Fashion, Mobility, and Protest: The Sapeur Movement in Congo

Abstract

The sapeur movement, which emerged in Congo in the second half of the twentieth century under the dictatorial regime of Mobutu Sese Seko, was a popular and fashionable form of protest. In resistance to the official ban on Western clothing, its followers defiantly sported European-style suits in a flamboyant and extravagant manner. The essay argues that the media played a crucial role in the rise of the sapeurs in the international arena of high society, which they simultaneously imitated and ironically subverted. The sapeurs' staging of themselves and others through photographs, newspaper and magazine articles, and documentary films contributed to the formation of the movement's characteristic appearance. Using a selection of international media sources from the 1970s to the present day, we seek to understand the sapeur as an interloper between several spheres: spatially, between Africa and Europe, i.e., between former colony and former colonial power; politically, between resistance to Mobutu's dress ban and the adoption of what critics understood as the former colonizers’ fashion; and socioculturally, between economic marginalization and aspirations to become part of an increasingly globalized high society through the display of internationally renowned haute couture brands. Beyond the display of fashionable clothes, thus our main thesis, this movement unfolded in constant interaction between performative acts of its members on the ground - in the streets and clubs of Congolese cities - and its medialization. In sum, we understand the sapeur as a prism of fashion, mobility, and social group identity that is specific to Congo and, at the same time, a transnational history, much of which remains yet to be told.