Congo (38 page)

A lively culture of clubs and associations arose. Still under colonial supervision, these organizations were nonetheless of great historical importance: in the alumni associations, academic clubs, and tribal organizations, after all, lay the seed of the political awakening to come.
⁶⁶
The former pupils of Tata Raphaël’s school came together in the Adapes (Association des Anciens Eléves des Pères de Scheut), later an important breeding ground for the first generation of Congolese politicians. In the
cercles des évolueés
(
évoluées’
clubs) they gathered to discuss books and organize debates; these were a sort of informal night school, and they shot up like mushrooms. In 1950 there were three hundred of them all over Congo. The tribal associations in the cities were now more than simply emergency coffers; they became cultural organizations that would soon develop political ambitions as well. In Elisabethville, tensions grew between the Baluba from Katanga and the Baluba from Kasai: the latter group, to the locals’ great irritation, had come down to work in the mines in huge numbers. New clubs were set up as a result. In Léopoldville, the Bakongo felt threatened by the growing influx of Bangala, tribespeople from Équateur who were active in the military and in commerce. Lingala was replacing Kikongo, the original language of the area around the capital, and so the Abako, the Alliance des Bakongo, was set up; a purely cultural association that promoted the language of the Kongo people. Its founder, once again, was a young man rejected for the priesthood.

An
évolué
was a man (never a woman, except as partner) who had enjoyed a certain level of education, had a fixed income, displayed great seriousness about his profession, was monogamous, and lived in European fashion. As the children of two of them explained to me once, the
évolué
also owned a Raleigh bicycle, preferably with gears. “That was the black man’s Mercedes in those days.” In his home he had a Coleman lantern. He had a record player, which he used to listen to Edith Piaf. Wendo Kolosoyi records were all right as well, because that was calm music. “But definitely not any music that might give rise to lewd dancing. My parents went dancing on Sundays, my father always wore a derby.” The
évolué
sent his wife to prenatal care at the health center. Their baby was weighed. At home they abided by the nutritional advice given by the white nuns. They rejected traditional medicine and ancestor worship, but the gap between male and female was sizeable. The former was educated and worked for an employer, the latter uneducated and jobless. Only two or three women in all of Stanleyville around that time were able to carry on a conversation in rudimentary French.
⁶⁷
One of the
évolué
children told me: “I often heard my father tell my mother: ‘You, you’re a real Negress, you know! The white people don’t live like that!’”
⁶⁸

The number of
évolués
was never very large (fewer than six thousand in 1946, and a little under twelve thousand by 1954), but their articulateness tipped the scales in their favor. Tragically enough, what they desired was closer contact with the Europeans, at the very moment when the Europeans were withdrawing more and more to their villas, swimming pools, and tennis tournaments. Yes, in the Belgian Congo there were black truck drivers and telegraph operators, but in cafes and restaurants the color bar was more pronounced than ever. If a white journalist in Léopoldville dared to take a black colleague along to a European bar, conversation would stop. Trains and riverboats may have been run by black engineers and captains, but the passenger compartments were strictly divided into black and white. If a black man jumped into a swimming pool, the whites would get out. Corporal punishment with the
chicotte
was still applied to all Africans, even those who could distinguish the Latin dative case from the genitive and read De Gaulle’s speeches. The writer Paul Lomami Tshibamba worked for
La Voix du Congolais
, a government-monitored magazine for
évolués
. For the second issue, published in 1945, he wrote a controversial but by all means moderate piece entitled “Quel sera notre place dans le monde de demain?” (What Will Be Our Place in Tomorrow’s World?). By his own account, its publication resulted for him in “countless legal sittings, accompanied by endless lashes.”
⁶⁹
The
chicotte
cracked while, elsewhere in the city, synchronous but far more lazy, the tennis balls thunked against the backboards. Meanwhile, white colonials went to the horse races and organized bicycle races. Festive kermis competitions, with amateur cyclists riding cheerfully under banners advertizing Martini and Rossi vermouth.

The painful yearning felt by the
évolué
was never clearer to me than during those few seconds of historical footage in
Heimweh nach den Tropen
, a gripping documentary by Luc Leysen. It is 1951 and the whites are lined up to judge a contest in Léopoldville. Yet these are not poodles or poultry being judged, but families. Before an exclusively white audience, Congolese families are parading past the jury. The father in short pants, his wife beside him, then the children neatly lined up according to age. The youngest child carries a sign with the contestants’ number. The audience applauds politely. Then they walk offstage gravely . . . . So much despair in so few seconds.
⁷⁰

The
évolués
desired a special legal status that would do justice to their unique place in society. That was understandable. They had, after all, become “social mulattoes,” people who dangled between two cultures.
⁷¹
The
évolués
of a small town like Luluabourg expressed it most grippingly:

We ask the Government to kindly recognize that native society has evolved powerfully in the last fifteen years. Beside the native masses who are rated less important or who are uneducated, a new social class has been formed which constitutes a sort of native middle class.

The members of this native intellectual elite do everything possible to advance themselves and to live in a respectable fashion, as respectable Europeans do. These
évolués
have realized that they have responsibilities and duties. But they are convinced that they deserve, if not a special legal status, then in any case special protection from the Government against measures or treatments applied to the ignorant and backward masses . . . . It is painful to be received as a savage, when one is full of good will.
⁷²

It is also painful to think that anyone who writes so eloquently could still be subject to flogging with a strip of hippopotamus hide. The subservient, almost servile tone bespeaks a great longing. The
évolué
did not wish to tear down the wall between black and white, but to be lifted over it. He did not fight against the color bar. He did not demand rights for “the Congolese people,” or for his tribe, but only for the circles to which he, after great effort, had gained access. Was that egotistical? Definitely. Was there something denigrating about it? Yes. But in the final analysis, in their desire for assimilation, they had even adopted the perspective from which most of Europeans regarded the natives.

The Belgian colonial authorities hesitated for a long time. After all, they had never set out to cultivate an uprooted elite, had they? Everything in good time, that was the motto. It was not until 1938 that a hesitant start was made with general secondary schools, and not until 1954 (only six years before independence, but no one knew that yet) that the first university, Lovanium, was set up, an auxiliary branch of the Catholic University of Louvain. During its first year, the new university had thirty-three students and seven professors. You could study natural sciences, social and administrative sciences, education, and agronomy. A law school was started only in 1958.
⁷³
No big hurry, in other words. Was it then really necessary to recognize a privileged caste?

In 1948 the Belgian administration found a provisional solution: the
évolué
could apply for a “certificate of civil merit.” Anyone without a criminal record and who had never been deported, who had sworn off polygamy and sorcery, and who could read, write, and do arithmetic was eligible. Those who held such a certificate could no longer be administered corporal punishment and would, in the case of a trial, be tried before a European judge. They had access to separate wards in hospitals and were allowed to walk through the white neighborhoods after 6
P.M
.
⁷⁴
This made a great impression on the average Congolese. In Boma, Camille Mananga, a man who was thirteen when the certificate of merit was introduced, told me: “That was reserved for the truly prominent. They were allowed to go shopping and drink along with the whites. That was a very great distinction. I was still much too young. The sky was more within my reach than a certificate like that!”
⁷⁵
But for people who had been working their way up the ladder for years, it represented fairly minimal privileges that stood in no proportion to their efforts. Structural wage inequality still existed. As a former
évolué
, Victor Masunda, another inhabitant of Boma, could still get wound up about that: “Of course I didn’t apply for that card. It really didn’t mean any higher wages. A lot of people groveled, but I refused to lower myself. Applying for the certificate of merit was degrading. Was I supposed to become their little brother? No. I could get hold of my red wine and whisky on my own.”
⁷⁶

It was for this reason that, in 1952, the
carte d’immatriculation
(registration card) was introduced. This new document gave the
évolué
the same rights in public life and in the eyes of the law as the European population. The most important advantage was that the
évolué
could now send his children to European schools, an exceptional social promotion that also guaranteed a decent education. But the skepticism among large parts of the colonial elite was so great that extremely stringent requirements were posed for obtaining such a card. Those requirements were often humiliating as well. During the period of application, an inspector was allowed to pay surprise visits to the family home, to see whether the candidate and his family lived in a truly civilized fashion. The inspector would look to see that each child had a bed of its own, that the family ate with knives and forks, that the plates were uniform in size and type, and that the toilet was clean. Did the family eat together at the table, or did the mother sit in the kitchen with her offspring while the man dined with his visitor, in the old style? Only very few applicants lived up to the these criteria. The result, therefore, was that years of palaver were invested in drafting a legal status from which almost no one profited. In 1958, within a population of almost fourteen million, only 1,557 “civil merits” were handed out and only 217 “registration cards.”
⁷⁷
That led to frustration. For sooner or later yearning turns to distaste, yes, even to hostility.

T
YPE IN A SEARCH
for “Jamais Kolonga” on YouTube and within seconds you will hear one of the great classics of Congolese rumba. It could have come from the Buena Vista Social Club, but it was composed by African Jazz, the most popular band in Congo in the 1950s. That legendary orchestra was led by Joseph Kabasele, nicknamed “le Grand Kalle.” The song itself was written by his gifted guitarist, Tino Baroza. It became one of African Jazz’s biggest hits. “Oyé, oyé, oyé,” the refrain went, “hold me tight. Jamais Kolonga, hold me tight. Let me go, and I might fall.” The part about holding tight was open to multiple interpretations.

I climb out of the car in a narrow, dusty alleyway in Lingala. Could this be it? In colonial times, Lingwala was the neighborhood of the
évolués
. All the old people I spoke to knew Jamais Kolonga. Of course! But hadn’t he passed away? Hadn’t the local press run an alarming article? “Le vieux Jamais Kolonga laminé par la maladie!” (Old Jamais Kolonga flattened by illness!) was the headline. They had read that the man “who as bon vivant, with his wisecracks and pranks, served as the embodiment of the vitality of Kinshasa in the 1960s” was now critically ill.

But, after a series of dead ends and a fortune spent on call minutes, I had finally come up with a street and a number. The yard I walked into was surrounded by a crumbling wall and contained a patch of corn, withered and dry as dust. From a cinderblock house a man appeared, wearing short pants, walking on crutches.

“Are you Jamais Kolonga?”

“The one and only!”

One had informants who had seen a lot but had little to say, and one had informants who had little to say but talked a lot anyway. Kolonga belonged to neither category. He had seen everything and he was a fantastic storyteller. He didn’t think so himself: “I’ve just had a hip operation. It’s not going too well. It hurts a lot, even with all the medicines I have to take.” He pulled up his pants leg to show me an impressive scar.

“Is there something I can do? Do you need anything?”

“Wine! If you’ve got some money, I can send one of my grandchildren out for wine.”

“Wine? In your condition? Are you sure?”

I spent three whole afternoons talking to that little, sharp-witted man, sometimes in his living room, at other times in the shadow of his house. He was excellent company, with a remarkable sense of humor, an unsinkable joie de vivre and a spectacular memory. One time I went to visit him in a little hospital where he had been admitted to convalesce for a few days, and where he flirted with the nurses nonstop. His hip was getting better every day. But now, I asked him, what was the story with that white woman?