Along the wide palm tree-lined alleys – which are usually filled with the cars of ministers, generals and other senior government officials – time seems to have stopped. The silence is occasionally interrupted by a whistling garden hose or a rustling door at one of the booths for the guards who ensure the safety of the wealthy villas’ inhabitants.
One of the villas, which was built in the same neo-Moorish style as the others, has been the home of Bobi Ladawa, widow of the late Zairean leader Marshal Mobutu Sese Seko, and some of the former Zairean president’s descendants for a quarter of a century. Her twin sister Kosia also lives in Rabat, but was in Europe at the time of our visit.
Ever since her hasty departure from Kinshasa on 16 May 1997, after her husband was overthrown by Laurent Désiré Kabila, Ladawa has been very discreet. This is the first time that she has agreed to talk to a
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