On a hill in the rainforest of northern Congo stand the ruins of Mobutu’s Versailles. Trees grow through floors of Italian marble, and a runway built for the Concorde still cuts through the forest. Gbadolite was once the private kingdom of Zaire’s ruler, and he built it while his country went bankrupt.
How Mobutu’s Versailles rose in Gbadolite
Mobutu Sese Seko ruled Zaire, today the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for 32 years. He was born Joseph Désiré Mobutu in 1930 and served in the colonial army before independence in 1960. As army chief, he pushed the country’s first leaders aside that same year. In 1965 he seized power for good, with steady support from Belgium, France and the United States. For the West, he was a reliable ally against Soviet influence in the heart of Africa.
His family came from the forest country around Gbadolite, near the border with the Central African Republic. In the 1970s it was a village of mud brick houses with roughly 1,500 inhabitants. Then the trucks arrived. Mobutu gave the village paved roads, a hydroelectric plant, a hospital with foreign doctors, a hotel and a cinema. There was even a soft drink bottling plant in the rainforest. As a result, the population eventually grew past 100,000.
Marble, champagne and a runway for the Concorde
About 15 kilometres outside town, on a rise called Kawele, he built a cluster of palaces. Visitors described Carrara marble from Italy, Venetian chandeliers and gilded furniture in the style of Louis XIV. Loudspeakers by the swimming pools reportedly played Gregorian chant. Pastries came from Paris, mussels from Belgium, and pink champagne filled the cellars. Several hundred cooks, drivers and servants kept the estate running, guarded by hundreds of soldiers.
Furthermore, the palace needed a way in. The airport received a runway of about 3,200 metres, long enough for the Concorde. Mobutu chartered the supersonic jet from Air France for trips to New York and Paris. In June 1989, 18 African heads of state flew into Gbadolite. There they watched the Angolan president José Eduardo dos Santos shake hands with the rebel leader Jonas Savimbi. The ceasefire collapsed within weeks. Even so, the summit marked the height of Mobutu’s prestige. Estimates of the building costs range from 100 to 400 million dollars, and the true figure remains unknown.
A rich ruler in a bankrupt country
Meanwhile, Zaire was sliding into ruin. Copper prices fell in 1974, and the debts kept growing. In 1982 a report by the German banker Erwin Blumenthal leaked to the press. He had worked at the central bank on behalf of the International Monetary Fund, and he warned that creditors had no realistic hope of being repaid. The same report put Mobutu’s personal fortune at four to five billion dollars. That was roughly equal to the country’s entire foreign debt.
The consequences reached every household. Copper output fell from 474,000 tonnes in 1986 to 40,000 tonnes in 1995. By 1990, most of the road network could not be used. In Kinshasa, a civil servant’s monthly salary shrank to the value of a single dollar. Hospitals in the capital demanded cash before they treated patients. In contrast, the hospital in Gbadolite had its own foreign doctors.
The last flight from the jungle
When the Cold War ended, Western support faded. Unpaid soldiers looted Kinshasa in 1991 and again in 1993. In late 1996, Laurent Kabila led a rebellion from the east with backing from Rwanda and Uganda. At the time, Mobutu was in Europe for treatment of prostate cancer. The rebels met little resistance as they crossed the country.
On 16 May 1997, Mobutu left Kinshasa and flew north to Gbadolite. The next day, the rebels entered the capital. That evening, Mobutu boarded a cargo plane on his own runway. As it rolled out, members of his presidential guard who were being left behind opened fire on it. The plane escaped to Togo and then to Morocco. Mobutu died in Rabat on 7 September 1997, aged 66. He lies there in a grave without a name.
Within hours of his departure, soldiers and local residents stripped the palace. Chandeliers, air conditioners, stoves and even the pool slides disappeared down the hill. Switzerland later froze about ten million Swiss francs of his assets, a small fraction of the fortune he was believed to hold.
What remains of Gbadolite today
Today, visitors pay a guard a small fee to walk through the ruins. The roof has gone, trees push through the marble, and the blue tiles have been prised from the empty pools. Yet the road into town still holds, and the hydroelectric station still supplies power. Many older residents remember the Mobutu years for jobs, electricity and order. In 2021 the town unveiled a bust of him outside its town hall, the first public monument to him in the country.
That nostalgia comes with a bill. Gbadolite enjoyed services that the rest of Zaire paid for and never received. The runway still lies in the forest, built so a ruler could arrive in style. In the end, it served him best as an exit.
This article draws on the documentary by the YouTube channel Empty Palaces.
Photo: Gbadolite airport, MONUSCO/Abel Kavanagh, CC BY-SA 2.0.
