‘Customs’

This chapter examines the significance of Afrique ambiguë and ascertains how this autobiographical narrative resonates with Balandier’s other scientific outputs (e.g. Sociologie actuelle de l’Afrique noire). This book provides a wealth of information to understand how the decolonization of sub-Saharan Africa unfolded in the 1950s. The many ambiguities recorded by Balandier are played out on the cultural, political, and religious planes. However, it is also a book testifying to Balandier’s efforts to account for the chronological complexity of decolonization, a historical process in which tradition and modernity, progress and development, but also past, present, and future are approached from a non-developmentalist angle. The first part focuses on Balandier’s exploration of the environmental devastation brought about by colonialism in British-ruled Nigeria and in French Congo. The second part examines the issue of cultural dispossession but also, via a focus on female circumcision, the strategies adopted by locals to transform traditional customs. The third part is devoted to Kongo messianism and analyses how some prophets used biblical messages to develop an anti-colonial agenda and reform the Kongo cosmogony.