Joseph-Désiré Mobutu stowed away aboard a boat traveling down the Congo River to Léopoldville in 1949 at nineteen years old. He had been expelled from his Catholic mission school for pranks that included pointing out French errors made by Dutch-speaking Belgian priests.
Mobutu Sese Seko seized power in another bloodless coup at age thirty-five on the 24th of November 1965. He assumed sweeping powers for five years under a state of exception and permanently suspended Parliament two weeks later in March 1966.
On the 1st of June 1966, Mobutu began renaming cities with African names such as changing Léopoldville to Kinshasa and Stanleyville to Kisangani. In October 1971, he renamed the country the Republic of Zaire and ordered citizens to change European names to African ones.
Mobutu gained significant support from Western nations as an anti-communist bulwark during the Cold War while maintaining close ties with France, Belgium, Israel, and apartheid South Africa. The United States became the third largest donor of aid to Zaire after Belgium and France until the end of the Soviet Union removed the reason to support him.
Mobutu died on the 7th of September 1997 at age sixty-six while suffering from advanced prostate cancer in Switzerland receiving treatment. He went into exile first in Togo then lived mostly in Rabat Morocco before his death.