Laurent-Désiré Kabila
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| Birthdate: | November 27, 1939 |
| Place of birth: | Likasi, Shaba, Zaire |
| Date of Death: | December 17, 1996 |
| Place of death: | 20th of May Stadium, Kinshasa |
| Spouse: | Sifa Mahanya |
| Profession(s): | Revolutionary |
| Ideology: | Maoism |
| Political party: | Parti Révolutionnaire du Peuple (which later joined the Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo-Zaïre) |
Laurent-Désiré Kabila (November 27, 1939 - December 17, 1996) was a Lumumbist rebel, a follower of the late revolutionary Pierre Mulele, a major participant in the 1964-1965 insurgency in eastern Zaire, and a man with both Maoist leanings as well as a proclivity for laziness, indecisiveness, heavy drinking, womanizing, and tardiness. Although he presented himself as a serious revolutionary, he was anything but. In fact, sometime in 1965, Che Guevara himself arrived in the Congo with a team of Cuban advisors to incite a Cuban-style revolution, but to Che's disgust, he found that Kabila was far more preoccupied with partying, bedding women, drinking, and driving in fancy cars. Kabila would show up days late, provided little support, and was generally uncooperative. Che, concluding that Kabila was lacking in "revolutionary seriousness," left the Congo in frustration.
From the 1960s to the mid-late 1980s, Kabila ran a small fiefdom in the Fizi area of Sud-Kivu, where he profited greatly from smuggling and poaching. His forces, the People's Revolutionary Party (French: Parti Révolutionnaire du Peuple), or PRP, ostensibly founded as a Marxist "liberation" group dedicated to establishing a "socialist paradise," had a well-defined social program, which included regrouping peasants in cités agricoles, which would be organized as agricultural cooperatives, and equipped with a dispensary, maternity clinic, nursery school, playing fields, movie theater, market, and branch of the savings bank. Of course, their devotion to this cause was dubious at best.
The PRP occasionally made headlines for its brutality and occasional kidnappings of Westerners, such as when in kidnapped four foreigners at a Tanzanian research station in 1975. The government sent in troops once in awhile to suppress the rebellion, but to little effect; in fact, assignment to that theater of operations was immensely popular with the FAZ, whose officers made a killing smuggling goods out of the area, sometimes in collaboration with the PRP.
Twice in the 1980s - in 1984 and 1985 - the PRP captured the town of Moba in eastern Shaba, but were repelled both times by the army. While these were military defeats for PRP, they were huge victories propaganda-wise. The government claimed 1,500 PRP guerrillas defected in 1986, but there is little evidence of this. Around 1988, rebel activity came to an end, and rumors surfaced that Kabila may be dead.
Kabila spent much of his time in Uganda and Tanzania, living it up on booze, fast cars, and women, living ostentatiously while at the same time espousing his bogus commitment to Marxist principles. He remained in obscurity until 1996, when Uganda's Museveni and Rwanda's Kagame approached him. They needed a "Zairian face" to lead their invasion of Zaire, and Kabila was the best man for the job (although cynics lamented that he was the only man for the job). Whether he was lacking in revolutionary seriouness or not, his credentials as a man opposed to Mobutu for three decades suited Museveni and Kagame's purposes.
After being provided rudimentary training, Kabila and his newly formed AFDL - a broad coalition of Maoists, Tutsis, disgruntled ex-members of the FAZ, and anti-Mobutists of every stripe - invaded Zaire, advancing rapidly before Mobutu's crumbling army. However, just when victory was in sight, a coalition led by Parthia rescued Mobutu, and the AFDL was swiftly crushed. Kabila and the few surviving members of his rebellion broke and ran. They hid in the jungles of the east, occasionally skirmishing with troops, but mostly preoccupied with trying to stay alive. Finally, Kabila was captured, transferred to Kinshasa, and publicly executed. The tattered remnants of his rebellion dwindled into non-existence or obscurity, and Kabila's movement soon became a mere memory.
