Some 50 years ago, Kinshasa’s Stade du 20 Mai united the world for one night.
Renowned boxer Muhammad Ali was fighting George Foreman in the Congolese capital. Ali would become a world champion after knocking out his younger opponent in the famous "Rumble in the Jungle" fight, so named to refer to both the fact that these were leading boxers of their time coming to African arena for the first time, and also cheekily referring to the idea that Africa was still unexplored and a jungle.
That was on October 30, 1974.
The Rumble in the Jungle became a worldwide event attended by 60,000 people and broadcast in the US and several other countries. It became a marketing coup by Joseph Désiré Mobutu, then President of Zaire, now Democratic Republic of Congo.
Here is how it began. In the US, at a time when black boxing champions were making the headlines for their sporting success, outside the ring, a professional boxing promoter was brimming with bold initiatives. His name was Don King.
In 1974, he arranged a fight between then Olympic and world champion George Foreman and former world champion Muhammad Ali, both heavyweights.
King was trying to make a winning bet, and he needed $10 million to give to the two challengers. He didn’t have it. Thousands of miles away from New York, where the promoter was based, Mobutu Sese Seko was ready to offer this astronomical sum of money.
Mobutu had been president of Zaire for nine years and was accustomed to providing his people world-famous entertainment events. In 1967, he invited Brazilian football legend Pele and the entire Brazilian national team to Kinshasa; in 1969, he invited the American crew of Apollo 11 to Kinshasa after they had landed on the moon.
For him, the fight between the two American champions was an excellent opportunity to gain worldwide exposure. Zaire's economy was flourishing at the time, thanks to skyrocketing copper prices worldwide. Mobutu was not to be told no.
In 1974, the Congolese leader introduced his policy of "recourse to authenticity," one that involved telling black people to rediscover their pride in being black. He jumped at the chance to organise a "black struggle".
Thus, in the streets of Kinshasa, large placards extolled the success of the head of State's policy: "A fight between two black men, in a black nation, organised by blacks and watched the world over, is a victory for Mobututism," read the posters scattered around the Zairean capital, according to photos now glassed in museums in Kinshasa.
At the time, Zairean president had already created the MPR (Popular Movement of the Revolution), the country’s single party. He had also renamed the Congo Zaire and wanted to establish himself as a great African leader.
So, through the various events, “it was also a question of competing with Léopold Cédar Senghor, the former Senegalese president whose country had hosted the first World Festival of Negro Arts in 1966,” wrote Eddy Ntambwe, a professor in Kinshasa.
When Ali and Foreman met in Kinshasa, on the sidelines of their fight, a music festival had brought together the world's greatest black musicians.
"From Latin America came Celia Cruz and Johnny Pacheco, from the USA BB King, the Pointer Sisters, Sister Sledge and James Brown. Saxophonist Manu Dibango and South African singer Miriam Makeba shared the stage with the great stars of Zairean music. Old Wendo Kolosoyi, father of rumba, was there, along with Franco and his TP OK Jazz, Tabu Ley," writes David Van Reybrouck in his book, Congo, Une histoire.
In Kinshasa, the public had largely decided to support Ali. In the Kinshasa neighbourhoods where he trained, youngsters and children chanted for Ali: "Ali, Boma ye" (Ali, kill him).
The former world champion certainly owed his popularity in Africa to his commitment to civil rights, which he had begun a few years earlier, at the height of racial segregation in the United States.
Zaireans considered him one of their own, while George Foreman was seen as an American.
Muhammad Ali, formerly Cassius Clay, had changed his name after embracing Islam. When he arrived in Zaire, Mobutu had banned Western names. Mobutu himself set an example by changing his from Joseph Désiré Mobutu to Mobutu Sese Seko.
What Ali and Mobutu had in common was their pride in being true blacks. Both detested Western "arrogance.” And so, as if by magic, Ali became popular in several African countries. In 1964, the boxing champion had already met Kwameh Nkrumah in Ghana.
In Zaire in 1974, the stakes in the fight were threefold: For 32-year-old Ali, it was a question of regaining the heavyweight title of world champion, whose title and boxing licence had been withdrawn for three and a half years, due to his refusal to fight in Vietnam.
For 25-year-old George Foreman, it was a question of taking on Ali and winning the $5 million staked by Mobutu through Don King. For the Zairean leader, it was a matter of propaganda and asserting himself as a great African leader.
Mobutu is long gone, but in Kinshasa these days, politicians like speaking of Congolese heritage.
Last week, President Felix Tshisekedi told the public that the country must adjust to a political and legal regime that is truly Congolese. He has suggested a new Constitution will be written, one which is drafted entirely by the Congolese, to discard the current supreme laws that he argues were written by “people who are foreigners and live abroad.”