Mobutu's return to Kinshasa in December 1996 from cancer surgery in Europe was stage-managed to reassure the public that the Big Man was back. And he was prepared to fight the rebels who were mounting an increasingly serious challenge in Zaire's east. Frail  and weak from prostate surgery, Mobutu made few other public appearances after this event as his conditioned weakened and the rebels strengthened. Six months after these photos were taken, Mobutu was forced  to flee Zaire. He died a few months later in Morocco.

©Andrew Maykuth / The Philadelphia Inquirer
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The Council of Traditional Leaders waits to give Marshal Mobutu the red-carpet treatment at Kinshasa Airport.

The Coca-Cola dancing girls prepare to greet the president. So many supporters were positioned on the tarmac that the blast from Mobutu's DC-8 blew over scores of them.

He Who Is Above All Others.

The gaunt president was surrounded by quite a few serious  guards.

Though he was sick, Mobutu lost little of the regal air that helped keep him in power for more than three decades.

Mobutu moves unfazed through the media horde awaiting his arrival at Kinshasa Airport