Mobutu Sese Seko
Mobutu Sese Seko ruled Zaire for thirty-two years and made his name a byword for kleptocracy. Born Joseph-Désiré Mobutu in 1930 in Lisala in the Belgian Congo, he was expelled from a mission school and conscripted into the colonial Force Publique, where he became a sergeant-major and a military journalist. He was in Brussels as a journalist when independence approached, and became close to Patrice Lumumba, who made him army chief of staff at thirty. In September 1960, weeks into the crisis that followed independence, he seized power in a first coup with American and Belgian encouragement, handed Lumumba to the Katangese secessionists who murdered him, and then returned nominal authority to civilians. In November 1965 he took power for good. He renamed the country Zaire in 1971, ordered Africanisation of names and dress — the abacost suit replaced the tie — and took the name meaning the all-powerful warrior who leaves fire in his wake. He built a personality cult with his image on the currency and on television before the evening news. He nationalised foreign businesses in 1973 and handed them to loyalists, who wrecked them. He is estimated to have taken four to fifteen billion dollars, held property across Europe and built a palace with an airstrip for Concorde at his home village of Gbadolite, while the state ceased paying its employees and infrastructure disintegrated. The West supported him throughout the Cold War as an anti-communist ally, and lost interest after it ended. Rwanda and Uganda backed Laurent Kabila's advance in 1996-97. Mobutu fled and died of cancer in Morocco in 1997.
- Lived: 1930 CE – 1997 CE
- Nationality: Congolese
- Roles: head_of_state, dictator, military_leader
