Foreign News: The King & 800 Wives

On the farthest fringes of the central Congo rain forest lives fat King Lukengu, monarch of the peace-loving Bakuba and their subject tribe, the Bakete. Far as he is from the fighting and feuding in the new republic’s cities, King Lukengu has nonetheless been roughly handled by democracy. Reason: his 800 wives.

The wives—some inherited from his predecessor, some the gift of subjects eager to display loyalty, and some simply picked out by the monarch himself—were more than companions to King Lukengu. They sang his praises, danced at his orders, embroidered the exquisite raffia tapestries on the walls of his jungle palace, and when he sneezed they applauded. as royal protocol prescribes. But most important of all, they were obliged to support him—to supply him with food and all his other needs.

King Lukengu’s troubles began last summer when the Congo became a republic and the new provincial government of Kasai decreed that it was “undemocratic” for one man to keep 800 wives in a life of semi-serfdom. “We have our freedom now,” said Kasai President Barthelemy Mukenge, 35, “and these women must have theirs.”

The man chosen to break the news to the King was David Mputukanga, a member of the subject Bakete tribe, who obviously relished the task. Escorted by a group of impressively armed soldiers,

Mputukanga toured the outlying villages, where the King stabled more than half his wives, called the women in and asked if they wanted their freedom. To a woman, they did. There remained the 350 wives at the royal village of Mushenge itself. Waiting till the King set out on one of his periodic visits to another part of the forest, Mputukanga rushed in with his armed escort, polled the palace girls, too. Returning, the King was enraged to find that all but a meager cadre of 50 wives had decamped.

Throughout the land of the Bakuba, village after village jumped with excitement as the girls celebrated their freedom. At one hamlet, twelve miles from King Lukengu’s seat, Mbawota, 25, a royal wife since childhood and mother of one of Lukengu’s many sons, threw her arms wide in joy and happily declared: “Mputukanga has guns, and the King has only spears.” Emboldened by the breakup of the royal harem, the King’s Bakuba subjects are holding back taxes and their traditional gifts to the king.

Hidden away behind the now-sagging raffia walls of his palace, King Lukengu himself is a broken man. He looks far older than his 60 years (as a man with 800 wives well might), and his rheumatism has grown so bad that a manservant has to raise him to a sitting position to receive callers.