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Paper short abstract:

This paper draws from oral history interviews and ethnographic research conducted in Kikwit, a rarely discussed secondary city in Western DRC. It explores how civilians and diverse state actors have negotiated and navigated power through language amid elections, rebellions, dictatorship, and ebola.

Paper long abstract:

This paper draws from fifty oral history interviews and ethnographic research conducted in Lingala, Kikongo, and French in DRC from 2019 to 2021. It combines methods and literature from political science, history, and sociolinguistics to explores how civilians and diverse state actors have used language to negotiate and navigated power in Kikwit, a rarely analyzed secondary city in Western DRC. Beginning Congolese independence in 1960, this paper shows how Kikwitois(e)s have navigated state power and violence first through Kikongo ya Leta, the city’s main lingua franca, but also with Lingala, the language of Congo’s capital and army, and later, with Swahili, the language of the AFDL rebellion which swept through Kikwit in 1997 on their path to power. When Kikwit suffered Lingala-enforced military occupation in the 1960s during the Mulele rebellion, many locals came to reject Lingala as a symbol of violence and oppression. But through the 1970s, Mobutu’s dictatorship, economic integration, and rumba music pushed the city’s inhabitants to embrace Lingala for survival, socioeconomic mobility, and political advancement. Later in the 1990s, a devastating Ebola outbreak, worsened by government neglect contributed to a new wave of opposition against Lingala, and an uneasy relationship with Swahili, Congo’s new language of power under Laurent Desire Kabila.