Word: kleptocratic
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Dates: during 1997-1997
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DIED. MOBUTU SESE SEKO, 66, African strongman and kleptocrat whose 32-year rule of Zaire finally ended last May; of prostate cancer; in Rabat, Morocco. In the cold war theater that was Africa, Mobutu profitably played the anticommunist, earning an ally in the U.S. and seizing power in what was then the Belgian Congo in a 1965 coup. He ordered the nation to discard Western dress in the name of African authenticity and touted nationalization and other economic reforms. But he spent the following decades looting his resource-rich country, leaving it bankrupt and impoverished...