Word: mobutuism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Perhaps the only thing more remarkable than the heartbreaking squalor visible everywhere in Zaire these days is the extent to which the man responsible for it has insulated himself from the despair and the destitution. For more than 30 years Mobutu Sese Seko has imposed an uneasy unity on nearly 250 tribes strung across an expanse of Central Africa the size of Western Europe. The natural richness of this region and the willingness of Western governments to bankroll his regime have enabled Zaire's President to indulge in an uninterrupted saturnalia of misrule and kleptomania. He has squandered his country...
During the past five months, Mobutu's regime has rapidly and spectacularly begun to unravel. In the streets of Kinshasa his opponents have been clamoring for him to step down. In two of Zaire's most remote provinces, long-sputtering secessionist movements have burst into flames. But it is the full-scale rebellion now sweeping across five eastern provinces that seems most likely to bring Mobutu's rule to an abrupt and unceremonious conclusion...
...marches at the head of that insurrection is Laurent Kabila, 56, a short, rotund guerrilla leader who has been battling Mobutu for more than 30 years. Since the early 1970s Kabila has waged a haphazard and by several accounts rather incompetent struggle against Mobutu's government from the jungle highlands around Lake Tanganyika. Although Kabila's Marxist-inspired People's Revolutionary Party received support from the Soviet Union, China and Cuba (Che Guevara once spent several months training with them), the obscure group never amounted to more than a nuisance. But the experience did enable Kabila to forge a valuable...
...several different armies. Until recently, they were assisted by Mai-Mai tribesmen, who smoke marijuana, worship water and festoon themselves with bathroom fixtures--mainly faucets and hoses--in the belief that these fetishes will aid them in battle. For the moment, the rebel leader has established his headquarters in Mobutu's former home in Goma. He has dubbed his new residence "the Museum of Shame" because its ostentatious decor mirrors the incorrigible excesses of Mobutu's rule. Visitors to Kabila's headquarters, however, are struck by an even more telling reflection. Much like Mobutu's imprimatur these days, the elegance...
Unlike those bagatelles, Kabila's threat to Mobutu is very real. The rebels control a chunk of territory 1,000 miles long. By last Saturday, Kabila's forces had not only taken the airport at Kisangani, the government's last major stronghold in the east, but had also captured the city. Mobutu's troops have been powerless to stop them. His success has instilled Kabila with such confidence that he seems to regard victory as a foregone conclusion. "This regime is completely worn out," he said with a laugh during an interview with TIME. "Mobutu can go wherever he wants...