Abacost

Mobutu Sese Seko, former President of the Republic of the Congo, in Abacost (1983).

The abacost is a jacket based on the style of Mao Zedong , which was prescribed as a national costume for the local ruling class from 1971 during the revolution in the Congo (1971–1997: Zaire ) under Mobutu Sese Seko . Mobutu himself also wore this jacket. In contrast to the Chinese model, the collar remains unbuttoned. “Abacost” stands for the demand “A bas les costumes! - Down with the (European) suit! " and was to be understood as a protest against colonization by Europeans.

When Mobutu began to lose power in 1990, suits and ties based on the western model were officially approved again in addition to the abacost.

The journalist and Africa expert Peter Scholl-Latour saw an analogy between Abacost and the introduction of the sans-culottes by the Jacobins as part of the French Revolution , which were intended to emphasize the renunciation of the Ancien Régime as an outward sign .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Zaire: Political reform in the 1990s - Proclamation of the Third Republic. In: Country Studies. Library of Congress, 1993.

literature

• Peter Scholl-Latour : Murder on the Great River: A Quarter Century of African Independence. dtv , Munich 1991, ISBN 3-423-11058-9 , p. 13.