EFFORTPOST Dictator of Zaire built a private plane runway in the middle of nowhere so he could fly a private Jet to Paris and back, while bankrupting his country.

Yo dramatards get a load of this guy.

If you don't know wtf Zaire is, and have never heard of it, don't worry, it doesn't exist anymore. Today it's known as the Democratic Republic of Congo. Existing from 1965 to 1997, The country was a one-party totalitarian military dictatorship, run by Mobutu Sese Seko.

This dude in the funny hat:

And his name was pretty self serving - his full name was like something out of Game of Thrones: Mobutu Sese Seko Koko Ngbendu wa za Banga (meaning; All-powerful warrior, who because of endurance and an inflexible will to win, will go from conquest to conquest leaving fire in his wake)

Zaire formed as a military dictatorship under Mobutu, after a bloody coup, which was preceded by Belgium having given the nation its independence. The history is way too complicated and long and boring, so all we need to focus on is that Mobutu was basically the Mugabe of the Congo, he was power hungry, batshit insane and, had no scruples and had no idea how to financially run a nation.

Mobutu led one of the most enduring dictatorships in Africa and amassed a personal fortune estimated to be over US$5 billion by selling his nation's rich natural resources while the people lived in poverty.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120520151428/http://articles.cnn.com/1997-09-07/world/9709_07_mobutu.wrap_1_joseph-desire-mobutu-zaires-mobutu-sese-seko-after

Mobutu's rule earned a reputation as one of the world's foremost examples of kleptocracy and nepotism. Close relatives and fellow members of the Ngbandi tribe were awarded high positions in the military and government.

https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5793&context=etd

Mobutu was the subject of one of the most pervasive personality cults of the twentieth century. The evening newscast opened with an image of him descending through clouds like a god. His portraits were hung in many public places, and government officials wore lapel pins bearing his portrait. He held such titles as "Father of the Nation", "Messiah", "Guide of the Revolution", "Helmsman", "Founder", "Savior of the People", and "Supreme Combatant".

Coins were printed with his face on them.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1997/09/14/mobutu-and-me/4a01f2c8-996a-4d0e-93d1-66be2694e144

He had batshit policies. He attempted to purge the country of all Belgian cultural influences, and maintained an anti-communist stance to gain positive international support.

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/world/africa/051797zaire-mobutu.html

====(from the NYT article)

"Mobutu has been called one of the world's wealthiest heads of state, a brutal dictator, an inveterate meddler in the affairs of neighbors and a colossal ego. His style, at once bold and vainglorious, was for an entire generation the very model of an African autocrat.

Resplendent in his signature leopard-skin cap and carved wooden scepter topped with an eagle, Mobutu -- through his canny courtship of Western support, destabilization of his neighbors, systematic corruption and grandiose economic schemes -- left Zaire teetering on the brink of economic collapse. His cult of personality rose to such heights that for weeks at a time, Zaire's official press was forbidden to mention the name of any other Zairian than the president himself."

"Mobutu almost singlehandedly invented Zaire, even giving the country its name in replacement of the colonial name, Congo. But his personal appetite for luxury and wealth spawned a system of official corruption so rapacious that he leaves behind a country in ruin, where revenue from lucrative mines has been squandered or squirreled away in foreign bank accounts.

Life in a vast country deprived of roads, health care, electricity, telephones and often education has reverted to a brutishness not known since the 1940's."

====(end)

Also we have our CIA buddies to thank for putting this lunatic in power, as he was one of the only anti-communists with a power base during the rough political instability of 1960-1965, when the Belgians gave the Congo its independence.

"Although he has always denied it, many scholars believe that Mobutu helped organize the 1961 execution of Lumumba at the urging of the CIA. During the early independence years, the CIA called most of the shots in Zaire. Nonetheless, in those early years, Mobutu often frustrated his CIA handlers." Nooooooooooooooo cries the CIA fricktards, you're supposed to do what WE say and be a bulwark against the Red Menace!!!

And Mobutu is like haha human-rights go brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr Thank you CIA and Burgerland very cooooool, you fricktards

Mobutu was known for his opulent lifestyle. He cruised on the Congo on his yacht Kamanyola. In Gbadolite, a remote outpost in Zaire, he erected a palace, the "Versailles of the jungle"

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/feb/10/where-concorde-once-flew-the-story-of-president-mobutus-african-versailles

Lol this article has more specifics of the stupid isolated runway.

https://www.motorpunk.co.uk/out-and-about/mobutu-and-the-concorde

"3200m long runway in a mud hut village that had no roads. He also built a palace, a hydro-electric dam and a Coca-Cola bottling plant. His choice of car (remembering that MotorPunk is mostly a motoring magazine) was, predictably, the Mercedes-Benz 600."

"In the 1980s Mobutu flew by Concorde to Paris for some shopping and schmoozing of François Mitterrand, and on another occasion, even flew the Zaire schoolboys choir to a gig in France in it. To those African schoolboys, in fact, any schoolboy, a trip on Concorde must have seemed other-worldly. Mobutu courted Reagan who over-indulged him in a bid to keep Communism at bay in turbulent times in central Africa. "

"So thirsty was Concorde that it used two tons of fuel just to taxi. Getting it in and out of central Africa safely was no easy task. There are no records of who built Mobutu's now knackered airport but Concorde needs a runway of just over 3000m and Gbadolite had 3200m. Very little room for error."

But The fricking Gbadolite runway was even more r-slurred than just that - it was so isolated from civilization, that every trip to his Congo palace risked stranding the fricking airplane there!

"An Air France Concorde, chartered by Mobutu to take him and his entourage shopping in Paris in the 1980s, had to land here. There wasn't much of a Plan B, either. There were very few runways long enough to accommodate Concorde at that time, the distance from Paris to Zaire being even longer than Concorde's regular route to the USA. It would have had, on arrival at Gbadolite, only 1000km of fuel left in the tanks. A diversion to the paved runway at Brazzaville, for example, would have been 1143km. Landing somewhere nearer would have been possible but getting it airborne again; a nigh-on impossibility. There was a real risk that this Concorde could have ended up as the most spectacular ornament in the grounds of Mobutu's folly. As out of place in the jungle as a Swedish Monarch with a fistful of taxpayers Krona in a knocking shop."

Lmoa