Word: mobutuism
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...would be hard to do worse than his father did. When the one-time Marxist Laurent-Désiré - backed by Rwanda and Uganda - ousted the venal Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997, he was greeted with cheers and optimism. After three decades of kleptocratic dictatorship, it seemed that Congo could finally begin again. But the senior Kabila's promise of national reconstruction didn't get much further than slogans and billboards. Within a year the country was back at war, and the smiling giant had cracked down on political opponents and postponed promised elections. So when a bodyguard shot...
...telling break from tradition is his refusal to have billboards of his portrait erected. Both Mobutu and Laurent-Désiré Kabila fueled a cult of personality through posters, songs and, in Mobutu's case, a nightly pre-news video showing him floating Godlike in the clouds. "I know how I look, so I don't need to have a poster to realize that I look like Joseph," he says. "Has it really got any meaning? Times have changed. The expectations of the people of the Congo are not to see Joseph on posters or to listen to songs...
...language. Joseph takes charge of a country in name only. The war that began as a rebellion in the east of the country in August 1998 quickly became an African scramble for Africa. Rwanda and Uganda, which had supported Kabila pere in his campaign to end the reign of Mobutu Sese Seko, backed the rebellion after falling out with Kabila. Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe supported the Congolese President in return for the promise of lucrative oil and mining concessions. A peace accord signed 18 months ago by the main protagonists called for a cease-fire, but fighting has dragged...
...Zimbabwean and Angolan armies currently pouring reinforcements into the war-ravaged country. Which is, of course, a double irony for the Congolese, since his father had arrived in the capital four years ago as the handpicked representative of the Rwandan and Ugandan forces that had put the dictator Mobutu to flight - the same armies that young Kabila's backers are now fighting...
...course, outside of his home region in the far-off southeast, and his autocratic ineptitude and shameless cronyism did little to endear him to the residents of the capital, who saw him as a Rwandan imposition on a country that might have had its own ideas on alternatives to Mobutu. Kabila's failure to stamp out the Hutu insurgency exasperated the Rwandans, and his leadership style fomented widespread resentment in the ranks of those who'd fought in the rebel armies of the east. When Kabila switched his support to the Hutu groups in 1997, the Rwandans and Ugandans resolved...