Word: sese
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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...
SICK MAN OF THE YEAR (AFRICA): Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire...
ROQUEBRUNE-CAP-MARTIN, France: President Mobutu Sese Seko made his long-anticipated return to Zaire Tuesday. But after four months abroad, no one seems to know what awaits the ailing President. A heavily armed convoy escorted Mobutu to one of his residences at Camp Tashatshi military base."This is certainly a significant event, but signifying what, no one is really sure," says TIME's Peter Graff. Sources say that Mobutu has weeks, possibly months, to live, but if he has an agenda for his last days other than trying to fight off prostate cancer, he isn't saying. Government officials...
...Mobutu Sese Seko is accustomed to using a strong arm. When the Zairean President flew to France two weeks ago from Switzerland, where he had been convalescing after cancer surgery since August, his arrival naturally attracted photographers eager to film the elusive leader as he entered his villa at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. Minutes later, bodyguards surrounded the journalists, snatched their film and threatened to start breaking limbs...
Backed by the CIA, army general Joseph-Desire Mobutu took over the Republic of the Congo in 1965 and later called himself Mobutu Sese Seko. In 1971 he renamed the country Zaire. Throughout his rule, Mobutu has dealt brutally with opponents, civilian and military. His country's mineral wealth and location kept Mobutu valuable to Western interests for years, but when the threat of communist expansion disappeared, his worth diminished. By 1993 his horrific human-rights record and his refusal to yield the throne had led to an economic squeeze of Zaire by three major trading partners--the U.S., France...