As it continues to take territory, the Congolese rebel group M23 wants to show it is more than just an army, and that it can also govern.

The African nation of Zaire was elated. Its president, Mobutu Sese Seko, had struck a deal in 1974 for the country to host potentially the biggest boxing contest in history: Muhammad Ali, a legend ...

I'm Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat. I study authoritarianism. Let's answer some questions from the internet. This is Tech Support: Dictators. [upbeat music] ...

The cast of characters became famous: Patrice-Emery Lumumba, the first prime minister, unable to cope with an army mutiny and the Katangese secession, and eventually assassinated in 1961; Moise ...

Mobutu ran the country into the ground. His successor, Laurent Kabila, was also installed by foreign powers. He ruled through the first and second Congo Wars until he was assassinated in 2001.

However, like the powerful Roman and British empires before, Mobutu's reign eventually came to a crashing end the way it rose and stayed afloat – militarily. Today the DRC is far from stable.

Trump's picks of Lara Trump, Charles Kushner and Massad Boulous to his administration and party are reminiscent of authoritarian leaders' choices for their regimes.

Of the "Big Men" who ruled Africa after independence, few were as notorious as Mobutu Sese Seko. During his 32 years in power, Mobutu renamed Congo as Zaire and stole many millions of dollars.

But there was another narrative, which had also begun a decade before, which also helps to define how we remember Ali-Foreman. Having seized power in a coup of 1965, President Mobutu, along with ...