Congo, now Democratic Republic of Congo, was called Zaire in 1991 when Melissa was posted to the capital, Kinshasa. The US embassy there was the largest in Africa, with at least 300 employees. Zaire had been ruled by one of the world’s most corrupt dictators, Mobutu Sese Seko, since the early 1960s. With the end of the Cold War, both the international and local context of Zaire were changing.
Melissa, who had been selected by US President George Bush, was already very experienced in working with African politics, and the press picked this up. Her husband Alfred wrote a letter to the family about the first developments after her arrival. She would soon be openly involved in local politics to an extent far beyond that for most US ambassadors. This would earn her the nickname “Tantine” or Auntie, in French.
“When I arrived which was in early June 1991, the main challenge was to take advantage of the opening in the political scene,” recalls Melissa in the ADST Oral History website. “President Mobutu had decided that political pluralism be introduced.”
“In other words, there could be a number of parties. At first, he had decided there should be only three parties. Everybody objected and then we started getting parties by the dozens. Everybody (…) decided to form a party. But in terms of major parties, and when I arrived and started making my contacts and finding out what they were hoping to do and how this political pluralism towards democracy is supposed to evolve, I was confronted time and again with the same issue. That was, ‘You, the United States, put him, Mobutu, there. You get him out of here.’
I just confronted it head on, and this is now June 1991. I said, ‘Look, let me make one thing very clear to you. The 82nd Airborne Division [a US paratroop unit] will never, ever be seen in Zaire. General Schwarzkopf has retired. Now what are we going to do next?’
[They would say]‘You liberated Europe from Hitler, etc.’
‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘that was 1940s. This is 1991.’
‘We need a [UN] peacekeeping force.’ [They would say]. (…)
I said, ‘You mean like the Congo in the sixties?’ This was before peacekeeping operations became a land office business just a few years ago. I said, ‘Look, the world has changed. You don’t have a war on here to begin with. Peacekeeping operations cost money. We’ll all be killed while we’re discussing all of this.’ I said, ‘That won’t work.’
‘What are we going to do?’ I said, ‘You Zairians have to develop a transition plan which includes President Mobutu. Nobody is going to take him out. I’m not going to carry him out. He’s a bit overweight. A transition plan which includes President Mobutu and we will support you.’
And after much to-ing and fro-ing and trying to play the empty chair, the opposition said, ‘Well you know I’m not attending because they [Mobutu people] didn’t do this.’
I finally had to shake a few of these people and said, ‘Do you realize what you’re doing? You’re so dependent on the outside world. When are you going to grow up and wear long pants?’ In many ways I think it’s only a woman who can talk that way.”
All through this, she was concerned about a growing anti-American mood among Zairians.
Melissa earned the nickname Tantine, or Auntie, for her important role in supporting the pro-democracy movement in Zaire and for the wisdom she shared with the leaders of this movement. Click here for her role in the National Conference and the origin of the nickname Tantine.
She received plenty of coverage in the Zairian press, both favorable and critical of her role in local politics. As in Mozambique, people started naming their daughters Melissa. An article entitled “A lesson signed by Tantine Melissa Weills [sic]” had a cartoon of her as a schoolteacher asking students what democracy is. Towards the end of her stay, the public-school teachers’ union sent her a letter of thanks for helping to spread education about democracy in the country. She watched at her residence, with the President of the Episcopalian Church in Zaire, the Hollywood musical in which her mother was a star, The Great Waltz. She received fan mail, including a handwritten letter that read, among things: “Je t’aime beaucoup depuis longtemps” and “I love you”.
She was realizing her dream of representing the United States in Africa.
Back in 1958 and 1959, when she had just joined the Foreign Service, she had twice filled out a form picking Elisabethville (now called Lubumbashi) as her number one choice for where she’d like to be posted. In a way, her dream came true, but with an ironic twist: she had to close the consulate-general in Lubumbashi. She had to go to the city several times. Once, she went on a private plane that, when it landed, was surrounded by people protesting US policy. “There was a very hostile reception – people, placards,” she recalled in the ADST Oral History website. “I knew the governor was behind it because you can’t come right up to an airplane at an airport. It’s fine to have all your demonstrators outside or inside the terminal or something, but to be right up there as the plane lands… So, obviously the governor [knew about] all this. (…) Very, very hostile signs (…) I saw this reception, and I made a point of walking by slowly and reading every single sign, shaking the hand of each of them, because they were really just trying to look ferocious. (…) I wanted them to know that I knew they weren’t really ferocious.”
“Now, going back to the troubles of September 1991,” she explained in the ADST Oral History website, “what happened was that with all the economic problems in Zaire, the army was very irregularly paid. They were late in being paid or only some of them were paid, but early in the morning on a day in September, we heard that a unit had mutinied out by the airport and that they had ransacked the international airport at Kinshasa, and that they were moving down the main road towards Kinshasa and of course the population was just joining them and looting everything in sight and burning cars and so forth. The long and short of this is that over a period of five to seven days we evacuated almost 3,000 Americans, including missionaries from the interior and so forth. Over 20,000 expatriates left Zaire, many of whom, most of whom have never come back.” Click here for more on the evacuation.
At least 300 people, including the French ambassador, were killed in this chaos. Melissa therefore was escorted by bodyguards wherever she went.
In November 1992, Bill Clinton won the US presidential election. As is custom, all US ambassadors must submit their resignations to prepare the way for the next administration. George Bush sent a standard letter to Melissa thanking her for her service.
In early 1993, news reached the Zairian press that Tantine had been invited to assume an important position at the UN. She was also being considered by the White House for the post of ambassador to Brazil, but the Zairians did not hear about this (and it never materialized). There were widespread reactions in Zaire by journalists interpreting her exit as related to local politics, which it wasn’t. A pro-Mobutu newspaper was happy to see her leave, going so far as to suggest that she needed a psychiatrist. The anti-Mobutu press saw it as some kind of trade-off and interpreted her leaving as a softening of the US position regarding Mobutu.
In her last press conference, Tantine praised the Zairians for their courage in fighting for democracy. To watch part of her statement, click here.
Shortly before leaving Kinshasa, she wrote a letter to Alfred, who had been evacuated to South Africa in 1991 and was living there. In it, she expressed her mixed feelings about what lay ahead and her concerns about the direction of events in Zaire.
She left in March 1993. She had realized much of her dream of an African adventure, having lived on the continent for eight years. She would work once more in Africa but would never reside there again.
Six years after Melissa left, Afrique Express, a continent-wide publication focusing on business, published an editorial praising her proactiveness.
In 2020, on the 60th anniversary of Congolese independence, the US Embassy in Kinshasa produced a video with Melissa talking about her experience there. Click here to watch.
In 2022, after she had moved to Maryland, she suffered a fall and had to be taken to a rehabilitation center. There she met a young male Congolese nurse. She told him that she had worked in Kinshasa and had earned the nickname Tantine. The nurse exclaimed: “Oui, Madame, I remember hearing about Tantine when I was a child!” Whenever he would come into the room to help her, he would call her Tantine.