1965: Joseph Mobutu Sese Seko, President of Congo, rolls up sleeves in a pose that seemed he was passionate about his country.
However, the man turned out one of Africa’s worst dictators ruling from 1965 to 1997 a period he changed the country’s name from Congo to Zaire.
He also served as the fifth chairperson of the Organisation of African Unity from 1967 to 1968. During the Congo Crisis in 1960, Mobutu, then serving as Chief of Staff of the Congolese Army, deposed the nation’s democratically elected government of Patrice Lumumba. Mobutu installed a government that arranged for Lumumba’s execution in 1961, and continued to lead the country’s armed forces until he took power directly in a second coup in 1965.
In 1997, when tension in his country got worse, Mobutu went into temporary exile in Togo, until President Gnassingbé Eyadéma insisted that Mobutu leave the country a few days later.
From 23 May 1997, he lived mostly in Rabat, Morocco. He died there on 7 September 1997 from prostate cancer at the age of 66. He is interred in an above ground mausoleum at Rabat, in the Christian cemetery known as Cimetière Européen.
In December 2007, the National Assembly of the Democratic Republic of the Congo recommended returning his remains, and interring them in a mausoleum in the DRC, which has not yet taken place. Mobutu remains interred in Morocco.
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