Zaire, R.I.P.
After 26 years, Zaire passed from the official U.S. lexicon on Monday. The State Department will call Zaire the Democratic Republic of Congo, the designation given the country by its new rulers."Zaire went away on Friday afternoon," said department spokes-man Nicholas Burns, alluding to the day when the deposed president, Mobutu Sese Seko, fled the capital. "That country has vanished."
Noting that the name "Zaire" was a Mobutu creation in 1971, Burns said, "He is gone. His era is past."
The United States has generally rejected attempts by governments to change the names of their countries. The Khmer Rouge tried to rename Cambodia as Democratic Kampuchea in 1975 and, more recently, Burmese authorities adopted the name Myanmar. In both cases, the United States paid no heed, largely because of the repressive nature of the governments.
But the name Zaire is linked inextricably with the Mobutu era, a period of extravagant plunder and of economic and social ruin.
The country, formerly the Belgian Congo, was born as the Democratic Republic of Congo at independence in 1960, but Mo-butu changed the name in 1971 as part of an "Africanization" plan. Just west of the Democratic Republic of Congo is the Republic of Congo.
Aside from changing Zaire's name, the State Department also changed its policy concerning the more than 300 private Americans living in Zaire. For weeks, the State Department had been urging them to leave, but on Monday, Burns recommended that they stay because of unsettled conditions.
Burns also reaffirmed the U.S. view that the country's new leader, Laurent Kabila, should include in his government people of differing political parties, ideologies and ethnic groups.
Burns said Kabila starts off with a handicap because of the way his forces reportedly executed many Rwandan refugees.