A: Zaire lies on the geographical coordinates of 20° 0' 0" S, 30° 0' 0" E.

Latitude and Longitude of Zaire in other units:

More detail about Zaire

The Democratic Republic of the Congo Was Once Zaire

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a large central African country that was not always referred to by this name. It was actually known as Zaire for a good period of time. This was when Joseph Mobutu was in charge of the country.

The land, which was originally known as the Republic of the Congo, was noted for being very unstable. Mobutu took control of the land in 1965 as a result of a successful coup where the government was suddenly overthrown with Mobutu's control. Mobutu took on a full dictator role in the country.

He also renamed the land Zaire. This comes from a term that means "a river which swallows rivers." He even forced different areas to take on African names instead of the French and Belgian sounding names. Mobutu even legally changed his name to Mobutu Sese Seko.

Mobutu ran the country with full control. This included his full control over who was going to be in the legislative branch and who would be in his cabinet. Public elections had been held but they were mostly rigged to where he would be the winner in a landslide for much of the time. There were also some cases where he used violence against his people as a means of encouraging them to support his policies and ideas.

However, the rule that Mobutu had was stopped after more than thirty years. Fighting in the nearby country of Rwanda moved into Zaire. A number of military forces began to rebel against Mobutu after he decided to use more force against his people as a means of controlling the fighting. A number of other countries began to join in against Mobutu in order to clear him out. He then left the country in 1997 and died a few months later.