Decolonizing African history:Authenticité, cosmopolitanism and knowledge production in Zaire, 1971–1975

Abstract

This article analyses the social and intellectual dynamisms of the Lubumbashi campus of the Université Nationale du Zaïre in the 1970s. It first highlights how Lubumbashi scholars participated in an early post-colonial attempt to radically transform the university’s teaching, research and operations, at the crossroads of intellectual decolonization and cosmopolitanism. These efforts both overlapped and clashed with the official Zairian policy of Authenticité , a politically tinged reappraisal of the country’s precolonial past. The article contributes to our limited knowledge of everyday life under Mobutu and of vernacular experiences of Authenticité , while highlighting Lubumbashi as an important node in the post-independence intellectual networks.

Ten challenges in reconfiguring African Studies

“…There is also need to turn attention to the understanding of geneses and genealogies of African Studies in Dakar in Senegal, Makerere in Uganda, Cairo in Egypt, Maputo in Mozambique, Lubumbashi in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) (Henriet 2022), Ibadan in Nigeria, Dar es Salaam in Tanzania (Al-Bulushi 2022) and other places within Africa where initiatives in decolonising and Africanising knowledge ensued in the 1960s. For example, a recent study on the DRC focused on Université Nationale du Zaïre's Lubumbashi campus revealed how 'Lubumbashi scholars participated in early post-colonial attempts to radically transform the university's teaching, research and operations, at the crossroads of intellectual decolonization and cosmopolitanism' (Henriet 2022, 1).…”