President Mobuto's Zaire is ending as it began, in outright military dictatorship. But this time it is in full retreat before the remarkable advance of Mr Laurent Kabila's forces. They have now been ordered to complete the rebellion initiated six months ago by seizing control of this vast country. When they have done so they will rename it the Democratic Republic of Congo, as if to reaffirm the original project of Lumumbist radicalism at the dawn of Congolese independence.
Mr Mobuto opposed this project throughout his military and political career, making his country safe for western powers and mining companies. Now these same powers and companies - along with nearly all President Mobuto's officials and troops - are tripping over themselves transferring their allegiance to Mr Kabila's victorious campaign. The question arises how dangerous is he likely to be for their interests?
Mr Kabila comes to the task of liberating his country from Mobuto with impressive credentials. He has not been associated with the pervasive "kleptocracy" that has become its byword, projecting the term into common usage in an unmistakable affirmation of regime collapse. His movement enjoys undoubted popular support, more for the practical and concrete alternative it offers than for the memory of Lumumbist radicalism. Most important, Mr Kabila enjoys the support of all those Africans determined to break from the Cold War dictatorships and dependencies that have so disfigured the continent's development.
His troops have behaved with exemplary restraint. They have captured all before them without rapacity or undue revenge and by skilful use of penetration and surprise. The tactics and timing have been impeccable, the diplomacy and coordination professional to the highest degree. Such judgments are relative, as always, but they stand out so graphically from recent African history that Mr Kabila has become something of a modernising icon, not only in Zaire/Congo, but much wider afield in Africa and the world. After state collapse and genocide made the Great Lakes region so much a symbol of helplessness, and incapacity to see it thus transformed is liberating, indeed.
The endgame of Mobuto's Zaire may yet be more bloody and politically messy than is heralded by these recent events. The dying embers include not only his own forces but those he supported in neighbouring Rwanda, the fleeing Hutu militias which will now have to decide whether to surrender or fight. There are also Jonas Savimbi's Angolan forces, which have been given refuge by Mobuto's Zaire.
The unscrambling of such post Cold War structures falls to an African leader who comes to the task with a legitimacy conferred by political and military success comparable to that of Mr Nelson Mandela in South Africa. He deserves similar support from the western powers and companies which have over these years been the beneficiaries of Mobuto and apartheid. Neither Mandela nor Kabila have much option or desire - but to cooperate. They have nonetheless, a great responsibility to reconstruct which needs support and solidarity.