'Is It Witchcraft? Is It Satan? It Is a Miracle.' Mai-Mai Soldiers and Christian Concepts of Evil in North-East Congo

Abstract

'Bang-Bang' shout a group of small children brandishing make-believe guns. Their playmates, semi-naked, with leaves protruding from behind their ears, refuse to play dead. Instead they shout 'mai' and advance on their make-believe enemies, fearlessly wresting their 'guns' from them and 'shooting' them down. These children are re-enacting the defeat of the Zairean' government forces in north-east Zaire from November 1996 to January 1997 by a faction of Laurent Kabila's Alliance des Forces Democratiques pour la Liberation (AFDL),2 the Mai-Mai. While the children play, their parents regale one another with stories of the invincible soldiers, who rely on traditional belief and magic potions rather than conventional warfare to defeat the demoralized forces of Mobutu. The triumph of the Mai-Mai gripped the imagination of those who had observed their victory. They were willing to pay tribute to the conventional soldiers whose skill and discipline had helped to rout the Zairean forces, but they were convinced that their success could not have been so swift and definitive had the Mai-Mai not used their supernatural powers. The population of north-east Congo attribute their liberation from the oppressive regime of Mobutu Sese Seko in large part to the Mai-Mai. This article is a snap-shot of oral theology in north-east Congo which displays the vivacity of local Christianity as it responds to contemporary circumstances. It aims to study the response of the Christian community to the actions of Mai-Mai during the war. This response provides a window onto a host of conceptions surrounding the nature of evil as