FINALLY, THE END

By Michael S. Serrill

The weeks of denial for Africa's most durable dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, finally came to an end on Thursday, when his three top generals asked for an urgent meeting. The trio was uncharacteristically blunt. They told Mobutu they could no longer protect him or the capital of Kinshasa from the approaching rebel army of Laurent Desire Kabila, and that if Mobutu valued his life he should flee. A commander had driven to the front east of Kinshasa that morning and concluded that government soldiers would not fight to save Mobutu's crumbling regime.

After a few final hours of procrastination, Mobutu, 66, ultimately accepted the harsh but just verdict of history. His grossly ruinous reign was finished. On Friday he flew without fanfare to his garish mansion at Gbadolite, 700 miles north of Kinshasa, leaving Information Minister Kin-Kiey Mulumba to announce to the press that the President had "ceased all intervention in the conduct of the affairs of state." Mobutu, who had said he would never be known as "ex-President," only "late President," still refused to give up his title. The President "reigns but does not govern," said Kin-Kiey.

But even before Mobutu left the capital, it was clear who was actually in power. U.S. intelligence sources said that throughout last week top army commanders were calling rebel leader Kabila, who already controlled three-quarters of the country, to pledge their allegiance. On Saturday morning Kabila's ragtag forces marched into the capital without serious opposition and by that night had taken full control. Hundreds of Zairians took to the streets, many of them wearing white headbands and holding palm fronds as signs of support. "Congo libere!" they shouted. "We are free! Kabila is here!"

While there were some killings--four of Mobutu's generals were reportedly murdered by their own men--the chaotic looting and mayhem that many had feared never occurred. Speaking from his headquarters at Lubumbashi, Kabila, 56, said he would "assume from now the functions of the head of state." He added, "I am happy, very happy to succeed." He said he would form a transitional government by Tuesday and promised a new constitution within 60 days for the country that he renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In the days before Kabila's forces moved in, scores of Mobutu's political and military cronies were reported fleeing across the Congo River to Brazzaville in the nation of Congo, some with suitcases full of cash. One man seen steering a speedboat across the river was the hated General Nzimbi Ngbale, head of the elite presidential guard.

General Likulia Bolongo, Mobutu's newest Prime Minister, Thursday night telephoned U.S. Ambassador Daniel Simpson in Kinshasa to announce Mobutu's impending departure. By week's end Likulia himself was in Brazzaville.

One sign that Mobutu's end had come: Switzerland announced it had seized his villa at Savigny, near Lausanne, valued at some $5.5 million. Mobutu's holdings in cash and real estate, most of them in Europe, are said to be worth $4 billion. Kabila's government is demanding that all Mobutu's assets be frozen.

In Washington, President Bill Clinton welcomed the downfall of the dictator the U.S. had backed for most of his reign, but issued a stern warning to Kabila. "The U.S. position is clear," Clinton said. "We want to see a transition to a genuine democracy" in Zaire.

Kabila's intentions, however, were difficult to measure. As his forces closed in on Kinshasa last week, he placed a call to the U.S.'s United Nations ambassador, Bill Richardson. In April, Richardson had spent a week in Lubumbashi and Kinshasa, trying to work out a deal between the two adversaries. Richardson told TIME that last week he had urged Kabila to reassure the world. "You need to issue a public statement about your intentions," the ambassador told him. "You need to calm fears. You need to say that you want democratic elections." But the rebel leader only laughed and said, "You have a lot of advice."

Some of the credit for Kabila's "soft landing" in Kinshasa may be owed to the persistent intervention of President Nelson Mandela of South Africa, who together with Richardson spent weeks trying to broker a deal that would avoid major bloodshed. It was partly at Mandela's urging that Mobutu relinquished his dictatorship. But early last week the South African leader's effort appeared to have collapsed, after Kabila failed to appear for a meeting with Mandela and Mobutu aboard a South African naval vessel docked off the port of Pointe Noire. Mandela, who had been host aboard the same boat of a May 4 conclave between the two men, then angrily returned home, telling Kabila that if he wanted to meet he would have to travel to Cape Town. Within hours Kabila was there--a sign both of respect for the South African leader and of his desire for international credibility.

Although he spent several hours talking to Mandela, it is still not certain that Kabila has accepted the South African's proposal: a 10-point plan that would put the rebel leader at the head of a coalition of opposition groups and guarantee elections within a year. What Mandela and the U.N. and U.S. negotiators had in mind was for Kabila to accept power from parliament speaker Laurent Monsengwo, Archbishop of Kisangani, who was installed in office for that purpose.

But in his first hours of power, Kabila ignored Monsengwo and his government. Though under pressure from many quarters, including his African backers, to establish a broad-based regime, Kabila has declared that the only legal political party is his own Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo.

Kabila's ascension to the leadership of Zaire, a nation of 45 million people the size of Western Europe and rich in diamonds, gold, cobalt and copper, came with stunning speed. Mobutu's ouster was the culmination of a seven-month military campaign that began as an uprising among Tutsi tribesmen in southeastern Zaire after they were ordered expelled from the country. With backing from the anti-Mobutu governments of Uganda, Rwanda and Angola, Kabila took control of and expanded the rebel movement, sweeping east to west across the vast Central African nation almost without opposition until he was camped on the doorstep of Kinshasa. Pushed before him in the jungle were hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees from Rwanda, many of whom are believed by aid workers to have died violently at the hands of Kabila's Tutsi supporters.

The stiffest resistance Kabila confronted came not from the Zairian army but from the Angolan rebel group UNITA, led by Jonas Savimbi, a cold war ally of the U.S.'s and great friend of Mobutu's. One of the hardest-fought battles of the civil war was two weeks ago in the southern town of Kenge between Kabila's troops and UNITA rebels, who have long depended on Zaire as a pipeline for weapons and other supplies. UNITA fighters were also among the last defenders of Kinshasa's international airport. But by Friday they too bowed to the inevitable and headed home.

Before he began his remarkable military campaign, Kabila had been dismissed as what a Clinton Administration official called a "bar revolutionary," who spent most of his time drinking in taverns far from the front or negotiating shady gold and diamond deals. A former Marxist who once held a group of Americans hostage, Kabila is still considered ideologically suspect in Washington. While he is reported to have restored law and order and welcomed foreign investment to the areas he has conquered, he has also begun "social re-education" programs. And so far, U.S. analysts say, he has shown a worrisome antipathy to elections and political parties other than his own.

Whatever his program, Kabila could not be worse than Mobutu, who reduced a nation that should be among the richest in Africa to utter penury. Meanwhile, Mobutu and his cronies looted the treasury of billions of dollars. In addition to his many secret bank accounts, Mobutu owns nine villas in Belgium, an estate on the French Riviera and an apartment in Paris; property in Johannesburg, Dakar, Abidjan and Morocco; a coffee plantation in Brazil; and, in the cellars of his estate in Portugal, 14,000 bottles of past-its-prime wine from 1930, the year of his birth. The dictator, who is suffering from prostate cancer, will thus not be inconvenienced by the Swiss seizure of one of his estates.

In welcoming Kabila, will Zaire be trading one corrupt despot for another? No one is sure. "The jury is still out on Kabila," says Richardson. "But he has potential, so we should give him a chance." In the region, some of his supporters have doubts about his political skills and are monitoring his progress with some concern.

In Kinshasa, the concerns about the new leader are purely practical. "I just want to be able to eat and drink," declares Celestine Mumdobu, who lives in a small block house with her two daughters and three grandchildren. "I want the leaders to compromise, so that the people can have peace, so that the people will have cassava bread and we will be fed until we die."

--Reported by Peter Graff/Kinshasa and Douglas Waller/Washington, with other bureaus

With reporting by PETER GRAFF/KINSHASA AND DOUGLAS WALLER/WASHINGTON, WITH OTHER BUREAUS