Laurent Desire Kabila, the president of the Democratic Republic of Congo who was killed by his bodyguard yesterday, was a man who renounced his Marxist beliefs to realise a dream he had harboured for 30 years.
In overthrowing the hated Zairean dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, in 1997, Kabila was briefly hailed as one of a new breed of African leader.
But the euphoria quickly turned sour when it emerged that his grip on the renamed Democratic Republic of Congo was to be every bit as firm as Mobuto's on Zaire.
Within a year, the all-too-familiar charges of bad government, nepotism and corruption were being levelled against him as fighting erupted throughout the country.
Kabila suspended political parties for a two-year "transition" period and banned public demonstrations.
He attributed virtually all powers, executive, legislative and military, to himself pending the adoption of a new constitution, while promising elections by April 1999 but these never materialised.
Born in Kalemie, on Lake Tanganyika, Kabila drew his inspiration from Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of independent Congo who was assassinated in 1961.
In 1964, aged 23, Kabila took part in a failed Marxist-inspired rebellion, the Stanleyville uprising and fled into the hills when Mobuto's forces crushed it.
Kabila formed the People's Revolutionary Party, encapsulating his own Marxist views and Pan-African vision, while on the shores of Lake Tanganyika.
His guerrilla movement briefly gained the support Che Guevara, but Guevara left in disillusion a few months later, dismissing Kabila as a mere "tourist".
Kabila always denied that he profited from trading in gold and diamonds between eastern Zaire and Burundi.
Kabila refused to give in to demands for elections, insisting that as long as rebels from the Rally for Congolese Democracy continued fighting government forces, foreign troops would remain in the country.
A peace deal in July 1999, brokered by Kabila's allies in Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia and backed by the rebels supporters in Rwanda and Uganda brought no sign of an end to the uprisings.
A summit in Kinshasa in October 2000 met with no greater success, with Kabila's regime denounced by hitherto neutral countries.