In this episode, our moderator Anotida Chikumbu sits with Joshua Castillo, a PhD Candidate in African History at Boston University. His research
focuses on the relationship between language and political power under the Mobutu regime from 1965 to 1997 in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He can be contacted on Jcafhist@bu.edu

The article discussed in this video argues for the potential of sociolinguistic methods to write post-colonial African history using a case study of the Mobutu regime’s use of Lingala as its language of power (langue du pouvoir) in order to rule Congo-Zaire. Oral history interviews conducted in
DRC from 2019 to 2021, corroborated by sociolinguistic and political science analyses from the period under study, reveal how the Mobutu regime’s use of Lingala contributed to the privatization of the Zairian state, and the fracturing of Zairian society, but also the strengthening of Zairian and later Congolese national identity.

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