After tumultuous first years of independence, Congo experienced a period of relative political stability under the authoritarian rule of Mobutu Sese Seko (1965-1997). Along with renaming the country Zaire in 1971, the regime enforced the all-encompassing policy of authenticité, a cultural revolution merging rhetorical celebration of “Africanness” with a strong personality cult. This paper revisits how this ideological shift impacted the production and transmission of history in universities, particularly on the campus of Lubumbashi, Zaire's sole social sciences department between 1971 and 1981. Home of a vibrant community of Zairian and foreign scholars, Lubumbashi was intellectual laboratory in the 1970s, where new approaches of oral enquiries and innovative research on popular cultures were conducted. As Zaire's main place of formation of its future administrative and political elite, the university also institutionalised the indoctrination and surveillance of potentially restive and politicized students. From the mid-1970s onwards, as Mobutu's regime failed to deliver on its promises of prosperity, the study and production of historical knowledge became less critical, and increasingly took the form of displays of allegiance to the regime and the president, in line with the party-state’s vision of authenticité.
Based on archival research and oral interviews, this work in progress aims to entangle the intellectual and socio-political of history of knowledge production in and on Zaire. In the current context of increasingly vocal calls to "decolonize the curriculum", this paper intends to historicize previous attempts at reshaping higher education in humanities to break free of the imperial heritage.