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Zaire NATIONALIST AWAKENINGS
Congolese resistance to Belgian rule has a long
history,
traceable to the countless uprisings against the Congo
Free State
instigated by local chiefs--as among the Babua in 1903,
1904, and
1910, and the Budja in 1903 and 1905--and the mutinies of
the Force
Publique in 1895 and 1897. To these early "primary
resistance"
movements must be added the various independent African
religious
movements that flourished in the 1920s and 1930s. The
Kimbanguist
Church, founded by Simon Kimbangu in 1921, upheld a vision
of
spiritual salvation that attracted thousands of followers
among the
Bakongo and that the Belgians perceived as a threat
(see The
Kimbanguist Church
, ch. 2). Much the same kind of
messianic message
was conveyed through other indigenous African religions,
such as
the Kitawala movement, which first appeared in the urban
centers of
Katanga in the 1920s. Although immediate measures were
taken by
Belgian officials to repress activities of these groups
and to
exile their members to distant areas, there can be little
doubt
that each of these early, proto-nationalist movements
played an
important role in forcing social protest into religious
channels,
and, in the case of Kimbanguism, into a powerful
ethno-religious
framework that helped structure and legitimize the
nationalist
aspirations of subsequent generations of Bakongo
politicians.
Data as of December 1993
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