Laurent-Desire Kabila
Laurent-Désiré Kabila overthrew Mobutu Sese Seko in 1997 after thirty years as a marginal rebel, and was assassinated by a bodyguard four years later. Born in Katanga in 1939 into a Luba family, he studied briefly in France and Tanzania and was active in youth politics around Patrice Lumumba. After Lumumba's murder in 1961 he joined the eastern rebellions, and in 1965 fought alongside Che Guevara, who spent seven months in the Congo attempting to build a revolutionary force. Guevara's diary is scathing about him — he described Kabila as absent from the front, unserious and given to drinking in Kigoma while his men fought. Kabila then ran a small enclave in the mountains east of Lake Tanganyika for years, sustained by gold smuggling, ivory and reportedly by ransoming kidnapped Western students. He disappeared from view for much of the 1980s and 1990s. His opportunity came from Rwanda. After the 1994 genocide, the perpetrators fled into eastern Zaire and used the refugee camps as bases. In 1996 Rwanda and Uganda needed a Congolese face for an invasion, and selected Kabila to head the AFDL. The campaign crossed the country in seven months, Mobutu fled, and Kabila declared himself president in May 1997, renaming the country the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He banned political parties, and within a year fell out with his Rwandan and Ugandan sponsors and ordered them out. They invaded again in August 1998, beginning the Second Congo War, which drew in nine countries and caused millions of deaths. He was shot by a bodyguard in January 2001, and his son Joseph succeeded him.
- Lived: 1939 CE – 2001 CE
- Nationality: Congolese
- Roles: head_of_state, military_leader, rebel_leader
