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This essay examines three examples of political treatment of the dead (specifically theirbones) in the Republic of the Congo: the return of the remains of its capital’s founder,Savorgnan de Brazza; the disappearance of the body of André Matswa, hailed by thepeople as their messianic ‘saviour’ guardian; and finally, the treatment of unidentifiedvictims of the various armed conflicts that occurred during the years 1990–2002. Theseevents can be analysed through the prism of two different historical perspectives: interms of the moyenne durée, the treatment of Matswa’s bones paved the way for thesubsequent occurrences by creating a precedent; in the context of the ‘present of history’,the construction of a Brazza mausoleum is contemporaneous with official denial of thepresence of human remains scattered across the capital city of Brazzaville as a result ofarmed conflicts. The comparative analysis of these historical configurations posits a setof circumstances whereby the bones become a symbolic buttress of the capital. Thehistorical puzzle here is to understand how that which came together in claimingMatswa’s bones becomes, in the context of democratization of the regime, an aestheticsense of the ‘beauty of death’ as expressed by people when they see the shrine as theircountry’s finest architectural accomplishment. Through the splendour of the monument,this aesthetic sense articulates the denial of the presence of the nameless dead.
