Democratic Republic of the Congo

In 1483, Portuguese traders arrived in the Kongo Kingdom, which comprised parts of the present-day Republic of Congo, Angola, Gabon, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Soon after, the region would become a vital slave trading center for the Portuguese as enslaved people were captured and then transported to Brazil and parts of the Caribbean. Most enslaved Africans from the Kongo Kingdom were shipped from ports in present-day Angola. Yet nearly two hundred thousand enslaved people also departed from Boma, a trading post along the Congo River in the Kongo Central Province of the DRC, between 1842 and 1867. In 1885, Leopold II, King of the Belgians, acquired the Congo Free State (modern-day DRC) as his private property and established a violent regime of forced labor to extract the region’s natural resources. Following international condemnation, the colony was transferred into the hands of the Belgian government in 1908, thereby becoming an official colony of Belgium known as Belgian Congo. In 1960, the Democratic Republic of the Congo became a sovereign nation; however, in the decades following independence, internal strife, authoritarianism, foreign interference, and an insatiable global demand for its natural resources have given way to severe political instability. The autocratic Mobutu Sese Seko regime from 1965 to 1997 (during which the country was renamed the Republic of Zaïre), followed by the First Congo War (1996-1997), the Second Congo War (1998-2003), and the ongoing conflicts in the eastern Kivu regions, have exposed the devastating legacies of European colonialism in this region of Africa.

Interviews conducted for The Unfinished Conversations Series speak to the overlapping histories of racial slavery and colonialism that continue to shape social, economic, and political life in the Democratic Republic of the Congo today. Interviews were conducted in Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC, as well as in Belgium, where some interviewees migrated due to political and economic hardship. Participants spoke about their early lives under Belgian colonial rule, particularly with regard to education, religion, and family structures. In addition, they recalled anti-colonial events and political activism that helped pave the way to independence in 1960. Several interviews also highlight Kimbanguism, an anticolonial and antislavery religious movement founded in Nkamba by Congolese spiritual leader and prophet Papa Simon Kimbangu in 1921. These interviews reveal how Kimbanguism still maintains strong memories and cultural connections with the ancient Kingdom of Kongo and its past interactions with the transatlantic trade and European colonialism