MPAGNI BOBUANABONGWE

Mpagni Bobuanabongwe (circa 1875-June 8, 1947), a member of the Boma ethnic group, living between the Zaire River and Lake Mai Ndombe, rose to prominence as a merchant, chief, and traditional historian.

Mpagni was born at Bomejuri village. Before he was 20 years of age, he took an active part, with his father, in the regional trade linking Stanley (now Malebo) Pool and Lake Léopold II (now Lake Mai Ndombe). Then, from 1901 to 1904, Mpagni studied the Bible at Tshumbiri, a Baptist Missionary Society station, 50 km (30 mi) south of Bolobo, on the Zaire River. It was there he learned to speak Bobangi and Lingala. The training Mpagni received at Tshumbiri was of great value to him in his later commercial and political dealings.

In 1908, he was chosen as the leader of his Shaa Kempinu clan. After gaining customary authority, Mpagni was recognised and invested by the colonial authority as ruler of the Mpelu Baboma chiefdom not far from Bolobo. Mpagni continued in his capacity for 20 years. As a firm friend of the whites, his influence and authority greatly contributed to the spread of colonial domination.
In 1928, the Mpelu-Baboma chiefdom was dissolved when the colonial authority created the great chiefdom of Baboma-North, placed under the authority of the Sengele people living just west of Lake Léopold II.

Consequently, Mpagni lost his office as chief of Mpelu-Baboma, and his government medallion was taken back. Angered at being rejected by the whites for whom he had worked so hard, Mpagni petitioned the district commissioner at Inongo, on the eastern shore of Lake Léopold II, to reverse the dismissal. Mpagni argued that he was the most influential man in the region and that the Sengele were latecomers who had arrived in the territory long after the Boma people had settled the lands. After five years of negotiations, having received no satisfaction from the commissioner, Mpagni organised a resistance against the government. Beginning in 1933, he urged all the inhabitants of his former chiefdom to wear raffia loin-cloths and to smear their bodies with white kaolin (clay). By these actions, Mpagni sought to demonstrate that the Boma people wished to return to their ancient customs and that they were too poor to pay taxes. Accused of causing trouble, Mpagni was banished to the territory of Kiri, about 100 km (60 mi) west of Lake Léopold II.

Mpagni’s banishment only increased the unrest in Mpela Baboma, and the region’s inhabitants systematically opposed the administration’s orders. Forced to reconsider their decision, the authorities soon liberated Mpagni, who returned to his village at Bomejuri. In 1937, the former chief resumed his commercial activities. Retaining his people’s loyalty, Mpagni soon was invested as a notable of Mpoko. That same year, Mpagni met the territorial administrator R. Tonnoir, who became an expert in Boma history. At Tonnoir’s request, Mpagni recounted Boma oral traditions, thus enabling Tonnoir to write his first work, La Pierre du feu (”The Fire Stone”).

Mpagni was extremely knowledgeable, not only in Boma tradition but in the history of the entire Lake Mai-Ndombe region. Tonnoir described him as “a grey-haired notable, fully conversant with an inexhaustible repertory of traditional stories, one of the guardians of the oral tradition, and narrator of the Pierre du feu.” Mpagni continued to prosper during the last years of his life. Becoming one of the region’s wealthiest men, he was the first Boma individual to purchase a bicycle and a sewing machine. One of his four sons also became a trader, rising to become one of the greatest Boma merchants. Mpagni died on June 8, 1947, after a long and painful illness.

BEKIMI BONZEKE