Word: mobutu
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Kabila said the Congo’s troubles stem back to the days of Belgian imperialism, when the needs of the people were neglected while the land was stripped of its rich natural resources. The country received its independence in 1960, but fell into chaos and then dictatorship under Mobutu Sese-Seko...
...describes the early colonization and exploitation of the Congo. Long before Sierra Leone, Belgium's colonial army encouraged the amputation of body parts as proof that native soldiers had actually killed their enemies. Former Financial Times correspondent Michela Wrong's "In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz" details Joseph Desire Mobutu's rise to power and his descent into paranoia, isolation and self destruction. Mobutu's Congo, Wrong writes, was a modern-day kleptocracy - a nation state that institutionalized theft...
...Lumumba's flirtation with the Russians led the U.S. , Belgium and other Western powers to look for a more malleable alternative to rule the Congo. They settled on Lumumba's former aide, Joseph Desire Mobutu, who had been promoted to head of the army. Mobutu was flooded with Western money and arms, and within two months was able to out-maneuver the remnants of Congo's civil government, launching the newly-independent nation's long slide into institutional theft and ultimate bankruptcy. Lumumba was placed under house arrest, and after he escaped, was captured, tortured and turned over to Moise...
...deep was the charismatic Lumumba's popularity among Congolese that even after ousting him, Mobutu felt obliged to build him a monument as one of Africa's great heroes. Like many other projects, the monument was never finished. There was another plan to name a boulevard in the capital after Lumumba. That also fell by the wayside. So the best monument may, in fact, turn out to be Peck's film which is based on solid research and hundreds of interviews with key participants, including one of the Belgian secret agents sent to dispose of Lumumba's body. The film...
...mystery, at least to Congolese. He has appeared on television just once, and some people grumble that he has spent too much time overseas. "He's a person we are just discovering," says Mabi Mulumba, professor of economics at the University of Kinshasa and a former Prime Minister under Mobutu. "Even the old guard know little about him." Kabila, who has a girlfriend and says he wants to marry soon and have a family, spent much of his childhood in Tanzania, where his father owned a bar and based the rebel movement that eventually took him to power. When...