Word: mobutuism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...middle of the din at N'jili International Airport outside Kinshasa, the capital of Zaïre, was Pope John Paul II. Occasionally mopping his brow with a handkerchief in the tropical humidity, he greeted President Mobutu Sese Seko and other dignitaries, then boarded an open Mercedes for the 15-mile motorcade into Kinshasa...
...President had changed his name from Joseph Désiré Mobutu, so it would seem less colonial and perhaps less Christian. But one could scarcely have discerned any political advantage in that from the joyous crowd of more than 1 million people packed along the entire route; their numbers and enthusiasm equaled the welcomes John Paul received in Mexico, Poland and the U.S. Many of the Zaïreans wore T shirts that depicted a brown-skinned Pontiff. On his way, the Pope repeated "Mvidi Mukulu" ("God bless...
...only accurate historian Naipaul finds, and his fiction is the subject of the fourth essay, "Conrad's Darkness." He offers Naipaul solidity: well-considered ideas that have been tested, conclusions which Naipaul can trace to their roots. His writing is a welcome change from the rhetorical fantasies of Generals Mobutu of Zaire and Peron of Argentina. "Nothing is rigged in Conrad. He doesn't remake countries. He chose, as we now know, incidents from real life; and he meditated on them...
Naipaul offers only one answer: countries must not look back too far and turn precolonial times into "le bon vieux temps de nos ancestres." This is the solution of General Mobutu in Zaire, a senseless one. Mobutu combines tradition and technology in a way that belongs to neither culture: African dances performed in a television studio, African art relegated to a sculpture niche in the wall of Mobutu's residence. Mobutu's "African nihilism" promises the flashy cars and gold wristwatches of Western technology while attacking their source...
...withering opinions were written in the early '70s when, between novels, Naipaul visited Trinidad, Zaire, Argentina and Uruguay. The resulting essays are partly coroner's reports on would-be redeemers, partly sources for settings and personality traits that Naipaul later used in his novels. Zaire's Mobutu, with his brew of futurism and ancestor worship, is clearly the model for the remote leader of the Central African nation described in A Bend in the River (1979). The confused longings and demagogy of Michael de Freitas, a Trinidadian cult leader who was hanged for murder...