| | For 30 years, Mobutu terrorised Zaire and butchered his enemies, all the while indulging his vanity with a personal film crew. The footage is the basis of a chilling film: Buy, Buy, Money, Money, Diamonds, Money, Money. That's what it was all about, according to one of Mobutu's former ministers who was an enthusiastic interviewee for this extraordinary expose of Africa's most baroque monarchical regime. Nothing you knew about Mobutu's venal reign in the Congo, which he remade as Zaire: the murder of the nationalist prime minister Patrice Lumumba, the long co-operation with the CIA, the assassinations and the crushing of political life, prepares you for the interviews and archive footage in Thierry Michel's film, Mobutu, King of Zaire. |
