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Summary: White mans guilt get a different meaning...
Review: I loved this book, the complete lack of morals by the government(s) of the Congo
and short sightness of their actions are truely amazing.
Easy to blame outsiders for the problem in Congo, but the root of the problem is that the state isn't neutral in its actions but there's always a catch in every move they make.
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Summary: Not just a big crook
Review: I was goig to write a review of this most amusing book, but found that Mr. Henderson had beaten me to it. Following his cogent and penetrating review I find there isn't much left to say. However, in the best tradition of reviewers everywhere, I would like to refer to other parts of the book, which I found to be very entertaining. In the Constitution of a region of Zaire that wanted to secede from Mobutu's Kinshasa government there was an article (article 15) suggesting to anyone who wanted the government's protection or support to "take care of your own business" ("debrouillez-vous"), which essentially the legal form of Mobutu's dictum that corruption was OK so long as it wasn't excessive (President Turbay of Colombia said the same thing in 1978, although he didn't manage to hang around as long as Mobutu did). There is an operating nuclear reactor in Zaire. An enriched uranium core disappeared recently, only to resurface in the hands of the Sicilian mafia. A profet jailed by the Belgians who believed himself to be the incarnation of the Holy Ghost created a church complete with hierarchy and miracles and Holy Writ. Mobutu kept twins as lovers, to ward off malignant influences from his defunct first wife's spirit. I agree with Mr. Brokesley that the soul of the story is Mr. Mobutu. A cunning man, he had that rare combination of shamelessness and grandeur. One would need to go back to Mussolini or Napoleon III to find a similar European mindset. He wasn't a psycopath like other African leaders (such as Francisco Macias NGuema, Idi Amin Dada or Jean-Bedel Bokassa), and while he robbed the country of its lifeblood, bringing it back into the middle ages, he did it much more amusingly than other leaders could have done (who ever heard of a good anecdote about Robert Mugabe or Daniel Arap Moi, who are just as big crooks as Mobutu ever was?). Mobutu shared in the spoils of corruption, and allowed even non-family members to take part in the feast. This is much more than other tyrants (such as Somoza, Trujillo, Khadaffi, Saddam Husseim or Suharto) ever did. Yes, he was a bad guy, responsible for untold misery, but he wasn't as bad as some of the others in his line of business. So, if you ever want to see what happens when the rule of law is absent and all social constraints implode, this is the book for you
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Summary: The Reverberating Effects of Colonialism
Review: Michela Wrong's In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz is the perfect companion piece for the amazing and horrifying King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild (itself a historical look at the setting of Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness). Wrong takes the story into the present by covering the recent years in the Congo after the Belgians abruptly leave their colony, after providing a brief, succint look at its colonial background, to show the rise and fall of Mobutu Sese Seko, taking down the rich natural resources and the economy of his country with him through his time in government. The author is very effective at showing the Congo as a piece on the Cold War checkerboard using this position to gain support from the United States and money from the IMF and the World Bank allowing a corrupt system to remain in place and the corruption to grow to enormous scale. The complete absurdity of this situation is made quite clear in the journalistic approach the author takes to this book. The end of the Cold War ended this system and helped bring down Mobutu, too late to help his country. The author is quite good at placing the blame and the Western nations come in for their fair share as colonialism left the Congo only to be replaced by a Western backed form of economic imperialism. A horrifying and often sadly humourous read that opens one's eyes to the situation in Africa.
Rating: 
Summary: Well Researched but Poorly Written
Review: Ms. Wrong clearly has first-hand knowledge of the history of Mobutu's destruction of Zaire, and the tragic events that resulted in the nation's demise. However, her editor must have been asleep when reviewing this book; there can't be any other explanation for publishing a work loaded with irritating typos and lacking flow . The book starts off with her arrival in Zaire, and suddenly it fast-forwards to the end of Mobutu's reign, then her looting of Mobutu's home with her colleagues. It then backtracks to his childhood, and so on. It is easily one of the most frustrating books I have ever read, and aside from the wealth of research Ms. Wrong undertook for this book, I found no cause to recommend it to anyone.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting subject matter -- not well written or organized
Review: The book has its weaknesses, notably that it's not especially well-written. And her analysis of the West's role in Zaire, especially the IMF, is very shallow. But it is an eyewitness account of a fascinating and tragic story, and that compensates for a lot..
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Summary: Unbecoming Leadership
Review: This book about Mobutu goes to show what some leaders in Africa manifest, the attainment of power to do good that degenerates into sycophancy and entrenched corruption.As most leaders in the developing world, Mobutu "greases" the palms of his "opposition" or does away with them if they prove to be too stubborn in their opposition. In any case, he had the backing of the powers that be. At the end of the day, Mobutu is a poster boy for bad leadership in that he failed to harness the immense resources of a vibrant country and succeded in depleting the country and sending her to the brink of collape.
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Summary: Wrong Is Right On
Review: This book is a great follow up to Adam Hochschild's recent account of King Leopold's vicious exploitation of the Congo at the turn of the 20th century, King Leopold's Ghost. Wrong briefly recounts those events and more recent history leading up to the emergence of Mobutu as leader of the Congo which he renamed Zaire. She calls the government he set up a kleptocracy and it is an accurate term for the government of this unfortunate nation. Colonialism set the people of the Congo up to expect corruption and greed from their leaders and the resulting passivity of the people made it ripe for exploitation by its indigenous dictator--an extremely charismatic and corrupt man who played the Western Powers such as the U.S. and France in the game of Cold War power politics. Mobutu stole billions from his potentially rich nation and finagled billions more out of the U.S. and international financial agencies who knew he was corrupt but also a person that they could count on as an ally in an area with many enemies of the West. In order to maintain his hold, Mobutu also had to liberally dole out his ill-gotten gains to those around him. He also employed a bloated bureacracy of 600,000 employees doing the work that could have been done by 50,000. In his later years, his control weakened and the others near the top began further looting beyond Mobutu's awareness or control. For example, In the early 1990s, his generals sold off the entire air force. When Mobutu noticed the planes missing he was told that they had merely been sent to France for servicing and repairs. When he finally figured out what happened a year later, there was nothing he could do about it. Top military people also siphoned off money that was supposed to pay lower ranking military and also inflated the number of members in the army to siphon off more money. Most of the best and brightest who tried to change things for the better were eventually bought off.
Because Zaire was a chief supplier of uranium to the West they were also a "beneficiary" of Western nuclear technology. They have a 40 year old nuclear power plant that is obsolete and they are unable to replace malfunctioning parts. It is now used only to conduct various tests. The thought of a poorly maintained nuclear plant in this corrupt, impoverished and highly unstable land is truly scary.
Wrong also describes the events leading up to the downfall of Mobutu, the invasion of Rwandan and other forces, and the rise of Kabila who merely extended Mobutuism without Mobutu. In this account Kabila is still in charge. He has since been assassinated and his son has taken over. I hope a new paperback edition of this book will be out soon with an update. This is an excellent book, highly recommended for anyone who wants to read about the corrupt politics of central Africa and of the U.S., France, and various international agencies.
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Summary: A good place to start your reading on Congo/Zaire
Review: This book was recommended to me by a bookseller here in Washington, DC when I mentioned my interest in reading King Leopold's Ghost. I have no relationship to the author. Like many U.S. residents, I have a fairly limited understanding of political history and current affairs in African nations. (Not completely so; recent travel in Egypt and Kenya raised some awareness.) Still, I was very appreciative of the author's presentation of the Congo/Zaire story: more a series of snapshots than a linear telling of the events. She did a decent job of suggesting that Mobutu's failings were hardly his own - sharing that responsibility, instead, with Belgium (within the broader context of colonialism) and, more recently, with Western governments and financial institutions (the IMF and the World Bank) that continue to profit from and exploit the African political landscape. Further, the author shows how these larger political games affected the people within its borders: her telling of the workings of the black market economy in the period of mega-inflation had my rapt attention. I also appreciated what the author revealed about how corrupt leadership benefits its collaborators at all levels. (Halliburton, anyone?) I don't think she let Mobutu off the hook; she just didn't slip into that trap of leaving him as Mr. Evil the way that some suggest that Hitler didn't have the collaboration of an entire nation of people. If you approach this book as someone's engaging story of how Congo/Zaire came to be what it is today rather than a historical researcher's dreary recounting of the facts, you'll like this book plenty AND be willing to learn more about the country. Off to King Leopold's Ghost now...
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Summary: Good book, bad writing.
Review: This is an interesting read and definitely worth the time. Unlike some of the other reviewers, I wasn't bothered by her loose chronological order. What did bother me, however, was her absolutely terrible writing style. Wrong seems not to understand that significant over use of a thesaurus, "clever" allusions, and purposefully obscure vocabulary are not suitable replacements for good writing. All in all, I would recommend the book, but you may need to skip over some of her more distracting examples of bad writing.
Rating:
Summary: Good book, bad writing.
Review: This is an interesting read and definitely worth the time. Unlike some of the other reviewers, I wasn't bothered by her loose chronological order. What did bother me, however, was her absolutely terrible writing style. Wrong seems not to understand that significant over use of a thesaurus, "clever" allusions, and purposefully obscure vocabulary are not suitable replacements for good writing. All in all, I would recommend the book, but you may need to skip over some of her more distracting examples of bad writing.
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