Ousted Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, one of Africa's longest-serving strongmen, died in the Moroccan capital, Rabat, last night. The former president had been suffering from prostrate cancer.
Mobutu arrived in Morocco on May 23rd after fleeing from Zaire, which he had ruled for three decades.
He stayed initially in a hotel south of the capital before moving to a resort near Tangier in June. He was taken to the Moroccan capital at the end of that month and admitted to Avicennes civilian hospital, where he underwent an operation for "serious bleeding complications", doctors said.
Born in 1930 at Lisala, in the centre of what was then the Belgian Congo, Joseph Desire Mobutu served for a time in the colonial forces, then became a journalist in Brussels and secretary to nationalist leader, Patrice Lumumba.
Returning home on independence in 1960, he served in Lumumba's first government, then took on the reorganisation of the army. In November 1965 he staged a military coup to oust president Joseph Kasavubu and proclaimed himself head of state the following January.
The following years were marked by political oppression, corruption, mismanagement and the looting of what was the richest country in Africa. Mobutu accumulated a personal fortune estimated at more than $4 billion. Despite his excesses he enjoyed the support of western countries, including France and the United States, for 25 years as a bulwark against communism in Africa. But with the end of the Cold War his allies brought pressure on him to introduce democracy and end human rights abuses.
Having enjoyed virtually absolute power since a 1965 coup, he successfully rode the tidal wave of popular support for multi-party democracy.
A master of the power game and a reluctant convert to democracy, he still entertained hopes of winning legitimacy through the ballot box in long-delayed multi-party presidential and parliamentary elections in 1997.
But prostate cancer and a Tutsi-dominated revolt backed by neighbouring Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and Angola combined against him and his rapacious, demoralised and divided armed forces crumbled before a determined rebel advance.
On May 16th, 1997, he fled his capital Kinshasa, one day before Laurent Kabila's Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo marched in to claim victory after a seven-month civil war.