Mobutu, King of Zaire

A comprehensively researched documentary history of the Congolese dictator who would be God, from his Stalin-like seizure and consolidation of power in the newly independent nation, through three decades of increasing corruption, brutality and megalomania, to his slightly shambolic fall from power in 1997. It's very much a personal study, meaning both that the passage of Zairean political, socio-economic and developmental change is detailed only insofar as it reflects on Mobutu himself, and that the insights into the self-styled leopard, notwithstanding much tantalising interview footage from down the years, are modest. Quite absorbing, despite the lengthy running time, but finally a rather familiar storyline.