Reconstruction 8.2 (2008)

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Memory, Ideology, and Exile: J. M Kibushi's Mwana Mboka / Ngwarsungu Chiwengo

 

<1> Jean-Michel Kibushi Ndjata Wooto's Mwana Mboka (which received the Belgian French Award in 2000) is an animated cartoon produced by Studio Malembe Maa, established in 1988 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and currently operating out of Brussels. This studio specializes in the developmental education of the youth. This awareness is garnered through children's workshops focusing on African games, tales, theater, and talking tom-toms. Animated cartoons are similarly utilized to expose spectators to issues of development. [1] 

<2> Mwana Mboka presents the story of the eponymous character, a street child, generally referred to in the Congo as a "phaseur," a "ballado," or a "moineau." Mwana Mboka, meaning native child, child of the land, or compatriot, saves the life of the Ministre des Travaux Publics et Aménagement du Territoire (Minister of Civil Engineering and the Development of the Territory) by rolling the immobilized military ambulance taking him to the hospital out a pothole. Out of gratitude, the minister's spouse gives him monetary compensation for his deed. When the media and radio trottoir (rumor mill) [2] diffuse the amount of the compensation he was awarded, he becomes the object of envy and jealousy, especially that of his benefactress Mama Muziki (a "Mother" or woman belonging to a prestigious social financial club). Harassed and abused by Mama Muziki, who seeks to confiscate his money, he decides to leave her.

<3> Jean-Marie Kibushi's fourteen minute Mwana Mboka is a compact layered animated cartoon that is far from a simplistic juvenile narrative. Cartoons, according to Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart, generally represent "the child as a miniature adult, enjoying an idealized, gilded infancy which is really nothing but the adult projection of some magic era beyond the reach of the harsh discord of daily life. It is a plan for salvation which presupposes a primal stage within every existence, sheltered from contradictions and permitting imaginative escape" (30). Mwana Mboka, on the other hand, even though its main audience is the youth, does not grant imaginative escape. It has no "gilded infancy," nor is it an adult projection of an "imperfect purified world." Rather, it, like Kinshasa september noir and Le crapaud chez ses beaux-parents I &II, exposes the corrupt, grim, and traumatic adult world and situates the golden age somewhere in a possible future. As Third Cinema, [3] it offers resistance to imperialism and post-independence oppression and offers, through its social criticism, values that can break the cycle of colonial and postcolonial violence and oppression.

<4> Mwana Mboka, produced in 1999 after the end of the Mobutu regime, preserves the Congolese's collective memory of the Mobutu era and its pauperization and repression of the population. In its portrayal of the diasporic voice, it also captures the State's inability to nurture its citizens and the subsequent immigrations of the population in search of a better life. While this animated cartoon appears to focus on the Mobutu era through its use of radio trottoire discourse specific to this era, it also evokes the adversity the Congolese have had to overcome historically since the Independent State of the Congo to the Kabila regime. As cinematic memory produced during an era when the Congo had survived a dictatorship and was undergoing an invasion, resulting today in more than three million deaths, Mwana Mboka and L'âne et le chat shed light on the causes of the current massive exodus of the Congolese abroad. Through the rap song," La où les temps sont durs," speaking through the interstices of the film, their difficult and painful exilic conditions are also reported. As oral historian, both through the narrative voice and through the camera lens, Kibushi contextualizes the collective popular memory of the violent Mobutu regime that "killed solely for the pleasure of killing" and of the lootings of 1991 in "Kinshasa septembre noir" and of the population's deprivation of food, in "Le crapaud chez ses beaux-parents," by the minority in the government who wished to "eat with a fork" when there was only one.

<5> Since Mobutism erased the colonial past when it instated a new myth of origins, Mwana Mboka was produced within a historical vacuum, so it successfully recuperates, through its narrative, the Congolese historical becoming that explains the present ontology and counter-values of Mwana Mboka's contemporary society. This historical narrative, interestingly, is not solely constructed through a chronological sequencing of events but also through an oral framework emerging from images, dreams, and music. The development of the youth is materialized through the re-membering of past popular memory, the Congolese's reflection on their liminal personae, their understanding of the raison d'être of exile, and their desire and will to regain a nurturing homeland, prosperity, and dignity. And in the more eloquent words of Annette Kuhn, "The story starts out from the places of memory, the places of childhood: the paths that lead back into a past that is remembered as a landscape across which are dotted the beacons in the night, and where all journeys begin and at home" (12).

<6> At the onset, Mwana Mboka is a banal animated cartoon that dramatizes a vivid account of a heroic incident in the life of a street child. Yet, close analysis of the work discloses the subversive and political nature of the film which exposes the lives of oppressed and neglected street children, and by extension the Congolese people, so poignantly portrayed in Muyengo Mulamba's Enfants du ciel: misères de la terre (Children of the sky: miseries of the earth). Indeed, the animated cartoon unfolds with the assertion that "The poor of God is the mass of children." Children, in Mwana Mboka, are undeniably oppressed because they not only lack adult guidance but also mature in a bankrupt and ungoverned state where even surrogate mothers have ceased to nurture. Merely cogs within the machine of production, these street children must fend for themselves. Mwana Mboka, the eponymous character, is shown at the beginning of the film rummaging through garbage and, later in the film, selling and pushing carts but rarely as the object of affection. The only affectionate relationship he experiences in the film is that of another street child, Jojo. He is constantly the object of verbal and of physical abuses and is disregarded by the Church that claims to protect the poor. When Mwana Mboka overhears a priest reminding a parishioner not to forget the poor of God, he is so outraged that he probes his relationship with God and the universe. Mama Muziki, in his opinion, prides herself of taking care of orphans and saving him from misery, yet he sleeps on the ground and eats crumbs. When the priest speaks of the poor of God, Mwana Mboka wonders whose poor he is. Disillusioned and in despair, he wishes he were dead.

<7> Through Mwana Mboka Kibushi also symbolically represents the Congo--an ungoverned, abandoned ruin where no progress is visible and where misery, corruption, and decay reign supreme. This decadence is dramatized in the heroic gesture of the eponymous hero. He saves none other than the Minister of Civil Engineering and the Development of the Territory, in charge of the maintenance of the city. Ironically, the impracticability of dirt roads and the dilapidation of the city, and by extension the very country, are foregrounded when the ambulance taking the Minister to the hospital is stuck in a pothole. Governmental negligence and incompetence affects not only the poor but also those in power. In this country all citizens are dehumanized; political power alone grants a semblance of respect, but not immunity from the consequences of the degradation of the social and economic structure. This is evident when the military police officer directing the traffic insults the chauffeur "nyama" (animal) and "zoba" (stupid). But when the ambulance driver informs him that the Minister of Civil Engineering and the Development of the Territory is the ailing passenger, the chauffeur and the passengers are immediately given respect and assistance.

<8> While the social theme of neglected and of oppressed street children is the main preoccupation of Mwana Mboka, it is foremost a political satire. The Congolese in this film are marginalized, dehumanized, and denied all rights. They are constantly verbally and physically abused. When they are not shoved and intimidated by the local police, they are denigrating others with violent words such as "Nyama" and "Zoba." The invective words heard in the background throughout the narration project a Congolese society bent on self-depreciating and humiliating itself. Moreover, this alienated population lives in an indifferent and meaningless society, which trivializes death. Thus, when a street child pushing a cart is involved in an accident, the policeman ironically observes, "double point: l'état de signalisation: borne, l'état des routes: cadavéré! Voiture du crime: malade au pied! Le chauffeur envolé! l'accidenté: pas de traces! Fils de rue: une ordure de moins pour la capitale!" (colon: the condition of the traffic lights: one-eyed! The condition of the road: blind! The car that committed the crime: suffering from a foot disease! The chauffeur has disappeared! And the accidentee has left no trace! The child of the street: one less ordure for the capital)! From the policeman's report, the entire Congolese society has unmistakably fallen apart or, as the Congolese would say, esi ekufi or inakufwa (has died). As humorous as the policeman's report may be, the personification of the car as suffering from a foot disease and the absence of the accidentee convey the crippling of the state, the dehumanization of street children, and the insignificance of the very people that make the state.

<9> This is a world in which the pauperized population lives haphazardly and is demanded to give all as illustrated in the repetitive "donnez tout!" (give all!) expressed by Mwana Mboka and his friend Jojo. This pauperization is most evident when the policeman begs Mama Muziki for money because there is "un grand ça ne va pas" (he has a major financial problem) at home. When the latter is not forthcoming with the requested assistance, the policeman decides "to make the government speak." Whereas the government is generally associated with law and order, the policeman "makes the government speak" by demanding that Mama Muziki decline her identity. Instead of requesting only her citizen card, he demands custom and ecological tax receipts, a marriage certificate, and a baptism card in the sole purpose of finding his victim in breach of the law so as to levy a fine that will ensure his family food. In a state where "commerce of legs" is said to be against the Revolution, and thus subversive, citizens possess no rights since the military police, represented by an elephant wearing a helmet reminiscent of the colonial and early post independence era, is dressed against the very citizens it purports to protect. The bankruptcy of the state is also consistently conveyed through the innuendoes and statements of policemen who "annul dossiers" for bribes and the cleverly crafted direct criticism of unidentified polyphonic voices piercing through the collective cacophony.

<10> In this chaotic society there is no relief because even religious life has been contaminated. Despite the religious fanaticism depicted in the film, it, too, has lost its liberatory nature and exploits the population. The contradiction between the official religious discourse demanding compassion, brotherhood, and love of the other, and the clergy's materialistic exploitation of its congregation, is made evident by the background anonymous cry "Muyibi" (a thief) when the clergy man gets off the bus. This is why the pastor is among the first to alert Mama Muziki of the reward Mwana Mboka is rumored to have obtained for saving the minister's life and to solicit a donation for the poor of God. As he blesses Mama Muziki's commerce amidst loud and impassioned alleluias, one can only wonder whether this religiosity is truly spiritual or if it is not a mere commodity on the market economy, especially since the camera focuses on the shoulder bag.

<11> Like colonial and missionary comics, such as "Les aventures de Mbumbula," that were used to inculcate a Western sense of order, hygiene, and thrift, the évolué, according to Jean Paul Jacquemin, Mwana Mboka also has an ideological function. As Third World Cinema, it equally raises the spectator's consciousness and constitutes a form of resistance against colonialism and imperialism while simultaneously explaining the origins of the Congolese's present ontology and economic situation. In a country where the Mobutu regime cultivated the forgetting of the past, recorded official histories of previous colonial and post-independence regimes were nonexistent. Mwana Mboka, therefore, contributes to the construction of popular re-memory, vital for any collective identity. Through its visual images, it contributes to the recuperation of the Congolese past because memory, as Mary Nooter and Allen F. Roberts so aptly claim, "is not passive, and the mind is not simply a repository from which memories can be retrieved. Rather, memory is a dynamic social process of recuperation, reconfiguration and outright invention that is often engendered, provoked, and promoted by visual images" (17).

<12> Mwana Mboka re-members the past through the oral structure of the quest--created through the perspective of a third person griot and the film's long shots. In the opening sequences of the prologue of the story, the film unfolds with a tableau of the popular painting inkala, representing a man taking refuge in a tree next to a river when a lion pursues him. This inkala painting, popular during the mid 1970s, is said to be inspired, according to Jewsiewicki Bogumil, by a genre in travel books. Because of its ambivalent meaning, it simultaneously alludes to both colonization and the Mobutu era. Jewsiewicki claims that it represents, on the one hand, a lion, simba bulaya (white cannibals) on the land, a crocodile (sorcery, pagan religion, devil), attacking from water, and a serpent (the Christian devil) preventing the man's refuge in a tree. Another possible political interpretation posits the lion as the postcolonial state, and water as an allusion to President Mobutu who is said to derive his power from the Mami Wata (siren), and society as "a slave of the predatory state, betrayer of its people" (108). Ironically, this man's retreat in the tree provides a precarious security, for his entire natural environment is a menace: a lion stands underneath the tree, a crocodile awaits him in the river below, and a poisonous snake is already in the tree. This image of the man who can not escape adversity collapses postcolonial and colonial violence into one single image. The film then proceeds to introduce the Church, through the character of the priest, the surrogate mother Mama Muziki, representing the country, and finally an elephant with corns, representing corrupt, political might, wearing looking glasses (a possible allusion to Mobutu). This amalgamation of meanings—evil/the devil/ and power/ technology—is further developed through that of the elephant, representing might. In addition to these images, the narrative voice of an elderly narrator, expounding the proverbial wisdom that "the poor of God is the mass of children" reinforces the historical context of the film. This elderly narrator disappears and an elephant hurls the turtle into the air, a movement which represents the flow of historical time. When the elephant, representing the might of the colonizer and postcolonial dictators, violently propels the slower, weaker turtle, representing the weak colonized, forward into history, the former swearing, "Nondidje" ("Nom de Dieu," meaning "The name of God"), this movement suggests, again, evolving time. Through these metaphors and the "nondidje" swearing of the elephant, utilized likewise by the post-independence policeman, the philanthropist enterprise of colonization is jettisoned. The flames and cannonballs shot from the trunk of the elephant emphasize the violent nature of its conquest and how colonial violence continues to govern dominant/dominated post-independence relationships. The Congolese pre-colonial and colonial histories, erased during the Mobutu era, are brought to the fore though these images.

<13> This history is not a glamorized utopia (a non-place) but a narrative that captures the dynamics of power and colonization. As an "uchronia," defined by Kristen Hastrup, as "a structured world, no where in time" (113) narrative, Mwana Mboka traces the becoming of the Congolese nation. It dramatizes its liminal historical present as the country progresses from the pre-colonial era to an unknown future time of stability, law, and order. Historical remembering in Mwana Mboka demythologizes what Filip De Boeck refers to as "synthetic nostalgia" consisting of a yearning for the colonial epoch whose qualities of order and law and economic prosperity were lacking under Mobutism (33). Instead, it highlights colonial violence and abuse of power.

<14> This oral narration is heightened by Mwana Mboka's dreams of the ancestor that punctuate the narrative. These paranormal occurrences are traditional mediums of communication between the living and the dead in Congolese culture. After listening to the ancestor in his dreams, Mwana Mboka, is also empowered the next day to narrate the story of the turtle that eventually escaped from the elephant who conquered the land with guns to his friend Jojo. While Mwana Mboka cannot tell his friend what happened to the turtle because he woke up before the end of the story, the film, in which he figures, is about the adventure and future of the turtle/Mwana Mboka. Throughout this short drama, dreams, depicting the ancestor's empathizing and sorrowful sighs, and other traditional folktale elements intrude and inform the realistic narrative of Mwana Mboka's life in present Congo. The ancestor's sighs of weariness do not preclude the latter's continual protection of Mwana Mboka since the ancestor puts a protective turtle charm around the hero's neck in a dream and appears to accompany him all along the ordeal of the journey. This ancestor/Mwana Mboka relationship, depicted in the dreams, is equivalent to that of the elder and the neophyte described by Victor Turner. The authority of the elder, "the personification of the self-evident authority" is, according to Turner, absolute in that it expresses "the axiomatic values of society in which are expressed the ‘common good' and the common interest" (100). While the ancestor is protective and concerned about the hero, the latter is passive. Through the ancestor's esoteric teaching, Mwana Mboka absorbs knowledge. The turtle sacra (symbolizing fertility and steady determination), given him by his ancestors in a dream, empowers Mwana Mboka to reflect on his society and to absorb powers so as to become a mature adult and citizen. The hero's telling of his dream about the elephant and the turtle to his friend contextualizes, once again, these contemporary dreams and the metaphor of journey within the oral tradition. The ancestor's sharing of the urban space with the living points to the coexistence of the traditional world (which plays a major role in the initiation of the Congolese during this moment of transition) and modernity.

<15> As noted earlier, the film begins with a third-person omniscient narrator, yet there is a multiplicity of voices: the dialogues of the characters, the voice of the ancestor, the background voices, and the voice of the narrator. While the dreams teach Mwana Mboka the nature of his journey, songs, interjected throughout the narrative, amplify the din of the collective urban voices, accentuate the drama of the hero, and collectivize the experience. At the outset of the film, a character greets the narrator only for the spectator to hear the voices of school children chanting "comment ça va," a parodic repertoire of popular dramatizations of the colonial educational system, whose methodology consists in repetition and memorization. As Mwana Mboka strenuously works for Mama Muziki, a French rap song accentuates his youth, immaturity, and perseverance. Difficulties, according to the song, engender maturity, even though it is arduous without personal training. Despite the adversity and nightmarish life he experiences, the child continues to seek happiness and paradise with pride. In another instance, when Mwana Mboka laments his fate, yet another song in Lingala invokes the suffering of the world and the young child's incessant search for healing. Mwana Mboka's quest for well-being is transformed into a collective journey as the musical responses in Swahili "Tutafute" (Let's Search) Lingala, "Pasi ya mokili" (Sufferance of Living in the World), and French, "La ou les temps sont durs" (When the Times are Hard) evince. The songs function in the narrative as collective responses to Mwana Mboka's call, shifting the child's pain and suffering from the individual to the social collective. These multiple narrative voices tell the story of the Congolese's contemporary experience as they engage in a communal dialogic conversation, making telling a communal effort and not the sole privilege of the griot. Like popular paintings, in which "moralizing, eroticism, and politics were so mixed that they spoke for another"(109), according to Jewsiewicki, the presence of these multiple voices, seeping through the narrative interstices, signal the verbalization of the Congolese's discursive resistance, uttered indirectly through radio trottoire and the dialogue complicitly existing between the narrator and society. Kibushi, the cinematic griot producer's telling of Congolese suffering and cultural memory entails a performance, in which both he and the society-at-large participate (109).

<16> This liminal collective experience is crystallized in the very person of Mwana Mboka, the native son. As the liminal character stripped of his name/identity, subjected to ordeal and alienated from his society, he epitomizes the alienation of the Congolese people, united in their poverty, from a State bereft of values and order. Like his compatriots, Mwana Mboka, is a transitional character because, as Turner elucidates in his discussion of liminality, he has nothing, for even the reward he receives of millions of Zairian currency is worthless. He, and by extension the Congolese, has "no status, property, rank [. . .] kinship position," and no legal rights (98-101). As the child of the street, he incarnates absolute poverty and occupies an ambiguous liminal space within his culture where "parentless" children are legally inconceivable according to the Zairian codes of family laws. [4]

<17> Meaning in this narrative is not produced solely through the commingling of individual voice and music but also through the juxtaposition of Mwana Mboka to his world. Through montage, children in normal families are portrayed playing soccer and chanting "Papa dit"(father said) in class. These healthy and well-off children, who obey the law of the father, are juxtaposed to fatherless and oppressed Mwana Mboka living under the guidance of a surrogate mother who fails to nurture and ensure his safety. The children playing soccer in the streets are also juxtaposed to Mwana Mboka pushing the cart, toiling and sweating. Tableaux depicting a father and son, a child with a toy, and a mother with something on her head are also included for effect. These snapshots in the background, juxtaposed to Mwana Mboka's ordeal, are counterpoints to Mwana Mboka's exploitation and constitute the sacra embodying the values to be upheld. These visual images demand the spectator's contribution in the production of meaning. The binary oppositions of the montage snapshots of the ideal child's life and expectations and that of Mwana Mboka accentuate the material and emotional poverty of the latter. In conformance with Christopher Bollas's understanding of expressive arts, these snapshots are objects "endowed with our states of self during our life, mnemonic objects that sometimes elicit states of being" (33).

<18> Mwana Mboka not only delineates the misery and exploitation of the street child but also his social exile. His dislocation and displacement, symbolized through his name as previously discussed, is reiterated through the diasporic sub-text. Mwana Mboka's departure at the end of the story is foreshadowed in the middle of the narrative through the song "Awa Tozali Tokokenda Mboka" (From Here We Are, We Will Return Home). Mwana Mboka's suffering and exile is inextricably associated with that of the political or economic exile of the diasporic subject who is forced to wear him or herself out doing odd jobs. His departure is, once more, linked to exile and the Congolese Diaspora when the film concludes off-screen with the nostalgic song "Nzadi! Nzadi! O! Nakozonga Mboka" (Nzadi, Nzadi, Oh! I Will Return Home). This diasporic exile, in turn, highlights the colonial and postcolonial exile of the Congolese population that is denied the central role of a real "Mwana Mboka," a real leader. Home fails to be an oikos that is secure and warm, for the Congolese are strangers inhabiting a liminal space within their own land.

<19> The film ends with the hero's departure and a call for change, yet there is no self-gratification or redemption, only long marches forward. The Congolese's alienation and exile from his or her land lies at the very beginning of the odyssey. The subject is exiled during the pre-colonial era from the land by natural inclemency and disasters, imperialism during colonization, and post-independence political and social groups. There is no hope in the Congo, for it is a wasteland with streets full of potholes, repressive policemen who are, themselves, oppressed by the system, and materialistic priests. Deprived of an original golden age to return to, the film raises acute metaphysical questions. Where lies the fault and is this situation an individual or a collective responsibility? Since there is no past utopia, happiness lies in an eventual future uchronia and only secured with the persistent slow gait of the turtle. In all of Kibushi's animation films, there are no golden days. Dorfman and Mattelart claim, though, that juvenile writings embody adult aspirations for a better future. In these adult projections, the pure child replaces the father and offers him an imperfect escape. "Thus, the imagination of the child, according to Dorfman and Mattelart, "is conceived as the past and the future utopia of the adult" (31). Conversely, Kibushi's films are not utopias, for they refuse to conceal the evil and corruption within the world of childhood, invaded and dominated by adult conflicts and pain. Because of the absence of an uchronia, Mwana Mboka' "s odyssey to happiness, represented by the turtle, can be achieved only progressively through analysis of present conflicts and obstacles. Because Mobutism eradicated and redesigned the past, there is no Golden Age to turn to. Unlike Western political tradition and political films that refashion the past, such as in the television History Channel's The Fifties that, according to Hilton Kramer, projects all American anti-values on the era to vindicate the politics of the sixties, in Mobutist politics before and after Mobutism there is the flood. The Mobutu regime, decadent and corrupt, is the sole measure of happiness and trauma and violence lies outside it, so Mwana Mboka walks towards a future nebulous uchronia to be constructed from the painful and violent experience of the present.

<20> Mwana Mboka's departure constitutes a severance with the dehumanizing living conditions in Kinshasa where the population is repressed, confronted with food shortages, and under or unpaid. The exile's severance from pre-colonial, colonial, and post-independence oppression and violence is, in itself, the genesis of a new myth and values that will eventually lead to the creation of an utopian Congolese society. Mwana Mboka's liminality and exile allow him to distance himself from the anti-values of his society. Economic duress and oppression, the major causes for exile and immigration, will, according to both the singers and the omniscient voiceover narrator, terminate one day because the sun that is at the end of the journey will eventually return the diasporic and exiled national communities to their homeland. After Mwana Mboka completes his rite of passage, he will be transformed into a true compatriot, and the wisdom acquired from his reflections during the transitional period will ultimately transform the old order into a new state of law. Indeed, the epic hero's exilic experience and trials, as Joseph Campbell claims, result in the "renaming of the community, the nation, the planet, or the ten thousand worlds" (193).

<21> The omniscient voiceover griot concludes the film with a proverb asserting that "when a turtle decides to walk, it does so slowly, "malembément'." Punning on the Frenchified Lingala "malembement," which is none other than Kibushi's studio Malembe Maa, the griot sheds his mask and reveals his true identity. The film producer/narrator is the organizing griot from whose perspective the camera unfolds the story. Similarly to other critical African filmmakers, Kibushi "recovers and preserves for exhibition in film that which that has been alienated from the present" (Tomaselli Shepperson, Maureen Eke et al. 23). Yet the quest, or process of becoming, of Mwana Mboka is not just about the rediscovery of the past but also about understanding the present and envisioning the future. Unlike the griot, the film-producer/narrator, as Manthia Diawara points out, transcends the established order and create[s] a new order" (206).

<22> Mwana Mboka is far from being an easy reading, challenging Sharon Russell's contentions; [5] it is a committed film that utilizes art, music, and the oral tradition to denounce the dislocation, alienation, and exile of Congolese citizens. It is a film that demands the active participation of the spectator in its production of meaning. There can be no passive viewing of the film if it is to be well understood. The spectator must be capable of interpreting both oral and visual images, listening to the various collective and individual narrative voices, following the camera, the griot, and interpreting the music. Meaning can be constructed only through comprehending the various meanings encoded in all the above discourses because it is through their fusion of past and present/traditional and modern that Congolese historicity comes alive and that one understands the extant Congolese ontology.

<23> Through Mwana Mboka 's use of vulgar street French, multilingual vernacular registers, intrinsic Congolese images, and vivid descriptions of everyday life in Kinshasa, Kibushi, the cinematic griot, liberates animated cartoons from the control of Western producers that both Ngangura and Jean-Pierre Jacquemin lament. [6] Through this feat he documents and captures the essence of contemporary Congolese dislocation and alienation, constructs—through conscious raising instigated by the film, the sacra—Congolese collective historical popular re-memory. Through his narration and the participation of the audience, the Congolese, recognizing their liminal condition, are invited to envisage a new social order susceptible to create the ideal multicultural Congolese society that nurtures its population. Yet, as the work of the first and only Congolese animated cartoonist, Kibushi's Mwana Mboka is just the beginning, a process within the transition.

 

Works Cited

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Bollas, Christopher. Becoming a Character: Psychoanalysis and Self-Experience. London: Routledge, 1993.

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New York: Princeton University Press, 1968.

Diawara, Manthia. "Oral Literature and African Film: Narratology in Wend Kuuni." Questions of Third Cinema ED. Pines & Willemen) London: BFI Publishing, 1989. 199-211.

Dorfman Ariel and Armand Mattelart. How to Read Donald Duck. New York: International General, 1971.

Hastrup, Kirsten. Other Histories. London: Routledge, 1991.

Jacquemin, Jean-Pierre. "BD africaine: masques, perruques." L'essaie de la Bande dessinée. Ed. Glénat, 1999: 86-87.

Jewsiewicki, Bogumil. "Painting in Zaire." Ed. Karin Barber. Readings in Popular Culture. Bloomington and Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1997.

King, Nicole. Memory, Narrative, Identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2000.

Kinshasa septembre noir. Dir. J.M. Kibishi Ndaje Wooto, Studio Malembe Maa, 1991.

Kramer, Hilton. " Telling Lies about history: The fifties' on Television." New Criterion. Vol 16 no 5 (1998): 12-15.

Kuhn, Annette. Dreaming of Fred and Ginger: Cinema and Cultural Memory. New York: New York University Press, 2002.

L'âne et le chat. Dir. J. M. Kibushi Ndjate Wooto. Studio Malembee Maa, 2001.

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Le crapaud chez ses beaux-parents, 2ieme episode. Dir. J. M. Kibushi Ndjate Wooto. Studio Malembee Maa, 1991.

Mulombe, Muyenge. Enfants du ciel: miseres de la terre. Saint Paul Afrique, 1992.

Mwana Mboka. Dir. J. M. Kibushi Ndjata Wooto. Studio Malembe Maa, 1999.

Ngangura, Mweze. Interview. By Ngwarsungu Chiwengo. Videocassette. Omaha. April. 2000.

Pines, Jim and Paul Willemen. Questions of Third Cinema. Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk: BFI Publishing, 1989.

Presidence de la Republique. Code de la famille. Kinshasa: Journal officiel, 1987.

Roberts, Mary Nooter & Allen F. "Audacities of Memory." Memory: Luba Art and the making of History. New York: The Museum of African Art, 1996.

Russell, Sharon A. Guide to African Cinema. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, 1998.

Tomasselli, Keyan et al. "Towards a Theory of Orality in African Cinema." Research in African Literature. 26,no 3 (1995): 18-35.

Turner Victor, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University press, 1967.
 
 

Notes

[1]In addition to Mwana Mboka, 1999, Kibushi has produced, in collaboration with the Graphoui workshop, Le crapaud chez ses beaux-parents, 1er épisode (The Toad at His In-laws 1st episode), 1990; Le crapaud chez ses beaux-parents, 2eme episode (The Toad at His In-laws, 2nd episode), 1991; Kinshasa septembre noir (Kinshasa Black September), 1992; L'éléphant qui pète de la neige ("The Elephant that Farts Snow), 1993; and in collaboration with AJC Tango ya Ba Wendo (The Time of Wendo or the time of the origins of Congolese music), 1993. [^]

[2]  Radio trottoir refers to rumors spread by the population during the Mobutu era. Because the government censored the official media, the Congolese developed alternative modes of communicating political information. Although considered rumors, radio trottoir was at times more accurate than the official media. [^]

[3] Third Cinema has been defined and widely discussed in Jim Pines and Paul Willemen's Questions of Third Cinema and Sharon Russell's Guide to African Cinema. According to African filmmakers and film theorists, Hollywood filmmaking is First Cinema while European and experimental art films are Second Cinema. Third Cinema, preempted of all derogatory connotations and associated with Third World cinema, is opposed to emotional manipulation and is grounded in the relationship between culture and social change. It advocates simplicity and clarity. It is revolutionary and must articulate indigenous aesthetics and culture. [^]

[4] According to section II, III, and IV of the Zairian Codes of Family Laws, all Congolese children must have a father and mother. Those children for whom paternity cannot be proven must be provided fathers from members of the mother's family or a person designated by the mother. There is no such thing as a natural/illegitimate child under Congolese law. [^]

[5] According to Sharon Russell, Third Cinema, according to Latin American filmmakers and theorists, calls for clarity and ease of reading that does not exist in European cinema. They consider this type of cinema imperfect and one that refuses to impose an aesthetics criteria or to be controlled by dominant Hollywood ideology (3). [^]

[6] Ngangura Mweze deplores the ideological influence of Western institutions on African films. Likewise, Jean Paul Jacquemin notes the heavy influence of Western genres on African comics that have only had an oral subtext in the last years. [^]

 

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