Piles of diamonds, porn and caviar – Inside crumbling palaces of Africa’s dictators where tyrants lived like emperors
PALACES once ruled by feared African dictators have been left crumbling for decades after the tyrants were brutally overthrown.
Piled high with flashy diamonds, littered with porn and stacked with pricey caviar, the rotting palaces are certainly no longer fit for an emperor.
Coughed up bones from pet crocodiles and chests full of diamonds were found after the leaders lost power and were sent packing from the places they had built from the ground up.
Today, the palaces serve as a constant reminder of the greed, corruption and brutality of Africa during the mid to late twentieth century and the money wasted across various leadership reigns.
In the deepest depths of northern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) sits a tiny inhabited village of Kawele slowly falling apart.
Once a bustling place where rulers ruled and servants served, Kawele has become a derelict area of muddied buildings and a sad former memory of how the village was formed.
Notorious dictator Mobutu Sese Seko ruled over the DRC, then known as Zaire, for 32 years up until the late 90’s and made Kawele his kingdom.
Mobutu’s palace has now lost its roof leaving only a flimsy, unusable structure.
The swimming pool is empty, covered in filth with cracks all along its sides as overgrown weeds and smashed up pottery and glassware sit scattered around the grounds.
Mobutu had his servants create two lavish palaces for him – one for hosting guests and friends and a private house in Kawele.
These infamous buildings were built from the finest Italian marble with antique French furniture, Venetian chandeliers and expensive artwork.
A booming Europe was transferred over to the dark depths of the African jungle as international chefs, Parisian pastries, and Belgian mussels were all flown in from the grandest spots available.
A runway was big enough to house Mobutu’s private plane – a Concorde – which the leader would take to and from France.
Back in the day, unhappy servants carried buckets filled with champagne and luxurious platters of salmon to their rulers.
The cellars were constantly bursting with the pretty pink champagne and elite vintage wines as 1,000 uniformed staff kept the palaces in perfect conditions.
French presidents, controversial figures, businessmen and even Pope John Paul II came to live the life of a king in the village.
One Congolese politician estimated that Mobutu spent up to £250m on the pair of palaces.
On top of the palaces, Mobutu built a luxury hotel to keep his fellow rich and wealthy friends happy, multiple flashy shops and business’ and even a Coca Cola factory.
These shops were set up as the town began to become a thriving social hub as the Zairean economy, outside of the village, began to tumble down.
As Mobutu was dying of cancer the town’s health dropped just as devastatingly.
The former tyrant leader was driven out of Zaire in 1997 and into Morocco by ruler of the rebellion Laurent Désiré Kabila as the DRC was formed.
Mobutu leaving also meant the money in the villages dried up and the businesses started to make their way out – leaving the place a ghost town.
Endless looting caused the village to look like a warzone and a plethora of half-finished projects left machinery and buildings rotting as it created an eyesore over a once beautiful town.
Broken down cars sit covered in rust with popped tires and smashed windows as the destroyed roads are littered in potholes.
The hotel – Motel Nzekele – still sits tall over the village but in a depressing state near unfixable.
The cinema sits broken and battered from the projector to the seats and the hotels once luxury pool has lost its water and is now just a murky green pit.
A hydroelectric plant to supply constant electricity to the villages is now derelict and pointless and the Coca Cola factory built up alongside banks and other vital businesses are now empty shells of places.
One slight shining light is two unfinished building blocks have been turned into classrooms for young children.
Wooden desks and old-fashioned chalkboards sit on the bottom floor of two giant stone buildings that were built as the headquarters for the town’s water ministry.
A second blood-thirsty tyrant was Emperor Jean-Bedel Bokassa who took over Central African Republic across the border at the same time as Mobutu.
The leader stole power by killing and scaring people into submission so he got what he wanted.
In 1977, he caused what many view as Africa’s most megalomaniacal post-colonial event as he ascended to a fully golden eagle throne donning a gold starry outfit with a golden crown bedazzled in diamonds.
His coronation cost a whopping £14million as the new leader made sure his grand event had more than 25,000 bottles of champagne.
Two years after, Bokassa was reportedly the main man behind the torturing and killing or school kids who were protesting over his reign and this led to his capture being imminent.
Bokassa built up his own town in a place called Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic.
Bokassa owned two palaces within his huge collection of properties that had shocking finds inside them after French Police searched his properties after he became the main target of international police.
After voluntarily handing himself in for his heinous crimes cops found a range of horror finds.
Villa Kolongo and Villa Berengo were eerily found with mutilated corpses in freezers, bones of dead victims that had been spat out by his pet crocodiles and mountains of horror pornography.
All that sat alongside chests, brimming with diamonds and lost treasure.
Bangui was built up by Bokassa as he set about making factories housing cocoa and coffee, a private airport, apartments for his advisers and housing for his 1,000 men guarding the place.
Today, unarmed guards stand nonchalantly at the village gates and around the giant statue of the town’s founder Bokassa as the buildings they protect sit overgrown with greenery and laced with graffiti.
In both towns once ruled by conman Mobutu and killer tyrant Bokassa, photos are scarce and uncommon as the guards try to keep the towns under wraps.
The military check cameras when you leave and one of the palaces – used by Mobutu for his own pleasure – hasn’t been seen for almost two decades.
A whopping 52-room castle with a giant swimming pool and a ballroom was also left abandoned for decades after its owner went rogue.
The 20th-century castle, located in the Polish village of Lapalice, near Gdansk was left to crumble before it was even completed.
A sad palace on the Italian coastline was also left to rot and crumble away a century after it was built.
Once bustling with the world’s elites dancing in its dazzling ballroom, surrounded by luxury chandeliers and pricey marble statues the building spiralled into insignificance shortly after it opened up.