Family
Mobutu was married twice. His first wife, Marie-Antoinette Mobutu, died of heart failure on October 22, 1977 in Genolier, Switzerland at age 36. On May 1, 1980, he married his mistress, Bobi Ladawa, on the eve of a visit by Pope John Paul II, thus legitimizing his relationship in the eyes of the Church. Four of his sons from his first marriage died: Nyiwa (d. September 16, 1994), Konga (died 1995), Kongulu (d. September 24, 1998), and Manda (died November 27, 2004). A son from his second marriage, François Joseph Nzanga Mobutu Ngbangawe, was a candidate in the 2006 presidential elections and later served in the government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo as Minister of State for Agriculture. A daughter, Yakpwa (nicknamed Yaki), was briefly married to a Belgian man named Pierre Janssen, who later wrote a book which described Mobutu's lifestyle in vivid detail.
Altogether, Mobutu had at least fourteen children.
Read more about this topic: Mobutu Sese Seko
Famous quotes containing the word family:
“The East is the hearthside of America. Like any home, therefore, it has the defects of its virtues. Because it is a long-lived-in house, it bursts its seams, is inconvenient, needs constant refurbishing. And some of the family resources have been spent. To attain the privacy that grown-up people find so desirable, Easterners live a harder life than people elsewhere. Today it is we and not the frontiersman who must be rugged to survive.”
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“With a new familiarity and a flesh-creeping “homeliness” entirely of this unreal, materialistic world, where all “sentiment” is coarsely manufactured and advertised in colossal sickly captions, disguised for the sweet tooth of a monstrous baby called “the Public,” the family as it is, broken up on all hands by the agency of feminist and economic propaganda, reconstitutes itself in the image of the state.”
—Percy Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)
“Family living can go on existing. Very many are
remembering this thing are remembering that family
living living can go on existing. Very many are quite
certain that family living can go on existing. Very
many are remembering that they are quite certain that
family living can go on existing.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)