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In 1978, Congolese inventor David Wabeladio Payi (1958–2013) proposed a new writing system, called Mandombe. Since then, Mandombe has grown and now has thousands of learners in not only the Democratic Republic of Congo, but also France, Angola and many other countries. Drawing upon Ramon Sarró's personal friendship with Wabeladio, this book tells the story of Wabeladio, his alphabet and the creativity that both continue to inspire. A member of the Kimbanguist church, which began as an anticolonial movement in 1921, Wabeladio and his script were deeply influenced by spirituality and Kongo culture. Combining biography, art, and religion, Sarró explores a range of ideas, from the role of pilgrimage and landscape in Wabeladio's life, to the intricacies and logic of Mandombe. Sarró situates the creative individual within a rich context of anthropological, historical and philosophical scholarship, offering a new perspective on the relationships between imagination, innovation and revelation.

This article offers a reading of Ortiz’s first book, Los negros brujos (1906). By following the theme of “duplicity” that structures the loose notes that compose the volume, an argument emerges in ...

Inspired by the thoughts of Zoe Strother, in this short piece I rethink my previous work on iconoclasm in West Africa, saluting her invitation to consider iconoclasm as part and parcel of African c...

This article focuses on the Kyangyang (‘the shadows’ or ‘the shades’), a prophetic movement that emerged in Guinea‐Bissau in 1984, in which ‘animistic’ Balanta farmers‐and‐herders learned to pray as Muslims and Christians do. We want to propose that (a) more attention needs to be paid to religious movements that bridge the polarisation between Islam and Christianity in West Africa and (b) a broader focus on the overall pluralistic setting is necessary in order to understand the conditions of possibility for the emergence of a particular religion. We want to propose, too, that some religions glossed as mimetic (such as Kyangyang) are not as ‘secondary’, in relation to a putative primary source (Islam or Christianity being the model to be copied), as we may intuitively assume at first sight. Copying is part and parcel of human action and transformation but, paradoxical as it may sound, it may not be as opposed to originality as we tend to think. By looking at how Kyangyang works, how imagination is put to play by prophets in order to make Balanta farmers ‘move forward’ towards a potential ‘new world’, we may be getting at the very heart of what it means to be original, at least in terms of religious creativity.

By revisiting my ethnographic engagement with the Baga of coastal Guinea, West Africa, in this article I analyse, in the first place, the ways in which secrecy and its associated verbal arts (silence, metaphor, gesture) has worked as an ‘imagination trigger’ in a post-iconoclastic religious landscape in the 1990s and early 2000s, inviting people to create in their minds possible scenarios of pre-iconoclastic pastness and notions of ‘double-ream’, or dabal, in Baga language; in the second place, and in sharp contrast, I discuss how Baga of today, belonging to a generation historically removed from the traumatic colonial iconoclasm but facing new and dramatic environmental challenges, are relating to historical knowledge in ways that make the arts of secrecy, so prevalent in the field twenty years ago, less relevant, but that nonetheless highlight the plastic, transformative nature of African systems of secrecy. A particular attention is given to the changing relationship between the ethics of secrecy and the presence or absence of slavery memories in the villages.

The Mandombe, graphic system invented by David Wabeladio Payi, responds to complex logic. As a system of writing and artistic creation, entirely conceived from the 5 and 2-shaped symbols that Wabeladio recognized in the lines joining the bricks of the wall of his bedroom, the Mandombe is a good example of writing that does not respond to the great classical functions. Wabeladio chose to prioritize mathematical elegance over ease, the spirit of system on simple efficiency, developing a script serving more support for the semiotic or aesthetic imagination than a simple transcription of languages.

Ecumenism has been a constant effort of many Christian agents in war-torn Angola ever since the 1960s, and certainly in the reconciliation initiatives that have taken place since the end of the war in 2002. Today, ecumenism is a structuring concept in the new law of religious freedom, which stipulates that, in order for religions to be legal, they must belong to an ‘Ecumenical Platform’. Yet, in the northern parts of Angola, Bakongo people remember too well how strongly allied Christianity has been with oppressive forms of power since the arrival of Diogo Cão five centuries ago, and especially since the martyrdom of Kimpa Vita in 1706. The local cosmology and an acute sense of historical resentment have created a strong resistance to any form of Christian ecumenism, especially among the thousands of exiled Bakongo who are returning to the country from the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, where they explored their Kongo, rather than their Portuguese, roots. Thanks to these returnees, Kongo religious institutions, some officially banned by Angolan laws, are being visibly revitalised and spread among local people to whom Christianity and ecumenism have little to offer beyond memories of suffering and oppression. How far grassroots ecumenism may be possible among these Kongo religious institutions remains uncertain.

Este artigo discute, a partir do estudo de caso da Igreja Tocoísta, a dialética entre processos de “presença” e “ausência” em movimentos proféticos em Angola e na diáspora angolana. Retoma algumas teses clássicas de Max Weber sobre carisma e rotinização da liderança para explicar, em função das dialéticas entre presença/ausência e geração/memória, os processos de transformação ocorridos nesta igreja no contexto da Angola de pós-guerra., This article discusses, from the case study of the Tokoist Church, the dialectic between processes of “presence” and “absence” in prophetic movements in Angola and the Angolan diaspora. It revisits classic Weberian theses on charisma and routinization of leadership, in order to explain, through the dialectics of presence/absence and generation/memory, the transformations experienced in this church in post-war Angola.

The existence of an objectified 'folklore' is often used by Baga interviewees not only to proudly show that Baga do have a cultural heritage but also to argue that whatever is seen in public performances is just the tip of the iceberg. But, to understand this present-day situation, it recalls the rudiments of Baga cultural history. Here it uses the notion of 'folklorisation' as a self-conscious objectification of what people perceive to be their folklore or tradition and its display in cultural performances. The fate of Baga cultural heritage is inevitably linked to such entanglements between secrecy and display. While in the demystification campaigns state monitors were sent to the villages to police ritual activity and to make sure that nothing 'irrational' happened, in post-socialist Guinea ressortissants often aim at reintroducing such practices and logics and make sure that nobody is punished for that. If they do not meet this challenge, they will not be reclaiming their heritage.

In 2009, as the Pope visited Angola, the Portuguese Kimbanguists prepared themselves to receive Simon Kimbangu Kiangani, the spiritual Chief of the Church (living in the Democratic Republic of Congo). According to Kimbanguists themselves, Lisbon is as marginal to Europe as Bethlehem was to the Roman Empire or N'kamba was to the Belgian Congo when, respectively, Jesus Christ and Simon Kimbangu were born. While they are not active proselytizers and do not use “reverse mission” arguments, Kimbanguists insist that Europe hosts a vast amount of “marginalized” people in need of a fresh spirituality. Analysing the Lisbon event, in this paper the authors discuss the dialectics between “centre” and “periphery” (N'kamba and Portugal) and suggest that the Kimbanguist religion must be simultaneously regarded as a mechanism by which Africans reaffirm a presence in the diaspora as well as being a means to orient efforts aimed at reinforcing their spiritual centre in Africa.

Este texto pretende contrariar la tendencia a ver ciertas manifestaciones religiosas “nuevas” (en especial los movimientos proféticos africanos) como mecanismos de “ruptura total con el pasado” o como ejemplos de “innovación” cultural, y ofrecer una visión alternativa en la que lo que resalte sea el carácter reiterativo de ciertas experiencias religiosas, el retorno a (o de) una forma religiosa anterior y dar así valor a teorías sobre la repetición, la reiteración y la importancia del presente vivido, que aparece como olvidado en la literatura contemporánea, en comparación con el valor que tanto el pasado recordado como el futuro esperado reciben en la antropología de la religión.

In this article we examine the concept of a religious Lusophone Atlantic, highlighting historical and contemporary exchanges in this continuum and situating research within recent scholarship regarding the 'Atlantic,' religious diasporas and contemporary Christianity. We focus in particular on the place of prophetic movements (namely the Kimbanguist and Tokoist churches) within the Portuguese and Angolan religious fields. Dans cet article nous examinons le concept d'un Atlantique lusophone religieux, mettant en évidence des échanges historiques et contemporains dans cet ensemble et plaçant la recherche dans l'érudition récente à propos de 'l'Atlantique,' les diasporas religieuses et le christianisme contemporain. Nous nous concentrons en particulier sur la place des mouvements prophétiques (à savoir le Kimbanguisme et les églises tocoïstes) dans les domaines religieux portugais et angolais.

Over the last decade, there has been an ‘expectations turn’ in anthropology. Anthropologists have produced a substantial body of literature on aspirations and hope (Crapanzano, 2003; Eggerman and Panter-Brick, 2010; Miyazaki, 2004); on uncertainty and ‘waithood’ (Honwana, 2013); and on futures (Appadurai, 2013; Cole, 2010; Cole and Durham, 2008; Piot, 2010; Temudo and Abrantes, 2015). This development seems in sharp contrast with the previous interest in the anthropology of memory, which tended to overemphasise the power of memory and of tradition to the detriment of creativity and invention (see Berliner, 2005 for a critical review). One of the arguments of this chapter is to suggest that we ought to find a balance, if not a synthesis, between studying the ways in which the past is used in people’s search for exemplarity and studying the expectations generated by people’s beliefs, education, and socialisation.