Cancer, Kabila, and the Congo: Central Africa at the End of the Twentieth Century

Abstract

By the mid-1990s Mobutu was dying from prostate cancer. As the above passage illustrates, Mobutu’s cancer-ridden body became a metaphor for Zaïre: two hollow, diseased bodies in the final stages of life (see also Newsweek, 12 May 1997, 40; and 26 May 1997; Time, 25 November 1996 and 26 May 1997, 45–46). Toward the end of his life, he spent more time in France and Switzerland undergoing treatment than he did in his own country.

They call it a country. In fact it is just a Zaïre-shaped hole in the middle of Africa. It has been sold, bought, appropriated, stolen. Equally, to describe it as corrupt implies some health somewhere … The virus infecting this carcass of a could-be state is the president himself, Mobutu Sese Seko.

—Economist, 8 July 1995, 37