• 1 Interview with Cyril Mukelenge (73 years old), Idiofa, 23 December 2013. This article is largely b (...)

It was the [1^st of October 1968]. [...] I turned on my small radio that had survived the rebellion. [...] I heard that Pierre Mulele was now in Kinshasa. [...] The journalist said that an agreement concluding his extradition was signed between the Government of Brazzaville and that of Kinshasa. [...] After listening to this news, I got worried. But not too much because I had faith in our president.
[…] On the [10^th of October 1968], I switched on my radio once again. After a few songs, the journalist went on to say that Pierre Mulele had died. He was put on trial by the military court and found guilty and then killed. […] The journalist added that now people can rejoice. Because their enemy was definitely defeated. He ended by saying that the page was turned. […] Everyone should forget about everything.
[…] Seized with emotion, I burst into tears. […] I had completely forgotten that it was forbidden to talk about Mulele, or about events in relation to his name. […] I got into my house. I scratched my head. I could not believe that Mulele was killed. […] It was just impossible to believe, knowing who this man was. […] It pained me to hear that. Mulele was someone who lived among us. After hearing this, how could I not be worried?
[…] I had not spent thirty minutes inside the house when I heard someone knocking on my door: “Bastard! Come out of the house. Today, we are going to crush your head.” I came out of my house only to find that seven plain-clothed armed men had invaded my yard. […] One of them raised his voice and said: “Bastard! You have not learned anything! Are you a stranger to this region? You know very well that it is forbidden to talk or think about this monster. But now you allow yourself the luxury of resuscitating him. Today, you are going to see what we will do to you.” Even before this man finished talking to me, another raised his bayonet and stabbed me, here, on the chest. I moved a little bit. The bayonet scratched me here. You can see the scar. I begged them, but none of them would listen to me. […] I cried out: “Please, I have had nothing to do with this man.” They said to me: “Shut up, idiot! You think you are above the law. Today, we are going to correct you.” […] They began to beat me up. My mouth swelled up. You could not even see my face. I became unrecognizable. […] They grabbed me. They threw me in their vehicle. They took me to Kikwit and put me in jail.1

• 2 Pierre Mulele was one of the founders of the Parti Solidaire Africain (PSA) in 1959 and former Min (...)

1With these lengthy words, Cyril Mukelenge, a former rebel from Idiofa whom I met in December 2013, recalled his experiences in the late 1960s. Painful by nature, these words referred to the Mobutu regime’s approach to managing the memory of the Mulele rebellion—a guerrilla war led by Pierre Mulele and his companions in the Kwilu region (and beyond) between 1963 and 1968.2 It is this politics, which I call “the politics of forgetting,” that constitutes the subject of this article.

• 3 Evidence from the Archives Conseil National includes: J. Mbadu, “Lettre: Arrestation Commandant re (...)
• 4 Note the title of the book by Ndom Nda Ombel (1984), Pierre Mulele assassiné, la révolution étrang (...)
• 5 Maquis is the French term for a territory where armed resistance gathers.

5From 1964 to 1968, the Congolese government attempted to pacify the Kwilu region (crisp 1967: 125-134). It was during this period that people came out of the bush. During this time, many of the rebel leaders were arrested, and most were subsequently killed by the Mobutu regime.3 These arrests and killings essentially quashed the rebellion.4 They marked the end of an event defined in time as that historical moment which had begun in July 1963 when Pierre Mulele reached the Kwilu region to set up his maquis.5

• 6 Interviews with Frade Zunga Zunga (56 years old), Kinshasa, 29 September 2013 and with Agnès Lakun (...)
• 7 Interviews with Odette Zunga Zunga (66 years old), Kinshasa, 29 September 2013; with Palmie Andian (...)
• 8 Anonymous, “Procès-verbal de la réunion du Conseil de secteur Lozo tenue en date du 4 septembre 19 (...)

6Nonetheless, even if the arrests and killings marked the official end of the rebellion, the problems it had caused for the ruling regime had not been solved. The first years after people returned from the bush were dramatic. The controversy sparked by the rebellion rebounded dramatically. Those who had been affected and even threatened by the rebellion demanded that effective and fair trials should be held.6 People bitterly demanded revenge for their suffering, to the point of re-fracturing social cohesiveness.7 The re-opening of courts at the level of local community acted as a catalyst in this situation. The heads of sectors called on those living in their jurisdictions to lodge complaints. These could vary from dealing with mere annoyances to reporting egregious offenses. In September 1965, the chief of Lozo sector vigorously defended this decision: “Everyone must lodge their complaint with the court as was done before [the rebellion]. […] In every country where the courts do not work, the population is not at peace. Things must work normally [as they used to].”8 Encouraged by this decision, people and cases flooded the courts. On 30 April 1966, for example, a man reported the theft of stolen goods:

• 13 F. Kindela and Ph. Makulu, “Lettre: Perception taxe pour caisse Mulele,” Kobo, 16 avril 1966, reel (...)
• 14 Ibid.

9During the days that followed, the situation became increasingly confusing. Everyday life came to be regulated by an economy of vengeance. The rebels could no longer live in peace in the sectors: they were being dragged in front of the courts and forced to pay tax for the Mulele caisse [the Mulele fund]. This was to compensate for what they had stolen during the rebellion. In early 1966, for example, the authorities of the Kobo sector forced Vendo, a man from Kikhandji, to pay 10,000 francs for the Mulele caisse.13 At the same time, Edouard Kita from Kikanda village paid 5,000 francs to the same authorities.14

• 15 Secrétaire provincial du Kwilu, “Reprise des fonctions du chef de secteur Banga,” Kikwit, 1 févrie (...)
• 16 Laurent Luyolo, “Lettre: transmission rapport administratif de Mr Kalunga Philippe sur ses activit (...)
• 17 Interview with Delphin Mafuta (75 years old), Kikwit, 22 October 2013.
• 18 Weiss (1967), published by Princeton University Press is entitled, Political Protest in the Congo: (...)

10Even within the administration, tensions ran high. Most of the administrative officers adopted extremist positions against the rebels. They wanted to avenge what they called “wounded conscience” (“conscience blessée”).15 The main reason for them to act in such a way was that they had been the rebels’ primary target during the rebellion. The rebels had strongly believed that the administrative officers embodied the power of the Congolese state. They killed many officers and humiliated many others, weakened the officials’ authority and replaced it with their own hegemony. This had considerable impact on the decisions taken by the administrative officers at the end of the rebellion. Many applications submitted by former rebels for their re-insertion into the administration were dismissed.16 The situation became extremely chaotic.17 Herbert Weiss, an American political scientist who later wrote a book on political protest in the Congo,18 said the following about his visit to the region in 1966:

• 20 Laurent Luyolo, “Lettre: transmission rapport administratif de Mr Kalunga Philippe sur ses activit (...)
• 21 B. H., “Lettre,” Gungu, 6 septembre 1965, reel 11, box 8, folder 2, file D, doc. G65/23A, ACN. See (...)
• 22 Interviews with Théophane Kambembo (57 years old), Idiofa, 18 November 2013 and with Bastin Bembo (...)

11Added to this state of confusion was the hostility felt by the population for the rebels. In many areas, communities judged rebel activities with extreme severity. They demanded social re-organizations. They asked that all those who had instilled fear and terror during the rebellion be excluded and forced many rebels to move away.20 Those who failed to move were subjected to reprisals.21 They were accused by the militaires who were still in the region.22 In the following extract, the receiver of revenue of the Lozo sector referred to this climate of hostility in a letter of 6 May 1966 about the Cercle Kilembe hearing:

• 24 Constant Ndom, “Commentaires Ndom-Weiss sur les documents Kwilu-administration,” Bruxelles, Summer (...)
• 25 Herbert Weiss, “Commentaires Ndom-Weiss sur les documents Kwilu-administration,” Bruxelles, Summer (...)
• 26 Interview with Delphin Mafuta (75 years old), Kikwit, 22 October 2013.
• 27 Anonymous, “Remarques sur le rapport d’inspection administrative de Gungu du 24 mars au 16 avril 1 (...)

12To deal with this situation, the Congolese authorities introduced new measures between 1966 and 1970.24 First, they decided to treat everyone as “victim” of the rebellion, regardless whether they had been rebels or civilians (Monnier 1967: 331). Mulele alone would be made to carry the responsibility for all the crimes committed during the rebellion.25 Those who were captured by the peacekeeping mission were issued certificates stating that they were survivors of war.26 This measure allowed many rebels to be re-integrated into the administration.27

• 28 In 1966, Congolese authorities created Bandundu province and Kwilu became one of its districts.

13The second measure taken by the authorities consisted in the suspension of all prosecutions for stolen property during the rebellion. The Provincial Secretary, following the Council of Ministers of the Bandundu province28 held in August 1969, instructed his administration as follows:

• 30 Anonymous, “Allocution prononcée par Monsieur l’Administrateur de territoire de Gungu à l’occasion (...)
• 31 Interview with Daniel Palambwa (83 years old), Kinshasa, 23 September 2013. See also Anonymous, “L (...)
• 32 “You lost your goods and family members during the rebellion, but you cannot claim them anymore.” (...)
• 33 Anonymous, “Allocution prononcée par Monsieur l’Administrateur de territoire de Gungu à l’occasion (...)
• 34 Ibid.
• 35 Ibid.
• 36 Ibid.

14The final measure was to call upon the population to live in peace and harmony.30 The words “forgiveness” and “reconciliation” became common in official speeches as this was the official launch of the regime’s policy on dealing with the past.31 The authorities wanted to make the rebellion a place of loss, but a loss that should not necessarily lead to the claiming of debt.32 Strong emphasis was placed on forgetting the past.33 Everyone should transcend the rebellion and the problems it caused.34 People could rejoice that the “lost children” had been “retrieved.”35 The region was liberated and all could now enjoy their freedom.36 A speech made by the administrator of Gungu during the release of prisoners in 1970 demonstrates the scope of this measure:

• 38 Interviews with Philémon Lozo (74 years old), Gungu, 12 January 2014; with Elie Kakesa (79 years o (...)
• 39 Anonymous, “Allocution prononcée par Monsieur l’Administrateur de territoire de Gungu à l’occasion (...)

15“Concord,” “peace,” “harmony,” and “freedom” are the words that most capture the imagination of the people who gathered at the ceremony.38 The restitution of property looted during the rebellion was indeed suspended. Those who came out of the bush truly benefitted from the fact that the status of being a victim was conferred to everyone. But the promise to enjoy the freedom achieved “at the cost of a thousand sacrifices”39 remained, for most of those who returned from the bush, a utopian project. The authorities distinguished themselves by their inability to maintain a balance between theory and praxis. Their attitude towards those who came out of the bush was completely ambiguous. Zénon Mibamba, former companion of Pierre Mulele and sent from one prison to another between 1968 and 1972, is one of those who suffered from these ambiguities. In an interview he said:

• 41 B. M. Kambamba, “Lettre: Rapport fanatique de la population,” Gungu, 14 avril 1966, reel 11, box 8 (...)
• 42 Interview with Ernest Kiangu (59 years old), Kinshasa, 23 March 2015. See also B.M. Kambamba, “Let (...)
• 43 B. M. Kambamba, “Lettre: Rapport fanatique de la population,” Gungu, 14 avril 1966, reel 11, box 8 (...)
• 44 B. M. Kambamba, “Lettre: Rapport fanatique de la population,” Gungu, 14 avril 1966, reel 11, box 8 (...)
• 45 N. M. interviewed by Kibari Nsanga in the late 1980s, private collection, Kibari Nsanga, Kikwit. S (...)

16These ambiguities were in compliance with the general policies of the Mobutu regime. It should be said that the main concern of local authorities at the time was the implementation of the regime’s overall vision: “People and colleagues,” wrote the administrator of Gungu to his regionals and heads of sectors in April 1966, “we all must now follow the policies and dictums of the current government. […] Please go and immediately execute this instruction.”41 As stated in the literature, Mobutu suspended the activities of political parties after his coup d’État in November 1965 (Monnier 1967: 305, 311). He set up a single-party regime that abolished people’s freedoms (Ndaywel è Nziem 1998: 665-772). He sought the collaboration of members of his administration to consolidate and stabilize his regime,42 instructing them to watch over all forms of political and social conflict,43 and recommended that they oppose all forms of political propaganda that criticised his regime.44 Yet, to a large extent, the rebellion continued to play a central role in the Kwilu region. It allowed for the articulation of political propaganda contrary to that of the Mobutu regime on both individual and collective memory (Jewsiewicki 1987: 141). It is from this that the necessity arose for the regime to maintain control and surveillance over the people that returned from the bush.45

• 46 After the assassination of Mulele, some of Mulele’s children benefitted from being placed in the c (...)
• 47 Interview with Mukidi Mbongo (68 years old), Gungu, 13 January 2014.
• 48 Interviews with Prospère Mbwisi (63 years old), Kikwit Sacré Coeur, 17 October 2013 and with Zénon (...)
• 49 Interviews with Palmie Andiang (75 years old), Idiofa, 24 November 2013 and with Tony Etono (68 ye (...)

17The regime opted for a system of monitoring based on opacity. This consisted of blurring the lines between what was seen (the visible) and what was not seen (the invisible, the intention); and between what was heard or spoken and what was concealed (the secret). The regime would take care of the ex-rebels, or some of the orphans left by the most influential of them, only to put these persons under its control.46 In so doing, the regime added mental and psychological methods of population control to traditional technologies of surveillance. The authorities ensured that the ideas incarnated by the rebellion, as well as the name of the man who had created them, disappeared from people’s minds.47 The regime distinguished itself in how it managed to dispossess social actors of agency by dominating the discourse on power sharing and talking about the events of the rebellion and the suffering it had caused. Speaking on one’s own about the rebellion became an offense against the regime in everyday practice.48 The name of Mulele was banished from the public sphere. The regime officially declared a “war” against those who pronounced the name of Mulele, as well as those who remembered the events associated with this name.49 The regime set up mechanisms to fight against all mobilization of this memory. The following fragments of testimonies of those who lived during the 1960s and 1970s provide insight into how these strategies worked:

• 51 Reflecting upon the “what is a thinking thing?,” R. Descartes (1912: 89) writes: “It is a thing th (...)

18From these testimonies, we can see how the “bodies” of the “victims” were subjected to destruction by the militaires in the name of the policy of forgetting; and how, at the same time, those who were forced to witness the deployment of violence onto these “bodies” were exposed to the perpetual renewal of a stronger fear, such that their ability to think was impaired or destroyed.51 Hence, to set up a variety of strategies in order to control people and force them to forget images they had formed during the rebellion is to do violence to these people. By imposing a regime of suffering over these people, the victims were deprived of their fundamental freedom to have and to hold their own memories. Thus, peoples’ minds were forced to navigate between “wanting not to know” and “wanting not to tell” their experience(s) of the past (Ricœur 2000: 580). As the interviewees put it in these testimonies:

• 54 See Etono’s testimonies above.
• 55 See Arendt (1951), Bell (2006), Caruth (1995, 1996), Castaignos-Leblond (2001), Connerton (2011), (...)

19The result of navigating between “wanting not to know” and “wanting not to tell,” as the above testimonies show, equated unequivocally to the repression of one’s memory within oneself. People were doomed to fall back on themselves as disintegrate as fragmented “bodies,” and live piecemeal between the corporeal world, the body, and the incorporeal world, the world of memory. Because they were not allowed to share these memories, their lives became fragmented and they themselves became fragmented, incomplete, and disembodied people. In the real world, as Etono’s words above demonstrate, they would live in fear. While seeking refuge in the incorporeal world, they would feel or know they were being observed by the state.54 Under such conditions of permanent fear, the incorporeal world itself became a space of organized repression, a site of the impossibility of all possibilities. This is what Etono refers to as the “impossibility of thinking,” reminding us of the work of trauma.55

• 57 On this topic, see Ricœur (2000).

21Despite these remarks on the impossibility of an absolute forgetting,57 the authorities did not lose their commitment to fight against the memory of the rebellion. People continued to be sent to jail. The shadows of these people were constantly monitored under the effects of the “panopticon” (Deleuze 1986: 40; Foucault 1975: 197). Through this all-reaching control and surveillance of society, the authorities sought to create a new “anatomy of power” to define their relationship to those onto whom they sought to impose forgetting. As this man explains in this testimony:

• 59 Interviews with Mukidi Mbongo (68 years old), Gungu, 13 January 2014 and with Cyril Mukelenge (73 (...)
• 60 Interview with Mukidi Mbongo (68 years old), Gungu, 13 January 2014.
• 61 Telephone conversation with Ernest Kiangu (60 years old), Johannesburg-Kinshasa, 28 January 2016.
• 62 Interview with Mukidi Mbongo (68 years old), Gungu, 13 January 2014. Mobutu constructed his person (...)

22In some prisons, portraits and effigies of the president were distributed to prisoners as a way of maintaining control over them. After liberation, the ex-prisoners were forced to put these portraits in their private homes, just as they would have been displayed in public and official spaces.59 To avoid any attempt of re-embracing Mulele’s ideas, they had to contemplate portraits of the president every morning.60 They were made to acknowledge that the president’s power was based on the notion of exclusivity and concentration of sovereignty.61 The idea that the president was jealous and, as such, could not tolerate any other forms of worship than those addressed to him was enforced.62 This demonstrates how the regime, over and above controlling physical bodies, sought to gain control over people’s imaginations, making them strongly believe in the actual existence of the forms of bodily power “dis-embodied” in official photograph and portraits.

• 63 Interview with Mukidi Mbongo (68 years old), Gungu, 13 January 2014. On the magical powers of the (...)
• 64 In Cameroon, Paul Biya proceeded in the same way (Mbembe 2001: 153).

23Symbolically, rapprochement through the portraits of the president indicated the regime’s presence among its detractors. The image of the president exercised a personalized form of surveillance over his opponents, and the president’s “magical power” enhanced the exercise of tight control over them.63 Above all, the president’s rapprochement through portraits was an indication of both the abolition and maintenance of distance.64 While the body of the president was actually far away in Léopoldville-Kinshasa, at the same time, he was also physically present through his representation in people’s houses as “tangible, palpable, and visible” material (Mbembe 2001: 153). A former militaire of the 1960s strongly confirmed in an interview that it was their responsibility to maintain this rapprochement with the president.

• 66 Interview with Anonymous (70 years old), Idiofa, 22 December 2013.

24This is how, in the name of a politics of forgetting, people’s imaginations became the subject of control in addition to their physical bodies. The authorities were convinced that the distribution of portraits of the president should have an effect on the imagination of those on whom they sought to impose forgetting. But, they were also aware that the mere distribution of the portraits was not enough to bring the figure of the president to the core of his detractors’ lives. Thus, they resolved to maintain a dose of coercion on the people, to whom they promised protection and freedom, to get them to comply.66

• 67 Interviews with Mukidi Mbongo (68 years old), Gungu, 13 January 2014 and with Cyril Mukelenge (73 (...)
• 68 See Etono’s testimony above.
• 69 This “all-powerful warrior” or “leaving fire in his wake” is the meaning of Mobutu’s full name, Se (...)
• 70 Interviews with Mukidi Mbongo (68 years old), Gungu, 13 January 2014 and with Cyril Mukelenge (73 (...)

25The principle was, therefore, to infiltrate information officers among former prisoners, to ensure that the latter had kept the portraits of the president on their walls.67 The implication was that there was virtually no limit to what the president could do. He could tear their flesh and organs apart and break their bones. He could drink their blood and, in so doing, demonstrate the locus of his excessive power and brutality.68 It was known that he was “the all-powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, goes from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake.”69 Strong emphasis was put on the fact that he was an absolute subjectivity, “god” (Stannard 2006: 42-43). As such, he could surround everyone and have dealings with them; especially because they had not managed to replace him with Mulele.70 All of this contributed to people permanently living in fear, as this man remembers:

• 72 Abbé Adolphe Lakwan was a priest of the Diocese of Idiofa. He was arrested and killed in 1965 by t (...)

26This is the point to which the obsession with controlling people and forcing them to forget their past experiences led. The regime even targeted those who criticised the rebellion in art. It confiscated these artworks in the name of the politics of forgetting. The artists were told to stop bringing the “pervasive” name of Mulele to the surface. Justin Kaziama is one of those people who experienced the arbitrariness of the regime, for defying the president’s authority. In 1971, he brought to life a substantial critique of the Mulele rebellion through his play La mort de l’abbé Lankwan.72 It led not only to the arrest of all of the actors, but also to their intensified surveillance.

• 74 Interview with Balingite Osam (81 years old), Idiofa, 24 November 2013.
• 75 Interview with Bastin Bembo (66 years old), Idiofa, 16 December 2013.
• 76 Interview with Cyril Mukelenge (73 years old), Idiofa, 23 December 2013.
• 77 Ibid.
• 78 Interview with Balingite Osam (81 years old), Idiofa, 24 November 2013. See also Martens (1985) an (...)

28The regime’s ambiguities analysed above, and the suffering that these ambiguities caused, led many people to become suspicious of the regime. If it was true that Mobutu had killed the man who had threatened his regime, why did he continue to mistreat them?74 Why was the government working so hard to deprive them of their freedom to think, if the man who constituted the threat was dead?75 Why did the government keep doing this?76 Why did it not allow them to live in peace? Why did they continue to have to subject themselves to this regime?77 These are some of the questions that people affected by this regime began to ask themselves in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The treatment of Mulele’s body after his death, as well as the absence of any burial of the body, reinforced these suspicions even more.78 The testimony by Balingite Osam illustrates this:

• 82 Interview with Balingite Osam (81 years old), Idiofa, 24 November 2013.
• 83 Interview with Cyril Mukelenge (73 years old), Idiofa, 23 December 2013.
• 84 See also Kopytoff (1971) and Nsanze (2004: 420-425). The same happened for Lumumba. See Jewsiewick (...)

29These are the mysteries that surrounded Mulele’s death. Apart from the skepticism that it created among Mulele’s followers, it left many in a situation where it was impossible to mourn. Osam’s testimony seems to be, at first glance, phantasmagorical. But a close reading shows that, to a large extent, it is this impossibility of mourning that was at stake. In addition to the fact that “the contract” between the living and the dead had not been broken—which is the opposite of Filip de Boeck’s postcolonial “beyond the grave” (de Boeck & Plissart 2006: 82)—this impossibility of mourning led Mulele’s followers to keep the dead Mulele alive among them. They could revive him in their imagination, talk to him and interact with him, despite all of the regime’s prohibitions against interiorizing or exteriorizing Mulele in any form whatsoever. They could let themselves be entertained by him.82 They could bear his name in their thoughts, while being unable to locate and identify his corpse and his remains.83 They could appropriate him as an image and, as such, internalize him and incorporate him within themselves, in a form of “cannibalistic consumption” (Gaston 2006: 2).84

• 85 Interview with Emile Nkwimi (58 years old), Kwanga Carrefour, 18 October 2013.
• 86 Interview with Grégoire Engwel (71 years old), Idiofa, 16 November 2013.

30This was the psychological atmosphere that prevailed at the time. The combined elements of the harassment by the regime, the mystery surrounding Mulele’s death, the impossibility of grieving and mourning, as well as the anxious wait for Mulele’s return caused people to mobilize en masse when, in the late 1970s, a prophet by the name of Kasongo suddenly made his appearance in the region. Kasongo proclaimed to be Mulele “re-incarnated.” With this re-incarnation, the memory of the rebellion that the authorities had sought to contain resurfaced. No one could speak of anything else but this man, the “new” Mulele. No one could think of anything anymore, except only of this specter, the becoming-body, the “new” Mulele.85 Even though Kasongo had a body and attachments to the land, Mulele’s followers firmly believed that he was an absence; something not really existing.86 They were convinced that he was, to use Derrida’s words, the “living repetition” of Mulele, the “regenerating reviviscence” of his spirit (Derrida 1994: 109).

• 87 Kasongo was primarily a traditional healer. He wanted to use the name of Mulele and, in doing so, (...)
• 88 Telephone conversation with Anonymous (60 years old), Johannesburg-Kinshasa, 28 January 2016.
• 89 Telephone conversation with Anonymous (60 years old), Johannesburg-Kinshasa, 28 January 2016.
• 90 Telephone conversation with Anonymous (60 years old), Johannesburg-Kinshasa, 28 January 2016.

31Although Kasongo was primarily driven by economic interests,87 his sudden appearance was of great value to most of Mulele’s followers. It allowed them to re-imagine the physical integrity of their leader. It offered them the opportunity of fantasizing about the presence of their leader. As some of those who were part of the movement remembered, they could represent him not as an amorphous and motionless mass, but as a presence-absence, as he was now a specter.88 They could project him as something that is cast on an imaginary screen.89 They could visualize him—at the very moment when they were unhurriedly projecting themselves into the incorporeal world. At the end of this process they would gain peace, evoke their own memories as in dreams, and escape from the constraints of time and location.90

• 92 On Nganda (camp) as site of refuge, reverie, and fantasy during the Belgian colonization, see Hunt(...)
• 93 Telephone conversation with Anonymous (60 years old), Johannesburg-Kinshasa, 28 January 2016 and i (...)
• 94 Telephone conversation with Anonymous (60 years old), Johannesburg-Kinshasa, 28 January 2016.
• 95 Interview with Balingite Osam (81 years), Idiofa, 24 November 2013 and telephone conversation with (...)
• 96 Interview with Balingite Osam (81 years), Idiofa, 24 November 2013 and telephone conversation with (...)

32With all of these activities, the camp of the “new” Mulele became not only the place of production of reverie and fantasy as during the colonial era, but also the site of remembering the rebellion.92 The camp became a site par excellence for the representation of the past, where the move between the corporeal and the incorporeal world was no longer subjected to any forms of control.93 Those who attended the camp declared that they held a portion of the specter. Through a purely paradoxical incorporation, the “new” Mulele’s followers believe that the specter could confer Mulele’s powers on them. Following the completion of this process, those who received the power of the specter could leave their bodies, travel through time, stutter, or go into trance where they could talk with the specter.94 When ideas were detached from the specter, Kasongo’s followers would prepare their “bodies” to receive them.95 After receiving the ideas, their bodies were, in turn, fused and merged, to use Derrida’s words (although made in a different context), “by the very subject of the operation who, claiming the uniqueness of its own body” would then become “the absolute ghost,” “the ghost of the ghost of the specter” (Derrida 1994: 127). At the end of such an operation, the ghost who had become “the ghost of the ghost of the specter” (ibid.) engendered several other ghosts, the small ghosts. These, in turn, would also generate other ghosts, through the spread of the ideas of the previous ghost, the “original” specter, the becoming-body, the “new” Mulele.96

• 97 Interview with Ignace Kapitene (72 years old), Idiofa, 20 December 2013. He was the head of Cité d (...)

33The echoes of this movement were quick to reach the political sphere. The authorities were very confused. Most of them could not make sense of what was going on.97 They did not understand, not because they were ignorant but “because this non-object, this non-present present, this being-there of an absent or departed one, no longer” belonged “to knowledge” (Derrida 1994: 6). They did not understand whether it was living or dead. Even though they did not speak of Kasongo as Mulele directly, they were confused whether it might not be Mulele after all. In their anxiety and their obsession with dismembering collective memories, they decided to conjure away the “new” Mulele, this “presence-absence,” the becoming-body, the man who brought back to the surface not only the name of their enemy, but also the popular ideology of resistance (Jewsiewicki 1987: 135).

• 98 Interviews with Anonymous (71 years old), Idiofa, 21 December 2013 and with Mbo Way (57 years old) (...)
• 99 Interview with Anonymous (71 years old), Idiofa, 21 December 2013.
• 100 Interview with Emile Nkwimi (58 years old), Kwanga Carrefour, 18 October 2013.
• 101 Interviews with Bastin Bembo (60 years old), Idiofa, 16 December 2013 and with Grégoire Engwel (71 (...)

34In January 1978, Mobutu sent the Red Berets from camp Tshatshi (Kinshasa) to occupy the whole territory of Idiofa.98 The decision was kill Kasongo, he who condensed himself into people’s lives and overtook their personal identities. Before making use of the violence of death, the militaires began their procedures by hunting. They hunted the ghost, as well as those who belonged to his lineage, like animals. To effectively combat the “new” Mulele, civil authorities of the region were forcibly militarized. The intelligence services were mobilized.99 Youths of the Mouvement Populaire de la Revolution (mpr), the sole legal political party presided over by Mobutu, were mobilized and enscripted, alongside the brigadiers of the sectors. They had to assist the militaires in their efforts of putting people to death.100 All Idiofa villages, and some villages of Gungu, were invaded by the militaires. Several people were arrested, but most of them were killed in the name of both the politics of forgetting and the powerful bureaucratic tradition of fear of resistance that the regime had towards the population.101 One of the intelligence agents who participated in this operation remembers:

• 103 Interviews with Isidore Ngyum (73 years old), Idiofa, 21 December 2013 and with Grégoire Engwel (7 (...)
• 104 15 people according to the president of Mulele Foundation (Anonymous, “Commémoration du 35ème anni (...)
• 105 Interview with Paul Muyenzi (64 years old), Kikwit, 16 October 2013.
• 106 Interviews with Mundele (57 years old), Idiofa, 16 November 2013; with Paul Muyenzi (64 years old) (...)
• 107 Interview with Innocent Yamb (56 years old), Kinshasa, 29 September 2013.

35If the death given to most of the little ghosts was private—that is, mostly administered in the bush and not witnessed by the other villagers—the death of the “new” Mulele took on public qualities. Because Kasongo had made an attempt to raise the name of Mulele to the surface, the militaires declared absolute ownership over his body and the right to end his life.103 Together with fourteen of his disciples, Kasongo was hanged in Mayunga stadium in Idiofa.104 Unlike the secretive characteristic of the assassination of the “old” Mulele, the militaires decided to make Kasongo’s execution a “highly visible act.”105 They requested a huge crowd to witness how his body and those of his followers were “invested by power”106: the crowd was meant to realize that, as in the time of the rebellion, the power of the state in Congo-Zaire was primarily based in an economy of death. The bodies of Kasongo and his followers were smashed with extraordinary power. The militaires intended to ensure that, in the future, they would no longer come back107 because, as Derrida reminds us, “the specter is” first and foremost “the future. […] [I]t presents itself […] as that which could come or come back” again “in the future” (Derrida 1994: 39). They assured the crowd of the impossibility of any further return of the specter, either publicly or in secret. They forced the same crowd to witness this certainty, as these two men remember:

• 111 Interview with Mukidi Mbongo (68 years old), Gungu, 13 January 2014.
• 112 Interview with Mukidi Mbongo (68 years old), Gungu, 13 January 2014. In Kinshasa, those who defied (...)

36Following the killing of the “ghost of the ghost” and the multitude of small ghosts he had brought to life, Idiofa was declared a red zone of high political and social conflict for the rest of Mobutu’s reign. Together with Gungu, its inhabitants were subject to maneuvers by the military operations Nguma i and ii in the 1980s.111 People from the area continued to be arrested and tortured as a result of these military activities.112 This is the situation which the politics of forgetting put people into during the 1970s and 1980s.

• 113 Interview with Zénon Mibamba (77 years old), Kinshasa, 17 September 2013.
• 114 Interview with Paul Lama (54 years old), 22 September 2013.
• 115 Interviews with Ernest Kiangu (59 years old), Kinshasa, 14 December 2015; with Zénon Mibamba (77 y (...)

37On 17 May 1997, the troops of the Alliance des Forces pour la Libération du Congo (afdl) entered Kinshasa (Reyntjens 2009: 102-166). With this, Mobutu and his regime fell (Ndaywel è Nziem 2010b: 604). When Laurent Désiré Kabila took power, it was the beginning of a new era in the history of Congolese nationalism, in general, and with respect to Mulelism, in particular. As with most Congolese nationalists, the Mulelists were now honoured.113 Many of them were rewarded for their “anti-Mobutu” and “anti-imperialist” efforts of the 1960s. They recovered the freedom they had been denied for years. Now they could finally talk about Mulele, remember him without fear, evoke his name in public places114 and completely liberate their memory of the rebellion.115

• 116 This was Mulele’s nephew. He was among the people that the Mobutu regime arrested on 2 October 196 (...)
• 117 Honsek, “Faustin Munene, l’héritier spirituel de Pierre Mulele,” La Solidarité, 4-7 October 1997, (...)
• 118 Ibid.
• 119 Interview with Paul Lama (54 years old), 22 September 2013.

38The presence of Faustin Munene as Minister of Interior made things easier.116 Presenting himself as Mulele’s “spiritual heir,” he devoted all his energy to re-honouring and re-inventing Mulele’s memory.117 His task was to give assistance to the forgotten dead.118 He had to exhume Mulele for a “third” life, the first and the second having been brutally stripped away by the Mobutu regime.119 In an interview in October 1997, he said:

• 121 Interview with M. Lakubu (57 years old), Kinshasa, 21 September 2013.
• 122 E. Kiekike, “Réhabilitation de la mémoire de Pierre Mulele,” La Solidarité, 4-7 October 1997, 136: (...)
• 123 Ibid.
• 124 Particularly by Ludo Martens, Pierre Mulele’s hagiographer.
• 125 Anonymous, “Programme des manifestations pour la célébration du 29^e anniversaire de la mort de l’a (...)
• 126 Kiekile, “Rehabilitation,” 3.
• 127 Especially Léonie Abo, Théophile Bula-Bula, Léon Makasa, and Nelly Labut.
• 128 Interviews with Zénon Mibamba (77 years old), Kinshasa, 17 September 2013 and with Jeannette Mulel (...)

39The Mulele Foundation, created in June 1995, served as a springboard for this project.121 One only has to read press articles published between the 2 and 4 October 1997 in Kinshasa to realize the magnitude of this project. During these three days, Kinshasa was in an uproar.122 Grandiose demonstrations were organized by the Mulele Foundation to commemorate the 29^th anniversary of Mulele’s assassination. Countless events, on an epic scale, were organized to celebrate the anniversary.123 Members of government and officials took part. Panel discussions on Mulele’s life, work, ideas, and legacy were held at the Kinshasa Zoo.124 Poems evoking the immortality of Mulele were recited.125 Mulele’s biography was sung by Langung, a folk group from Idiofa. Concerts featuring nationally acclaimed artists, such as Tabou Ley, were organized.126 Mulele’s friends and fellows stood at the podium, one after another testifying to Mulele’s life.127 There was an unprecedented effervescence.128

• 129 Interview with Paul Lama (54 years old), 22 September 2013.

40The aim of these commemorations was to expand the presence of the dead, Mulele, into the realm of the living. He had to come back, this time not to be conjured away, but to live forever and serve as a bridge between the living and the dead. He had to come back so that the forgetting “equation” imposed by the Mobutu regime could be reversed, from “remembering-forgetting” to “forgetting-remembering.” Paul Lama, one of the Mulele Foundation staff members explained it as follows: “During the Mobutu regime, we were forced to forget. But, when Laurent Kabila came into power, things changed completely. We were asked to remember Mulele.”129

• 130 Ibid.
• 131 Interview with Zénon Mibamba (77 years old), Kinshasa, 17 September 2013.

41The tradition of commemorating the anniversary of his assassination was maintained and continued over the years. The Mulele Foundation set up exhibitions to spread his memory.130 Numerous activities were organized to explain the meaning of his struggle. Congolese historians were approached by the Foundation to write “a scriptural tomb” (de Certeau 1988: 2) to Mulele. The name of Mulele began to re-capture the Congolese imagination in a new way.131 On 3 October 2001, Abdoulaye Yerodia—one of Mulele’s former companions, director of the office of president Laurent Désiré Kabila between 1997 and 1999 and Foreign Minister between 1999 and late 2000—gave a rousing speech. In his address, he raised Mulele to the level of a signifier and martyr. He invited the population to award him honours worthy of a national hero (Yerodia 2001: 4). He reiterated his loyalty to the memory of the symbol of Mulele (ibid.). He called all Congolese to proceed in the same way as him, reminding them of the form of death that Mulele had been subjected to (ibid.: 7-9).

• 132 Anonymous, “Pierre Mulele, héros et martyr d’Afrika,” Servir le Peuple, le blog des Nouveaux Parti (...)
• 133 Ibid.
• 134 Ibid.

43This great campaign of the rehabilitation of Mulele and his release from oblivion came to fruition in 2002. The governor of Kinshasa, in discussing what he called the “historical struggle” led by Mulele in the liberation struggle of the Congo, declared the death of Mulele as a sacrifice “for the safeguarding of” the Congolese state’s “independence and sovereignty.”132 Having considered the duty to immortalize Mulele in the history of the Congo, he decided, in his order of 8 February 2002, to rename Avenue de la libération after Pierre Mulele, the man who paid with his life in 1968.133 With this the governor assigned Mulele a lieu de mémoire which he had been denied for many years, in the heart of the Congolese capital. The new Avenue Pierre Mulele became both a symbol of the reconciliation with loss, the dead Mulele, and a grave for this loss. The media reported the event lively, considering the “renaming” itself as a form of revenge against the Mobutu regime.134

• 135 In 2010, General Faustin Munene attempted a coup against Joseph Kabila. Since then, the name of Mu (...)

44If these sepulchral mechanics, triggered by the new regime in 1997 and prolonged until 2010,135 contributed to re-inventing the name of Mulele in the imagination of the Congolese, it should be said that it also constituted a form of subjugation for those who suffered during the rebellion. Men and women whose bodies were marked with disruptions by the violent interventions of war have seen—and continue to see—in these practices the manifestation of a political power, both authoritarian and exclusivist; as intensively devoted as the previous regime to control the minds of its citizens. They have seen—and continue to see—in these proceedings the manifestation of a regime characterized by an unprecedented and spectacular blindness, the one that is driven by a strong desire of imposing a unique form of apprehension of the past in order to only “totalize the de-totalized totality which” (Sartre 1956: 357) it is. This is what these two people express in the following testimonies:

• 138 Interviews with Anonymous (59 years old), Kinshasa, 9 August 2015 and with Anonymous (58 years old (...)
• 139 See the speech by Yerodia (2001) above.

45But above all, the same people whose bodies were marked by disruptions have seen—and continue to see—in these decisions a “gruesome” performance of a “sadistic” behavior by the state. In their own words, this “sadistic” behavior is characterized by “tenacity.”138 As the previous regime, the new one is strongly engaged in a “for-itself” kind of relationship. It is engaged in this form of relationship to the extent of seeing itself as engaged, while intentionally ignoring the consequences of this engagement for those who suffered during the rebellion. It persists in this “for-itself” form of relationship and colonizes its subjects. It invests in their minds to the point of incarnating in them, through the violence of speech,139 the other, Mulele, the man who brought the rebellion that left them in unbearable pain and suffering.