Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga

Beaming notably plump applauded by his Ministers of Foreign Affairs Justice and Information flanked by his American lobbyists and wearing an abacost jacket like those once sported by Mobutu Sese Seko Kabila said all his concerns had been met gleefully but inaccurately claiming that Britain and France had named Rwanda and Uganda as aggressors...

Few believed anything could be worse than 33 years of rule by Mobutu Sese Seko...

The compensation game (Congolese demanding reparations for Belgian colonialism and Belgian businesses demanding compensation for companies nationalised under Mobutu Sese Seko) seems likely to be stalemated...

The main RCD spokesperson has been Kin-Kiey Mulumba formerly Mobutu Sese Seko's information chief and a Reuters' stringer whose flood of frontline despatches have failed to convince international opinion of the RCD position...

The Swiss authorities have already opened up some accounts and Swiss banks have had to disclose information about account-holders such as Mali's Moussa Traoré Nigeria's Abacha and family Gabon's Bongo and family and Zaïre's late Mobutu Sese Seko...

Like fellow dinosaurs such as Togo's Gnassingbé Eyadéma and Zaïre's late Mobutu Sese Seko Bongo (in power since 1968) was shocked by his marginalisation by Paris and Washington...

Some recall the late dictator Mobutu Sese Seko's imposition of 'authenticité' on the people of the country he named Zaïre...

Weariest of all are Congo's 45 million people who have faced a more or less continuous conflict since the Banyamulenge rebellion against the late President Mobutu Sese Seko started in Kivu-Sud Province in October 1996...

Since taking power in May 1997 he has replicated most of Mobutu Sese Seko's dictatorial and manipulative political techniques and detained the country's most popular political leaders...

Two years later the Kigali-Kampala alliance went to war again firstly to clear those guilty of genocide and their associates from the United Nations-run refugee camps in eastern-Zaïre and then to oust in alliance with Angola President Mobutu Sese Seko's tottering regime...

What made Hassan different from Africa's other absolutists (such as his pupils and friends former Zaïre's Mobutu Sese Seko and Togo's Gnassingbé Eyadéma) was his enduring ability to manage change and make himself useful to countries more powerful than his own...