World | Zaire's Power Vacuum

With Rebel Gains and Mobutu in France, Nation Is in Effect Without a Government

By HOWARD W. FRENCH

The word on the eerily subdued streets of this capital city today was that Zaire's longtime ruler, Mobutu Sese Seko, had died. The rumor is not true, and yet its spread seemed to underscore the idea that the end of the reign of one of Africa's greatest political survivors is now just a question of details.

In the glory days of his 31-year-old rule, Mr. Mobutu was one of those all-powerful African leaders who could spend weeks overseas with his huge entourage, secure in the knowledge that no one would dream of challenging his authority.

In recent weeks, however, as the 66-year-old Mr. Mobutu has remained holed up in his chateau in the south of France while his army and power have steadily crumbled, staying abroad seems to have become the best way of avoiding a coup.

These days no one really governs Zaire. Nor is there, given Mr. Mobutu's absence -- officially justified by his treatment for advanced prostate cancer -- anyone to physically overthrow.

What seems certain is that when rebels of the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo routed Mr. Mobutu's mercenary-backed army on Saturday and seized the important eastern city of Kisangani, some 770 miles from Kinshasa, the six-month-old war for control of this huge country entered its final chapter.

Mr. Mobutu managed to rule as long as he did by ruthlessly carrying out an updated version of what Zairians themselves freely call the law of the jungle.

With the help of Washington and other Western friends who throughout the cold war were eager to keep a naturally wealthy and vast country that borders nine others in their camp, Mr. Mobutu established a power as absolute as any.

Although he was always firmly in the Western camp, Mr. Mobutu's closest political models were Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania and Kim Il Sung of North Korea, both totalitarian Communists.

''The system of Mobutu is built on two primordial factors: fear for your life and the need for money,'' said a colonel who was once a close aide of the President. ''Mobutu had the say of life or death, and any money that flowed in Zaire flowed through him.''

The remnants of the Mobutu system still exist in Government-held areas through a proliferation of fearsome police and intelligence units with sinister acronyms like SNIP and SARM.

They behave like laws unto themselves, routinely holding up Zairians and foreigners alike, extorting payoffs, kidnapping their enemies and generally terrorizing the populace.

But today, with the rebels led by Laurent Kabila controlling a third of Zaire and advancing on all fronts, Mr. Mobutu's myth has been broken, and everyone who is anyone is scrambling to reach an accommodation with the rebel leader.

In the clearest sign of this shift, unthinkable only a month ago, Jonas Mukamba, the head of Zaire's largest diamond producer, source of much of Mr. Mobutu's fabulous wealth, said of Mr. Kabila, ''If he arrives, and if he is the new boss, I will obey him.''

It is uncertain how the 56-year-old Mr. Kabila -- a lifelong revolutionary and adventurer whose past is full of shady business dealings -- will use this authority.

In the case of Mr. Mobutu, what is clear is that absolute power corrupted absolutely, leaving a system to rot from within. With the President absent and believed to be dying of cancer, his country has proven easy pickings for a man like Mr. Kabila, whose rebellion was backed by enemies of Mr. Mobutu in power in Rwanda, Uganda and Angola.

All three of those Governments were angered by Zaire's support of insurgencies their countries.

Mr. Mobutu's most serious mistake may have been making a shell of his own army by naming unschooled relatives to the highest commands and neglecting to pay the paltry salaries of its soldiers.

Even before his rule, which began with a coup d'etat in 1965, Mr. Mobutu, as the commanding general of the armed forces, had come to rely on Western interventions and platoons of foreign mercenaries to put down the chronic rebellions that have afflicted the country's far-flung regions.

Once in charge, Mr. Mobutu kept his army weak and divided, insuring that there would be no internal challenge to his authority.

''A long time ago he seems to have figured out that if you build a capable army, and it saves you, the soldiers grow powerful,'' a Western diplomat said. ''If mercenaries win a war, you pay them and they go home.''

That formula has worked time and again, but with the Government nearly bankrupt and the elite incapable of acting in concert, the decision to call in 200 to 300 Serbian mercenaries proved too little too late.

In the end, Zairian Government troops, resentful of the $2,000 a month and more that the Serbs were being paid, are reported to have fired on the mercenaries at the outset of the rebel assault on Kisangani.

Even before the fall of Kisangani, the centerpiece of the entire war effort, large-scale official thievery seemed to doom a Government counteroffensive that Prime Minister Kengo wa Dondo promised in January would be ''thundering.''

In recent weeks, disgruntled Zairian officers and officials, whose accounts have been supported by foreign diplomats, told of how top officials made fortunes by overbilling their own treasury for arms and ammunition.

By one estimate, the rockets used for three Russian combat helicopters hired to defend Kisangani were billed at four times their cost. It was no surprise then, Western military analysts said, that the Government troops and Serbian mercenaries were constantly running low on ammunition.

If the overbilling stories are true, those implicated would merely be stealing a page from Mr. Mobutu. In one famous incident, when Washington delivered $2 million to Mr. Mobutu to be used in a covert war against Angola's Communist Government, Mr. Mobutu simply pocketed the entire sum, according to John Stockwell, a former C.I.A. official.

As certain as Mr. Mobutu's end now seems, what Mr. Kabila and his movement represent for Zaire's future remains a mystery.

No one knows to what extent Mr. Kabila has or will become his own man, or whether he will have the necessary skills to hold together Africa's third-largest and historically most fractious country.

''We have a system here that is very corrosive and where there is lots of corruption,'' said Jean-Baptiste Sondji, a doctor in Kinshasa's largest hospital. ''If you arrive here without a real grasp of the place, without firm convictions and a coherent vision, things can turn bad very quickly.''