Zaire At Crossroad

The only visible obstacles to the rebels’ entry into Kinshasa are the axle-deep potholes and garbage piles that add to daily misery in this somnambulant city eager for revolution.

“We’ll be cheering the end of Mobutu Sese Seko, not the coming of Laurent Kabila,” said Francois Luakabwanga, a currency trader, who is wary of the rebel leader. He reflects the prevalent mood.

“It’s like when you’re drowning,” he explained. “You grab any hand you can reach. When you’re out of the water, then you take a better look.”

No one knows what to expect, or when, or whether it will be tranquil or awash in blood. But all seem to be in general agreement: Something is bound to happen any day now.

Deep in the Cite, a sprawl of rusty-roofed slums that ring the city center, people are hiding their few valuables for fear of last-ditch pillaging by routed defenders on the run.

Tension is mounting in the market. Food prices headed upward when rebels closed off transport on the upper Zaire River and then seized the vital crossroads of Kikwit, 150 miles east of here.

Airlines drop their passengers in Brazzaville, across the river in Congo, fearful of sudden turmoil. Foreigners who have not fled run down cellular phone batteries checking rumors.

Mostly, however, Kinshasa’s 5 million inhabitants show no signs of panic, sleepwalking through their normal routine of scraping together enough to survive by hard work, petty theft or cadging handouts.

After dark, the usual beer-fueled revelry is tempered by police who shake down motorists and ransack homes on the pretext of searching for infiltrators. But this is still Kinshasa.

At the Sarajevo, a raucous little nightspot, owner Maurice Katshi gyrates his hefty frame to pounding music and laughs when asked what would happen if rebels showed up at the door.

“Kabila is welcome, and so is Mobutu,” he said. “I’m a businessman.”

Foreigners and wealthy Zairians at La Ciboulette, a wood-paneled French bistro downtown, plow along from foie gras to profiteroles, washed down by a petit Sancerre that traveled nicely, and joke about what might await them.

About 120 miles east, up the rutted road at Kenge, the war is not funny. Soldiers battle rebels headed toward Ndjili Airport, east of town. Military and civilian casualties are in the hundreds.

Mobutu’s aides have said the president will return today after a summit with neighboring heads of state, possibly with new support.

But reliable news is scarce, and the resulting guesswork adds spice to a city of glaring contradiction.

Mobutu is denounced as a dictator in a free-wheeling press that excoriates the ailing president. Opposition politicians talk openly of urging people to take to the streets.

Average wages might run to a few dollars a month, if paid at all, but plenty of Zairians stroll the gallery at the Intercontinental Hotel, which offers ostrich-hide loafers at $1,300.

Though mostly a vast expanse of crumbling shacks and open cesspits, Kinshasa has islets of tropical splendor: flowered-splashed villas, posh restaurants and casinos.

Years of neglect have turned what was once the Belgians’ gleaming white city into a mold-splotched sprawl.

In the Cite, leaflets have appeared mysteriously asking people to organize a warm welcome for Kabila’s troops. Yet eagerness to chase off Mobutu is tempered by worries of what Kabila might bring.

“This man stands for violence, and we’ve had enough of that,” said a woman who called herself only Maria-Jose, in case someone was already taking names.

“We have lived too long in this condition to continue,” she added. “Now we are ready to be normal, to have real lives for our families. If he doesn’t bring democracy, we don’t want him.”

The weekly, Le Batisseur, condemned a series of contracts Kabila signed with American, European and South African companies to exploit minerals in Eastern Zaire. That touched a cord.

“This is exactly what Mobutu did, and this time the people won’t take it,” said Jean-Marie Luakabwanga, Francois’s brother, who runs the private Francophone University of Zaire.

“People are now seeing that they can make a change,” he said. “If this guy Kabila is going to toss away our wealth the way the last guy did, I don’t give him a year.”