Zaire Capital Celebrates Amid Theft and Turmoil

KINSHASA, Zaire — Laurent Kabila’s victorious rebel army moved to restore order and consolidate authority across this still-tense capital Sunday on a day marked by jubilation in the streets but marred by looting and revenge killings.

A day after rebels first captured the city, thousands of reinforcements poured in on trucks or marched in long columns past wildly cheering and dancing crowds who lined streets and welcomed them as liberators.

Kabila’s name was chalked on roads and walls. Euphoric crowds donned white headbands and flashed V signs. Chants of “Liberty!” rang across the city. And one house flew the blue flag with seven stars that Kabila has chosen for the nation he calls the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Early Sunday morning, the guerrillas captured the last government military base, Camp Tshatshi--and with it the palace of ousted dictator Mobutu Sese Seko--after a brief battle with die-hard remnants of the exiled ruler’s presidential guard.

The first rebels to rush inside the palace tore down a giant banner reading “Welcome Papa Mobutu” and stamped on it. Palace employees then ran up to embrace them and hand out cigarettes and boots.

Other rebel troops moved into military camps and other strategic positions in the city, where they collected thousands of assault rifles and other weapons surrendered by soldiers from the defeated government army.

Severe looting erupted in some areas, but most of it appeared targeted at the lavish homes, cars and property of military officers, politicians and other powerful or notorious figures in Mobutu’s hated regime.

More worrying was an eruption of lawlessness and mob violence. Bloated corpses lay along several roads, and dozens more were burned in street bonfires by elated crowds eager to avenge years of official armed thuggery in this city.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said at least 200 people had been killed since rebels first entered the city early Saturday, including an unknown number who died in skirmishes and firefights with the insurgents.

Although all resistance seemingly had collapsed, rebel troops executed at least two men Sunday. Angry mobs identified them as members of Mobutu’s dreaded security forces, and they were shot. There were unconfirmed reports that the insurgents also killed several suspected looters.

While Mobutu’s whereabouts could not be confirmed, Togolese state television reported Sunday that he had fled his jungle palace in his northern home village of Gbadolite on Saturday--with rebels firing on his cargo plane as it took off, according to Associated Press. Mobutu’s plane stopped briefly in Togo on Sunday morning and then left for Morocco, the report said.

Diplomats said the rebels need to quickly reestablish civil order and security in the city before further lawlessness erupts. Rebel patrols were posted to some areas to keep the peace late Sunday, but normal police operations remained suspended.

The worst looting exploded around Camp Tshatshi, where mobs of youths sacked homes owned by the Mobutu regime’s elite. The rebels made halfhearted efforts to stop the destruction, including firing shots in the air.

At one point, a white leather armchair appeared to be walking down the street. “Why are you pillaging?” a rebel demanded of the man underneath it, ordering him to stop. He did so, but the chair soon walked off again. No one tried to stop another man hauling a huge Cubist painting.

Nearby, a filing cabinet was pushed on a swivel chair. A man staggered with a small washing machine on his head. Another reeled under a car transmission, newly torn from a red Mitsubishi sedan that was being stripped nearby. Mattresses, chairs, beds and tables paraded down the street.

One looter stopped to study an officer’s photo album. He grew steadily more furious as he saw pictures of huge plates of food at family feasts. “Look at this!” he said, stabbing his finger at the photo. “We are hungry!”

Bitongana Ndondoma was in tears after the looters left her villa. It was owned by a presidential guard commander, and her family had merely rented it. “I don’t know where my children are,” she wailed. “They ran away.”

The mob of about 300 people smashed windows and took clothes and furniture. They were trying to pry iron grilles from the doors in order to take the freezer too until a guerrilla in red flip-flops and a hat that nearly covered his eyes chased them away with a bamboo switch.

The most determined destruction was at the white poured-concrete mansion of Kongolo Mobutu, the autocrat’s sinister soldier son. He fled Saturday for neighboring Congo.

Filled with giant mirrors and bad art, the younger Mobutu’s home was a study in dictator kitsch, with matching white concrete bunkers with heavy machine guns on the front lawn and an arsenal of assault rifles and grenades out back. Confetti sprinkled on the ground suggested that last-minute shredding of documents had taken place.

Someone quickly ripped out the kitchen stove, and the house soon filled with the distinct smell of gas. That didn’t stop scores of people from running in and carting out everything from air conditioners to cabinet drawers.

“You couldn’t even look sideways at this house before or you would be arrested,” said Charles Seneli, a student watching from outside. “Kongolo was a dangerous man, like his father. No, more dangerous than his father. He could kill you just like that!”

Hundreds of other Kinshasa residents went to another military base, Camp Mobutu, to watch the defeated soldiers hand over their weapons.

Each time another carload of soldiers arrived to surrender, the spectators swirled around the car, clapping and cheering their approval. The festive crowd sang and danced as rebel guards loaded heaps of weapons onto cargo trucks.

“For the time being, we’re keeping all the weapons here, so that by Tuesday or Wednesday, the city will be secure,” said rebel fighter John Batesha, 27, predicting that Kabila will come then.

As of Sunday, Kabila was staying at his headquarters in the southeastern city of Lubumbashi, where he met with envoys of the United Nations and South Africa. But he sent his first political representatives to Kinshasa, saying they would meet with anti-Mobutu political figures.

The rebel troops drew a mixed reaction Sunday as they snaked across the capital in long lines. Many residents were exultant, cheering wildly, waving palm fronds and wearing white headbands in welcome. Others stared sullenly or stayed indoors.

“We see many strange men in this army,” said Jean Paul Kasusula, 31, a law student who watched nervously as they passed. “We don’t know what they will do. . . . Personally, I have fear.”

But the rebels also seemed uncertain. Although smiling residents repeatedly offered them water, bread and other food, the guerrillas cautiously asked the donors to taste the food themselves before they would eat it.

The disciplined rebel forces seemed determined to show the public that they were something new and different from Mobutu’s uniformed outlaws.

At midafternoon, four guerrillas in full combat dress, wielding assault rifles and large knives, slouched into the lobby of a pricey hotel, asking to change a $100 bill into local currency to buy food.

When the doorman replied that the foreign exchange bureau was closed on Sundays, one onlooker--a Kinshasa resident accustomed to the Mobutu-era way of doing things--began heckling the desk clerk, trying to pressure him to open his cash drawer.

The rebel leader cut him short.

“If they say there’s no exchange, then there’s no exchange,” he scolded. “This isn’t Zaire anymore. Now it’s the Congo, and in the Congo, people tell the truth.” They left empty-handed.