A new display at Kinshasa’s national museum has drawn large numbers of young visitors, many attracted to an exhibition chronicling the life and rule of Mobutu Sese Seko — the charismatic, long-serving and deeply controversial leader who seized power in 1965 and governed for more than three decades.
The show emphasizes Mobutu’s theatrical public persona: the one-party state he fashioned, a sprawling personality cult, and high-profile moments that placed the country on the world stage, from meetings with royalty and presidents to the 1974 Rumble in the Jungle boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. Backed by Western powers for his anti-communist stance, Mobutu pushed a program of “authenticity” that banned Western-style suits and European names while presiding over vast personal enrichment: an ornate palace, imported luxuries flown in by Concorde, and a lavish private life amid widespread poverty.
Despite that legacy of authoritarianism and kleptocracy, many visitors — especially younger Congolese — say they feel a longing for what they see as greater stability and international standing during his era. “To be sure, his reign wasn’t appreciated by everyone,” said Marie-Ange Makeya, an 18-year-old architecture and urbanism student at the exhibit. “But at least the country was respected, and there was no war.” Juvenal Munubo, a politician from eastern Congo who attended the show, acknowledged Mobutu’s controversies but argued people remember a stronger sense of national unity: “We recognize that the DRC was much more stable than it is now,” he said.
Mobutu was driven from power in the mid-1990s as a rebellion that began in the east spread across the country; he fled Kinshasa in 1997 and died months later in exile in Morocco. What followed were successive regional wars that devastated the nation, with death toll estimates running into the millions. Conflict has persisted in the eastern provinces, and in recent years violence surged again — most recently with the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels taking major eastern cities in early 2025 and seizing significant territory in mineral-rich areas.
Congo remains desperately poor: the World Bank reports that more than 70% of the country’s roughly 120 million people live on under $2.15 a day. It is against that backdrop that Nzanga Mobutu, one of Mobutu’s sons and leader of a small political party, organized the Kinshasa exhibit to educate young Congolese and defend his father’s reputation. “Whether he was a dictator or not a dictator, I mean: What do you want? Should we let our country be attacked and our women raped?” Nzanga told NPR. “We had discipline, when countries tried to attack we had a response.”
The display includes numerous photographs of Mobutu in his trademark dark glasses, leopard-skin hat and ebony cane, often standing beside world leaders such as John F. Kennedy, Pope John Paul II and Queen Elizabeth II — images intended to underscore the message of a leader who made the country visible internationally. Visitors have included pop stars, politicians from across the spectrum and international figures like Mike Tyson, who came to Kinshasa for the Rumble in the Jungle anniversary. Even President Félix Tshisekedi toured the exhibit; his visit carried symbolic weight because his father, Etienne Tshisekedi, was a longtime opponent of Mobutu and Félix spent part of his youth in exile.
Some observers worry that elements of Mobutu-style rule are reappearing in contemporary politics. In September, politicians swore oaths of loyalty to President Tshisekedi in a ritual critics say echoes Mobutu’s pageantry. For many Congolese who long for security and order, the museum show has become a focal point for a complicated nostalgia: admiration for the perceived stability and international prestige of Mobutu’s era, set against the contested memories of his authoritarianism and plunder.