
DATE: Tuesday, September 9, 1997            TAG: 9709090471
SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A4   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: FOCUS

SOURCE: BY ANDREW MAYKUTH, KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWS SERVICE 

                                            LENGTH:  136 lines

FOCUS: LAST OF THE ``BIG MEN'' MOBUTU SESE SEKO, THE EXILED AFRICAN DICTATOR WHO DIED SUNDAY, WAS A COLD WAR RELIC: A WILY DESPOT WHO SEIZED AND KEPT POWER WITH U.S. HELP BECAUSE OF HISANTI-COMMUNIST STANCE, THEN LOOTED THE TREASURY WHILE HIS NATION WENT TO RUIN.

Mobutu Sese Seko, the African despot who became fantastically wealthy while driving his country deep into poverty, ranked alongside Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and Jean-Claude Duvalier of Haiti among the world's enduring dictators.

Mobutu, 66, who died Sunday after a prolonged bout with prostate cancer, looted Zaire's treasury over three decades of iron-fisted rule before he was overthrown last May and driven into exile.

The son of a cook and a hotel maid, the former journalist and army sergeant remade himself into the quintessential African ``big man'': the all-powerful chief who dispenses favors and punishment with equal vigor.

His country was a lonely outpost of anti-communism on a continent rife with post-colonial socialism. The CIA helped him rise to power in the 1960s, and American aid was vital to his rule. President George Bush praised him in 1989 as ``one of our most valued friends.''

Suave, arrogant and cunning, Mobutu seized power in a 1965 military coup after the country - then known as Congo - had been ravaged by five years of civil war that started after independence from Belgium.

Mobutu held together one of Africa's potentially most prosperous countries, bringing a measure of stability to a nation the size of Western Europe, strained by intense rivalries among 250 ethnic groups.

But stability came at a price.

Mobutu jailed, tortured and killed thousands of his political opponents, according to international human rights agencies.

What set him apart among the world's tyrants was his unrivaled thievery.

He and his loyalists methodically depleted the accounts of state enterprises that mined copper, diamonds, cobalt and gold from Zaire's rich ore bodies.

By the end of his rule, the mining operations were bankrupt, their equipment obsolete and neglected.

He encouraged his followers to steal - as long as no one stole more than him.

``If you want to steal, steal a little cleverly, in a nice way,'' Mobutu once said in an interview with an African magazine. ``Only if you steal so much as to become rich overnight, you will be caught.''

Western powers were willing to ignore Mobutu's behavior as long as he remained useful in the Cold War, providing bases to support anti-communist rebels in neighboring Angola. The United States cut off aid to Mobutu only in 1993 after he once again failed to enact democratic reforms.

Born Joseph-Desire Mobutu, he grew up in Lisala, a steamy port city in Equateur Province on the Congo River, a place little changed from the country immortalized by Joseph Conrad in his 19th-century novel ``Heart of Darkness.''

He was a 29-year-old army staff sergeant when American intelligence agents recognized his leadership potential in 1959 as the Belgians were about to end their rule.

The new government became deadlocked between President Joseph Kasavubu and Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, whom American intelligence regarded as a Soviet sympathizer.

Mobutu staged his first coup in September 1960 and ordered Lumumba arrested.

Lumumba escaped, but Mobutu's men recaptured him. Lumumba was killed in January 1961 while in custody, probably by soldiers loyal to Mobutu. Lumumba's loyalists took up arms in eastern Zaire. Among them was a young officer named Laurent Kabila.

Mobutu staged his second coup in 1965. This time, he declared that no political party would be allowed for five years, except for his new Popular Movement of the Revolution.

Mobutu constructed an ingenious system in which no challengers or ethnic groups could consolidate power. ``Without me, there will be chaos,'' he said.

To cement Mobutu's dictatorship and keep potential rivals at bay, senior politicians from the previous government were appointed to overseas diplomatic posts.

Powerful opponents who remained in Zaire were imprisoned or publicly executed after sham trials. Those who stayed quiet were rewarded with gifts of fancy cars and luxurious villas.

Mobutu entwined potential adversaries in his feudal network of patronage. He appointed and fired cabinet ministers on whim, leading to a culture where government officials stole as much as they could while they were in office, knowing that their stay could be brief.

By 1970, all of Mobutu's potential rivals had retired, been arrested or had died. Mobutu held the long-promised elections, which he duly won. No other parties were allowed to run.

Mobutu was capable of astonishing hypocrisy. He enhanced his standing on the continent by blasting racist South Africans at summit meetings. But secretly he accepted Pretoria's support.

In the mid-1970s, he ordered several leading military and civic figures arrested and sentenced to death, accusing them of hatching ``a CIA plot'' to oust him.

Ironically, it was Mobutu who kept close ties to American intelligence.

The CIA used Zaire in the mid-1970s as a staging ground to airlift U.S. military aid to the bush headquarters of Jonas Savimbi's National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, then fighting a war against the Soviet- and Cuban-supported government in Angola.

In exchange, the West stepped up military, economic and covert aid to Zaire. Millions of dollars were siphoned directly to Mobutu and his family. Precious little was reinvested in the national infrastructure. Roads, schools, hospitals deteriorated. The mail was not delivered. The telephones stopped working.

As the nation slowly rotted, discontent grew. A surreal world developed where Mobutu rarely visited the capital, Kinshasa, and gradually became more isolated at his remote jungle palace. He kept control of the government through his ruthless, Israeli-trained Presidential Guard, the only soldiers who were paid regularly.

Nevertheless, Mobutu's rule appeared absolute until 1996, when his reliance on traditional faith-healers failed him.

By the time he visited physicians who diagnosed his prostate cancer, the disease had spread too far.

While he was recuperating from surgery in Europe, an insurrection led by Kabila rose up in Eastern Zaire.

Mobutu's demoralized army, unpaid and untrained because its corrupt commanders had sold its weapons, fled without much of a fight. As the soldiers fled, they looted Zairian citizens, the last act of homage to a larcenous regime. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Shown in a 1978 photo, Mobutu Sese Seko, center, seized control in a

1965 military coup after the CIA helped him rise to power. He was

forced into exile this year when rebel forces routed the Zairian

army.

Map

Graphic

Information compiled by Diana Diehl, news researcher

MOBUTU SESE SEKO

SOURCES: Facts on File, CNN Plus: Newsmaker Profiles, Encarta

[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]