Ruben Mantels

Highly Educated Mission: The University of Leuven, the Missionary Congregations and Congo, 1885-1960

This article discusses the relationship between the Catholic University of Leuven and the missionary congregations during the period when they were involved in the Belgian colony of the Congo. Their relationship was successful and longstanding, thanks to local networks and interaction between the two institutions, as well as to their shared values and complementary strengths. The forms of cooperation in which they engaged ranged widely, from setting up student missionary movements and teaching programmes for missionaries to providing agricultural and medical university support at the mission stations; and from studying the colonial language experience of the missionary to large-scale cooperation as was the case with Lovanium. These examples indicate that the partnership was active both in Leuven and in the Congo. The missionary archives, however, reveal that the colonial reality could differ from the image that was created in official language and propaganda. From 1955 onwards, as the movement for independence was gaining strength, the process of decolonization set in and the cooperation collapsed.

De klacht van Nkunda. Over universiteiten, kolonisatie en dekolonisatie in Belgisch-Congo

Nkunda’s complaint. On universities, colonisation and decolonisation in Belgian Congo In 2008, amidst ongoing troubles in East Congo, Congolese rebel leader Laurent Nkunda used an interview to complain about the lack of university education during the colonial period. His complaint is part of a long tradition, in which the Belgian government is held responsible for depriving the Congolese of university education; consequently, decoloniz a tion could only fail. This article argues that, although official education policies were not aimed at university education, initiatives were taken by the universities themselves. At Lovanium and at the Belgian universities, a small number of gifted Congolese were given the oppor - tunity to enjoy higher education in the years leading up to 1960. Furthermore, this group did play a role in the period immediately following decolonization. But after Mobutu had taken power, and during the post-colonial aftermath, a university diploma no longer served as an important entry to key positions in society.