Mobutu Sese Seko
Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu wa za Banga[a] (/məbuːˈtuː ˈsɛseɪ ˈsɛkoʊ/ ⓘ; born Joseph-Désiré Mobutu; 14 October 1930 – 7 September 1997), commonly known as Mobutu Sese Seko or simply just Mobutu and also by his initials MSS, was a Congolese politician and military officer who was the 1st and only President of Zaire from 1971 to 1997. Previously, Mobutu served as the 2nd President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1965 to 1971. He also served as the 5th Chairman of the Organisation of African Unity from 1967 to 1968. During the Congo Crisis, Mobutu, serving as Chief of Staff of the Army and supported by Belgium and the United States, deposed the democratically elected government of left-wing nationalist Patrice Lumumba in 1960. Mobutu installed a government that arranged for Lumumba's execution in 1961, and continued to lead the country's armed forces until he took power directly in a second coup in 1965.
Mobutu Sese Seko
Himself
(as President of the DRC)
Laurent-Désiré Kabila
(as President of the DRC)
Himself
(as President of Zaire)
7 September 1997 (aged 66)
Rabat, Rabat-Salé-Kénitra, Morocco
1949–1997
- Field marshal (Army)
- Admiral (Navy)
- Commander in chief (Military)
To consolidate his power, he established the Popular Movement of the Revolution as the sole legal political party in 1967, changed the Congo's name to Zaire in 1971, and his own name to Mobutu Sese Seko in 1972. Mobutu claimed that his political ideology was "neither left nor right, nor even centre",[1] though nevertheless he developed a regime that was intensely autocratic even by African standards of his time. He attempted to purge the country of all colonial cultural influence through his program of "national authenticity".[2][3] Mobutu was the object of a pervasive cult of personality.[4] During his rule, he amassed a large personal fortune through economic exploitation and corruption,[5] leading some to call his rule a "kleptocracy".[6][7] He presided over a period of widespread human rights violations. Under his rule, the nation also suffered from uncontrolled inflation, a large debt, and massive currency devaluations.
Mobutu received strong support (military, diplomatic and economic) from the United States, France, and Belgium, who believed he was a strong opponent of communism in Francophone Africa. He also built close ties with the governments of apartheid South Africa, Israel and the Greek junta. From 1972 onward, he was also supported by Mao Zedong of China, mainly due to his anti-Soviet stance but also as part of Mao's attempts to create a bloc of Afro-Asian nations led by him. The massive Chinese economic aid that flowed into Zaire gave Mobutu more flexibility in his dealings with Western governments, allowed him to identify as an "anti-capitalist revolutionary", and enabled him to avoid going to the International Monetary Fund for assistance.[8]
By 1990, economic deterioration and unrest forced Mobutu Sese Seko into coalition with his power opponents. Although he used his troops to thwart change, his antics did not last long. In May 1997, rebel forces led by Laurent-Désiré Kabila overran the country and forced him into exile. Already suffering from advanced prostate cancer, he died three months later in Morocco. Mobutu was notorious for corruption, nepotism, and having amassed between US$50 million and $125 million during his rule.[9][10] He was known for extravagances such as shopping trips to Paris via the supersonic Concorde aircraft.[11]
Biography[edit]
Early years and education[edit]
Mobutu, a member of the Ngbandi ethnic group,[12] was born in 1930 in Lisala, Belgian Congo.[13] Mobutu's mother, Marie Madeleine Yemo, was a hotel maid who fled to Lisala to escape the harem of a local village chief. There she met and married Albéric Gbemani, a cook for a Belgian judge.[14][15] Shortly afterward she gave birth to Mobutu. The name "Mobutu" was selected by an uncle.
Gbemani died when Mobutu was eight.[16] Thereafter, he was raised by an uncle and a grandfather.
The Belgian judge's wife took a liking to Mobutu and taught him to speak, read, and write fluently in the French language,[17] the official language of the country in the colonial period. His widowed mother Yemo relied on the help of relatives to support her four children, and the family moved often. Mobutu's earliest education took place in the capital Léopoldville (now Kinshasa). His mother eventually sent him to an uncle in Coquilhatville (present-day Mbandaka), where he attended the Christian Brothers School, a Catholic-mission boarding school. A tall and physically imposing figure at 191 cm (6 ft 3 in), Mobutu dominated school sports. He also excelled in academic subjects and ran the class newspaper. He was known for his pranks and impish sense of humor.
A classmate recalled that when the Belgian priests, whose first language was Dutch, made an error in French, Mobutu would leap to his feet in class and point out the mistake. In 1949 Mobutu stowed away aboard a boat, traveling downriver to Léopoldville, where he met a girl. The priests found him several weeks later. At the end of the school year, in lieu of being sent to prison, he was ordered to serve seven years in the colonial army, the Force Publique (FP). This was a usual punishment for rebellious students.[18]
Army service[edit]
Mobutu found discipline in army life, as well as a father figure in Sergeant Louis Bobozo. Mobutu kept up his studies by borrowing European newspapers from the Belgian officers and books from wherever he could find them, reading them on sentry duty and whenever he had a spare moment. His favorites were the writings of French president Charles de Gaulle, British prime minister Winston Churchill, and Italian Renaissance philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli. After passing a course in accounting, Mobutu began to dabble professionally in journalism. Still angry after his clashes with the school priests, he did not marry in a church. His contribution to the wedding festivities was a crate of beer, all his army salary could afford.[19]
Early political involvement[edit]
As a soldier, Mobutu wrote in pseudonym on contemporary politics for Actualités Africaines (African News), a magazine set up by a Belgian colonial. In 1956, he quit the army and became a full-time journalist,[20] writing for the Léopoldville daily L'Avenir.[21]
Two years later, he went to Belgium to cover the 1958 World Exposition and stayed to receive training in journalism. By this time, Mobutu had met many of the young Congolese intellectuals who were challenging colonial rule. He became friendly with Patrice Lumumba and joined Lumumba's Congolese National Movement (MNC). Mobutu eventually became Lumumba's personal aide. Several contemporaries indicate that Belgian intelligence had recruited Mobutu to be an informer to the government.[22]
During the 1960 talks in Brussels on Congolese independence, the US embassy held a reception for the Congolese delegation. Embassy staff were each assigned a list of delegation members to meet, and discussed their impressions afterward. The ambassador noted, "One name kept coming up. But it wasn't on anyone's list because he wasn't an official delegation member, he was Lumumba's secretary. But everyone agreed that this was an extremely intelligent man, very young, perhaps immature, but a man with great potential."[23]
Following the general election, Lumumba was tasked with creating a government. He gave Mobutu the office of Secretary of State to the Presidency. Mobutu held much influence in the final determination of the rest of the government.[24] He lost private access to Lumumba following independence, as the new prime minister grew busy and surrounded by aides and colleagues, leading the two to drift apart.[25]
Overthrow[edit]
The seeds of Mobutu's downfall were sown in the Rwandan Genocide, when about 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred by about 200,000 Hutu extremists aided by the Rwandan government in 1994. The genocide ended when the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front seized the whole country, leading hundreds of thousands of Hutus including many of the genocidal killers, to flee into refugee camps in eastern Zaire. Mobutu welcomed the Hutu extremists as personal guests and allowed them to establish military and political bases in the eastern territories, from where they attacked and killed ethnic Tutsis across the border in Rwanda and in Zaire itself, ostensibly to prepare for a renewed offensive back into Rwanda. The new Rwandan government began sending military aid to the Zairian Tutsis in response. The resulting conflict began to destabilize eastern Zaire as a whole.
When Mobutu's government issued an order in November 1996 forcing Tutsis to leave Zaire on penalty of death, the ethnic Tutsis in Zaire,[110] known as Banyamulenge, were the focal point of a rebellion. From eastern Zaire, the rebels, aided by foreign government forces under the leadership of President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and Rwandan Minister of Defense Paul Kagame launched an offensive to overthrow Mobutu, joining forces with locals opposed to him under Laurent-Désiré Kabila as they marched west toward Kinshasa. Burundi and Angola also supported the growing rebellion, which mushroomed into the First Congo War.
Ailing with cancer, Mobutu was in Switzerland for treatment,[111] and he was unable to coordinate the resistance which crumbled in front of the march. The rebel forces would have completely overrun the country far sooner than it ultimately did if not for the country's decrepit infrastructure. In most areas, no paved roads existed; the only vehicle paths were irregularly used dirt roads.
By mid-1997, Kabila's forces resumed their advance, and the remains of Mobutu's army offered almost no resistance. On 16 May 1997, following failed peace talks held in Pointe-Noire on board the South African Navy ship SAS Outeniqua with Kabila and President of South Africa Nelson Mandela (who chaired the talks), Mobutu fled into exile. Kabila's forces, known as the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (AFDL), proclaimed victory the next day. On 23 May 1997, Zaire was renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo.[112]
Exile and death[edit]
Mobutu went into temporary exile in Togo, until President Gnassingbé Eyadéma insisted that Mobutu leave the country a few days later.[113] From 23 May 1997, he lived mostly in Rabat, Morocco.[114] He died there on 7 September 1997 from prostate cancer at the age of 66. He is interred in an above ground mausoleum at Rabat, in the Christian cemetery known as Cimetière Européen.
In December 2007, the National Assembly of the Democratic Republic of the Congo recommended returning his remains, and interring them in a mausoleum in the DRC, which has not yet taken place. Mobutu remains interred in Morocco.[115]
Mobutu was married twice. He married his first wife, Marie-Antoinette Gbiatibwa Gogbe Yetene, in 1955.[116] They had nine children. She died of heart failure on 22 October 1977 in Genolier, Switzerland, at the age of 36. On 1 May 1980, he married his mistress, Bobi Ladawa, on the eve of a visit by Pope John Paul II, thus legitimizing his relationship in the eyes of the Church. Two of his sons from his first marriage died during his lifetime, Nyiwa (d. 16 September 1994) and Konga (d. 1992). Three more died in the years following his death: Kongulu (d. 24 September 1998), Manda (d. 27 November 2004), and Ndokula (d. 4 November 2011).[70] His elder son from his second marriage, Nzanga Mobutu, now the head of the family, finished fourth in the 2006 presidential elections and later served in the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo as Minister of State and Deputy Prime Minister. Another son of his, Giala, has also served in the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo as both a member of the National Assembly and the Senate. A daughter, Yakpwa (nicknamed Yaki), was briefly married to a Belgian, Pierre Janssen, who later wrote a book[117] that described Mobutu's lifestyle in vivid detail.
Altogether, Mobutu had sixteen children:[118]
On trips across Zaire he appropriated the droit de cuissage (right to deflower) as local chiefs offered him virgins; this practice was considered an honor for the virgin's family.[119]
In art and literature[edit]
Mobutu was the subject of the three-part 1999 Belgian documentary Mobutu, King of Zaire by Thierry Michel. Mobutu was also featured in the 2000 feature film Lumumba, directed by Raoul Peck, which detailed the pre-coup and coup years from the perspective of Lumumba. Mobutu also featured in the 1996 American documentary When We Were Kings, which centred around the famed Rumble in the Jungle boxing bout between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali for the 1974 heavyweight championship of the world which took place in Kinshasa during Mobutu's rule. In the 1978 war adventure film The Wild Geese, the villain, General Ndofa, described in the film as an extremely corrupt leader of a copper-rich nation in central Africa, was a thinly disguised version of Mobutu.[120]
Mobutu also might be considered as the inspiration behind some of the characters in the works of the poetry of Wole Soyinka, the novel A Bend in the River by V. S. Naipaul, and Anthills of the Savannah by Chinua Achebe. William Close, father of actress Glenn Close, was once a personal physician to Mobutu and wrote a book focusing on his service in Zaire. Barbara Kingsolver's 1998 historical novel The Poisonwood Bible depicts the events of the Congo Crisis from a fictional standpoint, featuring the role of Mobutu in the crisis. Mobutu was played by the Belgian actor Marc Zinga in the 2011 film Mister Bob. The French critic Isabelle Hanne praised Zinga's performance as Mobutu, writing he "brilliantly embodies this Shakespearian and bloodthirsty figure."[121] Mobutu was included as an additional promotional card in the card-driven strategy game Twilight Struggle. His card, when played, increases the stability of the country then known as Zaire and increases the influence of the United States over the African nation.