In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu's Congo

Known as "the Leopard," the president of Zaire for thirty-two years, Mobutu Sese Seko, showed all the cunning of his namesake -- seducing Western powers, buying up the opposition, and dominating his people with a devastating combination of brutality and charm. While the population was pauperized, he plundered the country's copper and diamond resources, downing pink champagne in his jungle palace like some modern-day reincarnation of Joseph Conrad's crazed station manager.

Michela Wrong, a correspondent who witnessed Mobutu's last days, traces the rise and fall of the idealistic young journalist who became the stereotype of an African despot. Engrossing, highly readable, and as funny as it is tragic, In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz assesses the acts of the villains and the heroes in this fascinating story of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

During Mobutu Sese Seko's 30 years as president of Zaire (now the Congo), he managed to plunder his nation's economy and live a life of excess unparalleled in modern history. A foreign correspondent in Zaire for six years, Michela Wrong has plenty of titillating stories to tell about Mobutu's excesses, such as the Versailles-like palace he built in the jungle, or his insistence that he needed $10 million a month to live on. However, these are not the stories that most interest Wrong. Her aim is to understand all of the reasons behind the economic disintegration of the most mineral-rich country on the African continent; in so doing, she turns over the mammoth rock that was Mobutu and finds a seething underworld of parasites with names like the CIA, the World Bank and the IMF, the French and Belgian governments, mercenaries, and a host of fat cats who benefited from Mobutu's largesse and even exceeded his rapaciousness.

Wrong turns first to Belgian's King Leopold II, who instituted a brutal colonial regime in the Congo in order to extract the natural and mineral wealth for his personal gain. Mobutu, with the aid of a U.S. government determined to sabotage Soviet expansion, stepped easily into Leopold's footsteps, continuing a culture built on government-sanctioned sleaze and theft. Under the circumstances, it's hard not to feel some sympathy for the people who survived in the only ways they could--teachers trading passing grades for groceries, hospitals refusing to let patients leave until they paid up, cassava patches cultivated next to the frighteningly unsafe nuclear reactor. What is less comprehensible--and rightly due for an airing--are Wrong's revelations about foreign interventions. Why, for example, did the World Bank and IMF give Mobutu $9.3 billion in aid, knowing full well that he was pocketing most of it?

In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz is a brilliantly conceived and written work, sharply observant and richly described with a necessary sense of the absurd. Wrong paints a far more nuanced picture of the wily autocrat than we've seen before, and of the blatant greed and paranoia of the many players involved in the country's self-destruction. --Lesley Reed

In The Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz follows the history of Mobutu Sese Seko, president of Zaire. The Mr. Kurtz in the title is, of course, Joseph Conrad's character from The Heart Of Darkness; a European who came to conquer the African Congo but instead found failure and madness.Mobutu was a young scholar and military leader when he took over the reins of the newly independant Zaire. Unlike many African leaders who reign for short periods of time, Mobutu reigned for over thirty years, and took a vibrant, thriving economy to ruins in the process.

Michele Wrong follows and tries to understand what went wrong. The biggest part of the problem was the sheer amount of money that Mobutu and his family and friends took out of the country. Hundreds of millions of dollars were diverted from trade, aid, and thriving businesses to their secret bank accounts. While Mobutu was a master manipulator of people and understood how to do that, he was bored by economic concepts and ignored what his policies did to the country.

Wrong covers all the areas in this tragedy. Those who had thriving businesses but were not African had their properties confiscated. Aid meant for refugees was diverted, and by the time Mobutu left, the average life expectency had fallen to the mid-fifties and diseases that had been reined in were once again rampent. Trade with other countries had dried up, as no one could count on contracts being honored. One of the richest countries in resources was left with a crumbling infrastructure and everyday services such as phones or electricity worked on a hit-or-miss basis.

This was an interesting book. I found the history itself interesting, as well as the blame that could be apportioned to international agencies like the IMF, which continued to give huge loans to Zaire when it was evident they would not be repaid, or the governments of Belgium, France and the U.S., which provided help to Mobutu regardless of his actions under the theory of "better the devil you know". This book is recommended for those interested in the history of Africa, or in reading how the best of plans often go astray.

A moving and tragic book, engagingly and often beautifully written.

Ms Wrong offers a host of hair-raising details about life in a country in which the rule of law has evaporated. The protections that most Westerners take for granted are totally absent; the local people, of course, never had these protections. Those in power (colonial, national, international, politicians, corporations) have many motives for their actions, but none of these motives seem to include improving the quality of life of the population.

What a great case study in self delusion! Mobutu and his associates never see the change in themselves as they pass from hopeful idealism to a sense of entitlement to outright corruption. As Mobutu deprives Congo's impoverished citizens of education and medical care in favor of spending the country's riches on foolish personal extravagance, he can't understand why he is not beloved as the savior of his people. What is wrong with them? Why are they so ungrateful?

To me, as an aside, this goes beyond "power corrupts" and calls out for an analysis from the perspective of the recent studies in the neurophysiology of memory!

One of the most memorable books I have read.

We've all heard the tale told so many times it's boring. How a local strongman poorly equipped for political or economic leadership manages via brutality and cunning to circumvent whatever the political process of the day is in order to install himself as totalitarian dictator of an otherwise impoverished nation. And it's perhaps that rolling of the eyes many of us get when hearing of it happening yet again, that deep breath as you try to stifle some politically incorrect utterance that makes this such an important book. Because I feel it is. I was a total layman in respect to this Mobuto chap, I only bought the book because it was reviewed in a travel magazine I was reading. Yet the author has walked the fine line between boring me to tears with too much detail and making me feel cheated by not including enough.

The overall situation of the country is discussed, the rise of Mobutu is talked about, the guy is to a certain extent humanised by the authors assertion that he can and should at times be viewed through the prism of a traditional African tribal strong man looking after his followers. Or lackeys. The chronology of the descent into economic madness and Mobotus' inability to grasp that he had no clue and to at least instal economically competent people into the corrct positions of authority is laid bare for all to see. The seemingly inevitable fracturing of society and support - usually based (drum roll please) on tribal affiliations if not at least geographic ones is also shown and the reader is left to experience a taste of the exasperation that must of been the lot of any foreign company trying to do business with such a mixture of volatile politics and seemingly wilful stupidity.

I found this book from the title down to be an interesting proposition. Literary yet not condescending, straight forward yet brimming with detail and the authors enthusiasm for her subject did come through. For those fascinated with post colonial Africa or anyone likely to be posted there for work this would be an illuminating read.

Just finished reading this. Wow. It should be required reading for anyone wanting to learn about the Congo/Zaire.

This is a mostly fascinating on-the-ground report of the waning years and immediate aftermath of Mobutu Sese Seko's incompetent dictatorship in Zaire (Congo). Michela Wrong offers a well-rounded journalistic report that digs into the bizarre depths of kleptocracy, as the potentially prosperous Zaire was bled dry while Mobutu and his ever-shifting gang of cronies and yes-men lived in ridiculous luxury, oblivious as their subjects suffered some of the worst poverty and hardship on Earth. Wrong gains plenty of insight into Mobutu's style of governance, as he spread favors around egregiously and played other powers off each other in an increasingly paranoid effort to maintain his own influence, stealing or blowing away untold billions of dollars in the process. Wrong also reports on the aftermath of Mobutu's pathetic downfall, as a convoluted series of atrocities related to the genocide in tiny Rwanda eventually led to the replacement of Mobutu's kleptocracy with Kabila's thugocracy.

There is a running theme, which Wrong could have dwelled upon more, about how the ugly history of European colonialism and exploitation has forever wrecked the ability of Africa's peoples to build their own functioning societies, while Zaire suffered the tragic fate of a home-grown dictator who ruined his people as badly as the colonialists did. Cold War politics and shifting loyalties in endless proxy wars added to the misery. The tail end of the book gets a bit messy as well, degenerating into disconnected chapters on various items of interest, as Wrong's writing takes on some of the disjointed chaos that plagued the country itself during Mobutu's downfall. The British slang and grammatical patterns of Wrong's writing style can also lead to some confusion for American readers. But despite missed opportunities to dwell on some crucial historical lessons, here we get an engaging history of a dictator who is fascinating in his ineptitude and corruption. [~doomsdayer520~]