Mobutu, roi du Zaïre

This belgian-made documentary traces Mobuto as he begins his life in the military, establishes a friendship with the Belgian royal family, and, by and by, in Hitler-like fashion, installs himself as dictator of the Congo(Zaire). He disposes of rivals and opponents, though not always in the most obvious ways(one acquaintance claims he had Machiavelli's "The Prince" memorized.) He dumped bodies in rivers, doled out money from the treasury to friends(sometimes having more printed when needed)and bedded other mens' wives. He insituted a short-lived and ill-fated space program. Over the years he visited with Nixon, Bush and Indira Ghandi, among others. Like his European counterpart, Nicolai Ceaucescu, even at the end he can never quite be convinced of his own unpopularity. He manages to avoid the Ceaucescu's degrading end, and instead succumbs to prostate cancer in 1997. The film makes it clear that U.S. leaders like Bush became embarrassingly thick with Mobuto because they considered him a safeguard against communism. But what is even more disturbing is that we have no reason to believe that the Congo's current government is much better.

This is a pretty standard documentary aimed at an audience largely desenitised to the horrors of the modern world. it's a detailed account of the rise to power of the eponymous, cynical Congolese (Later, at his own whim Zairean) dictator, which doesn't pull any punches in identifying his benefactors in the CIA and European governments. It presents Mobutu as being an intellectually, if not morally complex figure, more so than Norman Mailar's description of him as "someone you wouldn't want to run into on a dark night" It won't tell an expert on Africa anything he won't already know about the history of the Congo, but it's got some fascinating footage, though there's no mention of the rumble in the Jungle