Some in Congo Long for the Order Of Late Dictator

Mobutu Nzanga, left, a candidate for president of Congo, is trying to evoke the era of his late father, Mobutu Sese Seko, using the torch-in-fist symbol of the country then known as Zaire. (By Craig Timberg -- The Washington Post)

Mobutu, a former army officer who took power in a 1965 coup, was one of Africa's archetypal Big Men, putting his image on currency, on pictures in public buildings and on billboards across the country. The evening news began with images of him descending, god-like, through the clouds. And he changed his name to an eight-word phrase meaning "the all-powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, will go from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake."

He looted, by various estimates, billions of dollars in government revenue from a country whose population remained mostly poor, helping give rise to the term "kleptocracy." He so feared coups that he built few roads that might assist advancing armies, leaving a country the size of the eastern United States with only 300 miles of mostly battered pavement. And he sharply limited political debate, allowing for most of his reign only a single party -- his own Mouvement Populaire de la Revolution.

"During the Mobutu regime, we didn't have freedom of speech," said Katunda Mubalu, 48, who peddles rare memorabilia of the late president -- some currency, military medals and a book featuring Mobutu on the cover -- at a Kinshasa market. "He didn't want the country to be developed."

Yet what came after, voters say, was worse in almost every way.

After Mobutu's fall, the country endured years of devastating wars under both Laurent Kabila, who was assassinated in 2001, and Joseph Kabila, who signed a peace deal the following year. But during the strife, foreign governments and investors divvied up much of Congo's vast mineral wealth. Deaths from the years of instability were estimated at 4 million, with most coming from easily preventable diseases and famine.

The United Nations has a 17,500-member force in Congo, the largest peacekeeping operation in the world. In advance of the vote, U.N. tanks drove through Kinshasa while Congo's own military was confined to barracks.

Nzanga Mobutu's party flag borrows the color scheme and torch-in-fist symbol of Mobutu's Zaire, but the son has a problem. Though Nzanga Mobutu was briefly an aide and spokesman for his father, his years in Europe, where he attended school, and in Morocco, where he had been in exile, have undermined his credentials as a politician in Congo, analysts say. Other candidates, including Bemba, a former Mobutu adviser, and Pierre Pay Pay, a Mobutu-era governor and cabinet minister, have more successfully laid claim to his political legacy.

Yet none is nearly as popular, Nzanga Mobutu and analysts said, as Mobutu himself.

Nzanga Mobutu said his father, if he were alive, would adapt to the ways of multiparty democracy. "He would understand that the world is different," Nzanga said, "and he would have done things differently."