Paul Lomami-Tshibamba (1914–1985)

I first heard about Paul Lomami Tshibamba in David van Reybrouck's Congo: The Epic History of a People, where he's referred to in passing as the ‘first giant of Congolese literature’, a title which, I have to admit, struck me as a little like being called the first giant of Congolese downhill skiing. I was curious enough to find one of his books though, and I'm pleased I did. Lomami Tshibamba came of age as a journalist at the height of Belgian colonial rule, and published a number of articles in the 1940s criticising how things were run – criticism that was damning enough to get him locked up and tortured. Eventually he opted for exile over the river in Brazzaville (in the other Congo), and didn't come back until independence in 1960.

The first generation of home-grown Congolese writers really emerged in this post-independence world, but by then Lomami Tshibamba had already been there and done it all. His first novella, Ngando, was written way back in 1948 and published immediately in Europe, where it won the inaugural prize at the Brussels Foire Coloniale. Not only that, but it's a deliberately un-European book, written not in imitation of existing French literary voices but rather under the influence of a tone and worldview that is all its own, drawing on an overtly African, Bantu understanding of metaphysics and of narrative shape.

He says in his foreword that his main concern in writing Ngando was to ‘respect, as much as possible, the purely indigenous foundation’ upon which the work is constructed. That is indeed what we see. The story could have been quite a simple one: a young boy, Musolinga, is snatched by a crocodile (ngando in Lingala) on the banks of the Congo River after playing truant from school. But according to the traditional Bantu worldview through which everything here is presented, no act is random or disinterested – everything is a result of the struggle between the forces of good and evil. The crocodile is seen as acting on behalf of a ndoki or evil sorcerer, and the boy can only be recovered through recourse to the agencies of a nganga-nkisi or benevolent witch-doctor.

What makes the book especially fascinating is that (as in, say, some of Gogol's early stories) these mythical elements are blended with naturalistic descriptions of everyday life, in this case of Congo in the 1940s. So his lavish, fantastic set-pieces about a city of water-spirits under the Congo River, or orgiastic black sabbaths, rub up against these moody depictions of colonial prisons, riveters at the dockyards, or unemployment in Kinshasa:

Habiter Kinshasa et être chômeur était deux choses incompatibles avec la sécurité. Les vieux travailleurs eux-mêmes n'étaient pas épargnés : usés, ils étaient aussi des « sans travaille » ; l'autorisation de séjour leur était retirée et on leur refoulait dans leur village d'origine qui, souvent, n'existait plus.

[To live in Kinshasa and to be unemployed were two things that were incompatible with security. Even former workers were not spared: used-up, they too became ‘out of work’; their residence permits were revoked and they were sent back to their villages of origin, which, often, no longer existed.]

Lomami Tshibamba's treatment of colonial politics and race relations is interesting to watch – he treads a careful line which allows him to be relatively palatable to the kind of committees that give out European prizes, while also getting plenty of challenging content in under the radar. As, for instance, when one of the bilima – the evil spirits of men who have drowned in the river – gives a rousing speech about how the world has changed since the arrival of white men, with their superior technology and scientific outlook:

Les hommes noirs qui, naguère, avaient peur de nous, nous vénéraient et nous faisaient des offrandes humaines, se moquent de nous aujourd'hui en nous prenant pour des biloko mpamba – choses illusoires. […] Et lorsque nous parviendrons à vaincre les Blancs, il nous sera tout à fait facile de regagner notre place dans la vénération et dans la crainte des Noirs. A partir d'aujourd'hui, c'est la guerre déclarée contre les Blancs !

[The black men who until recently feared us, venerated us and gave us human sacrifices, now mock us and take us for biloko mpamba, imaginary beings. And when we succeed in vanquishing the Whites, it will be easy to regain our place in the veneration and fears of the Blacks. From here on, war is declared against the Whites!]

Here, lip service is paid to the Europeans' superior understanding of the world, while at the same time it allows a character to openly declare war on the colonisers (the speech goes on to outline all the creative, supernatural ways in which they will be attacked and destroyed).

In this particular volume, Ngando is followed by two other short novellas, set among different Congolese tribes and expanding on some of the themes of how native cultures clash with each other and with European culture in interesting and often damaging ways. All three stories are well worth reading, full of interesting ideas and striking images; none of them, as far as I can tell, has been translated into English yet, which is amazing really since they will clearly delight anyone with an interest in mythology, colonial studies, or ‘African’ literature (whatever that vague term means) in general.… (más)