The question that arises is whether former prisons, like Robben Island and Johannesburg’s Old Fort (or Number Four, as it was colloquially known), should be preserved intact for posterity or should be removed wholesale, so that the future can unfold with its own identity, unfettered by the evils of the past.
England’s Tower of London is just one example of the argument for careful preservation — in fact, its gory memories, going back four or five hundred years, are an important part of that country’s multibillion-pound tourist industry.
But another, less exalted example closer to home also springs to mind.
Near the centre of the southern Congolese city of Lubumbashi, crammed between two more modern buildings, sits the old prison constructed by Belgium’s colonial authorities in the early part of the 20th century. Its use as a prison was discontinued many years ago, and, far from being preserved as a museum or a national monument, it would probably have been demolished by the post-colonial government, but for the fact that the country has been trapped in a terrible lethargy since its independence in 1960. Little has been constructed outside the capital of Kinshasa, and there has been no incentive to tear down old buildings to make room for new in other parts of the country.
So the prison has remained standing and unaltered by default. And since the authorities have little interest in its welfare, the building has been taken over by a local interest group — the followers of the Congolese prophet Simon Kimbangu.
Surviving on donations from the few passing visitors who happen to hear about it, and on contributions from loyal adherents of the Kimbanguist faith, the cold colonial prison has been turned into a shrine dedicated to the memory of the founder of the movement, who died there in 1951.
Kimbangu is an extraordinary (and little known) figure in the history of the African liberation movement. Born in 1887 in the central Congo, he would have grown up during the period of Belgium’s rapid colonisation of the country, and its transformation into a vast rubber plantation, run as a private enterprise by King Leopold II. Millions of Congolese were maimed and butchered in the quest for wild and cultivated rubber, which was then almost as valuable as gold or diamonds on the European and American stock exchanges.
Along with the Belgian soldiers, policemen, administrators, plantation overseers and general freebooters, who came to carry out this plunder came European missionaries — men with long beards and flowing white robes who came to convert the Congolese to Christianity — with some success.
Kimbangu was one of many early African converts who saw a grim contradiction in the double-act of brutality and seeming kindness played out between the forces of order and the bearers of this new religion — and the fact that the Congolese, condemned by an accident of colour, should be the ultimate losers in the game. But he was also not the first to see extraordinary power in the philosophies set out in the Bible, and in the prophetic and even revolutionary personality of Christ. He became a deeply committed convert to the literal interpretation of the scriptures.
In 1910 he is said to have heard the call from the Holy Spirit to “start to gather his flock”. Declaring himself unworthy of such a noble calling, he refused several times, and even ran away to the distant colonial capital of Leopoldville to try to escape “the Voice”. But the brutal and unjust working conditions of the Belgians of Leopoldville, he claimed, made him realise that he had no place there.
In 1921 he returned to his village, where “the Voice” called on him once more — this time to resurrect a child who had just died there. According to his followers, Kimbangu not only performed this task — “Kimbangu’s first miracle” — but continued into an intense period of predictions and miracles in the weeks that followed.
News of a “People’s Prophet” spread like wildfire in the district. The Belgian missionaries were appalled to see their own carefully nurtured flocks begin to defect to this new native prophet, and complained to the district commissioner, who ordered Kimbangu’s growing movement to be suppressed by force. Kimbangu went into hiding, from where he delivered a series of powerful prophesies — most of which predicted the end of colonial domination and the rise of a proud, rejuvenated African people.
This was heresy in both the religious and political sense. Kimbangu was finally captured, and at his trial, when asked to explain himself, he claimed that he was the Son of God. For this blasphemy he was sentenced to death. This was later commuted to a life sentence, and Kimbangu was transferred to the prison at Lubumbashi (then Elizabethville) where he would be incarcerated for the next 29 years.
The love with which Kimbangu’s devotees have preserved the prison transforms it from a place of suffering to one of transcendence. Visitors have to remove their shoes as they enter the grim wooden door of the prison, and are then taken on a tour of the prison yard, the salt water pit where he was subjected to daily torture, and the tiny cell where he was held in solitary confinement for most of those years.
The last cell he occupied, from which he delivered his final statement prophesising the exact day and hour of his death, is filled with wreaths and flowers and messages from thousands of followers.
In determining to preserve the place of their prophet’s suffering with virtually nothing but their bare hands, the Kimbanguists of the Congo have created a shrine not only to a religion that places the deity at the centre of their own world, but also to the ultimate resilience of the African, and human, spirit. This is the stuff that the preservation of our history is made of.
John Matshikiza is a fellow of the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research
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