Mobutu or Chaos? is the latest product of the Foreign Policy Research Institute's study on friendly tyrants. Like its predecessors, it tackles the thorny question of how to deal with the pro-U.S. authoritarian regimes that have bedeviled U.S. foreign policy for the better part of forty years. The book chronicles the U.S. relations with Mobutu from their beginnings in the sixties when support for the ruler was justifiable by higher goals, through to the present when the degeneration of his regime into incompetence and severe brutality raises new questions both practical and moral as to the justification of continued relations. This volume is important to all those interested in Zaire, Africa, and the general workings of U.S. foreign policy. Co-published with the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

The words "crisis" and "chaos" have been so closely associated with central African giant Zaire for so long that they form part of the country's informal appellation. The literature about Zaire, from V.S. Naipul's 1981 book, A New King for the Congo: Mobutu and the Nihilism of Africa to Michael Schatzberg's 1991 tract, Mobutu or Chaos is the literature of despair and despondency. So many observers, in fact, have been writing in increasingly alarming terms of the Zairian tragedy for so long that it is all but impossible to find a positive assessment of the country's prospects. But Zaire is too important for Africa's future -- and, in the long term, given its size, riches and population, for the world's future -- for us to fail to make the necessary intellectual and economic investment now to ensure a stable, prosperous future for the country. What is more, it is the contention of this paper that the power or powers which move to take up Zaire's cause stand to gain a great deal: a favored economic and strategic position in Africa's richly endowed center, and the sort of sense of humanitarian accomplishment that all modern democratic powers appear to crave.

"The colonel's great-aunt sat cross-legged on the carpet with her mouth wide open. With a gnarled finger, she pointed down her throat. A fishbone peeked over the base of her tongue and was easily retrieved. The old woman and the colonel were delighted. The doctor was relieved. This episode was the first of many that led Dr. Bill Close toward becoming the physician and friend to many, including the colonel who became president and then dictator of the Congo. Beyond the Storm details Dr. Close's extraordinary experiences during the uncontrollable human storms that crashed repeatedly in the Congo after independence. In July of 1960 chaos erupted when Belgium turned over power to Patrice Lumumba, the first elected prime minister, but kept the keys to the nation's prodigious mineral wealth. Two men, Colonel Joseph Désiré Mobutu, the newly appointed army chief of staff, and William T. Close, M.D., volunteer surgeon in the general hospital, met, and their lives became intertwined during the next sixteen years." -- Amazon.com viewed March 15, 2021.

‘Joyous ... a book that makes other journalists weep with envy’ The Economist'Provocative, touching, and sensitively written ... an eloquent, brilliantly researched account’ Sunday Times One of The Economist’s best books by foreign correspondents.

In this stunning memoir, veteran Washington Post correspondent Lynne Duke takes readers on a wrenching but riveting journey through Africa during the pivotal 1990s and brilliantly illuminates a continent where hope and humanity thrive amid unimaginable depredation and horrors. For four years as her newspaper's Johannesburg bureau chief, Lynne Duke cut a rare figure as a black American woman foreign correspondent as she raced from story to story in numerous countries of central and southern Africa. From the battle zones of Congo-Zaire to the quest for truth and reconciliation in South Africa; from the teeming displaced person’s camps of Angola and the killing field of the Rwanda genocide to the calming Indian Ocean shores of Mozambique. She interviewed heads of state, captains of industry, activists, tribal leaders, medicine men and women, mercenaries, rebels, refugees, and ordinary, hardworking people. And it is they, the ordinary people of Africa, who fueled the hope and affection that drove Duke’s reporting. The nobility of the ordinary African struggles, so often absent from accounts of the continent, is at the heart of Duke’s searing story. MANDELA, MOBUTU, AND ME is a richly detailed, clear-eyed account of the hard realities Duke discovered, including the devastation wrought by ruthless, rapacious dictators like Mobutu Sese Seko and his successor, Laurent Kabila, in the Congo, and appalling indifference of Europeans and Americans to the legacy of their own exploitation of the continent and its people. But Duke also records with admiration the visionary leadership and personal style of Nelson Mandela in south Africa as he led his country’s inspiring transition from apartheid in the twilight of his incredible life. Whether it was touring underground gold and copper mines, learning to carry water on her head, filing stories by flashlight or dodging gunmen, Duke’s tour of Africa reveals not only the spirit and travails of an amazing but troubled continent -- it also explores the heart and fearlessness of a dedicated journalist.

In a follow-up to his ground-breaking "Africa Betrayed, " George Ayittey takes up the plight of Africa at the end of the twentieth century. Former UN Secretary General Boutros-Boutros Ghali once said that Africa was in danger of becoming the lost continent and, on this point, Ayittey thoroughly agrees. As he begins to see countries like Nigeria go over the edge of economic and social disaster, Ayittey uses his formidable powers of analysis to look at the political economy of Africa, the incursion of foreign powers and the relationship of Africa to the world market. He contrasts the indigenous systems of government that existed in Africa before the arrival of Europeans with the colonial and post-colonial systems that were forced on the country and the effect these systems have had on Africa s inability to move forward. Ayittey s view is dark and, as always, his stinging conclusions will infuriate some and invigorate others. Certain to create controversy, "Africa in Chaos" is a must-read for fans of Ayittey s earlier work as well as anyone interested in the world economic scene today. "