Mobutu and remote-control politics

A few posts ago I criticized a magazine called New African for a hilariously misguided article about the 'African brain'. However that was not the only piece in that edition that raised my wrath (coupled with the kind of morbid amusement you usually get when you see your parents try to dance) I cannot remember the title of the piece but it was a review of the memoirs of Larry Devlin. Devlin was the CIA's point-man in Congo in the sixties and seventies and the man who was charged with assasinating Patrice Lumumba (astonishingly enough the order came from President Eisenhower himself). He didn't do it in the end, but it was not because of any moral scruples. Lumumba's fellow Congolese proved a lot more enthusiastic than the American government in this regard.
My problem with the article was...well, the whole thing actually. The only way I can think of describing it is a kind of grassy knoll for idiots taking pot-shots at reality. The main gist was that Devlin's memoirs proved that the Americans controlled Mobutu by 'remote control'. He offers a few examples from the book but none of them really prove his point and most of the article is just a rant about how the white man has screwed up Congo. Mobutu it seems was nothing more than a puppet- the really evil people here were the Americans who propped up his regime and-according to the article- basically destroyed Congo.
Sadly such escapist views have little connection to what actually happened. In her fascinating book In the footsteps of Mr Kurtz (possibly the most readable book ever written about Africa)Michaela Wrong shows that it was actually the other way round. There is ample evidence that the US and the IMF were the ones actually dancing to Mobutu's tune. The Americans needed him as a bulwark against a potential Soviet takeover of the region (and mainly to get their hands dirty trying to keep them out of Angola)while the IMF were simply too spineless to cut him adrift and also no doubt looking forward to the money he would have to pay back. In one of the most remarkable tales of this unholy trifecta, Wrong reveals that Mobutu was once so displeased with the IMF that he cut off all relations with them and only a high-level delegation dispatched to Congo managed to make him change his mind- "an undignified sight" as Wrong puts it with considerable understatement. For the IMF to come grovelling to a third-rate dictator is something that defies words.
In another incident that highlighted exactly who was calling the shots in this relationship, he expelled all American officials in the seventies accusing them of trying to overthrow his government. They were eventually allowed back, but such actions were hardly those of a puppet. Wrong has a few of these stories and underlying them is a mixture of horror and disbelief that this man was allowed free rein. Unlike our friend from the magazine she also understands the difference between influence (which evidently run both ways) and the so-called 'remote controlled politics' which supposedly governed Congo.
New African as a whole seems to operate on the principles of this article- "Africans did nothing, it was all the white man's fault and still is!" Such posturing is intellectually dishonest and plain baloney. By ludicrously trying to paint Mobutu as a victim like the rest of his country, the magazine hardly begs to be taken seriously.
Meanwhile I strongly recommend In the foosteps of Mr Kurtz- so good I re-read it recently.