As part of his authenticité program to strip away colonial-era names and symbols, President Mobutu Sese Seko officially changed the country's name from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the Republic of Zaire. The name, derived from a Portuguese corruption of a Kikongo word for the Congo River, was meant to evoke African authenticity, even as Mobutu's kleptocratic and increasingly brutal rule drove the country toward economic ruin.
Mobutu had seized power in a 1965 coup and, by the early 1970s, was consolidating a personality cult built around rejecting the vestiges of Belgian colonialism. Citizens were ordered to drop Christian names for African ones, Mobutu himself trading 'Joseph-Désiré' for the title 'Mobutu Sese Seko Nkuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga,' loosely translated as 'the all-powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, goes from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake.'
The renaming of the country followed the same logic. 'Zaire' derived, ironically, from a Portuguese mishearing of the Kikongo phrase 'nzadi o nzere,' meaning 'river that swallows all rivers,' making the supposedly authentic African name itself a colonial-era linguistic artifact.
Mobutu's authenticité campaign coincided with the nationalization of foreign-owned businesses and a personal fortune he siphoned from state coffers, reportedly totaling billions of dollars stashed in Swiss bank accounts while ordinary Zairians endured crumbling infrastructure and hyperinflation. The country reverted to the name Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1997 after Mobutu's overthrow, but the episode remains a case study in how nationalist symbolism can mask, rather than remedy, authoritarian plunder.