Zaire’s President Mobutu Sese Seko shed a tear as he delivered a speech in April 1990 promising his people an end to one-party rule and a future without the man they knew as the Guide.
“Understand my emotion,” he said, his distinctive, deep voice cracking.
In the seven years that followed, the military dictator acted on few of his promises and Zaire sank into chaos, leading to his overthrow in 1997 and helping trigger a series of conflicts that would kill millions of people.
A quarter of a century after Mobutu’s speech, there is a sense of deja vu as the fate of democracy hangs in the balance and fears of civil war grow in Africa’s largest copper producer, now known as Democratic Republic of Congo.
