Laurent-Désiré Kabila

... or PTAs.

[laughs] Yeah, and presidents.

You know, fac- fac- factor in the fact that it's El Salvador, too [laughs] when you-

All right.

I don't know.

[laughs]

Have there been more or fewer US presidents than British monarchs since 1776?

More.

And so he rose as far as one could under the repressive colonial system, and became a quasi proto-political actor.

He made a name for himself by writing in a weekly chronicle, becoming leader of as many civic groups as he could.

In 1955, he even managed to speak privately to Belgium's new monarch, King Baudouin.

The sky was the limit.

For him to make a real difference, he needed a position of power.

In October 1958, around 20 men gathered to set up a reformist political group, later named the Congolese National Movement, or the MNC.

Patrice Lumumba emerged from that meeting as its leader.

Now, he had the juice to work towards a democratic future for his country.

At the instigation of Rwandan President Paul Kagame, a multinational alliance known as the Alliance of Democratic Forces, or AFDL, a coalition of four Congolese revolutionary groups working in tandem with Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Zambia, Eritrea, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, and later Angola, was formed to depose him.

The man selected to replace Mobutu and who would lead the column of rebels to Kinshasa was Laurent-Désiré Kabila, a former Congolese guerrilla commander who had for the past decade, in an obscure corner of eastern Zaire, made a living as an ivory and diamond trader.

The plan was set in motion on the 6th of October 1996, when the RPA crossed over into Congo to destroy the Hutu strongholds in lockstep with the AFDL.

Within a month and a half, the Hutu extremists and FAZ had been driven from the camp towns of Kivu, opening the way for the AFDL to make their way across the country to Kinshasa.

But while he's away, Rwanda and Uganda put together a Congolese rebel army and give it a leader.

His name is Laurent-Désiré Kabila.

He's fifty-seven.

He was one of Lumumba's people back in nineteen sixty and he has spent thirty years in the bush in the east, mostly being written off.