La Sape

La Sape, an abbreviation based on the phrase Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes (French; literally "Society of Ambiance-Makers and Elegant People") and hinting to the French slang word sape which means "attire", is a subculture centered on the cities of Kinshasa and Brazzaville in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Republic of Congo respectively. An adherent of La Sape is known as a sapeur. The movement embodies the elegance in style and manners of colonial predecessor dandies.

La sape can be traced back to the period of colonialism in Africa, and in particular Brazzaville and Kinshasa. The French mission was to civilize the “uncouth” and “naked” African people. They brought second hand clothing from Europe as a bargaining tool to gain the loyalty of the chiefs. Brazzaville soon became the “most favored residential area for whites and the seat of colonial government.” By the end of the 19th century their “houseboys” were the first to embrace European modernity because they would be given clothing instead of money as compensation for their work. The Congolese elite not only included the houseboys, but also those who held lower positions as clerks in colonial offices and other places.

A major influence on the Congolese elite, present during the 1920s (the so-called Roaring Twenties), was West African colonial workers who came to the Congo. These Bapopo or Coastmen, as they were called, served as inspiration for the Congolese elite “to combat ingrained charges of inferiority leveled at them” by French and Belgian colonialism. Young Congolese men took the style of their masters’ and made it their own. In the historian Didier Gondola's essay titled "La Sape Exposed!: High Fashion Among Lower-Class Congolese", he says:

The houseboys used their connections in France to acquire their clothing. One colonist looked down on the habits her houseboys in Brazzaville because while they may have been half-starved, they would still don their expensive clothing once their monthly wages came in.

According to Gondola, Camille Diata frontlined the sape movement in Brazzaville in the 1930s, but also had a deep influence in France. He was also part of L'Amicale, “a loosely organized anti-colonial movement,” formed in France in 1926 by the imaginative Congolese revolutionary André Matsoua. The organization mainly helped Africans new to Paris get settled in the city because they were not really welcomed by French, facing imprisonment and deportation. By the time of Matsoua death in 1942, his political developments gained prominence in the Congo and were “hijacked” by the Congolese intellectual elite. They not only adapted the fashion sense but also his anti-colonial views. This movement became a distinctly ethnic Bakongo and Balari one characterized by potent political symbolism and ideology that would manifest in postcolonial era.

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