Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, August 22, 1994 TAG: 9408220027
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: DENVER LENGTH: Medium
This week, he and three other NBA players will be in the post-Apartheid nation to conduct basketball clinics in Johannesburg and Cape Town.
Also on hand will be the New York Knicks' Patrick Ewing, the Charlotte Hornets' Alonzo Mourning, the Utah Jazz's John Crotty plus Atlanta coach Lenny Wilkens and former Washington coach Wes Unseld.
But Mutombo's visit will be bittersweet.
Rwandan refugees in Africa are fleeing civil war and ethnic persecution by crossing the border into Mutombo's native Zaire.
"The reason I stopped watching TV for the past weeks is because of all these pictures they are showing of refugees in my country," he said. "So many were dying, they were burying them with tanks."
The basketball superstar said he saw tragedy while growing up in Africa for 20 years before moving to the United States.
"Still, I never got a chance to see the sadness and the ugliest pictures I'm seeing on television now," Mutombo said.
Mutombo said he is keeping an eye on South Africa to see if it can provide a model for democracy and post-colonial resurrection among African nations. His own, Zaire, is a former Belgian colony.
This week he will be close to his troubled homeland and family, yet far.
Mutombo was born in Kinshasa, Zaire's capital, where soldiers salute his father out of respect for Mutombo's NBA accomplishments and his work as a spokesman for the international relief agency CARE.
The Nuggets star won't visit the cosmopolitan city of 4 million this week because of fears for his safety.
Zaire, a central African nation of 40 million, has been under the authoritarian rule of President Mobutu Sese Seko since 1965.
Mutombo still has flashbacks to January 1993, during his second season with the Nuggets, when soldiers ransacked his parents' home in Kinshasa. They took everything the family owned and forced them to flee, leaving Mutombo without news of his family for two months.
He said he was so worried he considered leaving his NBA job to return home to search for them. The family eventually returned safely to Kinshasa.
But because of Mutombo's wealth, he himself is a potential target. His Nuggets contract is good for five years and $13.75 million.
"Crazy people are everywhere," he said. "The people who rob my father's house, they come from the street. When people are poor, they act violently and do anything necessary to get money."
Mutombo's parents and extended family spent the past two months in the United States on a trip that included a private audience with President Clinton.
"I remember how my father and my mother and aunts and uncles felt when President Bill Clinton shook their hands," Mutombo said. "They couldn't believe it. They were saying the world came to an end for them."
Mutombo said he expects to feel the same way should he get the opportunity to meet Nelson Mandela, South Africa's first black president, on his trip.
by CNB