The writer from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) In Koli Jean Bofane invites us to a joyful and apparently light novel of morals, with his tasty novel Congolese Mathematics. He recounts the life of Célio Matemona, poor and orphan, living in a popular district of the huge and bustling city of Kinshasa, and who survives as best he can thanks to his resourcefulness and the generosity of his entourage.
Faced with the great game of life, the young man, however, holds an exceptional card: his superior knowledge of mathematics. Since in college he immersed himself in an old Compendium of Mathematics for the use of the second cycle, concocted by a certain Kabeya Mutombo (1967 edition), he discovered the alpha and the omega of his existence. His knowledge also earned him, in addition to a few rare salaries, the respect of all: “Célio was the local intellectual or, at least, he was considered as such. He served as a lawyer, mediator, scribe and, occasionally, notary. He was an office unto himself (…) Célio, the big boss! (…) He had managed to identify the labyrinthine minds of Pythagoras, Einstein and other Thales. »
All the boy needs is a nudge of luck to turn his life around. Never mind, In Koli Jean Bofane is responsible for imagining a beautiful turn of destiny for its protagonist. Noticed by Gonzague Tshilombo, a powerful adviser to the President of the Republic himself, Célio finds himself overnight at the heart of the state apparatus, the center of all the intrigues. From then on, the novel turns into a detective comedy, Congolese Mathematics can be read as a series of complex socio-political calculations.
For Tshilombo, head of the “Bureau Information et Plan” and whose job is to “collect and disseminate information for the best interests of the presidential party, with all the means he deems good and necessary”, the young recruit falls on time. It is indeed time to sustainably strengthen the edifice of power that has been threatened for several months by the opposition parties and by a civil society supported even in the West. Célio has the ability to make projections, to imagine curves and algorithms to manipulate the masses in order to keep them under the control of the powerful.
The accused is none other than the State
“There are too many disgruntled people to repress and it’s starting to get messy,” Tshilombo told him calmly. As you know, the government has had to take drastic measures lately and this cannot be repeated too often. It is better to act in depth. The radical measures in question consist of the fierce repression of the latest demonstrations – and of which some of Célio’s relatives have been victims. But for the moment, the latter does not make the connection.
Logistician that he is, he is content to propose to Tshilombo to “generate from trivial information a kind of ground swell that can lead the population towards one and the same direction. Kabeya Mutombo’s Abrégé de mathematique openly advises the exponential function, patron. That’s what works best. In less scholarly language, such a plan consists in cleverly orchestrating the disclosure of rumors likely to bring down a few heads of political leaders harmful to the president.
The operation is set up and proves to be so perfectly effective that Célio is invited to imagine several others, each more Machiavellian than the other. Too happy to finally have a status as well as a remunerative job commensurate with his skills, the young adviser silences his scruples for a while. But the moment comes when, observing his professional environment, he is obliged to note the effects as much as the misdeeds. And choose sides. Will he add himself unscrupulously to the political scum in order to reinforce his power or on the contrary evade the system to privilege his ethics and find his own?
These are the Congolese mathematical calculations that our hero must do. And such is finally the novel proposed by In Koli Jean Bofane: a book with the appearance of a sparkling comedy but with a bitter political aftertaste, in which an innocent young detective technician finds himself caught in the cogs of an immutable system. Here the accused is none other than the State which, in order to maintain a privileged fringe in place, is guilty of daily crimes against its population… which paradoxically it continues to suspect. Is such an equation acceptable?