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VIDEO OF MOBUTU SESE SEKO
Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga born Joseph-Désiré
Mobutu; 14 October 1930 – 7 September 1997) was a Congolese politician and
military officer who was the President of Zaire (renamed from the Republic of
the Congo (Léopoldville) and later to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in
1971) from 1965 to 1997. He also served as Chairman of the Organisation of
African Unity from 1967 to 1968.
During the Congo Crisis, Mobutu, serving as Chief
of Staff of the Army and supported by Belgium and the United States, deposed
the democratically elected government of nationalist Patrice Lumumba in 1960.
Mobutu installed a government that arranged for Lumumba's execution in 1961,
and continued to lead the country's armed forces until he took power directly
in a second coup in 1965 to become the country's military dictator.
To consolidate his power, he established the
Popular Movement of the Revolution as the sole legal political party in 1967,
changed the Congo's name to Zaire in 1971, and his own name to Mobutu
Sese Seko in 1972. Mobutu received strong support (military, diplomatic and
economic) from the United States, France and Belgium, who saw him as the
strongest pillar of anti-communism in Francophone Africa; he also built close
ties with the governments of Apartheid South Africa, Israel and the Greek
military junta.
By 1991,
economic deterioration and unrest led him to agree to share power with
opposition leaders, but he used the army to thwart change until May 1997, when
rebel forces led by Laurent-Désiré Kabila expelled him from the country.
Already suffering from advanced prostate cancer, he died three months later in
Morocco. Mobutu became notorious for corruption, nepotism, and the embezzlement
of between US$4 billion and $15 billion during his reign. He was known for
extravagances such as shopping trips to Paris via the supersonic and expensive
Concorde. He presided over the country for more than three decades, a period of
widespread human rights violations.
Videos of Mobutu Sese Seko
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