Mzée Laurent-Désiré Kabila, National Hero: Between Liberation and Asymmetric Dependency. Storm of Patriotic Awakening in the Democratic Republic of Congo (1997-2026)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.30972/rcd.529704Keywords:
collective memory, sovereignty, foreign interference, memory conflictAbstract
The figure of Laurent-Désiré Kabila (1939-2001), third president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, constitutes a paradigmatic object of study for understanding the tensions between national memory, political sovereignty and foreign interference in the African Great Lakes region. This article examines the paradox of a leader hailed as a « national hero » for having ended thirty-two years of Mobutist dictatorship, but simultaneously accused of having facilitated the « infiltration » in the vocabulary of his critics of Rwandan and Ugandan forces. Based on a qualitative methodology involving discourse analysis, press review and study of memorial productions (2001-2026), the research demonstrates that the constitutive ambivalence of his legacy has generated, after his assassination in January 2001, a « storm of patriotic awakening ». It is concluded that Laurent-Désiré Kabila embodies less a simple heroic unity than a field of memorial tensions where the future of Congolese patriotism is at stake.
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