In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz

by Michela Wrong

  When peace was finally restored a bizarre picture emerged. For years rather than months, the security services discovered, a little old man who made up in charisma for what he lacked in coherence, had been beavering away in the small house in Makala, busily setting up the structures of a state within a state. His plan was to recreate the ancient Kongo nation, that sophisticated kingdom discovered by the Portuguese explorers of the fifteenth century and destroyed by the slave trade and civil strife, with him as its first monarch.

  Bernard Mizele Nsemi’s efforts were already known to the local authorities but had been brushed aside as the ravings of a lunatic. But if the authorities had refused to take him seriously, his followers had not been so dismissive. They numbered in the thousands and came from all ages and social classes. They held ID cards issued in the name of the Kingdom. Fathers signed up their children, uncles their nephews, often, it later emerged, without the knowledge or approval of the individuals concerned. They even paid minimal levels of tax, a gesture of recognition and respect most Congolese citizens had long ago stopped according the state.

  With the Congolese delight in hierarchy and status, the constituent parts of a nation had been identified and the top jobs distributed, from the Royal Prime Minister to the Interior Minister, Central Bank Governor to the Mayor of the port of Matadi. There were even bizarre echoes of Mobutu’s divide-and-rule tactics in the multiplicity of security forces created and army chiefs nominated. In the short time that the royal court had existed, one felt sure that the Head of the mythical Royal Army had already been at loggerheads with the Chief of the Royal Police Force, who no doubt was bickering with the General Army Commander, who felt he couldn’t trust the Royal Police Commander and suspected the Head of the Mixed Kongolese Army of plotting a coup.

  When the military court convened on 9 July 1998 to try the 118 suspects on charges of murder, criminal association and plotting to overthrow an established government, the crowd that gathered to watch proceedings was so large the overwhelmed magistrate at one point thought of holding the session in camera. If idle curiosity played its part, another factor helped explain such keen attendance. Here was a group, the onlookers recognised, which had gone from complaining about the hardship of daily existence and dreaming vaguely of a better life—the bread-and-butter of every Congolese citizen’s existence—to trying to bring about that future with the directest of methods.

  Like David Koresh’s Branch Davidians, they had at some point crossed the line dividing harmless fantasy from violent action. As in Waco, the authorities were about to signal just what they thought of such alternative worlds by crushing them. The government had moved from poo-poohing King Mizele as a comic irrelevance to attributing the entire movement to a European-backed destabilisation attempt, before concluding that this was in fact a home-grown rebellion, similar in nature to their own recent uprising, endowed with dangerous mystical overtones and fully capable of capturing the imagination of at least part of the population.

  The trial, which received saturation coverage in the press, was a major organisational challenge. Mizele and the other suspects either refused or could not afford to defend themselves, so a team of eleven defence lawyers was appointed by the state. When the suspects were assembled in one spot they looked, in their glossy blue shirts—emblazoned with a giant ‘P’ for ‘prisoner’—rather like an oversized football team limbering up for a match. But the crowd did not come to see the nobles of the royal court. They came to size up King Mizele the First, the man responsible for all the trouble.

  He looked mild-mannered enough, a grey-haired old man, everyone’s favourite uncle. But he had the single-mindedness of visionaries and madmen, making up in certainty what he lacked in royal blood. King Mizele did not base his claim on descent from any traditional chief. ‘He told the court he was inspired by God,’ said his attorney. ‘He said he was in touch with our ancestors, including Simon Kimbangu and Joseph Kasavubu, Congo’s first president.’ Challenged by a lawyer to substantiate this claim, the King offered to take him to meet his ancestors. That was when the defence asked for a medical examination to assess whether the King could be held responsible for his actions.

  Mizele was far from being a first-time offender. A similar incident had occurred in 1996, under Mobutu, when employees from the water board went to the Royal Court to chase up some overdue bills. They were beaten and held hostage and in the stand-off that ensued between the court officials and soldiers sent to free the water board workers, one man died. The King was sentenced to fifteen years in prison, but he was out in no time, one of the detainees who scampered from their cells when Makala’s guards abandoned their posts during the rebel takeover of 1997.

  He had returned smoothly to his old activities and claimed to have been in touch repeatedly with Kabila. The former rebel chief, King Mizele’s lieutenants explained, had promised to hand over power six months after toppling Mobutu in exchange for their previous support. The royal court had decided to march on the radio station only when it became clear that Kabila was not planning to honour his commitments. Given Kabila’s readiness to make promises to all and sundry in the run-up to his seizure of power, the audience found this part of the story easy to believe. But the jeers and boos began when the xenophobic nature of King Mizele’s fantasy state emerged. The Kongo Kingdom was to unite King Mizele’s own Bas-Congo province with Kinshasa and the province of Bandundu. Tribes from these three western regions—and in particular, from Bas-Congo—would enjoy special privileges. Those signing up for the Royal Army must come from within the area, said the King, as he did not want ‘mercenaries’ in his forces. ‘Outsiders’ were invited to leave Kinshasa of their own free will.

  In the decades of Mobutu’s rule, the Congolese had seen ethnic cleansing used repeatedly as the Leopard ruthlessly stoked up tribal hatreds for political gain. Scarred by the massacres and expulsions, Kinshasa’s population did not want to pass that way again. For those born outside the favoured three provinces, the Kongo Kingdom only promised a repeat of old nastiness. When the King and his personal secretary were condemned to twenty years in jail, with lesser sentences and fines for other notables, there was a general sense of relief. ‘We tried to argue that because the King was away in Bas-Congo at the time of the shooting, he could not have given his followers any direct orders or be held responsible,’ said one of the unsuccessful defence lawyers. ‘But the authorities decided that having told Kabila to quit power in the first place was responsibility enough.’

  In an attempt to prevent any further resurgence, the authorities have done their best to wipe out all evidence of this national embarrassment. The Royal Court’s activities have been outlawed, the family home King Mizele used as his base seized and converted into a police station. The King’s personal secretary died in prison but Mizele himself, placed in the wing reserved for those convicted of military offences, seems to be thriving. He has put on weight, is said to be cheerful and is given to telling visitors he soon expects to be a free man. It is not clear whether he hopes to be pardoned or is planning to take part in one of the all-too-frequent escapes in which, even the chief warden admits, Makala specialises. Perhaps King Mizele’s cheerfulness is based on the understanding—the same realisation that made both Mobutu and Kabila belatedly sit up and take notice—that there will always be those exasperated enough to listen to a siren voice speaking of mystical vocations, ancient rights and a brave new world.

  King Mizele’s thwarted citizens had looked to the past for relief, weaving their dreams around the folklore of an antique kingdom. A music rehearsal in the heart of Kinshasa revealed how many Zaireans turned their gaze inwards to escape reality, resolutely embracing the trivial in their quest for self-fulfilment.

  It was hard not to wince as a series of electronic whines shrieked from the stage, followed by the monotonous ‘Hallo, hallo, testing, testing, hallo, hallo’. Wenge Musica 4X4, as the pop group called itself, was trying out its system ahead of a concert scheduled a few days hence.
The equipment was rudimentary, the amplification turned too high and the result a fuzzy roar in which voices and instruments all blended into one painful, deafening mess.

  It was a shame, because there are few sounds sweeter to the ear than the music known across Africa by the generic term ‘Lingala’. If Congo has failed in most sectors, music must qualify as its one, most glorious exception. Across the continent and in the Afro-Caribbean nightclubs of Paris, Brussels and London, fans snub home-grown bands to dance to the lilting melodies coming out of Congo’s slums.

  The mystery is how conditions so depressing can give birth to tunes so infectiously light-hearted, so innocent in tone. But somehow they do. As a music expert once wrote, if the critics’ jibe that Congolese guitarists often only play three notes has an element of truth to it, the fact that those three notes have managed to entrance a continent for more than thirty years is something of an achievement. Formulaic though it may be, Lingala is Congo’s greatest export, its commercial success the most reliable escape strategy ever made available to its youth. The goal is to be recognised by a promoter scouring the hundreds of tiny nightclubs in Kinshasa, flown to Paris or Brussels to record a first cassette, break into the international music scene and—following the pattern set by such stars as Papa Wemba, Koffi Olomide, Tabu Ley Rochereau and the late Pepe Kalle—start a new life abroad, only occasionally returning to Kinshasa to perform for grateful fans back home.

  Wenge had been one of the latest groups to go through that routine, fulfilling most of the industry clichés in the process. Mirroring the country’s political parties, Congolese bands have a tendency to fracture within split seconds of forming, as the most talented members vie for the limelight. Each dissident faction, realising the importance of the recognition factor, then claims the original band name. And so the offshoots confusingly proliferate. What had started out as good old Wenge Musica now came in four rival versions: Wenge Musica 4X4—that day’s performers—Wenge Musica Maison Mere, Wenge Musica BCBG, Wenge Musica Kumbela and Wenge Musica Aile Paris. No doubt there would soon be more.

  As dusk fell, and a flock of herons flew over the white-washed compound in neat formation, the band was practising its moves, the desire for clarity constantly losing the battle against the quest for added volume. The cost of the tickets for listening to the stop-start renditions of Wenge’s hits was minimal, but it was still too high for many of the fans milling outside the open-air venue. The balconies of nearby apartments were crammed with people watching for free and despite organisers’ attempts to shoo them away, the phaseurs were out in force on the corrugated roofs of nearby shacks.

  Wenge Musica 4X4 seemed to be following the recent trend of downplaying the role of griot—the angelic voice which traditionally sang the king’s praises—in favour of the fog-horn voiced ‘animateur’, who was once limited to shouting out one-word choruses. At his bidding, the performers were now standing in line, legs bent. A pelvic thrust was passed from one singer to another like a bad case of the flu, until six hips were grinding in unison. Then the group suddenly fragmented, each youth wheeling away in apparent confusion, to reassemble in a different formation.

  While Wenge’s musicians practised, a different kind of choreography was becoming apparent in the young men arriving to help with the rehearsal. Almost willing the crowd to watch them, each crossed the floor alone, sauntering the length of the compound with the diffident self-consciousness of court débutantes, heads high, toes turned outwards, shoulders rolling. There was nothing spontaneous about this gathering. Each wore at least one item of clothing that could qualify as ‘tape-à-l’oeil’—designed to leave its image lingering on the retina—a white shirt whose collar wings fell to nipple-level, a pinstripe jacket with a giant diaper pin in its lapel, a black fishnet T-shirt, a drawstring top with one hood in front and one behind, a top and pair of trousers in ice-lolly colours bright enough to make the teeth ache.

  Pronounced dead by overly-blasé Congolese radio presenters years ago, ‘La Sape’—central Africa’s equivalent of the Mod movement—was clearly alive and well, I noted with approval, albeit surviving in straitened circumstances. Proud of their status as fashion victims, a new generation of ‘sapeurs’ had turned style into a form of near-religion (dubbed ‘kitendi’), complete with its ‘grand priests’—the classiest of dressers—and its ‘deities’—the international designers. The show, evidently, was still going on.

  An abbreviation of Society of Ambiencers and Persons of Elegance, La Sape as a movement was actually born across the river in Congo-Brazzaville in the 1970s. But it was in Zaire that it really made its mark, moving hand-in-hand with the explosion of the Lingala music phenomenon onto the international scene and fuelled by the birth of a monied urban elite who had travelled, shopped abroad, and knew their Yamamoto from their Montana, their unstructured jacket from their deconstructed suit.

  As bands signed recording contracts in France and Belgium, their members hit the designer shops of Place Vendôme and Place Stephanie, returning to Kinshasa with suitcases full of ‘griffes’ (designer labels) to show off. Fans of rival bands would compete to see who could look cooler, perfecting dance techniques that allowed them to show off their socks on the disco floor, or display the crucial silk labels on the insides of their jackets. The biggest star of all, Papa Wemba—who enjoyed the jaunty title of ‘Le Pape de la Sape’—spearheaded one craze after another with his on-stage appearances. There was the time of the three-quarter length trousers, the time for braces, the time when Jean-Paul Gaultier was all the rage.

  The movement, I knew, had gone into something of a decline with the general drying up of disposable incomes. The death of Niarkos, a famous Kinshasa mobster who rivalled Papa Wemba for narcissism, had dealt it another blow. Yet here they were: the shirts looked a little grey, the jackets far from new and the battered shoes were the biggest give-away, but this flock of down-at-heel young peacocks were keeping up appearances nonetheless.

  ‘Of course it’s still alive,’ snorted the man known as ‘Colonel Jagger’. ‘If anything, La Sape has just become part of the mainstream, it’s been vulgarised. Government ministers wear couture and have sapeur hairstyles. Just look at the young church pastors—even they now assert themselves.’

  Asserting oneself (‘affirmer’) is one of the key concepts in La Sape’s vocabulary, ranking in importance alongside understanding how to ‘débarquer’—make an entrance (never, but never, to go unnoticed)—and knowing how to walk. A sapeur’s walk is an art form in itself, a mixture of swagger and stroll as individualistic as a graffiti artist’s tag. ‘Do you remember John Travolta’s way of walking in Saturday Night Fever? Well, we were doing that long before he did,’ said Colonel Jagger. ‘You lollop, you almost dance. It’s each man’s way of standing out from the crowd.’

  Recognised as a key proponent of La Sape, Colonel Jagger, manager of the rival band Viva La Musica, nevertheless proved a slight disappointment on first encounter. Dressed in a simple black T-shirt and jeans, this quietly spoken and rather sombre individual had none of the flamboyance I had come to expect. Ah, but that was where I was mistaken, said Colonel Jagger, when I confessed my surprise. ‘This may be understated, but it’s still La Sape. These are Weston shoes, Ferré jeans and the T-shirt is by Gaultier. All in all, this outfit probably cost over £1,200.’

  We were in the heart of noisy, smelly Matonge—‘my Matonge’ as Colonel Jagger referred to it. But the pink-walled house was situated in an unexpected enclave of peace, hidden down an acacia-lined avenue. In the street, urchins were playing football and neighbours were sitting chatting quietly in the trees’ shade. They watched us with interest, but were careful to keep a respectful distance from the Colonel, one of Kinshasa’s acknowledged VIPs. And keeping your distance, establishing some personal space, as it turned out, was a principle that went to the very heart of La Sape, along with bitter contempt for slavish imitators (‘suivistes’) and those with money but no sense of style (‘taureaux’). ‘Our slogan is
“No indiscriminate contact” (Pas de contact avec n’importe qui),’ said Colonel Jagger. ‘It means we keep our distance from the police, the authorities and we don’t get mixed up in politics. We keep away from those people because they don’t understand us. They go crazy when they realise that someone with empty pockets is going around in an outfit costing 12,000 French francs (£1,200).’ Those whose aspirations had been stifled all their lives had pushed sartorial elegance to a point where it became far more than self-indulgence. It became a mission.

  Much of the movement’s original inspiration came from the first films shown in Kinshasa. During colonial times, the Belgians would send lorries into what were then the ‘indigenous quarters’, set up their projectors in the open air and screen movies for the entire neighbourhood. The adventures of the Three Musketeers, with their swash-buckling costumes, and the black-and-white thrillers of the 1940s and 1950s, with their sharp mobster outfits, seemed the epitome of Western cool. Later on came borrowings from the British pop scene. The colonel took on the name of his favourite rock star, Mick Jagger, and acknowledged his admiration for Bryan Ferry, ‘my favourite Englishman’.

  There were more recent signs that La Sape was being infected by the ‘slob’ look embraced by America’s blacks, all outsized jeans, baggy dungarees and shorts that drop to calf level. But Colonel Jagger, who dismissed the style as ‘the white man’s look’, remained a conservative, with a philosophy bordering on the austere. He stressed the importance of cleanliness, preached against violence, abhorred hard drugs (‘if you use hard drugs, you get dirty, so you can’t be a sapeur’) and shaved his head once a week to avoid a messy hairstyle.