MONDAY, 5.00PM
A SINGLE brief radio announcement informed the people of DR-Congo that the dictator who had ruled them for 31 years was dead (see below).
“In the African tradition, you don’t say anything bad about someone who has died,” the state-run radio said, explaining the subdued public reaction to the death in Morocco of Mobutu Sese Seko. Similarly, Kinshasa’s newspapers showed none of the bitterness towards them that marked the final weeks of Mobutu’s reign. But the public were more outspoken:
“One shouldn’t have to die two times,” said Mbungu Mbuange, a parliament deputy under Mobutu, who said that for the people of Kinshasa, Mobutu was already dead when he fled the country.
“Politically he was completely dead, but we cannot forget that after all, he was instigator of all looting. He leaves us with a ruined country,” said Alex Kamango.
“He had abandoned everything that was good,” said Agnes Kapinga, a bread vendor. “It’s God who has the last word. You can’t wait until the last minute to change your behavior.”
MONDAY, 9.00AM
MOBUTU SESE SEKO, dictator of Zaire for three decades, has died in exile in Rabat, Morocco, less than four months after being forced into exile. He died in a Moroccan military hospital late on Sunday night, weighing only 40kg at his death.
Although it is not yet clear where he will be buried, the government of Laurent Kabila has not ruled out the possibility of allowing his body to return home.
Mobutu had been suffering from prostate cancer for several years, and had travelled to Europe repeatedly for treatment. During the critical months early this year when rebels took over most of his country, Mobutu was away in Switzerland and France.
Mobutu was born Joseph Desire Mobutu on October 14, 1930, and worked first as a journalist before being made chief of the post-independence Congo army. In 1965, he seized power with the backing of the military and the tacit support of the USA, Belgium and France, who saw him as a bulwark against communist expansion in Africa. He renamed the country Zaire in 1971, and gave himself the title of Mobutu Sese Seko as part of an “Africanisation” drive.
Mobutu quickly established a one-party state, jailing his critics. His regime became notorious for its corruption, with Mobutu and his cronies often accused of siphoning millions out of the country into bank accounts abroad. Some critics claimed that he had a personal fortune as large as $5 billion. Despite his country’s enormous potential wealth from gold, diamonds and copper, impoverishment became widspread and the local currency became useless.
As the economic and political situation worsened, Laurent Kabila, a long-time rival of Mobutu’s, led a Rwandan and Ugandan-backed revolutionary force which astonished the world by the speed with which it moved across the country, meeting very little resistance from citizens angered by years of Mobutu’s abuse.
In May, Mobutu left his palace in Kinshasa for his home town in the north east — and almost immediately had to flee, narrowly beating the advancing rebels. He travelled first to Togo, and then to Morocco. Despite repeated attempts at asylum in France and possibly South Africa, he was rejected by the world.