After the remains of Etienne Tshisekedi and Patrice Emery Lumumba were repatriated to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in June 2019, it is time to bring back the body of former President Mobutu Sese Seko, say deputies. The former dictator king of Zaire was buried in Morocco in 1997 where he went into exile after the entry of AFDL troops, Laurent-Désiré Kabila.
Twenty-five years after the death of Laurent-Désiré Kabila, a caucus of deputies met on Friday, July 15, in Kinshasa, to initiate political steps in order to push the power in place to repatriate the man who had spent 32 years of power.
” What Mobutu did for this country, he [Mobutu] is not, so far, equaled. First with the problem of peace in the East. The longest war that Mobutu knew was the 80 day war and he was ready to negotiate everything to obtain peace. Since his death, peace is not in the East. If today, attempts at balkanization do not succeed, it is because Mobutu succeeded in imposing on the Congolese and making them understand that they belonged to a single nation. “, explains the deputy Willy Bolio Emina, president of the caucus set up, to our correspondent in Kinshasa, Pascal Mulegwhas.
Read also: Who was Mobutu Sese Seko?
” The approach must be institutionalized and we have to start somewhere, which is why we have set up a group of deputies who will reserve the primary motivation for the President of the National Assembly, the belt by which we will reach the President of the Republic which had promised, in 2019, the repatriation of the body of Mobutu. This should not remain an unrealizable promise. You know, you can eat well in a dream but when you wake up, you stay hungry because the meal in a dream is not a real meal. And so we are waiting for the concrete so that the remains of Marshal Mobutu return to the country “, he adds.