Who builds your ‘Concrete Monsters’? The Geopolitics of Concrete in Mobutu’s Congo-Zaïre

A 2008 drawing by the renowned Congolese artist Mega Mingiedi presents us with a striking image of Kinshasa in which a series of key edifices constructed during the late 1960s and early 1970s are clearly recognizable. In its emphasis on the vertical dimension of the cityscape, thereby erasing the bulk of the largely horizontal urban tissue, Mingiedi’s map is very much a political image, depicting a city which, as Dominique Malaquais once remarked, is haunted by the ghost, or spectre, of president Mobutu Sese Seko. Architecture was indeed a key instrument in Mobutu’s nation building-project which he launched in the second half of the 1960s under the label recours à l’authenticité and included a new toponomy for the nation, Congo being renamed Zaïre. It resulted in the construction of a number of large-scale public buildings, which complemented the unfinished skyline of what during colonial times was the capital city of the Belgian colony.

By focussing on the materiality of Mobutu’s spectre, we want to contribute to writing a more global history of what Adrian Forty termed in his 2012 book Concrete and Culture the ‘Geopolitics of Concrete’. Archival material found both in the papers of architects involved and in the archival funds of construction companies which were active in Mobutu’s Zaïre in the 1960s and 70s, provide us with information on the architectural and engineering labour involved in erecting such spectacular complexes as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1968-1974), the Monument to the heroes of the nation (1970-1974) or the extension of the National bank (1978-1981), projects which one can easily fit into the category of ‘Concrete Monsters’ popularized by the 2017 publication and exhibition project SOS Brutalism. A Global Survey. Yet, as we will demonstrate, archival sources on such projects remain conspicuously silent on the modes of production of these buildings, and, more specifically, on the organization and division of labor on the building site. Who built these ‘concrete monsters’, therefore, remains a challenging question.