The rooster that watches over all the hens.
Not the most accurate translation (if you were uncle Mo), but indeed the most applicable and most popular
I don’t think it’s that easy to delineate who won, lost and why. Mobutu often responded to even minor problems with reorganizing the Ministries and military. A delusion of progress for the West and a terminal state of confusion for the Zairois.
I’m sure you are well aware of the fact that the FAZ back then was little more than a bunch of sergeants and troops. There were maybe a dozen Belgian-trained cadet officers, but little more than foreign advisers in country following independence. Typical even today, the troops are kept as far from the city and the president as possible and were kept in check by controlling their payroll (or lack thereof). Dispersing his rivals and literally exiling unruly units into the jungle kept uncle Mo from worrying and kept political and ethnic leaders from accessing the military. The 31st Para would later learn how to cope with that mentality by hijacking the very aircraft that would (should have) send them into permanent asylum.
As for Kamanyola - In 85 one old DSP officer told me that Mobutu created the numerical military units to do away with former colonial jargon and to further his drive for authenticity (Congo to Zaire and all European place names replaced with African names). He would later name his yacht Kamanyola.
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