11 The Production of Historical Knowledge at the University of Lubumbashi (1956–2018)

But the difficulties encountered by these students in Belgium, in particular the government’s refusal to grant them the equivalence of their diploma for their studies in Congo, led to the abandonment of this first university experiment in Elisabethville.2 Lwamba Bilonda, ‘L’Université de Lubumbashi, de 1956 à Nos Jours’ in Ndaywel è Nziem (ed.), L’Université dans le devenir de l’Afrique: Un demi-siècle de Présence au Congo-Zaïre (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2007); pp. 37–59, p. 37. For Congolese children, the initiative of establishing higher education was prompted by a Belgian senatorial commission sent to the Belgian Congo and Ruanda-Urundi in 1948. The members of this commission recommended that the colonial state should facilitate access to higher education for those Africans who were ‘predisposed by talents and training’. It is in this context that Latin humanities courses were commenced in Dungu (Haut-Uele District), Kamponde (Lulua District), Kiniati (Kwilu District) and Mboma Mbanza (Bas-Congo), alongside the establishment of vocational training schools for boys and housekeeping or family training schools for girls.3 It should be noted that, before the 1950s, the education provided to African children was discriminatory. While boys were trained to become future white workers’ helpers in the workplace, girls were trained to become good future housekeepers. ‘To give the sons of our workers an education which will later enable them to become good workers by giving them the basic knowledge that their fathers did not have and that the latter only acquired empirically, following a long and arduous apprenticeship. … Girls we want to make good mothers, not to burden them with practically useless knowledge. The education they receive at school must be a preparation for the training they will receive later in the workshops and in the housekeeping schools’: Gécamines Lubumbashi, ‘Aide-mémoire M.O.I.’, fascicule II, Politique M.O.I., annexe 3, 1943. It is important to note here that, until the late 1940s, the well-known ‘colonial trinity’ – administration, business and religious missions, often presented as the ‘pillars’ on which the Belgian colonial order was based – was not yet sure of the type of education to be given to Blacks.4 Crawford Young, Politics in Congo: Decolonisation and Independence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), p. 10. The general education provided had until this point been limited to middle school level (for the training of assistants, clerks, etc.), teacher training colleges (for the training of primary school teachers) and medical assistants. Later, the Ten-Year Plan for the Economic and Social Development of the Belgian Congo, 1949–1959 (the so-called Van Bilsen Plan) sought to provide for the training of Congolese specialist employees and technicians, in increasing demand as the economy expanded and with the aim of supplementing or replacing high-cost white labour.

It was not until the early 1950s that the colonial government implemented the plan to create a state university, and this was the result of a consensus between the colony’s major political, economic and religious actors.5 Makwanza Batumanisa, ‘L’histoire de l’Université de Lubumbashi dans la destinée nationale’, in UNILU, 30ème Anniversaire de l’Université de Lubumbashi (Lubumbashi: UNILU, 1986), handout file, pp. 23–6.. It should be remembered that education in the Belgian Congo was then the monopoly of missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant. After the Second World War, the first official schools were set up for white children. It was only during the 1950s, under Colonial Minister Auguste Buisseret, a liberal, that the desire to put an end to the near-monopoly of the Catholic Church in the field of education for Africans became a reality. Government schools were created for black children, who sometimes shared benches with European pupils. It was in this same context that the Official University was created in Elisabethville in November 1956. This initiative effectively put an end to the Catholic monopoly of higher education, although Elisabethville coexisted with Lovanium University, established in Léopoldville in 1954 with the help of the Catholic University of Louvain.6 Donatien Dibwe dia Mwembu, ‘La formation des élites coloniales: Le cas de la province du Katanga’, in Nathalie Tousignant (ed.), Le manifeste Conscience africaine (1956): Élites congolaises et société coloniale – Regards croisés (Brussels: Publications des Facultés Universitaires Saint-Louis, 2009), pp. 117–39.

Originally envisaged as exclusively for the children of Belgian colonists, the University of Elisabethville was nonetheless ‘mixed’, in that it accepted Congolese students. During its first academic year in 1956–57, for example, there were eight Congolese among 104 students admitted. This number would steadily grow, while the proportion of European students, especially Belgian students, continued to decline.7 After the Congo gained independence, during the 1963–64 academic year there were 327 Congolese as against 104 expatriates, including 53 Belgians, 26 Rwandans, 4 Italians, 3 Rhodesians, 3 Cypriots, 1 French and 1 U.S. American: 431 students in total: Lwamba Bilonda, ‘L’Université de Lubumbashi’, p. 57. Throughout the colonial period however, the entire faculty was composed of expatriates from Belgian universities, hired within the framework of technical cooperation. The Africanisation of the teaching staff began only after the country gained independence, first with the hiring of assistants and then, later, of a Congolese academic staff.

The Official University of the Belgian Congo and Ruanda-Urundi had to respond to three concerns of the colonial authorities. First, it was necessary, as noted above, to educate the children of Belgian settlers who lived in Katanga; second, to educate the children of Africans in general and of the Congolese in particular, to meet the demands of the growing economy and, finally, to affirm secularism in order to counterbalance the Catholic Church’s monopoly on education. Moreover, the establishment of the official colonial university in a mining-dominated province was indicative of an orientation towards the technical sciences in general and mining technical education in particular, since the colonial companies aspired, inter alia, to replace some European employees with Africans, which would reduce costs. The Official University thus opened its doors with four departments (Sciences, Philosophy and Letters, Engineering, and Educational Sciences). The intention was then for the colonial university to train and guide the elite among the Congolese populations at the same time as the Europeans, creating the conditions for the existence of a fraternal society across racial lines.8 ‘Histoire d’une vie – Campus de Lubumbashi, 1955–1979. De l’UOC à l’UNAZA’ (Lubumbashi, undated), p. 3.

From 1956 to 1960, the only doctoral degree that the Official University of the Belgian Congo and Ruanda-Urundi bestowed was one in history in 1959. Paul Van Vracem, ‘[t]he happy recipient’, notes Ndaywel è Nziem, ‘had just defended a doctoral thesis entitled ‘The border of the Ruzizi-Kivu from 1894 to 1910’.9 Isidore Ndaywel è Nziem, ‘De Lovanium au campus de Lubumbashi: Production d’une modernité culturelle congolaise’ in Ndaywel è Nziem (ed.), Les années UNAZA, pp. 107–27, p. 117. But the creation of a history department in Congo would have to wait until 1965, at the University of Lovanium (Kinshasa). The first group of Congolese graduates in history obtained their degrees only in the 1970s.

The Katangese secession did not last long. In January 1963, Katanga returned to the Congo and the State University in Elisabethville took the name Official University of the Congo (UOC), which it would keep until 1971. Several foreign, mostly Belgian, professors and researchers left, a situation which disrupted both teaching and research within the university. Very few studies have been devoted to this period. But it should be remembered that the UOC administration during this period oversaw a significant Africanisation of personnel. In the field of history, the period from 1960 to 1970 witnessed the birth, in independent black Africa, of a nationalist historiography which contributed to the rehabilitation of the specific historicity of African societies. Historians of UOC played a significant role in demonstrating what we now take for granted, that Africa has always been in history and has always had a history. We can mention here, by way of illustration, the work of the Africanists, in particular that of Jan Vansina,1 Jan Vansina, De la tradition orale: Essai de méthode historique (Tervuren: MRAC, 1961). who opposed the approach of the positivist historians such as Henri Brunschwig.2 Henri Brunschwig, Méthodologie de l’histoire et des sciences humaines (Mélanges en l’honneur de Fernand Braudel) (Toulouse: Privat, 1973), p. 85. The latter believed that Africa had no history before 1800. Through his research on the Kuba kingdom, Rwanda and Burundi, Jan Vansina also demonstrated that the reconstruction of African history was possible thanks to the use of oral traditions, a source long marginalised because it was perceived as inconsistent, ephemeral and therefore unreliable. The work of the Africanists complemented that of African historians, in particular the revolutionary historian Cheikh Anta Diop3 Vansina, De la tradition orale; Cheikh Anta Diop, Antériorités des civilisations nègres: Mythe ou vérité historique? (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1967).. Djibril Tamsir Niane showed, through the publication of his book Soundjata or the Mandingo Epic that African history can also be written by the ‘griots’ who represent the collective memory, the oral tradition worked on and handed down from generation to generation.4 Niana Djibril Tamsir, Soundjata ou l’épopée mandingue (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1960). Other African academics, such as Joseph Ki-Zerbo or Théophile Obenga, sustained their historical research by their nationalist and pan-Africanist convictions.5 Joseph Ki-Zerbo, Histoire de l’Afrique noire: D’hier à demain (Paris: Hatier, 1972); Théophile Obenga, L’Afrique dans l’Antiquité: Egypte pharaonique, Afrique noire (Paris: Présence Africaine, 1973). Ambitious collective works written in the 1970s also set out to trace the history of the continent over the long term. They sought to shed light on the way Africans shaped their historic destiny, even under the colonial yoke.6 Cf. UNESCO, General History of Africa (in eight volumes) written by African and Africanist historians; cf. also Ibrahima Baba Kake et Elikia M’Bokolo (eds), Histoire générale de l’Afrique (Paris: ABC, 1977); Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch and Henri Moniot, L’Afrique noire: De 1800 à nos jours (Paris: PUF, 1974).

Until the late 1960s, colonial history in the Congo was the story of the actions of Europeans; the Congolese played the role of mere extras.7 See, by way of illustration, the monographs on large companies such as UMHK, BCK or La Forminière. Postcolonial history would take on the task of showing that the African in general, and the Congolese in particular, played a decisive role in the construction of colonial society. Until the early 1970s, more than 90% of Congolese historiography was in the hands of Africanists of various external origins, largely from Western Europe, Eastern Europe and North America. It was these Africanists who, in 1965, created the first Department of History at the University of Lovanium, whose programme was modelled on that of the Belgian universities from which these teachers mainly came. The Congolese research centres were, in a way, offshoots of their European counterparts. The research carried out focused on the precolonial period and was centred on ‘tribal’ history, written from the narrative sources of the explorers and also from the earliest archival documents.8 Jean-Luc Vellut, Guide de l’étudiant en histoire du Zaïre (Presses universitaires du Zaïre, 1974), p. 64. See for example: N’Dua Solol, ‘Histoire ancienne des populations Luba et Lunda du Plateau de Haut-Lubilashi: des origines au début du XXe siècle (Bena Nsamba, Inimpinim et Tuwidi)’, PhD thesis, UNAZA, Campus de Lubumbashi, 1978; Mumbanza mwa Baawele, ‘L’histoire des peuples riverains de l’entre-Zaïre-Ubangi: Evaluation sociale et économique, 1780–1930’, PhD Thesis, UNAZA, Campus de Lubumbashi, 1981.

In 1968, the Department of History was endowed with a bachelor’s programme and later, in 1972, a doctoral programme. The main objective was to train the African historian who, according to Bogumil Jewsiewicki, ‘must give back to the peoples of this continent their own history, a necessary element of the national consciousness. At the same time, his investigations should make it possible to understand the processes of formation of society and the State today9 Bogumil Jewsiewicki, ‘Notes sur l’histoire socio-économique du Congo (1880–1960)’ in Etudes d’Histoire africaine, III (1972), pp. 209–41, p. 209.. The year 1970 saw the first Congolese students graduate with a degree in history from the University of Lovanium.

The university reform of 1971 was also shaped by the deterioration of relations between the Mobutu regime and the Congolese universities, viewed by the former as places where protesters in the pay of foreign powers were unhelpfully accommodated. The Zairian intellectual – and especially the student – had to be made a responsible man, totally free of any ‘neocolonial’ influence. This objective seemed particularly pressing in view of the increasing politicisation of Congolese students. In 1961, an assembly of Congolese delegates (but also with members from Belgium, France and the United States of America), identifying themselves as Marxist-Leninists, founded the General Union of Congolese Students (UGEC). The Union opposed successive Congolese governments, which it described as ‘the servant of American and Western imperialism’. Moreover, at the end of the symposium on the reform of higher and university education held in Goma in April–May 1969, student representatives demanded co-management of universities, as well as the Africanisation of personnel and programmes.

The government’s wholesale rejection of all the symposium’s resolutions was an opportunity for the students to express their disapproval on the streets. Demonstrations that took place on 4 June 1969 were violently repressed and led to the death of a significant number of students. The second anniversary of these events gave rise to new demonstrations in 1971, also strongly repressed. Following these, the universities were closed and all students were recruited into the army. Ngoma Binda notes that President Mobutu also wanted to get rid of supposed dissident elements hostile to his rule by removing them from Kinshasa.3 Ngoma Binda, ‘Faut-il privatiser les universités officielles du Zaïre?’ Zaïre-Afrique, 288 (1994), pp. 495–505, p. 497. The Mobutu political regime now sought to take control of university institutions by politicising them. Indeed, the academic reform of 1971 stipulated that all the decision-making positions had to be occupied by committed MPR militants.

The single party was also working on the indoctrination of Zairian youth. Young people were expected to testify to their ‘civic virtues’ wherever they were – in the field, on the construction site, in factories, at school, etc. They were expected to know that the success of the revolution greatly depended on their support and that they had to become aware of their responsibility in solving the problems facing the country. In this context, the chief concern of MPR leaders was to provide appropriate political guidance, not only to the student youth, but also to the entire university community. The objective was that everyone would be committed to making UNAZA a pioneering body of the revolution and thus put an end to the instability of the early years of independence.

It is in this context that we must understand the role entrusted to the JMPR (the MPR youth), that of being both the eyes and the ears of the regime. A former member of the student brigade, one of the JMPR branches at the UNAZA Lubumbashi campus, described his role in these terms:

The journal Jiwe, the ideological organ of the MPR, which was created on the Lubumbashi campus, was a propaganda tool and the champion of the party-state within the university community. The Editorial Board presented it as pursuing

The UNAZA years were also marked by various political and economic troubles, such as the two Shaba wars and the policy of Zairianisation. In November 1973, Mobutu launched the policy known as Zairianisation. This was the takeover by the Zaireans of the local subsidiaries of Belgian companies and foreign commercial enterprises, as well as the nationalisation of petroleum product distribution companies. This policy did not achieve its economic objectives and discouraged foreign investors. The departure of foreign traders – particularly Greeks, Portuguese and Indians – plundered by the Mobutu government led to an increase in unemployment. In addition, Gécamines, the country’s major source of income, experienced supply difficulties due to the deterioration of Zaïre’s economic structure and the closure of the Lobito railway.

The Eighty-Day War or the first Shaba War (8 March to 13 May 1977), was the first attack carried out by Katangese gendarmes in exile in Angola against the province of Shaba (Katanga). These rebels were defeated by the Congolese army, supported by Moroccan troops with the logistical assistance of the French army. A year later, the second Shaba War or Six-Day War (12–19 May 1978) saw the same rebels from Zambia and Angola invade the city of Kolwezi.6 See Eric Kennes and Miles Larmer, The Katangese Gendarmes and War in Central Africa: Fighting Their Way Home (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016), pp. 119–45. The rebels were driven out by the Zairian army with the support of French paratroopers. Both events led to a sharp fall in Gécamines’ copper production.

The UNAZA years were not however altogether bad. Positive achievements were made in the fields of research and teaching, the living conditions of students and the Africanisation of personnel. As a result of bilateral cooperation, the university received financial, technical and academic support from Europe and the United States. Scholarships from the Rockefeller Foundation, for example, were granted to Zairian doctoral students, while American, Belgian, French, German and Polish teaching staff were sent to Zaïre as part of cooperation agreements. These collaborations led to the construction of new infrastructure, such as research laboratories, veterinary clinics or residences for teaching staff.

Nyunda ya Rubango recalls UNAZA’s Lubumbashi campus as being characterised by the research carried out there during this period: ‘I am still in awe of some spectacular past achievements of the Lubumbashi professors, actions testifying to the influence of the university at national and international level.’7 Nyunda ya Rubango, ‘De Lovanium à la Kasapa caserne: mémoires d’un pèlerin métis’ in Ndaywel è Nziem (ed.), L’Université, pp. 97–124, p. 123. In addition, that author cites the various research centres set up during this period, which were the pride of the institution due to the quality and frequency of their academic output.8 Ibid., p. 123: the author cites research centres, mostly from the Faculty of Letters: CELTA (Centre for Theoretical and Applied Linguistics), CELRIA (Centre for Studies of African-inspired Romance Literature), CIS (International Semiology Centre), CERDAC (Centre for Documentary Studies and Research on Central Africa), CERPHA (Centre for Research in African Philosophy), CEPAC (Centre for Political Studies in Central Africa), etc. Indeed, during the UNAZA period, the Lubumbashi campus produced 59 doctoral theses, including five in history. It should be noted that, with the merger into UNAZA in 1971, the history departments of the University of Lovanium and UOC were merged into a single department located at Lubumbashi’s Faculty of Letters. Here, the history curriculum involved four options: political history, economic and social history, cultural history and the history of the African population.

Indeed, it is important to note that the creation of UNAZA/Lubumbashi marked a turning point in Congolese historiography. It schooled the first class of Congolese history graduates, and its first doctoral degrees were awarded in 1978.9 The first doctoral thesis in history defended by a Congolese at the Lubumbashi Campus was in 1978. The other four theses were defended in 1980 (2) and in 1981 (2). Moreover, from 1971, the UNAZA Department of History in Lubumbashi initiated first the Africanisation of its researchers and assistants first (in 1976), and of its teaching staff thereafter (1978). In 1970, the History Department established an organ for the dissemination of academic research, the journal Etudes d’Histoire Africaine. In 1973, the Department set up a research centre (the Centre for Studies and Documentary Research on Central Africa (CERDAC) and, alongside Etudes d’Histoire Africaine, a CERDAC journal called Likundoli (‘Awakening’). It is in these research structures that fruitful academic research developed, focusing on the country as a whole, the province of Katanga, the region of the Copperbelt i.e. the mining towns of Lubumbashi, Likasi, Kolwezi, Kipushi, Kambove, Kakanda, etc., and their hinterlands.

With regard to the emergence of a new postcolonial historiography in Africa, it must be recognised that the History Department initially lagged behind. Its alignment to the new postcolonial historiography constituted a challenge, as was emphasised so clearly in 1970 by the rector of UNAZA, Bishop Tshibangu Tshishiku, in the foreword to the first issue of Etudes d’Histoire Africaine.

Thus, the pre-UNAZA history programme was strengthened to ensure that the Africanist option of the History Department addressed the concerns of the time. Broadly speaking, before UNAZA, the number of hours of Zairean (Congo) and African history courses constituted only 18.4% of the history students’ curriculum. Following the 1976 reform, this rose to 54.4%.12 Ndaywel è Nziem, ‘Programme de formation des historiens africains en faculté des lettres (1963–1976)’, Likundoli: Histoire et devenir, 1, 4 (1976), pp. 1–56. In addition, research was initiated at CERDAC on social history. The development of a single-volume history of Zaïre, with a longue durée vision, was a challenge, despite the contribution of Robert Cornevin13 Robert Cornevin, Le Zaïre (ex-Congo-Kinshasa) (Paris: PUF, 1972). and another volume of this type that was published by Tshimanga wa Tshibangu in 1974.14 Tshimanga wa Tshibangu, Histoire du Zaïre (Bukavu: Editions du CERUKI, 1976). Further work was undertaken on the development of an encyclopaedic dictionary of Central African history15 Many studies are elaborated in the form of dissertations, theses etc.; on biographies of historical personalities of Zaïre, of which a first section including 120 entries was published; and on the development of a history of Zaïre for teaching of the subject in secondary school.16 A first volume was completed and published locally in 1981. See Tshund’Olela Epanya et al., Histoire du Zaïre vol. I (Lubumbashi: UNAZA-CERDAC, 1981). This first volume dealt with ancient Zaïre. Volume II was to deal with the colonial and postcolonial period. But it took a long time to see Isidore Ndaywel è Nziem develop and publish a general synthesis of Congo’s history: Isidore Ndaywel è Nziem, Histoire générale du Congo: de l’héritage ancien à la République démocratique du Congo (Paris: Duculot, 1998). Critical re-reading also made it possible to detect prejudices and make corrections to the content of older history textbooks.17 See: Tenda Kikuni, ‘Préjugés à dépister dans les manuels d’histoire du cycle d’orientation’, Likundoli 4, 1–2 (1979), pp. 58–69.

Nor did the History Department remain isolated from its environment. The 1970s saw the creation of SOHIZA (Society of Historians of Zaïre) and the organisation of several local, national and international symposia and seminars, focusing in particular on issues of national memory. For example, in 1975, a symposium on the elites of Zaïre was held in Lubumbashi, during which the figure of Patrice Emery Lumumba was discussed. Lumumba is a complex historical figure, perceived by some as a liberator, by others as a dictator, a communist or even a murderer.2 Bogumil Jewsiewicki (ed.), A Congo Chronicle: Patrice Lumumba in Urban Art (New York: The Museum for African Art, 1999); Matthias de Groof (ed.), Lumumba in the Arts (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2019); Pierre Petit, Patrice Lumumba: La fabrication d’un héros national et panafricain (Brussels: Editions de l’Académie, 2016). Lumumba, who was controversial in 1960, was transformed into a consensual object of memory under Mobutu. Indeed, the Zairian regime, eager to pass itself off as the political heir to Lumumba, rehabilitated him and turned him into a national hero. His effigy appeared on the twenty makuta bank note, where he was depicted breaking the chains of slavery, while main thoroughfares in Kinshasa and in Lubumbashi came to bear his name. The unified memory of a liberating Lumumba was thus imposed upon the minds of the Congolese people.

The historians of UNAZA/Lubumbashi were also involved in this rehabilitation. They underlined his major role in the national emancipation of the country and presented him as a model to be imitated by the current political elite. During the 1975 symposium, Lumumba was presented as the herald of a unitary nationalism, opposed to tribalism and separatism, in order to better espouse the ideology of the MPR.3 CERDAC, Elites et devenir de la société zaïroise, actes des troisièmes journées du Zaïre (Lubumbashi: CERDAC, 1975), p. 9. From this period, Lumumba, once regarded by most Katangese as a communist and the plunderer of Katanga’s wealth, came to be remembered as a national hero.

However, in the face of the meteoric rise of Mobutism – the cult of the president’s personality, which gained momentum during the 1980s – Lumumba’s memory was confiscated and relegated to oblivion. His effigy on the twenty makuta bank note was replaced by that of President Mobutu. ‘The historical Lumumba’, notes Bogumil Jewsiewicki, ‘was returned to the archives and gradually banished from political life and the public space monopolised by the omnipresence of the image of the chief, master of the place, Mobutu himself’.4 Bogumil Jewsiewicki, ‘Corps interdits: La représentation christique de Lumumba comme rédempteur du peuple Zaïrois’, in Cahiers d’Etudes africaines, 141–2 (1996), pp. 113–42, p. 134. After the fall of Mobutu, the memory of Lumumba resurfaced with the accession of President Laurent-Désiré Kabila, whose political regime posed as the continuator of Lumumba’s politics and thought. Painters reproduced on canvas Lumumba breathing his spirit on Laurent-Désiré Kabila, as in the Old Testament the spirit of the prophet Elijah had entered the prophet Elisha.

During the 1980s, that is to say towards the end of the UNAZA years, the living conditions of students and teaching staff began to deteriorate. Subsidies allocated to higher and university education began first to decrease, then disappeared entirely. This led to the growing destitution of teaching staff, who were paid a meagre, starvation wage. Universities throughout Africa similarly entered a period of decline from the 1980s. By way of illustration, we can mention the case of Makerere University in Uganda which, due to both the dictatorship of Idi Amin (1971–79) and the civil war in the south-west, west and central parts of the country (1980–86), experienced a dramatic decline in its academic output. This doubly political situation forced many local researchers into exile and led many expatriate researchers to abandon positions in African universities.5 Henri Médard, ‘Histoire populaire et histoire scientifique en Ouganda (1890–2009)’ in Nicodème Bugwabari, Alain Cazenave-Piarrot, Olivier Provini and Christian Thibon (eds), Universités et universitaires en Afrique de l’Est (Paris: Karthala, 2012), pp. 99–114, p. 108. Generally speaking, several factors explain this situation. These include the economic crisis and structural adjustment plans that caused the state to withdraw financially from universities almost everywhere. The second major factor was the massification of higher and university education, due mainly to the demographic explosion experienced in African countries.6 Hervé Maupeu, ‘Les réformes néolibérales des universités est-africaines: eléments d’analyses à partir du cas kényan’ in Nicodème Bugwabari, Alain Cazenave-Piarrot, Olivier Provini and Christian Thibon (eds), Universités et universitaires, Karthala, pp. 195–212, p. 202; see also Leo Van Audenhove, Development Co-operation in Higher Education: A Strategic Review of International Donor Policy and Practices (Brussels: Free University Brussels, 1999), p. 12. The Democratic Republic of the Congo did not deviate from this reality. However, the abolition of scholarships,7 Enrolment fees were deducted at source for scholarship students. However, non-scholarship students had to pay their enrolment fees themselves. the unproductive policy of Zairianisation launched in November 1973, and the neglect of education by Mobutu’s government are specific to the DRC. In other words, education in general was not on the list of priorities of the ruling power. ‘The university appeared, from the 1970s’, notes Julien Kilanga Musinde, ‘as a negligible appendage to the priorities defined by the authorities.’8 Julien Kilanga Musinde, La main de la tradition: l’homme, le destin, l’université (Lubumbashi: CIRIADA, 2000), p. 14.

From 1974 to 1989, there was a major decline in purchasing power and currency depreciation. The exchange rate, which was 2 US dollars for 1 Zaïre on 1 January 1968, moved to 1 Zaïre to 0.34 US dollars at the beginning of 1980. From 30 January 1984 to 31 December 1989, the exchange rate for 1 US dollar rose from 30 to 300 Zaïres. In addition, in September 1989, the main underground mine at Kamoto collapsed, depriving Gécamines of a third of its production. This deteriorating economic situation was worsened by political upheaval. Growing political challenges to Mobutu’s reign were marked by a wave of violence. Bloody incidents at the University of Lubumbashi in May 1990 led to the Republic of Zaïre being cut off from credit by the international financial and monetary institutions. In addition, looting orchestrated by the Mobutu government on 21 and 22 October 1991 systematically destroyed the economic fabric of the city of Lubumbashi. Small and medium-sized enterprises had to close their doors and lay off their workers on a massive scale. This situation led to an increase in the unemployment rate and a deterioration in living conditions.

This period of turbulence in the Republic of Zaïre in general, and Katanga in particular, had a profoundly negative impact on the functioning of UNILU and on research. Between 1985 and 1990, the funds paid to the university by the government varied between 3.2% and 14% of the amounts requested, before stopping entirely in 1990.1 Kilanga Musinde, La main, p. 16. As a result, the research centres, deprived of all funding, saw their collective projects come to a standstill. These gave way to individual research projects, most often carried out on external commission, and therefore not generally addressing local and national needs.2 Kakoma Sakatolo Zambeze, L’Académie congolaise du XXIè Siècle (Lubumbashi: UNILU, 1999), pp. 4–5. Moreover, personnel assigned to the research centres were diverted from their original functions to provide teaching, for which they were not hired. How, in this case, could research contribute to the development of society when there was such a mismatch between local, provincial and national needs and the academic output of the Congolese universities in general, and of UNILU in particular.3 Kakoma Sakatolo Zambeze, L’Académie congolaise, p. 5.

In addition, UNILU, like other universities in the country, faced the problem of limited access to electronic publications and the acquisition and renewal of scientific and computer equipment. Over time, the quality of higher education graduates deteriorated dangerously, throughout sub-Saharan Africa in general, and the DRC in particular. Many companies, including Gécamines and the rail company Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer du Zaïre (SNCZ), began to express reservations about the quality of the students graduating from universities.4 World Bank, Faire de l’enseignement supérieur le moteur de développement en Afrique subsaharienne (Washington DC: World Bank, 2008), p. 52; see also Donatien Dibwe dia Mwembu, ‘Le rôle social de l’Université de Lubumbashi’ in Bogumil Jewsiewicki and Véronique Klauber (eds), Université de Lubumbashi 1990–2002: société en détresse, pari sur l’avenir (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2003), pp. 1–120.

For nearly seven years (1990–97), Congolese universities operated in a closed environment. The opening up of these institutions of higher and university education in general, and the University of Lubumbashi, in particular, was designed to prevent their descent into hell. This was where the formula of cooperation and partnership between the University of Lubumbashi with foreign universities, especially Belgian universities (both French and Dutch speaking), came into play. This cooperation and partnership helped to begin the tentative opening up of the University from 1998 onwards. It should be noted here that funding and equipment provided by this cooperation and partnership with Belgian universities generally concerned the whole of the University of Lubumbashi. This cooperation and partnership were beneficial to both parties. First, the Belgian universities and UNILU pooled their expertise. Second, the research projects that were developed responded to the concerns of both Congolese and Belgian researchers.

For example, the UNILU project to rehabilitate the Jason Sendwe hospital in Lubumbashi was supported by the Belgian universities, which enabled Belgian medical students interested in tropical diseases to carry out their internships there. Another case is that of the tripartite partnership between UNILU, the University of Liège and South Africa’s University of KwaZulu-Natal, whose project was designed in Lubumbashi by representatives of these three institutions. This research partnership focuses on the transformation of urban space and the integration of different social groups, the transformation of family and gender and civil society, social capital and capacity building, especially in the field of education. Its objectives were to maximise the use of the skills, resources and capacities of the three partners, to promote collaboration and the social and mutual commitment of universities and civil society organisations involved in community development, carrying out an annual evaluation meeting following a joint seminar.

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo in general, and in Lubumbashi in particular, the collection of life stories began in the 1970s. Bogumil Jewsiewicki initiated the collection of oral histories focusing on the colonial period.1 Here we cite some of Jewsiewicki’s work relating to the collection of oral sources: with Jocelyn Létourneau, Histoire en Partage: Usages et mises en discours du passé (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996); with V. Y. Mudimbe, History Making in Africa (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1993); with H. Moniot, Dialoguer avec le léopard? pratiques, savoirs et actes du peuple face au politique en Afrique (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1988); with H. Moniot, Mémoires, histoires, identités, special issue of Cahiers d’Études africaines, 28, 107–109 (1988); and with F. Montal, Récits de vie et mémoires: vers une anthropologie historique du souvenir (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1987). Various publications on life stories, autobiographies and religious testimonies were produced during the 1980s. It was, however, in the 1990s that the study of memories of the independence period of the Democratic Republic of the Congo intensified. The fields covered by this research are varied: the first life stories collected were brought together in a book edited by Bogumil Jewsiewicki.2 Bogumil Jewsiewicki (ed.), Naître et mourir au Zaïre: un demi-siècle d’histoire au quotidien (Paris: Karthala, 1993).

Building on these achievements, the Mémoires de Lubumbashi project was created in the year 2000. It was jointly supported by the University of Lubumbashi and the city government, and was financially supported by international cooperation. The project is led by an international multidisciplinary team composed of historians, archaeologists, sociologists and anthropologists from various academic and research institutions. This project aims to unearth obscure or little-known aspects of everyday urban life, with a view to reconstructing a plural rather than singular understanding of the past past and leading to a comprehensive knowledge of the city. It is from the population that the project gathers individual or collective memories. It thereby seeks to bring the story of the city’s inhabitants closer to the inhabitants themselves, giving them the opportunity to know and take ownership of the history of their urban milieu. The project enables the urban population of Lubumbashi to discover the city’s cultural heritage and to ask themselves a fundamental question, namely, what cultural heritage do they intend to bequeath to posterity and which characterised their past?

As a result of this approach, the urban memories archived and recorded cover all areas of urban daily life. They concern the world of workers, as well as economic, political, social, cultural and religious actors. They are concerned with the spaces occupied by men, women and children, and with diverse institutions and social spaces, such as schools, clinics, maternity wards or markets. They also concern relationships between the different socio-professional strata, for example between employers and workers, or between different communities.

The resultant collections of life stories is a rich, even invaluable source of information for social scientists. In the field of history, Léon Verbeek notes that life stories ‘provide an explanation of certain facts and behaviours that written history does not provide’.3 Léon Verbeek, ‘Histoire et littérature orale’, Cahiers de littérature orale, 45 (1999), p. 167. It should be remembered that the use of oral and pictorial sources enables the historian to associate the population itself with the reconstruction of the past, as both an agent and a holder of the cultural heritage of the past. This approach, already in place at UNILU in the 1970s, was intensified during the 1990s, and this was even more the case following the creation of the ‘Memories of Lubumbashi’ project in 2000.

The use of oral testimonies in the elaboration of the social history of workers or industrial and urban sociology allows us, among other things, to better understand their relationships in camps or urban centres and their professional relationships in the workplace; to understand their attitudes regarding the behaviour of employers towards them, and to evaluate their active part in efforts to improve their living and working conditions.4 In his work Oral Tradition as History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), Jan Vansina shows that ‘all the questions of methods which arise for urban oral history also arise for the history of rural areas’. See also Donatien Dibwe dia Mwembu, Faire de l’histoire orale dans une ville africaine: La méthode Jan Vansina appliquée à Lubumbashi (R-D Congo) (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2008), p. 11. The collection of memoirs has provided historians of Lubumbashi with an impressive number of ‘aides memoires’, a variety of media that serve to convey urban oral history. These include photographs, plays performed in popular theatres, popular paintings, popular songs, life stories themselves, as well as the various items kept in homes and representing the heritage of the past.

The study of popular theatre, for example, has significantly contributed to the reconstruction of Lubumbashi’s past. It is a form of mass entertainment, produced in vernacular languages, by actors generally without any professional training. It is therefore a popular product, widely available to the public. It speaks of everyday life, of the problems of the moment in reference to those of the past within society or the family.5 Maëline Le Lay, La parole construit le pays: théâtre, langues et didactisme au Katanga (Paris: Editions Honoré Champion, 2014): the author deals with popular theatre in Katanga, and the Mufwankolo Group is among the six cases studied; Donatien Dibwe dia Mwembu, ‘Le rire, thérapie ultime: le théâtre populaire de Mufwankolo’ in Danielle de Lame and Donatien Dibwe dia Mwembu (eds), Tout passe: instantanés populaires et traces du passé à Lubumbashi (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2005), p. 279–300; Schicho Walter, Le Groupe Mufwankolo (Vienna: Afro-Pub, 1981). Popular theatre likewise reflects the political, economic, social, cultural and intellectual situation of the country or city and provokes public reflection through its performance. It scrutinises the population’s behaviour and in doing so, criticises, informs, trains and moralises. It enables anyone to follow, step by step, the vicissitudes of a society: its past, present and aspirations, its hopes and its fears. It revives and glorifies the past at the same time as it offers an undaunted criticism of the modern mentality. Private life becomes a spectacle and everyone finds themselves in the satirical presentation of everyday life. Performances culminate with a clear ethical message.

This popular theatre is of the same order as popular painting, also known as naïve painting, which is equally the work of untrained painters. Popular painting, as an illustration of the memory of a society at a given moment in its past, provides historians with the feelings, perceptions and representations of the population and makes it possible to analyse these variables. Experience has shown us that as much as there are artists and painters who turn their attention to a given theme of daily life, there are as many memories as well. However, some events in the past leave deeper mark on the collective memory than others, such as instances of punishment of the whip, illustrated in paintings of the ‘Belgian colony’; the independence speech of Lumumba which provoked a mood of disbelief and anger among the Belgian colonists; or the Katangese secession.6 Donatien Dibwe dia Mwembu, ‘La peine du fouet au Congo Belge (1885–1960)’, Les Cahiers de Tunisie, 36 (1986), pp. 127–53, pp. 135–6; Jewsiewicki (ed.), A Congo Chronicle; Donatien Dibwe dia Mwembu, Marcel Ngandu Mutombo, Vivre ensemble au Katanga (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2005). It is also important to mention the Kalindula orchestras, led by unemployed young people. They use rudimentary musical equipment, a banjo and a drum. Their songs are often social satires. The themes most often discussed are the behaviour of the urban population in the face of death (mourning), the depravity of mores due to precarious living conditions, and the abdication of parents from their responsibilities in the family.

These different popular art forms, that is to say popular painting, popular songs and popular theatre, thus contribute to expressing the collective memory of the population. They deal with the social, cultural, economic and political situation. Popular art therefore constitutes another interpretation of historical facts by non-academic actors, popular ‘historians’. It equally provides raw material for academic researchers, a medium for history. The historian uses it in the elaboration of the history that s/he wishes to be more global, more intelligible, alive and richer. As stated, it is this participation of others in the rewriting of history that makes the historian a co-creator of the past.

The Observatory of Urban Change and the Mémoires de Lubumbashi project constitute spaces for the promotion of urban culture that have breathed new life into academic research in general and historical research in particular. They bring humanities researchers – especially historians – into contact with the population, who hold the cultural heritage of the past. While OCU provides researchers with an empirical database, resulting from its field surveys, the Mémoires de Lubumbashi project provides them with collective and/or individual ‘aides memoires’ (life stories, photographs, popular art, etc.) which they can utilise to reconstruct the past. Here, history and memory (collective and individual) are brought to the meeting point of research and are invited to walk together. The history of DR Congo is as problematic in its reconstruction as in its interpretation. History and memory help each other. History can be reconstructed through memory, among other things, and memory can be better interpreted and contextualised through history.7 Donatien Dibwe dia Mwembu, ‘History and Memory’ in John Edward Philips (ed.), Writing African History (Rochester NY: University of Rochester Press, 2005), pp. 439–64.

During the colonial period, from 1956 until 1960 there was no History Department at the University of the Belgian Congo and Ruanda-Urundi, despite the doctoral thesis defended at that institution in 1959. Nationalist history began in 1960, the year of African independence. African historians then sought their cultural identity, to decolonise and de-alienate history and in short, as Achufusi so aptly put it, to ‘give a truthful image of history, an image necessary for the historical awareness of the masses in their struggle for national, political, economic, social and cultural independence’.1 M. Achufusi, quoted by Pierre Salmon in Gabriel Thoveron (ed.), Mélanges Pierre Salmon, Tome I: Méthodologie et politique africaine (Brussels: Institut de Sociologie de l’Université de Bruxelles, 1993), p. 19.

Shortly after the Congo gained its independence in 1960, the province of Katanga seceded with the support of Belgium. The Official University of the Congo (UOC) was converted into the State University in Elisabethville. However, there was a lack of academic output in history associated with this political event. The first candidatures in history were only inaugurated in 1962–1963 at the Faculty of Letters, at a time when the independent state of Katanga was mainly concerned with the training of indigenous technicians for the development of its various mining, industrial and commercial enterprises. When, in 1963, the Katangese secession came to an end, the reintegration of the province of Katanga into the Democratic Republic of the Congo was marked by the university’s return to the identity of the Official University of the Congo

In 1971, the decision by the Mobutu regime to merge the three universities into UNAZA was intended to fulfil the MPR objectives of training responsible Zairian intellectuals to be at the forefront of the authentic Zairian revolution, bearers of a new mentality, free from colonial culture and constantly nourished by African culture. The history departments of the three universities (Lovanium University of Kinshasa, Free University of Kisangani and UOC) were merged into one department within the Faculty of Letters in Lubumbashi. The Africanist character of the Department of History was strengthened through changes to the historical curriculum and by an increase in the number and the volume of courses on Zaïre (Congo) and Africa. The Department of History then initiated the Zairianisation of the research and academic staff.

Academic output in history, which began in the 1970s, generally dealt with the precolonial period (to rehabilitate African history) and more with the colonial period, apparently in view of the availability of archival documents and the fact that knowledge of the past period is necessary in order to claim to solve current problems. The postcolonial period constitutes almost virgin ground to be cleared. One of the pitfalls of this nationalist history is that of a chauvinistic re-reading of the past, of the easy simplification of certain political and social facts of the colonial period, as Bogumil Jewsiewicki notes: ‘Any conflict is readily reduced to fundamental and schematic opposition: colonised-coloniser, while the existence of social conflicts between the colonised themselves as well as between the colonisers is too easily forgotten.’2 Bogumil Jewsiewicki, ‘Contestation Sociale au Zaïre (ex-Congo Belge): Grève administrative de 1920’, Africa-Tervuren, 22, 2/3 (1976), pp. 57–67, p. 57.

In 1981, the Mobutu regime returned to university autonomy. However, Congolese universities in general, and that of Lubumbashi in particular, experienced lean years because of the deteriorating political, economic and social situation of the country and the province of Katanga. Congolese universities were no longer considered among the priorities of the Mobutu regime. Deprived of public support, they could only implement the policy their means allowed. The descent into hell was inevitable. The centres’ research projects were locked away in drawers for lack of funding, and collective research gave way to individual research, generally carried out on external commission, conducted piecemeal and in an unplanned manner, because it was commissioned by various foreign bodies that had no concern for local needs but wanted to satisfy their individual and different needs. The result, generally speaking, as Kakoma Sakatolo Zambeze noted, was a mismatch between the needs of society and teaching and research as practised at the University of Lubumbashi3 Sakatolo Zambeze, L’Académie Congolaise, pp. 4–5..

The decade from 1990 to 2000 was marked by the bloody incidents that took place on the Lubumbashi campus, as well as the looting and destruction of the economic fabric of Katanga’s cities and the wider political, military and ethnic conflict of the period. This situation severely disrupted the functioning of the University of Lubumbashi in the core areas of teaching and research. However, the advent of international academic cooperation provided a breath of fresh air for the university. The creation of the OCU research centre and the setting up of the Mémoires of Lubumbashi project were the two mainstays of historical research output in Katanga. Not only did these two centres allow history researchers to come into contact with the population, the holders of the cultural heritage of the past, but also, and above all, gave historians the opportunity to access oral sources, to fill in the gaps in written history and to reconstruct a global, living and far richer urban history. The historian has become the co-recreator of the past.