Mobutu ruled this vast country by personal contact for over 30 years. In each major region of the country he appointed personal representatives who owed their position solely to him. Perhaps only to a lesser extent than our own President Yoweri Museveni, Mobutu deliberately prevented any individual or institution from developing a base beyond his control. Much like many fear will happen with Uganda after Museveni, Mobutu in the end bequeathed his country a total power vacuum. To this day, DR Congo has almost no passable roads.
Communication is by radio, transport by air.
While Mobutu extracted his tithes, there was no formal connection between the centre and the rest of the country. Many functions of the state were taken over by provincial governments and on a social level, the churches. East Kasai, for example, was run by the local bishop and the head of MIBA, the nominally state-owned diamond company. In that sense, the foreign countries in the DRC conflict like Uganda, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Angola, and Namibia, whether they are backing the rebels or Kabila's government, are all swimming against the tide that has been in the country for decades towards dissolution and fragmentation of the DR Congo. They are trying to reconstitute a central authority in a country which is set toward fragmentation and regionalisation.