In the July edition of New English Review, Theodore Dalrymple reminisces about his journey through the Congo back in the 1980s after reading a book about a similar trek by a French journalist, who had covered the Rwandan genocide.

It was hardly surprising, then, that Mobutu’s regime collapsed like a house of cards, without a fight. In the kingdom of those without ammunition, the man with one bullet is king. But what followed Mobutu was probably even worse. Not that that is a defence of the ever-victorious Marshal, any more than a second genocide, had it happened (it didn’t), would have been a justification of French policy.