This piece troubleshoots an array of epistemological, political, and practical difficulties involved in public studies of colonial atrocities. It explores the deficiencies of the Commission on Colonialism backed by the Belgian parliament between 2020–22, and suggests pathways for facilitating a fuller accounting of colonial wrongs. The argument leverages the author’s experiences in investigating and publicizing the colonial massacre of Mozambican civilians in Wiriyamu in 1972, which culminated in a public apology from Portugal’s prime minister in 2022.

I argue that navigating Lingala represented a central part of many Zairians’ experiences of Mobutu’s regime (1965–97), causing linguistic change, shaping their relationships to state power, and influencing their experiences of the regime’s everyday authoritarianism. Mobutu’s regime imposed Lingala through informal language practices including political rallies, songs, and slogans, interactions with state agents, and Mobutu’s own practice of addressing audiences nation-wide in Lingala. Zairians navigated the regime’s imposition of Lingala in different, and often divergent ways along a spectrum from rejection and opposition to acquisition and embrace. Where some Zairians, especially Kiswahili speakers in the East, rejected Lingala and criticized the language — critiquing Mobutu’s authoritarian rule in the process — other Zairians, particularly people in the Kikongo and Ciluba national language zones adapted to Mobutu’s new linguistic dispensation by learning to speak and understand Lingala, improving their relationship with the state and facilitating life under Mobutu’s rule.

Although the Lower Kasai was identified by Jan Vansina as a likely center for highly complex societies, he failed to recognize that sixteenth-century sources had mentioned the Empire of Mwene Muji as a large polity in that region. Studying the well known and recently discovered literature on West Central Africa, as well as a critical study of oral tradition, shows considerable evidence for the antiquity and existence of Mwene Muji.

This article explores the promises and pitfalls of the colonial archives for the study of seeing and knowing contemporary violence. As an ethnographic field and a site of decolonial struggles, the colonial archive is increasingly mobilised in scholarship that seeks to historicise and disrupt conventional, Western-centric knowledge production. While using the colonial archives might reproduce asymmetrical power relations, they also hold the potential to unsettle the ‘toxic imperial debris’ of our time. How can the colonial archives challenge the post-colonial politics of erasing imperial violence and contribute to decolonial futures? Drawing on research in the African Archives in Belgium and fieldwork in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), this paper complicates problematic portrayals of the post-colonial state in the DRC and Congolese women as always already violated or silenced. We argue that the logics of the African Archives reveal a set of destabilising state anxieties that reflect the duality and instability of colonial rule itself and that infuse contemporary (international) politics. This recounting of the violence contained in the archives both narrates the concrete, violent manifestations of our ‘global coloniality’ and works towards its own demise as part of a broader ‘anticolonial archive’.

In January 1967, under the infamous military head Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, the Democratic Republic of Congo nationalized its mining industry based on anticolonial rhetoric of “economic sovereignty.” Only two years later, the same Mobutu government welcomed foreign companies and investors with open arms to the inaugural Foire Internationale de Kinshasa. Even at this crucial postcolonial moment when ideas of economic independence and self-sufficiency had become so highly valued, an attachment to — even affinity towards — foreign capital persisted throughout Congolese politics. This article explores the political and intellectual tensions that arose from the postcolonial utilization of foreign capital for state consolidation and synthesizes these contradictions into a broader understanding of early development approaches in Mobutu's Congo. In contrast to those who have framed the Congolese leader's ideology as a rearticulation of colonial logics or the authoritarian whims of an individual, I argue that these early notions of Mobutist development should be understood as a kind of “worldmaking,” emerging from an anticolonial ideology that asserted Congo’s economic sovereignty while simultaneously inserting itself into the global streams of finance. By tracing the Mobutu government's fluctuating relationship to foreign finance, this research offers a longer history of the “neoliberal moment” in Congo — one in which the intellectual underpinnings for liberalization had percolated in Congolese nationalist politics for several decades.

Guite (IMA2017-080), Co3O4, is a new mineral species and an important economic mineral found in the Sicomines copper-cobalt mine, located ~11 km southwest of Kolwezi City, Democratic Republic of Congo. The mineral occurs as a granular agglomerate, 50 to 500 μm in size, and is associated closely with heterogenite in a quartz matrix. Guite is opaque, has a dark grey colour with metallic lustre and a black streak. In reflected light microscopy, it is white with no internal reflections. The reflectance values (in air, R in %) are: 27.0 (470 nm); 25.6 (546 nm); 25.2 (589 nm), and 24.6 (650 nm). The average of 20 electron-microprobe analyses is Co 71.53, Cu 0.58, Mn 0.67, Si 0.25, O 26.78, total 99.82 wt.%, corresponding to the empirical formula calculated on the basis of 4 O apfu: (Co2+0.92Cu2+0.02Si4+0.02)Σ0.96(Co3+1.98Mn3+0.03)Σ2.01O4.00, with Co2+ and Co3+ partitioned using charge balance. The ideal formula is Co2+Co3+2O4. Guite is cubic with space group Fd$\bar{3}$m. The unit cell parameters refined from the single crystal X-ray diffraction data are: a = 8.0898(1) Å, V = 529.436(11) Å3 and Z = 8. The calculated density of guite is 6.003 g/cm3. The eight strongest observed powder X-ray diffraction lines [d in Å (I/I0) (hkl)] are: 4.6714 (16.7) (111), 2.8620 (18.4) (220), 2.4399 (100) (311), 2.3348 (10.4) (222), 2.0230 (24.8) (400), 1.5556 (26.3) (511, 333), 1.4296 (37.7) (440) and 1.0524 (10.1) (731, 553). The crystal structure of guite was determined by single-crystal X-ray diffraction and refined to R = 0.0132 for 3748 (69 unique) reflections. Guite has a typical spinel-type structure with Co2+ in tetrahedral coordination with a Co2+–O bonding length of 1.941(1) Å, and Co3+ in octahedral coordination with a Co3+–O bonding length of 1.919(1) Å. The structure is composed of cross-linked framework of chains of Co3+–O6 octahedra sharing the equilateral triangle edges (2.550 Å) in three directions [0 1 1], [1 1 0], [1 0 1] with Co2+ filling the tetrahedral interstices among the chains. Guite is named in honour of Prof. Xiangping Gu (1964–).

This article examines the Baluba Association of Katanga (Balubakat) from its creation in 1957 until its dissolution in 1964, as well as its leader Jason Sendwe. Despite not receiving much scholarly coverage hitherto, Sendwe and the Balubakat played an important part in undermining the Katangese secession, along with the UN and the Congolese National Army (ANC). This article's focus on the Balubakat and Sendwe challenges the traditional historical focus on top parties, such as the National Congolese Movement (MNC), and their leaders, such as Patrice Lumumba, when examining Congolese decolonisation. Sendwe's pragmatic, non-aligned stance helped the Balubakat maintain the support of powerful institutions, such as the Great Lakes Railway Company (CFL). His ability to hold the Balubakat together also derived from its members’ common wish to oppose the Katangese secession. Yet the efficacy of Sendwe's leadership was best demonstrated after the party disbanded following his assassination.