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Authenticité (Zaire)
''Authenticité'', sometimes Zairianisation in English, was an official state ideology of the regime of Mobutu Sese Seko that originated in the late 1960s and early 1970s in what was first the Democratic Republic of Congo, later renamed Zaire. The authenticity campaign was an effort to rid the country of the lingering vestiges of colonialism and the continuing influence of Western culture and to create a more centralized and singular national identity. The policy, as implemented, included numerous changes to the state and to private life, including the renaming of the Congo and its cities, as well as an eventual mandate that Zairians were to abandon their Christian names for more "authentic" ones. In addition, Western-style attire was banned and replaced with the Mao-style tunic labeled the " abacost" and its female equivalent. The policy began to wane in the late 1970s and had mostly been abandoned by 1990. Origin and general ideology Not long after Mobutu Sese Seko's declara ...
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Mobutu
Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga (; born Joseph-Désiré Mobutu; 14 October 1930 – 7 September 1997) was a Congolese politician and military officer who was the president of Zaire from 1965 to 1997 (known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1965 to 1971). He also served as Chairman of the Organisation of African Unity from 1967 to 1968. During the Congo Crisis, Mobutu, serving as Chief of Staff of the Army and supported by Belgium and the United States, deposed the democratically elected government of left-wing nationalist Patrice Lumumba in 1960. Mobutu installed a government that arranged for Lumumba's execution in 1961, and continued to lead the country's armed forces until he took power directly in a second coup in 1965. To consolidate his power, he established the Popular Movement of the Revolution as the sole legal political party in 1967, changed the Congo's name to ''Zaire'' in 1971, and his own name to Mobutu Sese Seko in 1972. Mobutu claimed that h ...
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Kikongo
Kongo or Kikongo is one of the Bantu languages spoken by the Kongo people living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, Gabon and Angola. It is a tonal language. It was spoken by many of those who were taken from the region and sold as slaves in the Americas. For this reason, while Kongo still is spoken in the above-mentioned countries, creolized forms of the language are found in ritual speech of Afro-American religions, especially in Brazil, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Haiti. It is also one of the sources of the Gullah language and the Palenquero creole in Colombia. The vast majority of present-day speakers live in Africa. There are roughly seven million native speakers of Kongo, with perhaps two million more who use it as a second language. Geographic distribution Kongo was the language of the Kingdom of Kongo prior to the creation of Angola by the Portuguese Crown in 1575 and the Berlin Conference (1884-1885) that balkanized the ...
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Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a prominent role in the history and development of Western civilization.O'Collins, p. v (preface). The church consists of 24 ''sui iuris'' churches, including the Latin Church and 23 Eastern Catholic Churches, which comprise almost 3,500 dioceses and eparchies located around the world. The pope, who is the bishop of Rome, is the chief pastor of the church. The bishopric of Rome, known as the Holy See, is the central governing authority of the church. The administrative body of the Holy See, the Roman Curia, has its principal offices in Vatican City, a small enclave of the Italian city of Rome, of which the pope is head of state. The core beliefs of Catholicism are found in the Nicene Creed. The Catholic Church teaches that it is the on ...
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Mao Suit
The modern Chinese tunic suit is a style of male attire originally known in China as the Zhongshan suit () after the republican leader Sun Yat-sen (Sun Zhongshan). Sun Yat-sen introduced the style shortly after the founding of the Republic of China (1912–1949) as a form of national dress with distinct political overtones. He based the suit on the  Japanese cadet uniform. The four pockets are said to represent the Four Virtues of propriety, justice, honesty, and shame; and the five buttons the branches of China's former government (Executive, Legislative, Judicial, Examination, Control), which still survive today in the Republic of China government of Taiwan. After the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War and the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, such suits came to be worn widely by male citizens and government leaders as a symbol of proletarian unity and an Eastern counterpart to the Western business suit. The name "Mao suit" comes from Chinese ...
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Christian Name
A Christian name, sometimes referred to as a baptismal name, is a religious personal name given on the occasion of a Christian baptism, though now most often assigned by parents at birth. In English-speaking cultures, a person's Christian name is commonly their first name and is typically the name by which the person is primarily known. Traditionally, a Christian name was given on the occasion of Christian baptism, with the ubiquity of infant baptism in modern and medieval Christendom. In Elizabethan England, as suggested by William Camden, the term ''Christian name'' was not necessarily related to baptism, used merely in the sense of "given name": Christian names were imposed for the distinction of persons, surnames for the difference of families. In more modern times, the terms have been used interchangeably with ''given name'', ''first name'' and ''forename'' in traditionally Christian countries, and are still common in day-to-day use. Strictly speaking, the Christian name ...
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Katanga Province
Katanga was one of the four large provinces created in the Belgian Congo in 1914. It was one of the eleven provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo between 1966 and 2015, when it was split into the Tanganyika Province, Tanganyika, Haut-Lomami, Lualaba Province, Lualaba, and Haut-Katanga provinces. Between 1971 and 1997 (during the rule of Mobutu Sese Seko when Congo was known as Zaire), its official name was Shaba Province. Katanga's area encompassed . Farming and ranching are carried out on the Katanga Plateau. The eastern part of the province is considered to be a rich mining region, which supplies cobalt, copper, tin, radium, uranium, and diamonds. The region's former capital, Lubumbashi, is the second-largest city in the Congo. History Copper mining in Katanga dates back over 1,000 years, and mines in the region were producing standard-sized ingots of copper for international transport by the end of the 10th century CE. In the 1890s, the province was beleaguered ...
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Kinshasa
Kinshasa (; ; ln, Kinsásá), formerly Léopoldville ( nl, Leopoldstad), is the capital and largest city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Once a site of fishing and trading villages situated along the Congo River, Kinshasa is now one of the world's fastest growing megacities. The city of Kinshasa is also one of the DRC's 26 provinces. Because the administrative boundaries of the city-province cover a vast area, over 90 percent of the city-province's land is rural in nature, and the urban area occupies a small but expanding section on the western side. Kinshasa is Africa's third-largest metropolitan area after Cairo and Lagos. It is also the world's largest nominally Francophone urban area, with French being the language of government, education, media, public services and high-end commerce in the city, while Lingala is used as a ''lingua franca'' in the street. Kinshasa hosted the 14th Francophonie Summit in October 2012. Residents of Kinshasa are known as ''Kinoi ...
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Congo River
The Congo River ( kg, Nzâdi Kôngo, french: Fleuve Congo, pt, Rio Congo), formerly also known as the Zaire River, is the second longest river in Africa, shorter only than the Nile, as well as the second largest river in the world by discharge volume, following only the Amazon. It is also the world's deepest recorded river, with measured depths around . The Congo- Lualaba- Chambeshi River system has an overall length of , which makes it the world's ninth- longest river. The Chambeshi is a tributary of the Lualaba River, and ''Lualaba'' is the name of the Congo River upstream of Boyoma Falls, extending for . Measured along with the Lualaba, the main tributary, the Congo River has a total length of . It is the only major river to cross the Equator twice. The Congo Basin has a total area of about , or 13% of the entire African landmass. Name The name ''Congo/Kongo'' originates from the Kingdom of Kongo once located on the southern bank of the river. The kingdom in turn was name ...
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Jan Vansina
Jan Vansina (14 September 1929 – 8 February 2017) was a Belgian historian and anthropologist regarded as an authority on the history of Central Africa, especially of what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi. He was a major innovator in the historical methodology of oral history. As a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, he taught several generations of students and, according to a biographer, "set the pace in African historical studies from the 1950s into the 1990s." Biography Vansina was first trained as a medievalist and ethnographer but became known as one of the most prominent Africanist scholars. In his work, he focused on the history of African societies prior to European contact, and is widely regarded as the foremost authority on the history of the peoples of Central Africa. He published widely on the subject, including a landmark text on the factual interpretation oral history. On Vansina, historian David Beach writes, "In 19 ...
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Albert Ndele
Albert Ndele Bamu (born 15 August 1930) is a Congolese politician and banker. He served as chairman of the College of Commissioners-General that governed the Republic of the Congo (Léopoldville) for two weeks while Justin Marie Bomboko returned from New York to Léopoldville, and the next four months as deputy chairman. He was later governor of the National Bank of the Congo from 1961 to 1970. He briefly served as the Minister of Finance A finance minister is an executive or cabinet position in charge of one or more of government finances, economic policy and financial regulation. A finance minister's portfolio has a large variety of names around the world, such as "treasury", " .... One term from September 1960 to February 1961, and another term from 15 September 1970 until his dismissal on 12 November 1970. Citations References * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Ndele, Albert Living people Governors of the Banque Centrale du Congo Prime Ministers of the Democratic Republic of ...
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Jacques De Groote
Jacques de Groote (born 25 May 1927) is a Belgian financier and banker. Career In the period 1973–1994, he was one of the Executive Directors of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and in the period 1973 – 1991, one of the governors of the World Bank (IBRD). He was then active in various international institutions, such as the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and International Development Association (IDA). Traces of de Groote’s career can be found not only in Belgium, Switzerland, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, but in many of the former East Block countries, including the Czech Republic. Jacques de Groote personifies the symbol of the IMF and World Bank of the 1970s and 1980s. Academic career From July 1955 to January 1957, he was an assistant at Cambridge University. From 1963 to 1992, he taught at the Faculty of Economics of the University of Namur (Belgium) as a professor, lecturing on subjects related to money and credit theories, m ...
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Zairean Zaire
The zaire ( French: ''zaïre'', code ) was the unit of currency of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and then of the Republic of Zaire from 1967 until 1997. All but six of the 79 series of banknotes issued bear the image of Mobutu Sese Seko. two distinct currencies have existed: The ''zaire'' (1967–1993, ), and the ''nouveau zaïre'' (1993–1998, ). History Zaire (1967–1993) The Zaire (french: Zaïre), symbol: "Z", or sometimes "Ƶ", was introduced in 1967, replacing the '' Congolese franc'' at an exchange rate of 1 zaire = 1000 francs. The zaire was subdivided into 100 ''makuta'' (singular: ''likuta'', symbol: "K"), each of 100 ''sengi'' (symbol: "s"). However, the sengi was worth very little and the only sengi denominated coin was the 10 sengi coin issued in 1967. Unusually for any currency, it was common practice to write cash amounts with three zeros after the decimal place, even after inflation had greatly devalued the currency. Inflation eventually caused denomina ...
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