Word: mobutuism
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...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...
...Joseph Mobutu as Africa's stylish nihilist: "Mobutism simplifies the world, the concept of responsibility and the state, and simplifies people. Zaire's accession to power and glory has been made to appear so easy; the plundering of the inherited Belgian state has been so easy, the confiscations and nationalizations, the distribution of big shadow jobs. Creativity itself now begins to appear as something that might be looted, brought into being by decree...
...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...
...reinforced their oft-expressed warnings of Soviet imperialist ambitions in the Third World with some dramatic diplomatic gestures. Following the French and Belgian military intervention in Zaïre last May, Chinese Foreign Minister Huang Hua flew into Kinshasa. Touring Shaba region with Zaïre's President Mobutu Sese Seko, Huang declared that the Katangese invaders had been "Soviet-Cuban mercenaries." Since then Keng Piao has carried China's admonitory message to Pakistan and Sri Lanka, as well as to the Caribbean. The indefatigable Vice Premier has scheduled visits for next autumn to Guinea and Ghana...