The Courier

The mural by the Congolese painter Chéri Samba, which used to decorate a building at the entrance to Matonge.

© CEC (Coopération par l’Education et la Culture)

Brussels is home to a large sub-Saharan community from Angola, Cameroon, Ghana and Nigeria, most arriving during the waves of immigration of the 1990s. It also includes Burundians and Rwandans, whose countries used to be Belgian colonies. The largest African community in Brussels by far is from the Democratic Republic of Congo (several thousand).

Brussels is a city of dreams for people from the Congo. During the 1970s and 1980s, Congolese from all walks of life ended up in Europe as part of huge migratory movements. Back then, the city was the stuff of dreams for all young people, eager for a better life. People started using the word ‘Miguel’ to indicate ‘Europe’, and particularly Belgium and Brussels, pronounced as ‘Brisel’, just as ‘Kisasa’ for Kinshasa.

In 1977, I stopped over in Athens. Back home, I was giving an account of my travels when a youngster asked, “Po na nini okendeki poto te?” or, “Why didn't you go to Europe?”. I understood what he meant; for him, Greece was not part of Europe. People in Congo used to say: “There are two white people, three Portuguese and one Greek in the room”. For them, white people, ‘mindele’, were Belgians. The Greeks and Portuguese were simply traders, living amongst us, eating like us and sometimes going out with local girls.

Three years later, I made up for what I had missed. After completing a report in Germany, I stopped off in Miguel and Matonge, the African district, where I bought some of the famous ‘Dutch wax’ cloth, very popular with Congolese women. Not forgetting to take back a few recordings of Congolese music.

Matonge, part of the Brussels municipality of Ixelles, is like Kinshasa’s ‘cité d’ambiance’, a district that never sleeps. At the entrance to this Brussels district, until recently, was a splendid mural by the renowned Congolese painter, Chéri Samba, reflecting the welcoming atmosphere of this exotic area: people of all races and from all walks of life rubbing shoulders. Matonge is a real crossroads, a meeting point for people from all corners of the globe. It has everything: African cafés and restaurants, clothes shops, food and beauty products, travel agencies, freight services and facilities for sending money to Africa, a radio station, a TV channel, Congolese newspapers…

Capital of ‘Mikili’

Over the years, the Congolese people have dropped ‘Miguel’ or ‘Mputu’, meaning ‘Europe’ in Kikongo, one of the country's main languages, in favour of ‘Mikili’ or ‘worlds’ – referring to all European countries with Congolese communities. Brussels has become ‘Mputuville’, or the capital of ‘Mikili’. So, whether their home is Paris, Lille, Aix-la-Chapelle or London, all Congolese dream of a trip to Mputuville one day. “Just as the manatees go to drink from the Simal fountain”, as the poet Léopold Senghor said.

A shared past that goes back a long way…

Brussels has always been in the thoughts and dreams of Congolese. During the Brussels Universal Exhibition in 1958, citizens from all parts of then-colonised Congo met for the first time outside their native country. The Brussels Round Table declared the independence of the Belgian Congo, June 30, 1960.

Forty-seven years on, The Round Table still has an aura about it. I remember politicians returning from Brussels triumphantly announcing that they had brought back the country's independence. At the time, many of us thought ‘independence’ was an item carried in a briefcase! The first academics making up the College of Commissioners-General left for Brussels when the Republic's first government was dismissed. The first Congolese footballers to make their careers abroad; Mukuna Trouet, Bonga-Bonga, Mayama Braine and so many others, headed for Brussels.