WILFRED ARINDA: Mobutu’s looting legacy crossed into Uganda

It has been said—by a voice lost to time but forever etched in truth—”The state decays, but the dictator grows fat.” This haunting phrase, whispered through the ages and carried on the winds of forgotten history, captures the tragic fate of nations devoured by the insatiable greed of those who rule.

It is a prophecy that found its grim fulfillment in the long, parasitic reign of Mobutu Sese Seko over Zaire—now the Democratic Republic of Congo. His 32-year dictatorship was not just a political epoch; it was a grand theft, a slow, cruel plunder of a nation’s very soul, leaving nothing but the hollow echo of what might have been

Mobutu ruled from 1965 to 1997, during which the machinery of the state was brazenly hijacked to serve his personal empire. His regime became the textbook definition of kleptocracy—power sustained by plunder.

In his captivating work The Congo: From Leopold to Kabila – A People’s History, Congolese scholar and diplomat Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja peels back the layers of Mobutu Sese Seko’s regime to expose the truth beneath the surface. He reveals that Mobutu was not a president, but a kingpin dressed in the robes of leadership. Under his rule, the nation became less a land of people and dreams, and more a grand criminal enterprise, where the duties of governance were mere smoke and mirrors to conceal the ongoing theft of the country’s wealth. The Congo, in Mobutu’s grasp, was not a country—it was a crime scene, with power used not to serve the people, but to satisfy the endless greed of the looters.

In 1989, Mobutu Sese Seko’s was reported to have amassed a staggering $5 billion—an amount that was, ironically, equivalent to Zaire’s entire national debt at the time. His wealth wasn’t just a product of power; it was a mirror to the country’s financial ruin, a wealth built while the nation languished in poverty.

Professor Merwin Crawford Young, of blessed memory, a towering figure in African political scholarship, in his seminal 1994 work The African Colonial State in Comparative Perspective, delivers a searing critique of Mobutu Sese Seko’s economic mismanagement. He illuminates how Mobutu’s regime presided over the systematic looting of the Zairian state, siphoning billions into private coffers while state institutions were stripped of capacity and purpose. What remained, Young argues, was a hollowed-out apparatus—government in name but ghostly in function, a spectral bureaucracy drifting in the ruins of its own plundered promise. The state became a carcass, and Mobutu and his loyal looters feasted on it with impunity.

The aftermath was nothing short of catastrophic. The nation’s lifeblood—its roads, hospitals, and schools—crumbled to dust. Zaire’s economy, crushed under the weight of endless looting, collapsed completely. Even civil servants had to rely on bribes just to survive, while soldiers turned to plundering civilians for their basic needs. The Washington Post once revealed that Mobutu held total control over the national budget, treating it as though it were his own personal bank account. His departure didn’t bring relief; instead, it unlocked the door to chaos, war, and suffering that continues to haunt Congo to this day. His loot-fueled reign sowed the seeds of destruction, growing into Africa’s deadliest conflict—one whose scars still mar the land. Yet, Mobutu’s ghost has never truly left; it simply crossed borders, leaving its mark wherever it went.

In Uganda today, President Yoweri Museveni’s long tenure is beginning to mirror Mobutu’s style of state-sanctioned looting. After six decades since independence, Uganda seems trapped in a vicious cycle—where political survival is financed through grand theft of public funds, dressed up as governance. The headlines have become numbing in their repetition.

Reports have emerged that every Member of Parliament—across party lines, including opposition members—recently received an “Easter package” of 100 million shillings. This windfall, handed out not for service rendered or emergencies averted, but as a political gratuity, continues to expose a disturbing trend of state-sponsored looting. A nation desperately in need of basic infrastructure—hospitals, schools, clean water, and functioning roads—557 MPs have collectively pocketed 55.7 billion shillings, or roughly 15 million USD, not to address the country’s myriad challenges but as an extravagant political payoff to maintain the political status quo.

Just one year ago, parliamentary commissioners went even further, rewarding themselves with a staggering 1.7 billion shillings, a self-congratulatory gesture paid for with taxpayer money. Now, in an unprecedented move, a proposed 500 million shillings is on the table as an “election package” for the same commissioners. This is not governance—it is a flagrant abuse of power, a systematic plunder of state resources masquerading as politics.

In Museveni’s Uganda, looting is not the exception—it is the script. Those who control the levers of power no longer pretend to fear consequences. One senior public official, speaking to me under the veil of anonymity, confessed with astonishing boldness: “I know this system inside out. I can steal and sleep soundly. I just know how to play it when the watchdogs bark.” He laid bare the anatomy of Uganda’s rotten core—where accountability is a myth and impunity is institutionalized.

Let no one deceive you. This government will never fight looting. It cannot. To fight it would be to destroy itself. The very architecture of the Museveni regime is constructed on patronage, kickbacks, and strategic theft. While Idi Amin is infamously remembered for murder and brute force, Museveni’s presidency will be remembered as the era of loot and luxury. This is a government that does not just tolerate looters—it celebrates them. It shields them, promotes them, and sends them back to Parliament with “packages” of praise.

The eerie resemblance between Mobutu’s grotesque looting and Museveni’s modern-day plunder is more than historical déjà vu—it is a terrifying signpost of what lies ahead. Both regimes built castles on shifting sands, enriching a few while condemning millions to lives of scarcity, indignity, and broken promises. While Mobutu’s collapse dragged Zaire into blood-soaked chaos, Museveni’s looting spree has pushed Uganda into a democratic death spiral—where elections are bought, institutions are toothless, and the national dream is mortgaged for political survival.

This isn’t merely a tale of greedy men—it is a national emergency. When a government loots instead of leads, when looters wear suits of legitimacy, and when theft becomes tradition, what future is left for the children of Uganda? When billions meant for health, education, roads, and food vanish into private mansions and offshore accounts, we are not witnessing politics—we are witnessing betrayal at a historic scale.

The tragic parallels between Mobutu’s Zaire and Museveni’s Uganda should serve as a siren: looting is not history—it is the nightmare unfolding before us. And unless we confront it, this nation may one day join the ruins of those who chose silence in the face of sanctioned theft.

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The writer, Wilfred Arinda Nshekantebirwe is the LC 5 Male Youth Councillor for Rubanda District 

wilfredarinda@gmail.com