Magical Politics and Modernity

This chapter uses a longue durée historical and comparative framework, spanning the length of Central Africa’s encounter with Europe from the late-15th century to the present. Specifically, it applies the method Charles Tilly once called Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons , which are sutured on microlevel (i.e., agential) narratives of three magical personages who have left their mark on the politics of subregion: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita, Africa’s “Joan of Arc,” who blended African traditional religion, Roman Catholicism, early feminism and Kongolese nationalism; André Grenard Matsoua, who inspired Matsouanism (also spelled Matswanism) or Ngunzism; and Simon Kimbangu, the father of Kimbanguism, simultaneously a religious cult and a symbol of modern Congolese nationalism. Although West and Central Africa are linked substantially by an overarching mythological cosmology, politics is infused with magic (charisma), including so-called witchcraft, to a greater extent in Central Africa than in West Africa. The chapter ponders some basic, but very important, questions. How does magical power transmogrify into political power, or simply put, how do religious figures become political figures, and vice versa? In what ways did the dark sides of Western modernity, i.e., the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism, help construct magical politics in Central Africa?