From Jean-Perce Makanzu to Makanzu Mavumilusa: An Evangelical Protestant Leader in Mobutu’s Congo, 1960–1980

While scholars have written at length about Pentecostal churches and African Independent Churches in the postcolonial era in the Democratic Republic of Congo, little attention has been given to evangelical Protestants in the opening decades of Congolese independence. Jean-Perce Mavumilusa Makanzu became a key theologian and evangelist in the 1960s and 1970s, and became popular with U.S. missionaries in the late 1960s in promoting evangelical teachings as one means of recovery from the left-wing Simba revolts of the mid-1960s. While the Mobutuist state struggled to subjugate the Roman Catholic hierarchy in the 1970s, Makanzu became a key figure in promoting reconciliation between evangelical teachings and Mobutu Sese Seko’s dictatorship. He lost his previous support from U.S. missionaries as a result, but showed his versatility at obtaining foreign aid by building close ties with West German Protestants.