[55][56], Mobutu successfully capitalized on Cold War tensions among European nations and the United States. Contact [contradictory] He had turned 35 a month earlier.[27]. The following year, Mobutu paid a visit to Beijing, where he met with chairman Mao Zedong and received promises of $100 million in technical aid. [53] While in office, he formed a totalitarian regime responsible for numerous human rights violations, attempted to purge the country of all Belgian cultural influences, and maintained an anti-communist stance to gain positive international support. Parliament refused to recognise the dismissals and urged reconciliation, but no agreement was reached. "Un jour j’avais trouvé quelque chose de bizarre sous forme d’un miroir sous son oreiller, j’ai appelé son épouse qui l’a déplacé mais sans me dire de quoi il s’agissait…Mobutu et son épouse n’allaient pas à l’église, Même les dimanches, on restait toujours à la maison et ils ne priaient même pas au palais". At the same time, the party president was automatically nominated as the sole candidate for a seven-year term as president of the republic; he was confirmed in office by a referendum. © 2020 Deutsche Welle | [52], 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. During Reagan's presidency, Mobutu visited the White House three times, and criticism of Zaire's human rights record by the US was effectively muted. However, Mobutu tore up the treaty in 1974 in protest at Belgium's refusal to ban an anti-Mobutu book written by left-wing lawyer Jules Chomé. Lumumba wanted to keep both men in his government and wished to avoid upsetting one of their camps of supporters. [17], During the 1960 talks in Brussels on Congolese independence, the US embassy held a reception for the Congolese delegation. The men were executed on charges of being in contact with Colonel Alphonse Bangala and Major Pierre Efomi, for the purpose of planning a coup. He also opposed seating the PRC at the United Nations. The former had shown some influence over the mutinying troops, but Kasa-Vubu and the Bakongo ministers feared that he would enact a coup d'état if he were given power. Anthony Mockler, 'The New Mercenaries,' Corgi Books, 1985, Nohlen, D, Krennerich, M & Thibaut, B (1999), Other translations of his name include "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," "the earthy, the peppery, all-powerful warrior who, by his endurance and will to win, goes from contest to contest leaving fire in his wake" and "the man who flies from victory to victory and leaves nothing behind him"<, CS1 maint: BOT: original-url status unknown (, Leslie, Winsome J. Mobutu also had a cordial relationship with Reagan's successor, George H. W. Bush; he was the first African head of state to visit Bush at the White House. In most areas, no paved roads existed; the only vehicle paths were irregularly used dirt roads. Mobutu was known for his opulent lifestyle. Op 30 juni 1960 reisden koning Boudewijn en zijn ministers naar Leopoldstad voor de officiële onafhankelijkheidsviering van Congo. [28] In his first speech upon taking power, Mobutu told a large crowd at Léopoldville's main stadium that, since politicians had brought the country to ruin in five years, it would take him at least that long to set things right again. Sylvestre Ilunga Ilunkamba a été nommé en vertu de l'accord politique entre les coalitions du président Tshisekedi et de Joseph Kabila. Mobutu was becoming increasingly physically frail and during one of his absences for medical treatment in Europe, Tutsis captured much of eastern Zaire.