Joost Vandensande, editor-in-chief at production house Panenka, talks to Business Doc Europe about his company’s new 4-part doc series, to be pitched during the upcoming Flemish showcase, about the former Congolese dictator who, even now, very much divides opinion. “He is still a very, very delicate subject. It’s like opening a Pandora’s Box,” Vandensande tells BDE.
He was a brutal dictator who had thousands killed and yet there is a certain nostalgia for Joseph Désiré Mobutu (1930-1997), the strongman in charge of Congo for more than three decades. He may have been a tyrant who looted the country but he was also a symbol of African pride. He was the one who lured legendary boxers Muhammad Ali and George Foreman to Zaire for their famous “rumble in the jungle” in 1974, a moment when the eyes of the entire world seemed to be turned on Zaire (as the Democratic Republic of the Congo was then known).
Now, Mobutu is subject of a four-part docuseries presented as one of the project pitches at RE>CONNEXT 2021. The series is being made by Belgian outfit, Panenka, under editor-in-chief, Joost Vandensande.
“He [Mobutu] was a man who seduced you with his charm but, at the same moment, he gave you fear,” Vandensande says of his subject.
Vandensande has a family connection with Mobutu. His father Joseph Vandensande worked as a TV executive in Zaire in the 1970s and 1980s. Joseph met Mobutu who joked about their sharing the same Christian name. In person, the dictator was friendly and courteous.
Mobutu is “a bit forgotten” today, according to Vandensande. Historians have paid more attention to his former friend and colleague, Patrice Lumumba, against whom Mobutu organised a murderous coup. In the years since he died in exile in Morocco in 1997, the world’s press seems to have forgotten about Mobutu’s various close relationships with western leaders.
“He [Mobutu] is still a very, very delicate subject. It’s like opening a Pandora’s Box,” says Vandensande of the mixed reaction the dictator still provokes. He was a small-time soldier in the 1950s who eventually became a journalist (“quite a good one” according to Vandensande) and then the absolute ruler of his homeland. In no time at all, he went from “zero to hero.” His ascent was helped by his western allies.
Depending on who was speaking to him, Mobutu could be very charming. At the same time, he was “a puppet on a string” of the Americans, the Belgians and the British who had a vested interest in keeping him in power. When Bill Clinton came to power and the Berlin Wall fell, his reign quickly came to an end.
“He was a very complex personality. On the one hand, he was very timid, very shy, but on the other he was a man who could speak, such a good debater,” Vandensande reflects on the endlessly paradoxical Mobutu.
The docuseries, which is directed by Guillaume Graux, is looking at the events of Mobutu’s era “through the prism of Black Lives Matter.” The dictator was a fierce critic of white minority governments in Africa. In a famous speech at the UN in 1973, he attacked colonisation, racial segregation and apartheid. His words have a strong contemporary resonance. However, he was also corrupt, cruel and guilty of enormous human rights abuses.
“Our ambition is really to make an international series,” Vandensande says. “It is not only from a Belgian point of view.” He points out that Americans, Australians, Chinese and British all still flock to Congo, which is a failed state, to plunder its immense natural wealth. “It [the series] is also about neo-colonialism and how colonialism never stops…that is also a layer of our series.”
Mobutu had over 20 children. He married several times, including to identical twin sisters. Many of his family members are collaborating with the documentary makers, something they’ve never done before. The series will also feature rare archive material. This is an expensive project on a very big scale for which Panenka is looking for co-producers.
Vandensande is approaching some very prominent figures who knew Mobutu well, among them American politician Henry Kissinger, who is now well into his 90s, and members of the Bush family, who were very close to Mobutu. They already have an agreement with former heavyweight champ George Foreman for him to share his memories of his bout with Ali in Zaire.
“Our ambitions are very, very high,” Vandensande declares. “We are now in touch with the entourage of George Bush Junior. Bill Clinton, we will see about that.’
The series will be shot in French and English and is expected to be ready for 2023.
