#mobutu

[kmlottin]

Needed to be pounded hard and raw from him when this happened

[slack-wise]

Mobutu Sese Seko Nkuku Ngbendu wa Za Banga

[lightdancer1]

Mobutu, of course, in turn is the classic US-backed Cold War dictator

Joseph-Désiré/ Mobutu, Sese Seko Kuku Waza Banga Mobutu (1930-1997) •

Joseph Mobutu, named Joseph-Désiré Mobutu at birth, was the second president of Zaire (now called the Democratic Republic of Congo) from 196

There are people who fit into much more complex histories in the Cold War and in terms of navigating in both African and Black history terms. Mobutu is not one of these people. He was the face of American 'freedom' in its real world manifestation all too often in the Cold War, promoted for his supposed ability to defeat 'Communism' more than anything else and heavily reliant on US subsidies.

He also was well aware of this.

[lejournaldupeintre]

N’sele, Kinshasa N'sele, some 40kms outside Kinshasa, the capital of what today is known as the Democratic Republic of Congo, but then was Zaire, was once one of ruler Mobutu Sese Seko’s most glittering palaces.

[colleenrants]

Patrice Émery Lumumba was the first democratically elected leader of the Congo. Before decolonization, he led the Mouvement National Congolais in their attempt to be free of Belgian oppression.  Denied help from the UN and US, he was aided by USSR, making enemies both in Congo and abroad.  He was killed by order of anti-communist (and soon dictator) Mobutu in 1961.

[quyotes]

With Washington’s backing, President Mobutu’s thirty-two-year rule (1965–97) made corruption into a form of governance that came to be termed “kleptocracy.” Compounding a century of Belgian misrule, Mobutu turned government revenues and investment capital into ready cash, tending to his regional base in the north while making regular payments to local warlords and tribal chiefs elsewhere in that vast nation. To sustain his elaborate patronage network, while also stashing some $6 billion in his overseas bank accounts, Mobutu siphoned off about 50 percent of Congo’s state revenues, along with much of its mineral export income, foreign aid, and private investment. [...] At his death in 1997, the Washington Post reported the Congo’s per capita income was less than 10 percent of its level in 1960, half the country’s children died by the age of five, almost all schools and hospitals had closed, and the country’s currency was worthless. The research group Transparency International later reported that Mobutu had stolen half of the $12 billion in development loans Congo received from the International Monetary Fund, leaving the country with a crippling debt and no development. As a legacy of Mobutu’s thirty years of misrule, in 2008 the Brookings Institution rated Congo as the world’s third-weakest state, comparable to Haiti, with an average life expectancy of only fifty-five years, one of the world’s worst.

Alfred W. McCoy, Cold War on Five Continents

[kmlottin]

What is the hottest thing about kylian?

Remember this day? I needed him pounding in me

[poppapeasy]