Mobutu Sese Seko: Corruption and Murder in the Heart of Africa

today's video is brought to you by athletic greens and it's wonderful daily blend of vitamins and minerals ag-1 by athletic greens is a comprehensive all-in-one greens powder engineered to fill the nutritional gaps in your diet and support your body's nutritional needs across four pillars of health gut health immune support energy and recovery it's packed with 75 vitamins and minerals and whole food sourced ingredients combining the perfect amount of micronutrients absorption and taste to jump start your daily routine you'd be hard-pressed to find a more comprehensive powder supplement on the market right now now as you guys know i'm not exactly a fitness youtuber but i do like to eat right and take care of myself i also know i don't always eat right so 81 definitely fills those gaps for me what you do is you take one scoop from the provided jar you put it in the provided bottle and i take it in the morning i do it with my coffee and it tastes great but somehow tastes healthy at the same time and i just feel it gives me a bit of a sustained boost of energy throughout the day which is nice plus age one is gluten free dairy free paleo vegan keto low allergen and low calorie less than one gram of sugar per serving ag-1 is the perfect dietary support regimen so if this sounds like the supplement that you've been looking for then you can grab your own immunity bundle which contains one year supply of vitamin d plus five individual travel packs for free with your first purchase at athleticgreens.com forward slash biographics again year supply of vitamin d five travel packs for free at athletic greens.com forward slash biographics or just click the link in the description below and now today's video it was an era of hope that soon descended into agony in 1960 belgian congo was at the head of a wave of decolonization sweeping africa after generations of exploitation this gigantic nation larger than alaska and california combined was free of the yoke of european rule determined to forge its own destiny for a handful of months that shining future looked to be within reach but then it slipped through everyone's fingers instead the congo found itself being squeezed lifeless in the iron grip of a brutal dictator a leader more corrupt than nearly any other in his era his name was mabutu sesoseko and he would single-handedly crush his nation's dreams a former journalist heard army officer mabutu had started out as one of the good guys friends with patrice lumumba a advocate for independence a firm believer in helping the people how he got from there to the depths of kleptocracy is a tale of hubris and tragedy a tale that biographics is exploring today on the depressing top 10 list of nations you definitely don't want to get colonized by the number one spot surely goes to belgium in 1876 king leopold ii took a gigantic swath of africa as his own personal property turning its lush forests into the heart of darkness decades of enslavement murder and mutilation followed as the belgian king pillaged the land although his own government eventually stripped him of his possession in 1908 the damage had already been done it was into this wounded brutalized place that mabutu seseko would be born coming into the world on 14th of october 1930 joseph de ceremotu as he was originally known started his life weighed down by disadvantages for one thing he was born out of wedlock an unexpected son barely acknowledged by his father for another he grew up in what can only be described as the arse end of nowhere a village so remote that it didn't even appear on maps yet his greatest disadvantage was something far more intrinsic mabuta you see was born black in a place that was still under europe's thumb the belgian congo that had replaced leopold's atrocity exhibition may have been a step up from the king's regime but it was still racist as hell all the good jobs all the important postings were held by whites despite this being their native land locals could only dream of shattering that bulletproof glass ceiling but while this shameful setup would ignite a fire and guys like patrice lumumba a desire to fight for independence mabutu's way of dealing with it was more nuanced for the first 30 years of his life booty would be very much in the if you can't beat em join em camp thanks to a french education at the hands of belgium missionaries the young man was eventually able to leave his remote village and travel to the capital leopoldville there he began a career in colonial service joining the force public and rising to the rank of sergeant one of the highest ranks available to black people but it would be his parallel career as a journalist that really made him interesting to the belgians while working as a reporter in leopoldville mabutu made contact with the pro-independence movement by now it was the mid-1950s and no one could ignore the wave of decolonization sweeping the world in belgium congo's a guy riding the crest of this wave was patrice lumumba a firebrand left-wing nationalist he was pretty sure the congolese could rule themselves more effectively than dudes who thought mayonnaise with fries was a legitimate snack food as he reported on him mabutu got to know lumumba better than almost anyone he even joined the old man's congolese national movement a pretty radical step at the time yet there's some suspicion today that mabutu was not quite as radical as he seemed in 1959 the young man traveled to belgium to study journalism in brussels at roughly the same time that negotiations were taking place on decolonization standing in for lumumba when the activist was briefly jailed it's thought mabutu may have been passing information behind the scenes to belgian intelligence an asset for the colonials even as he was publicly pushing the cause of independence if that was the case though it didn't do authorities in brussels much good that same year pro-independence riots paralyzed leopoldville suddenly faced with the prospect of a colony 77 times their size becoming ungovernable the belgians decided to run for the exit on june 30th 1960 belgian congo ceased to exist becoming the independent nation of the republic of the congo a name which quickly had the word democratic attacked on the front to avoid confusion with its identically named northern neighbor was the transfer of power patrice the member was elevated to premiere with his political rival joseph cassava boo serving as president more importantly for today's story though but the two likewise entered government taking the post of secretary of state for national defence in effect giving him command to the army little could lumumba or cassava boo have known it but this well-spoken journalist would soon turn out to be the worst person for the job imaginable [Music] although it might have been independent the word stable would not have been anyone's choice to describe congo in 1960. just days after colonial rule ended a mutiny broke out in the army against the white officers one mabutu only managed to put down through the hasty distribution of bribes around the same time a civil war erupted as the wealthy province of kadanga tried to split off under leader moist to chambe and form an independent state on top of that lumumba and cassava boo began fighting for control of the government a power struggle that threatened to destabilize the entire region into this rapidly developing dumpster fire came the geopolitical gas canister known as the cia 1960 of course was the height of the cold war the cuban missile crisis was just two years away and shady government types and suits were super jumpy about the idea of the soviet union picking up allies anywhere in the world so when the leftist lumumba asked moscow for help putting down a rebellion in katanga it was tantamount to signing his own death warrant to this day many suspect the cia's weapon of choice was mabutu by september 1960 the former journalist held perhaps one of the only solid power bases in the country an army paid with donated american money on the 14th mabuta used that armed power base to launch a coup removing both lumumba and kassababu from their posts but only one of them would feel the full force of mabutu's wrath after a long stand offered a u.n compound lumumba was captured trying to escape on november 27th beaten tortured the independence leader was at last flown to katanga and given as a gift to boyce to chamber the rebel commander made sure he was never seen again while this was the end of lumumba though it wasn't quite the end of a semi-democratic congo with lumumba dead and the soviet threat neutralized mubutu stepped back from his coup kassavabu returns as civilian leader and the army man slunk back to his base apparently one of the reasons was the cia's unwillingness to back a strong man that it regarded as weak with his refined tastes bookish air and habit of indecision babutu just wasn't a guy anyone could see dictating anything one american diplomat derided him as a black hamlet after the shakespearean character who famously spends five acts doing nothing but that's the thing about dictators they come in all sorts of flavors while some like adolf hitler are clearly megalomaniacs by the time they reach power others only show their true colors well it's too late to stop them the next couple of years passed in a series of rolling crises with western backing the government was able to reintegrate katanga with moyes to chambe even going on to become the congo's prime minister but this just caused more problems as cassava boo started clashing with the new guy just as it clashed with lumumba by 1965 their feud had become so bitter that the government was effectively paralyzed it was at this point the mamutu pulled off his real coup on november 24th 1965 the army announced that democracy had been suspended and all power temporarily vested in mabutu's hands thanks to the coup's echoes of 1960 everyone was all like okay i guess we don't really need to worry he gave us power back last time right but mabuji's 1965 takeover would be nothing like the last time in the aftermath of his seizure of power babutu had cassava boo placed under house arrest and to chamber sent into exile they both died in mysterious circumstances not long after by then though it was clear what was happening blaming partisanship for congo's crisis mabutu banned rival political factions replacing the various parties with just one the popular movement of the revolution membership became mandatory as was voting for it so when mubitu called a democratic election to decide his next move the results were inevitable of all 20 million citizens only 157 cars ballots against the party itself a surprisingly large number given there was literally no one else to vote for just like that the era of democracy in the democratic republic of the congo was over with executive functions still suspended in the nation now a one-party state the ex-journalist at the head of it was suddenly free to do whatever he wanted and what mabutu wanted was to build one of the nastiest most flagrantly corrupt dictatorships in all of history [Music] sometimes when we do these dictator videos it can be hard to ascertain the exact moment they went from in it for the people to edit for themselves plus also tons of insanity however there exists no such gray area where mabutu cesoseko is concerned as far as we can tell he stepped onto the leadership stage determined to act like a megalomaniac or tyrant the tyrant part became incredibly obvious incredibly quickly mere months after taking power mabutu had four government ministers hanged in a sports stadium in front of 50 000 people while it's not so shocking for the guy who willingly handed his old friend lumumba over for a torture and murder session it did mark a brutal new step in congolese governance one that would get more brutal as time went on and torture and sexual violence became tools of oppression nor was the oppression merely physical like most dictators mabutu was super keen for all his subjects to think and act as he wanted them to in his case that meant forcing everyone to accept his ideology of authenticity when you just skim the basics authenticity sounds kind of interesting arguing as it did against simply recreating european systems in the postcolonial era and instead looking to a political heritage that was truly african but then you read what mabutu defined as european and you realize it was mostly just another excuse for keeping himself in power according to authenticity democracy was inherently european and an african society should revolve around a powerful chief with the chief's own ostentatious wealth and power the sole way of measuring the nation's health so while for common folk authenticity meant being banned from listening to foreign music straighten their hair or using christian names for mabutu it meant a literal black check in his decades of rule the congolese dictator signed over so much of his nation's wealth to his own pocket that by some counts he was the most corrupt kleptocrat in history now such rankings are always a little dubious and there are other contenders like sahato or ferdinand marcos but to give you an idea of the eye-watering embezzlement that mobutu was up to here are just a few of the things that he blew ungodly sums on always a man of refined taste even in his journalist days mabutu's dictator dedicated himself to collecting expensive trophies that meant a string of mansions around the world and concord jets at his beck and call to take him on shopping trips at the drop of a leopard-skin hat nor did he just use charted planes to transport people in one particularly memorable episode the dictator decided he wanted to start keeping sheep on his ranch uninterested in european breeds he ordered one of his jets to make 32 round trips to caracas in until as many as 5 000 venezuelan sheep had been brought across the atlantic ostentatious all of this was though it paled beside gabadelite mabutu's ancestral home gabalite had been an invisible village when he was born place colonial authorities didn't even bother including on maps of the wild northern regions but that wasn't auspicious enough for mobutu's tastes so yet the whole town torn down and rebuilt only now the mud huts became marble villas the local mission a luxury five-star hotel a vast dam and hydroelectric power plant were constructed just to ensure the lights were always on when the leader visited an airport was built with a runway big enough for concords to take off from to top it all off on the edges of the expanding settlement babutu built himself a palace one nicknamed the versailles of the jungle a place stuffed with old master paintings and vintage french furniture where he could escape the capital and sip pink champagne while listening to classical music all the while his already ravaged nation sank deeper and deeper into poverty in this era many referred to that nation as a rich country of poor people alluding to its vast mineral wealth wealth mabutu personally siphoned off five billion dollars from but such thievery was only made possible by having friends in some very high places perhaps one of the most remarkable things about mabutu was how open he was about his sins in 1977 for example he gave a speech nominally warning of the evils of corruption but which effectively doubled as a kind of advert everything is for sale he declared anything can be bought in our country again this was dressed up as an anti-corruption speech but those listening caught the high-pitched tones of the kleptocratic dog whistle with bobot's nation rich in diamonds copper and cobalt dozens of western firms were more than happy to close their eyes to his abuses in return for buying up those resources who cared if their dollars flowed straight into the tyrant's pockets after all it's not like vastly more powerful actors weren't interested in backing babutu actors with the wealth and technology of entire states at their disposal by now the 1960s had given way to the 1970s what had once been the democratic republic of the congo had been renamed zaire by mabutu who'd likewise renamed himself mabutu seseko kuku bendu wazabanga or to give him the english version of his title the all-powerful warrior who because of his endurance and inflexible will to win will go from conquest to conquest leaving fire in his wake but while times may have changed the cold war was eternal with communist influence always threatening to expand western powers were permanently on the lookout for bulwarks against marxism who cared if those bulwarks were preposterous dictators who ate the finest foods while their countrymen starved so it was the mabutu was able to stay in everyone's good books courted by washington paris and brussels in return for stamping out the soviet flame in africa remarkably this went well for the dictator even when it went badly in 1975 zayer sent troops across the border into angola to stop a left-wing militia from taking the capital only it turned out that left-wing militia had serious cuban training and was able to wipe the floor with mabutu's troops and then seize power yet even this debacle didn't dent his foreign support when katanga erupted in rebellion a couple of years later french belgium moroccan troops all came to his aid backed up by american logistics so long as he was anti-communist mabutu couldn't be allowed to fall which is remarkable when you consider just how uncapitalist so many of his policies were 1973 for example saw the advent of xyronization a fancy word for expropriation and nationalization of foreign-owned businesses unfortunately it turned out that those foreigners mostly pakistani and belgium but greek and jewish too were pretty good at business while the cronies mabutu handed their property over two weren't the result was a general collapse of productivity which in turn fed into the general economic malaise and sense of decline a decline that couldn't be halted even with absurd stunts like movie paying muhammad ali and george foreman five million dollars each to take part in rumble in the jungle in the renamed capital kinshasa come the 1980s the one thing keeping the nation economically afloat was high copper prices prices high enough that mobutu could pay off strong rivals and keep his cronies in relative luxury not that being a mabutu crony was much fun a man who'd like to dominate people mabutu was fond of sleeping with his underling's wives both to humiliate them and to show how powerful he was how he could do anything and you just have to smile and take it but no matter how powerful he felt no matter how many broadcasts from tv stations began with an image of him descending from the heavens mabutu was far from the strongest force in his nation as the 1980s progressed the twin impersonal forces of economics and history were going to bend his regime to breaking point and when it finally snapped it was going to take a whole lot of people down with it vladimir putin infamously called the breakup of the soviet union a tragedy but while most georgians ukrainians estonians and so on would probably disagree it absolutely was a tragedy for one man in africa with the cold war over babutu ceso seiko suddenly found western support for his regime drying up the decade before the collapse of cop prices and ballooning national debt had left zaire effectively reliant on american and european aid as long as washington was still worried about the soviet threat that aid kept coming but when the ussr collapsed a whole bunch of officials began to ask themselves why they were throwing money at this corrupt despot so in the early 1990s they stopped in an effort to keep the money tap on mabutu tried introducing multi-party democracy but when that resulted in a new prime minister that he didn't like he suspended the guy after just 12 days so the west stopped financially backing him with nothing else going for it what remained of zaya's economy bottomed out in those dark days inflation peaked at seven thousand percent deadly riots repeatedly swept the capital not that mabutu really cared as the country descended the dictatorship retreated to the luxury of gabadolite there he drank imported champagne and detained wealthy guests a bizarre male caricature of marie antoinette eating cake in the fake versailles while everything went to hell in the end though it wouldn't be turmoil in his own nation that toppled mabutu but a humanitarian disaster across the border on april 6 1994 a plane carrying rwanda's president juvenal habyar imana was shot down over the capital kigali an estinhutu habiyaramana was killed at a time of extreme tensions between the nation's hutu majority and tutsi minority the very next day hutu extremists stated by the government began the systematic killing of tutsis in what would become one of the 20th century's worst genocides 800 000 people would be killed in just 100 days in neighboring zaire the effects would be apocalyptic not that it looked like rwanda was going to destabilize mobutu's regime at first quite the opposite as rwanda exploded former colonial powers like france were desperate for regional partners always ready to exploit a crisis mabutu opens aye to paris immediately turning himself back into a darling of the west a status that only increased when he agreed to host over a million refugees the trouble was those refugees weren't persecuted tootsies but hutus including some hutus who had helped direct the genocide by july the 4th 1994 the tutsi-led rwandan patriotic front had fought its way into the capital and toppled the government fearing the coming backlash many hutus had fled to zaire among them were militias who now use mabutu's nation as a staging ground for attacks on the rpf but while booty may have been fine with cross-border raids the rpf certainly weren't and they would soon be more than happy to take matters into their own hands mabutu seseko was in switzerland seeking treatment for prostate cancer when he got the call it was autumn of 1996 and the dictator was miserably ill so advanced was his cancer that had become incontinent forcing him to wear diapers so he wouldn't soil himself in another universe it's all but certain the cancer would have ended babutu's rule his grip on power only loosening when he finally died but not in this universe that day mabutu could only listen in horror as he heard the news that the rpf had crossed into zaire worse they were backing a brand new zyrian rebel group determined to oust him a group receiving money and weapons from a coalition of african states that had wronged in the past hoping to inspire his army to fight him the old sick man returned home preparing to face down the invaders but when he got there he found far far too few people willing to lay down their lives for him over the following months the rebels fought their way across the congo's rivers and mountains along isolated roads through dense forests by may 1997 they'd reached kinshasa terrified mabutu did as it always done before and he begged the west for help this time though the west wasn't listening on may the 16th the diamobutu boarded his plane and fled into exile in a sign of how bad things have become his own officers took pot shots at the craft as it rose into the air the bullets pinging off the hull yet the big humiliation would be babutu's inability to land initially heading for france the plane was refused permission to enter european airspace so mabutu instead flew to togo whose own dictator had backed in the past but he was allowed to stay there just a handful of days before togo also ordered him to leave and neither the cia nor belgian intelligence who had clandestinely served willing to help him in the end the only nation that would accept him was morocco it was here in a hospital in the city of rabat that mabutu spent the last months of his life a disgraced cancer-ridden exile unable to do anything as his palace was looted as zaire was renamed the democratic republic of the congo as his name was scrubbed from history he didn't even get the bitter satisfaction of watching the nation descend into civil war without him by the time the second congo war started the dictator was no more mabutu seseko died on september 7th 1997 at the age of 66. he left behind a broken and financially broke nation one with the mineral wealth to be staggeringly rich but instead trapped in a quagmire of poverty and violence and while a legacy of colonial exploitation certainly hadn't helped mobutu's reign had only made things a thousand times worse today it's hard to truly grasp what an utter disaster mabutu seseko at independence his nation had been wounded and ravaged yes but with a possible bright future ahead of it one embodied in the fiery national pride of patrice lumumba but mabutu had helped strangle that future killing number and seizing power then plundering his nation with the greed as vast as it was self-defeating it's rare in modern history to meet leaders who are unequivocally good or bad a disastrous president might do great humanitarian work or a venerated prime minister might tarnish his greatness with racism mabutu seseko though falls into that special category of people who simply made the world a worse place who offered nothing beyond narcissism and greed and delivered both in abundance we can only hope this will remain his epitaph for centuries to come [Music]

Channel: Biographics

Views: 121,663

Keywords: biographics, biography, biographies, people, famous people, simon whistler

Id: ap5BS_-c5Hs

Length: 25min 12sec (1512 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 28 2022