History as hidden truth: imagining the Kongo past on religious websites

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the relations between the Internet, religion and ‘Kongo history’. The websites under study claim an existing ‘Kongo community’ and recurrently evoke the Kongo kingdom and historical figures like Kimpa Vita and Simon Kimbangu. Texts and images on Kongo history have long been available in print media, but through the increasing accessibility to the Internet and the consequent possibilities of online activities the distribution of these texts and images have obtained a new dynamic. The article focuses on the references to Kongo history as persuasive strategy and procedure to include or exclude groups of people as intended audience. It will be shown that on religious websites with a ‘Kongo connection’, history functions in a framework of truth versus lies, through which studying and subsequently revealing the true history of the ‘chosen’ people can lead to redemption. ‘History’ on these sites is not only important for its particular contents, it also functions in formal and stylistic ways to convince a particular audience. Through this analysis, it will be possible to connect the fashionable scholarly notion of ‘style’ to the ways in which the past is made to function in the present.

KEYWORDS:

• Kongo kingdom
• Internet & websites
• popular history
• religious movements
• Kimpa Vita
• Simon Kimbangu

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We have considered using ‘Kongo history’ parenthetically, to indicate that our concern is not so much with events and processes in the past (Kongo history without parentheses), but with the constructive processes of imagining the past. As this may, however, impair reading we have opted to leave the parentheses out, but it should be clear that our aim is not to verify or falsify the information offered.

2. Since March 2009 BDK’s political intensions are officialized by the creation of a political party: Bundu Dia Mayala, ‘those united in politics’ (Kihangu 2011, 3). Bundu dia Kongo, however, remains the most common denominator for Ne Muanda Nsemi’s organization, both religiously and politically.

3. In 2001 a schism within the Kimbanguist church occurred when Dialungala Kiangani Salomon, who had succeeded his brother Diangenda as EJCSK’s leader, deceased. Dialungala was succeeded by his son Simon Kimbangu Kiangani. The children of Diangenda and Charles Kisolokole (Simon Kimbangu’s third son), however, claimed to be entitled to the same position and created their own Kimbanguist church. EJCSK under the leadership of Simon Kimbangu Kiangani remains the ‘official’ Kimbanguist church with the majority of adepts. As Pype (2014) shows, this schism is a point of discussion on Kimbanguist websites, but it does not interfere with the representation of Kongo history.