LOSERS^505and in those localities where foreign companies were extracting min
eral wealth. All of these paid him tribute, and his accounts in Switzer
land were said to total billions of dollars. Between these few points of
effective control, the only transport was by air, for the roads below are
neither passable nor safe. Under Belgian rule in 1960, the Congo had
88,000 miles of usable road; by 1985 this was down to 12,000 miles,
only 1,400 of them paved. But then dirt roads are better than holed
and cracked hard surfaces. Paving is only as good as its maintenance.
Almost the whole of the country and the society was in but not of
the pseudo-nation. In the east, foreign invaders were driving foreign
refugees to their death while supporting rebellion against Kinshasa. In
the capital, the parliamentary opposition denounced rebel plans and
warned against a new despotism: "We are not getting rid of one strong
man to replace him with another." The rebel reply: "If the opposition
leader "wants to pilot a ship that is going down," he'd better learn to
swim.^27 Meanwhile Western agents worked to persuade Mobutu into
retirement (or keep him in office) while jockeying for influence with
what might follow. The primary Western concern was to keep getting
those minerals out. The French also wanted to keep Zaire in the fran
cophone orbit, as though the dignity of France depended on it. (The
Belgians had thrown up their hands long ago.) The Americans... well,
it wasn't clear what might be the American interest, except maybe to
"stick it" to the French.
In the midst of this anarchy, international relief agencies tried to
keep refugees alive but had to break off every time marauders drew
near. Some emergency supplies got in, but for whom? Some mineral re
sources were still getting out, but for whom? The capture by rebels in
April 1997 of the country's diamond capital portended a change in
regime. Without revenues, Mobutu could not pay his troops, now
given to pillage (a soldier's got to live); nor could he hold the hearts
of the great powers, even if he spoke French. Footnote: Zaire had van
ished by then from the tables of the World Bank. This was prescient:
the victorious rebels, after forcing Mobutu out in June, changed the
name of the country back to (the Republic of) Congo.
The second case is Benin, formerly Dahomey. This country's biggest
products from 1960 to 1989 were Marxist-Leninist propaganda and
political coups. The official statistics showed product and trade as al
most nonexistent. Yet Benin was planting and harvesting palm oil and
peanuts. It simply did not yield up its product to the authorities or to
official markets. Just about everything moved in parallel channels.
These yielded the farmer more than he would ever get from an official