Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Increasingly, however, Mobutu's vanity showed. He became ostentatious, carrying a trademark
cane and wearing a cap made from the skin of a leopard, a Parisian furrier supplying him with nu-
merous duplicates. He went on frequent shopping trips to Europe in his private jet, and he paid for
all of this by claiming large shares in the country's industries.
Mobutu's popularity faded, and even as he spoke out against corruption—
le mal zaïrois
, “the
Zaïrian sickness”—his own excesses reached new heights. He survived assassination attempts, be-
coming paranoid and creating an inner circle that agreed with everything he did. He imprisoned or
exiled even those who tried to warn him against his own mistakes. In Équateur, 710 miles northeast
of Kinshasa, he built Gbadolite, an immense compound of palaces that came to be known in dip-
lomatic circles as “Versailles in the jungle.” Later in his rule, he had daily flights bring in flowers
and shellfish. “They chartered Boeings like most people use supermarket trolleys,” Pierre Janssen,
Mobutu's son-in-law and a member of his court, recalled.
Under Mobutu, reinvestment in industrial assets stopped, and mines and factories fell into dis-
repair. What he didn't squander he hid away in Swiss bank accounts. The symbol of Mobutu that
writers often evoke is his Villa del Mare, just down the coast from where King Leopold of Belgium
had his own estate.
Mobutu presided over his country's economic decline even as its Mercedes-Benz imports hit a
record high. The Congo's distribution networks broke down, access to goods became difficult, and
prices shot up throughout the country. As wealthy Zairians became wealthier, the rest of the people
ate their meals
à la morte subite
, “like sudden death,” given that they never knew where food would
come from, and when they found it, they devoured it on the spot. To have one meal a day was for-
tunate, and many families alternated between parents and children, eating every other day.
In light of a century of Congolese history, from King Leopold's slave state to Mobutu's eventual
anarchy, it is no wonder that the people I encountered were so wary. In the villages, I walked past
mud-daubed houses, observing crowds of children roaming about in tattered clothes, the adults
masking their scrutiny with mastered nonchalance. The people had seen foreigners come and go,
returning to their homes and safety during troubled times. Relationships here had been based on
survival. There was no buffer zone between failure and starvation. If officials asked for a little extra
money, they did so politely. The request had taken on a formal air. It would pay for their families'
education, for their relatives' hospital visits. No one, especially not an official who had the power
to ask, was exempt from being worked over for money.
Such opportunism wasn't recent, and the story Albert Lokasola told me of his father wasn't sur-
prising. As a young man, André had lived through constant upheaval, uncertainty, and shifting val-
ues. After the Congo Crisis, Mobutu, who at that time seemed the leader the Congolese had hoped
for, founded the Mouvement Populaire de la Revolution (MPR), which remained the only legal
political party until 1990. Rather than be executed, André Lokasola had gone through three parties
in as many years—the PNP, MNC (Mouvement National Congolais), and MPR (even becoming its
administrative secretary in Djolu)—a skill of transformation-by-necessity that many would master
during the decades of the new regime.
As Mobutu's politics dominated the Congo, Albert's father also became the chief of the sector
of Luo, a collection of
groupements
in the forests of Kokolopori. It was here that Albert came of
age, his father receiving gifts from the locals and impressing upon his son not only his ability to
survive but their family's bond to the land, to its people and forests.
