Word: mobutu
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...Gbadolite, Mobutu lives in a series of garish palaces guarded by soldiers drawn from his own Bangala tribe. An early riser, he often tunes in newscasts via satellites. It was after watching the televised execution of his old friend President Nicolae Ceaucescu of Romania, for example, that he decided to embark Zaire on its now stalled "transition to democracy." After breakfast he accords audiences that can stretch into the afternoon; then he relaxes with % his family or studies biographies of men he admires, including Napoleon and De Gaulle. Mobutu is fascinated by Machiavelli, whose treatise The Prince he used...
These days he avoids trips to the capital or other major cities, although the Gbadolite village airstrip can accommodate the supersonic Concorde that Mobutu charters from Air France as well as a number of Boeing jets in the presidential fleet. Exquisite flower gardens and vast plantations of pineapple imbue Gbadolite with an air of bucolic tranquillity. But it is a Potemkin village: most of the electricity is switched off when the dictator and his circle are absent, leaving thousands of townspeople to fend for themselves in the tropical darkness...
...brutality, his control of key military units and broadcast media, and his elite security forces. But there is also a personal element: his knack for co-opting former enemies is little short of amazing. Nguza Karl-i-Bond, who published an account of brutal tortures inflicted on him by Mobutu's minions, later proceeded to serve him twice as Prime Minister. As Mobutu shifts appointees in and out of office, sometimes on a monthly basis, erstwhile opponents have shown a willingness to return to his orbit, occasionally banking tidy sums in the process...
Equally noteworthy has been Mobutu's quest for sexual favors among the wives of political associates. "The President enjoys an almost feudal droit du seigneur," explains a former Cabinet minister. "He uses sex as a tool to dominate the men around him. You get money or a Mercedes-Benz, and he takes your wife and you work for him." Says a former longtime resident of Gbadolite: "The complaints of those he has cuckolded only add to his mystique as a virile and powerful ruler...
Outside Gbadolite, Mobutu's hold on power is more tenuous. More than a thousand miles away in the teeming slums and decaying center of Kinshasa, Zaire's capital, hundreds of people have died in the past month in clashes with Mobutu's Israeli-trained security forces. Looting by unpaid military units has ravaged the city, obliging Belgium and France to send troops to rescue most of their remaining nationals. Both countries, joined by the U.S., have demanded that Mobutu proceed immediately with a transition to democracy that he initiated in 1990 and has since halted...