This paper is about the changing discourse on the political legitimacy of chiefs in Mayombe during the early decades of colonialism. Precolonial Mayombe had known ritually invested chiefs with various titles. In the 1890s, the Congo Free State authorities started seeking out which chiefs could be given an official recognition, so that the state would be able to appeal to them. This would be done legitimately, the idea was, if the selection of chiefs would be based on “indigenous custom.”
Historians and anthropologists have pointed to the arbitrary nature of colonial conceptions of “custom.” These often greatly simplified complex discourses on legitimacy, which invoked past migrations, genealogical trees and other arguments about which administrators could rarely find consensus. “Custom” also presupposed the existence of singular authorities ordered in clear hierarchies. Scholars have noted that such rigid structures often did not exist, and that leadership often “rested on the ability to play multiple roles” (Willis 2013). This should invite us to look also for parallel or overlapping discourses on legitimacy which may or may not have transformed under colonialism.
This paper looks at changing arguments about legitimate authority in and around the chieftaincy of Kangu in Mayombe. It examines statements about the declining power of the paramount MaKangu chiefs and looks at expressions about the legitimacy of the first colonial chef médaillé of Kangu. It discusses the importance of shrines, regalia and ritual charms, and of new forms of knowledge propagated by the state and the mission. It analyses acts of iconoclasm and the widespread concern with the containment of witchcraft.
This research contributes to a better understanding of the multiple and often conflicting arguments that have supported the appointment of colonial and postcolonial chiefs and the survival of the chieftaincy as a form of local governance.