Kananga

The German explorer Hermann Wissmann, travelling for King Leopold II, set up a station on the Lulua river in the 1880s and called it Malandji; when the railway was built on the far bank the station moved, and the new town took the name Luluabourg from its Lulua railway station. The site sat between the Luba and Lulua peoples in open savanna, at a crossing point on routes running east towards Katanga and north to the Kasai. In 1895 Tetela soldiers of the Free State's army mutinied here, in a revolt that took years to put down.

Under Belgian rule Luluabourg became an administrative and railway town, a stop on the line linking the Katanga mines with the river port of Ilebo, from where barges carried copper down the Kasai towards the capital. Missions founded schools and a cathedral, and the town became the main market for the farming country around it. A constitution drafted here in 1964 was known by the town's name.

Independence brought conflict between Luba and Lulua communities and the upheaval of the South Kasai secession to the east, and many families moved between the two areas. The town was renamed Kananga in 1966 during Mobutu's campaign to replace colonial names, and it has grown very large since, without the services to match. In 2016 the killing of a customary chief, Kamuina Nsapu, set off an uprising in Kasaï Central; the violence and the military response that followed reached the town itself and displaced great numbers of people, and two United Nations investigators were murdered in the province in 2017. Recovery has been slow, and Kananga remains the administrative centre of a province still marked by those years.

Kananga is a Tshiluba-speaking city, home to Lulua and Luba-Kasai people whose relations have shaped the region's politics since independence. French is the language of school and administration, Lingala arrives with soldiers, traders and music from the capital, and Tshiluba carries ordinary life. Kasaïans have a reputation across the country for schooling, commerce and political argument, and many families here have relatives in Kinshasa or Lubumbashi.

Customary authority survives alongside the state. Chiefs are consulted over land, marriage and disputes, and their succession is taken seriously — one reason a contested chieftaincy could set off the violence of 2016. Extended families are large and obligations run wide: school fees, funerals and weddings are shared costs, and a funeral can fill a street for days.

Church life is strong, with Catholic and Protestant missions of long standing, Kimbanguist congregations and a great number of revival churches whose choirs rehearse in the evenings. Music in the Kasaï centres on mutuashi, the Luba dance rhythm carried to national audiences by the singer Tshala Muana, though rumba and ndombolo from Kinshasa dominate the bars. Craft traditions in the wider region — raffia weaving, carving and beadwork — reach the town's markets from the Kuba and Songye country to the north and east.

Kananga is one of the larger cities in the country, with an estimated population of about 1,524,000 in 2021, which makes it the fourth most populous urban area in the DR Congo; no recent census exists and estimates vary. It covers a lot of ground for its size: low compounds, red earth streets and patches of cultivation, with only the centre built up and surfaced.

Work is mostly informal. Trading, transport, small workshops, construction and farming on the edges of town support most households, alongside the provincial administration, the churches and a large presence of aid organisations. The railway and the improved road west bring goods in, but freight is slow and expensive, which keeps prices high. Electricity is intermittent and much of the town relies on generators, solar panels and charcoal, and water comes from standpipes, wells and the river.

The day starts at first light with the markets and the motorbike taxis, and much business is done before the heat of the afternoon. Evenings belong to churches, bars and the grills along the avenues. The aftermath of the Kamuina Nsapu years — displaced families, damaged villages, orphans and a strained health system — still shapes conversation, along with school fees, the price of maize flour and the exchange rate.

The Kasaï plate begins with bidia, a stiff dough of maize and cassava flour, eaten with the right hand and dipped into a sauce. Pondu, cassava leaves pounded and stewed with palm oil and onion, is the standard green, and sauces are built on groundnuts, palm oil, okra, aubergine and plenty of pili-pili chilli.

Protein is goat, chicken, beans and fish — smoked or dried rather than fresh, since the town is far from any large river fishery, though the Lulua supplies some. Caterpillars gathered in season are fried with onion and sold by the cup, and bushmeat comes in from the forests to the north. Sweet potatoes, maize, groundnuts and beans from the surrounding farmland fill the market, and mangoes, bananas, avocados and pineapples are cheap in season.

Eating out means small local kitchens serving a plate of bidia and sauce, or the evening braziers where goat and skewered meat are grilled beside the bars. Bottled lager arrives by road and rail from Kinshasa and Lubumbashi; palm wine and home-brewed maize or sorghum beer are the local drinks, and a strong home-distilled spirit circulates informally. Sugary tea or instant coffee with bread or fried dough starts the day.