ZAIRE: WAITING FOR KABILA

Perhaps the only thing more remarkable than the heartbreaking squalor visible everywhere in Zaire these days is the extent to which the man responsible for it has insulated himself from the despair and the destitution. For more than 30 years Mobutu Sese Seko has imposed an uneasy unity on nearly 250 tribes strung across an expanse of Central Africa the size of Western Europe. The natural richness of this region and the willingness of Western governments to bankroll his regime have enabled Zaire's President to indulge in an uninterrupted saturnalia of misrule and kleptomania. He has squandered his country's wealth, ravaged...