian right.  But change was on the way, and with thaw in the cold
war even the U.S. State Department was growing concerned with Mobutu's
strongman rule .  On April 24, 1990, Mobutu ("under pressure,"
according to news sources), ended single-party rule and began to
create the illusion of a pluralistic government, first by appointing
opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi as prime minister, then quickly
replacing him with Leon Kengo.

   Robertson stayed involved in Zaire through a Christian Broadcasting
Network outreach called "Operation Blessing," and a less-publicized
venture known as African Development Company.  ADC operated a diamond-
mining project and forestry range on one of the government's
concession tracts, part of Zaire's $300 million annual trade in the
precious stone market.  And Robertson became more of a mouthpiece for
Mobutu, a fact which prompted Dr.  Makau Muta of the Harvard Law
School's Human Rights Program to declare that "Robertson is Mobutu's
biggest American catch."

   By 1995, Robertson was part of a network of boosters for the
Zairean dictator which included a group  of paid consultants,
religious right activists and intelligence operatives.  In August of
1995, Robertson announced efforts to persuade the U.S. State
Department to lift its ban on granting Mobutu a visa, reversing a
policy which had been implemented two years earlier. The Washington
Post quoted State Department sources who insisted that contrary to
Robertson, "Mobutu hasn't changed...What he wants is a transition from
the second Mobutu republic to the third Mobutu republic."

   The Post noted that "The long U.S. bill of particulars against him
(Mobutu) includes massive corruption, personal enrichment on a
spectacular scale at his country's expense, indifference to the
physical deterioration of what should be a prosperous country,
connivance at rearming the murderous Hutu militias of neighboring
Rwanda and repeated maneuvers to the frustrate the process of
transition to democracy that ht has promised to support."

   A Clinton administration source told the Post that "Robertson's
hand is all over" the visa lobbying campaign.  Also helping were some
other operatives with long-standing ties to Robertson groups and the
religious right.  They included:

   * Paul Erickson ~ political consultant and political director for
the 1992 primary campaign for Pat Buchanan.

   * Jack Abramoff, former director of Citizens for America
(bankrolled by drugstore magnate Lewis Lehrman), one of the "private
aid" groups that was part of the Oliver North's operation to aid the
Nicaraguan contras, and a Board Member of "Towards Tradition," a
religious-conservative Jewish group that works closely with
Robertson's Christian Coalition.

   Abramoff, like Robertson, was often an apologist for the former
apartheid regime in South Africa.  While chairman of the College
Republican National Committee he traveled to South Africa in order to
forge relations with the extreme right National Student Federation.
And he produced the 1989 film "Red Scorpion," supposedly a loose
interpretation of the story of Jonas Savimbi; the movie was financed
in part by the then apartheid government of South Africa.

   But Abramoff was involved even deeper in South African intrigue,
especially efforts to prop up the apartheid regime, portray Nelson
Mandela and the African National Congress as tools of international
communism, and support the role of the Inkatha (Zulu) Freedom Party.
Abramoff was involved in the International Freedom Foundation, founded
in 1986 as a Washington "think-tank," but according to some an
overseas asset of the South African National Defense Force and
intelligence service, BOSS (Bureau of State Security).  Newsday
revealed that its investigation discovered: "A respectable Washington
foundation which drew into its web prominent Republican and
conservative figures such as Senator Jesse Helms and other members of
Congress, was actually a front organization bankrolled by South
Africa's last white rulers to prolong apartheid..." Involved in IFF
projects along with Abramoff were such Washington heavy-hitters as
Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), Rep. Robert Dornan and presidential
candidate Alan Keyes.

                           Chaos in Zaire

   Following thirty years of authoritarian rule by Mobutu and over a
decade of efforts by the American religious right to prop-up the
dictators public image, Zaire is in shambles.  Inflation has soared by
nearly 100% in the last several months,  and "ethnic cleansing" and
warfare is rampant between the Tusi and Hutu tribal groups.  A
staggering amount of the country's wealth (one estimate is $10
billion) has been looted by Mobutu, who is recovering from prostate
surgery in Europe.

   The human rights "Zaire Watch" charges that Mobutu "has used the
Rwandan refugee situation to prop himself up.  His policies have
created serious tensions at the borders between Zaire, Rwanda and
Burundi.  He has consistently used people who committed genocide in
Rwanda to destabilize Rwanda for the last year and a half.  He has
also contributed to the crisis in Burundi by allowing Burundi rebels
to attack their country using Zaire as their staging base..."

   Pat Robertson and other extreme political religious interests in
America may be President Mobutu's last and only hope to retain power,
or even find a place to settle if his regime is overthrown.  The Swiss
have granted a passport to Mobutu since their banks  hold an estimated
$4 billion of the autocrat's  money, but most other European nations
are either lukewarm of hostile on the prospect of extending exile
status to the ailing dictator.  He may not even return to Zaire,
preferring to remain at his palatial Mediterranean palace on the Cote
d"Azur in France.

   Ironically, some analysts -- and even citizens in Zaire -- see a
Mobutu return as the only way to stabilize the country  and "keep the
generals in line."  Zaire may disintegrate into tribal provinces.
There is also the prospect of an international military-aid operation
involving French and even American troops; reports suggest, though,
that many Zaireans are resentful of the French who, they say, want to
bolster Mobutu's shaky rule.  Regardless of the outcome, the Zairean
tragedy remains a massive violation of human rights, and another
example of Pat Robertson's problematic involvement with corrupt,
authoritarian political interests.


