When We Were Kings
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:28:02
'where you could imprison as many
as a couple of thousand people.

:28:07
'Before the fight came, the criminal
rate in Zaire began to go up.'

:28:11
A few white foreigners
had been killed, driving their cars.

:28:16
And Mobutu decided that this would be
a disaster in terms of publicity,

:28:21
so on a given day he had a thousand
of the leading criminals in Kinshasa

:28:28
rounded up and put in this stadium,
down in the detention pens.

:28:34
'And then the legend has it, and I
suspect the legend may even be true,

:28:38
'that he had 100
taken at random and killed them.

:28:42
'And the reason was
a particularly simple one

:28:44
'from Mobutu's point of view.'
:28:46
Career criminals have connections who
protect them when they're in trouble,

:28:51
and by making this kill
of 100 out of 1,000 arbitrarily,

:28:54
Mobutu was saying "Your connections
are worth nothing. I am Jehovah.

:28:59
'"I will blast you out of existence
if you fool around with me."'

:29:10
'He made his point, Kinshasa was
one of the safest cities in Africa,

:29:15
'in all the world, while the foreign
press was there for the fight.'

:29:20
(Slow blues)
:29:32
'To me, the drum was the communicator
since the beginning of time,

:29:36
'I'm sure it was
the first message ever sent.

:29:39
'The beat today
and the beats centuries ago

:29:43
'are the only thing
that's kept us together.'

:29:50
We had this thing, when we hurt,
we sung for trial and tribulation,

:29:55
and for relief, we sung songs to God
:29:58
and this music that you hear today
is the same songs


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