Congo: Nzanga Mobutu stared out over the chocolate-brown sweep of the Congo river and remembered his father. Mobutu Sese Seko was once one of Africa's most reviled dictators. For 32 years he ruled Congo, then called Zaire, with an iron rod and stolen wealth. Then rebels toppled him, sending him to exile and death, writes Declan Walsh
Six years later, the "Leopard" is back. Standing outside the family's recently reclaimed villa in Kinshasa, Nzanga (33) wore a green shirt with his father's beaming portrait. The legend read: "We will never forget you".
Mobutu's family and friends are returning home as Congo's war - among Africa's most terrible conflicts - grinds to a halt.
The Mobutists are not fondly remembered. Their leader bankrupted the country, using its legendary wealth to buy political loyalties and build palaces where pink champagne flowed like water. Enemies were ruthlessly suppressed, often with the connivance of Western Cold War sponsors.
When rebels toppled Mobutu in 1997, the ailing autocrat fled to Morocco, where he died of cancer four months later. His cronies followed, clutching suitcases of designer clothes and offshore bank details. Many relieved Congolese thought them gone for good.
But as five years of war - an orgy of rape, murder and plunder which left over three million dead - draws to an end, the Mobutists are coming home. A transitional regime uniting rebels and government has been cobbled together in Kinshasa. Since the door of national reconciliation wedged open, the monied exiles came flooding in.
"It is good to be home," says Nzanga Mobutu at the riverside villa returned to his family this week. The urbane son, who until recently ran a media company in Morocco, apologised for the lack of furniture. The previous tenant - an army general - left reluctantly, he explained, taking everything with him. All that remained were the echoing marble floors.
In the past two weeks, Nzenga was joined by his older brother Manda, who flew in from Paris, and Kenga wa Dondo, a former prime minister. Lesser Mobutists, some of whom fought in the rebellion, have also returned, some with ministerial positions.
The mood of change has filtered down to the tattered streets of Kinshasa. Mobutu shirts and leopard-print hats are worn openly - a practically treasonable offence only six months ago.
But the return of the Mobutists has also sparked recriminations. Angry residents rained stones on Mr wa Dondo's motorcade as it entered the city two weeks ago.
"They represent bitter memories - dictatorship, corruption, human rights violations. Their return does not bode well for the future," says Dr Mwembe Kabamba, a surgeon at the dilapidated general hospital and leading opposition figure.
Ostensibly, the Mobutu brothers have returned to arrange for their father to be buried at his spiritual home. They came also to recover their properties - houses scattered across Kinshasa, coffee farms and cocoa plantations up country. "As far as we know, all were looted," says Nzanga.
Even the vast jungle palace in Gbadolite, with its Chinese gardens, private zoo and an airstrip where Concorde once landed? "Ouf," he says in lightly accented English. "Don't even mention it."
The Mobutus also have political ambitions. Manda already has his own political party. Nzanga says he might run for parliament in elections due in two years. "I belong to a generation that needs new leaders, other personalities," he says. "It can't be a one-man system any more. I'm thinking of team work."
Uniquely, the sons of Congo's three post-independence dynasties now live in Kinshasa. The confluence is loaded with blood-soaked ironies. The Mobutus returned only thanks to the blessing of President Joseph Kabila, whose father Laurent drove them from Kinshasa six years ago.
Also present is François Lumumba, son of murdered independence hero Patrice Lumumba. Many Congolese believe Mobutu had a hand in Lumumba's 1961 assassination, along with Belgian and US spies.
"Nobody will allow the Congo to take a step back in time, but if they come with a spirit of rebuilding the country, we will hold out our hands to them," Mr Lumumba says, his beard and untucked shirt a contrast with the starched collars and gold cufflinks of the Mobutists.
Nzanga Mobutu, who had been his father's spokesman in the final months, is aboard. "I'm not saying it was the best of regimes," he says, "but to say my father was the worst dictator is just wrong. At least then there was peace and people could eat. Those are the facts."
The Mobutu flame quietly burned on during the Kabila years under Catherine Nzuzi wa Mbombo, one of the few who refused to run. "Why should I have left? I stole nothing. Everything you see here comes from the sweat of my brow."
Draped in gold jewellery and sporting thick-framed Christian Dior glasses, Mrs Nzuzi is, in appearance at least, the heir of Mobutuism. Like the leopard, she walks with a cane, but hers came from injuries sustained during the 20 months she spent in prison during the Kabila years.
Now she has been appointed Minister for Solidarity and Humanitarian Affairs and Congo's poor are her charges. There are no offices yet, so Mrs Nzuzi works from home - the opulent penthouse of a four-storey apartment building she had built in the 1970s at the height of Mobutu's powers.
"I will be responsible for refugees, demobilised child soldiers, widows, orphans and war wounded," she says, leaning into a wicker chair under a portrait of herself.
The return sparked divided opinions at the "pavement parliament", an informal meeting of politics junkies at a newspaper stand in the rundown Matonge neighbourhood.
The Mobutu brothers coming back was "not a big problem", says Andre Pembe. "They are sons of this country. That is it." However, human rights activist Jacques Benameyi disagrees.
"When the children of the leopard appears before those who have been devoured, we look on them with suspicion," he says.
Fears that the Mobutists could galvanise into a fresh political force appear premature. The MPR has split into two factions, one of which is lead by Mrs Nzuzi. "For now the Mobutists are a diffuse lot," says one western diplomat. "If anything, their return shows the astonishing capacity for reconciliation in Congo."
Picking the morsels from the leopard's teeth is Mobutu's last mystery. Estimates of the wealth he frittered away - spent on champagne, Concordes or cronies - vary wildly, between $4 billion and $14 billion. Switzerland impounded $4 million and a lakeside villa, but the location of the rest - some doubt it still exists - remains a puzzle. Are Nzenga and his family sitting on the missing billions? He shrugs impatiently.
"I've been asked the same thing for years. Wherever you go, in Europe or the US, families of heads of states have the means to live," he says. "As far as I'm concerned it's pure nonsense."