Uganda, March 1 -- In her book, "In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz" Michela Wrong takes readers into a full-on immersion of Mobutu Sese Seko's Zaire. One of the key things she shares is the conundrum that those who sought to oust the thieving dictator faced. He had stayed around so long and compromised everyone so deeply that you couldn't find anyone that wasn't in his pocket.

Yet to reform Zaire required that you deal with Mobutuism. How, when every potential replacement in the army, civil service, politics and civil society was engaged in the grand theft that was characteristic of the willy Leopard's government? The DRC has not recovered even after he was unceremoniously thrown out, and the signs still don't look too good more than 20 year...