In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz by Michela Wrong Page A

era. But for Mobutu the Force Publique was to prove a godsend. Here the natural rebel found discipline and a surrogate father figure in the shape of Sergeant Joseph Bobozo, a stern but affectionate mentor. In later life, bloated by good living and corroded by distrust for those around him, he would wax nostalgic about the austere routines of army life and the simple camaraderie of the barracks. Looking back, he recognised this as the happiest period of his life.
    In truth, Mobutu was never quite as much of a military man as he liked to make out. Of more importance in furnishing his mental landscape was the fact that he managed to keep his education going in the Force Publique, corresponding regularly with the mission pupils he had left behind, who kept him closely informed of how their studies were progressing. On sentinel duty, carrying out his chores, he readvoraciously, working through the European newspapers received by the Belgian officers, university publications from Brussels and whatever books he could lay hands on. It was a habit he retained all his life. He knew tracts of the Bible off by heart. Later, his regular favourites were to give a clear indication of the sense of personal destiny that had developed: President Charles de Gaulle, Winston Churchill and Niccolò Machiavelli, author of The Prince , that autocrat’s handbook.
    He took and passed an accountancy course and began to dabble in journalism, something he had already practised at school, where he ran the class journal. And he got married. Marie Antoinette, an appropriate name for the wife of a future African monarch, was only fourteen at the time, but in traditional Congolese society this was not considered precocious. Still smarting from his schoolroom clashes with the priests, Mobutu chose not to wed in church. His contribution to the festivities—a crate of beer—betrayed the modesty of his income at the time.
    Photos taken during those years show a gawky Mobutu, all legs, ears and glasses, wearing the colonial shorts more reminiscent of a scout outfit than a serious army uniform. Marie Antoinette, looking the teenager she still was, smiles shyly by his side. Utterly loyal, she was nonetheless a feisty woman, who never let her husband’s growing importance cow her into silence. ‘You’d be talking to him and she would come in and chew him up one side and down the other,’ said Devlin. ‘She was not impressed by His Eminence, and he would immediately switch into Ngbandi with her because he knew I could understand Lingala or French.’
    A Belgian colonial had started up a new Congolese magazine, Actualités Africaines, and was looking for contributors. Because Mobutu, as a member of the armed forces, was not allowed to express political opinions, he wrote his pieces on contemporary politics under a pseudonym. Given the choice between extending his army contract and getting more seriously involved in journalism, he chose the latter. Although initial duties involved talent-spottingCongolese beauties to fill space for an editor nervous of polemics, Mobutu was soon writing about more topical events, scouring town on his motor scooter to collect information. The world was opening up. A 1958 visit to Brussels to cover the Universal Exhibition was a revelation and he arranged a longer stay for journalistic training. By that time he had got to know the young Congolese intellectuals who were challenging Belgium’s complacent vision of the future, staging demonstrations, making speeches and being thrown into jail.
    One man in particular, Lumumba, became a personal friend. The two men shared many of the same instincts: a belief in a united, strong Congo and resentment of foreign interference. Thanks to his influence Mobutu, who had always protested his political neutrality, was to become a card-carrying member of the National Congolese Movement, the party Lumumba hoped would rise above ethnic loyalties to become a truly