SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This article demonstrates how ordinary people construct their own narrative to contest colonial commemorations, through citizens’ experience of the Savorgnan de Brazza Memorial in Congo. In 2006, the government of Congo built a $10 million glass and marble mausoleum to honorifically house the remains and to celebrate the legacies of the French colonizer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, the founder of the capital, Brazzaville, which is named after him. This extravagant commemoration sits uncomfortably with current protests around the world on the racial meanings of memorials celebrating colonial figures. The article interrogates the meanings of colonial commemoration in a postcolonial francophone state with the intent to challenge the Western-centric tropes associated with the meanings of colonial memories. While in the West the image of Savorgnan de Brazza remains associated with the tropes of the ‘White Savior’ and the ‘Good prophet’, for Congolese citizens, the colonial monument rather symbolizes France’s colonialism and its negative consequences in Africa. By recentering the Congolese people and their perceptions towards the mausoleum, this research uncovers an original account of Françafrique, or the acquaintances between French and African elites that renders possible the continued influence of France in the state affairs of its previous colonies.