Can black woman be first to head an African country?

he first Black woman ever to seek the presidency of an African country hopes next December to overthrow Zaire President Marshal Mobutu, who has controlled the continent's fourth largest and once rich country with an iron hand for almost 30 years.

"I will succeed," says Ms. Iyombe Botumbe Akerele, the determined wife of a Nigerian-born doctor who now practices in Washington, DC. My country could become another Somalia as living conditions worsen. Few outsiders care about our suffering."

Visiting the Washington Bureau of JET, Ms. Akerele, the founder and elected head of the grassroots Congres Lokole party, disclosed for the first time in this country her plans to lead a well-financed grass roots effort to depose President Mobutu. The mother of three children - two sons and a daughter - allowed only pictures of herself to be taken. She did not reveal names of any of her supporters in Zaire, anxious only to inform financial backers that her program already is underway. She had every reason to be discreet.

The oppressive Mobutu regime arrested her husband last January. He was detained by police and their Zaire home was "plundered, pillaged, and destroyed," an action that spurred his wife to realize that "the country is going to ruin" and she should make one last desperate try to save "the Eagle of Gbado."

The nation's foremost journalist, Kalala-Mbenga Kalao, was stripped of his baggage, containing clothes and papers, before he was allowed to come to Washington recently to receive the National Press Club's (NPC) International Freedom of Press award. And while here, he learned that his wife had been detained by government police, provoking NPC President Gil Klein to cable a protest to Mobutu.

A member of one of Zaire's tribal royalty families, the well-educated and traveled feminist who speaks nine languages has served as a political aide to a former Zaire prime minister and a cabinet secretary in another regime. During her residency here, she has continued to keep links with her people. In Washington, she organized a Zaire Group comprised of professionals, legislators, business people and citizens. Back in her own country, she founded the Friends of Zaire Association (FOZA) which develops programs in health, education and economics.