Making himself a cult, the dictator, among other things, established the Mobutu Good Will Fund as a fundraising effort to end poverty in the country.
While Zairiens (Mobuto had renamed his country Zaire) were living in poverty, he began the shameful practice of using taxpayers’ money to live in luxury, and in transforming his rural village, Gbadolite, into a city.
By the time he was deposed in 1997, Gbadolite did not only have an airport with a runway long enough to handle supersonic Concordes, but also a nuclear bomb-proof bunker that could house more than 500 people and was believed to be the largest in Africa.
Four or five times a year, Mobuto, who did not joke with bottles of his favorite Taittinger champagne, traveled to Gbadolite to enjoy these niceties without extending them to the rest of the people in the vast central African country.
The structures of the palaces, however, remain alone in the middle of the jungle in DR Congo, including the bunker and other buildings.
