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In most of the pictures taken in or around the bush, locals walk around, parade, hunt, work barefoot. All alarm bells ring! Colonialism! Poverty! Exploitation! Do not trust the smiles, it is just the Stockholm syndrome of capitalistic oppression. And still. They are all smiles on the picture. Even clearly well off, walking around barefoot. Even soldiers; when it would make some practical sense to have a military force with shoes. How many stories did we hear about armies failing because of bad footwear?
Barefoot in the bush. Socially, Europeans are programmed to react to this visual cue. It is a no-no.
In French “shoeless” (va-nu-pieds) is literally an historical social insult – maybe the oldest one – a social branding, cannot even afford shoes. Talk to any European country, and dig up some form of legend of the “one pair of shoes for the year” for Back to School in the 1950s. Clodhoppers, croquenots, the heavy leather shoes of yesteryear that complemented school uniforms. A basic.
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Shoes visually define cultures, from the Japanese wooden Geta, to the clogs, worn by farmers across Western Europe until mid-last century. Except in the Netherlands, where clogs apparently remain popular, if only as a tourist souvenir. A bit like the French béret. A social, historical, cultural stamp. And a message too. I wear clogs because I am close to my roots.
Footwear as social statement. That was the 70s message. Yogi don’t wear footwear. And hippies made it a political statement.
So, what to make of the pictures from turn of the century Congo where the locals mainly go around barefoot? Surely, a symptom of the wider colonial oppression? Local societies so poor and/or backwards, that they could not afford shoes?
No. Not primarily so.
According to family lore, and more importantly to historical records, wearing shoes was not always the cultural, physical and economical obligation Europe thought it was. Actually wearing these European contraptions was sometimes construed as a punishment, or a price to pay to work in the offices or houses.
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Truth is that leather shoes very much felt like having bound feet in leather straps. It only slowly percolated in the 30s and 40s, especially as a visual sign for the local middle and upper class, the évolués, a signal of integration with the colonial élite. Not practicality, not comfort, just a stated social aspiration. Shoes, cufflinks, 3 piece suit and a hat.
So no, these pictures of shoeless people, did not centre around oppression or poverty, but a expressed local culture.
Dig into the topic, and one of the striking tenets of Kimbanguism, the most followed Congolese religion, is to walk barefoot, as a visual cue to the affirmation of the Congolese identity. Barefoot, against the social and cultural diktats of the Whites, the mundelé if you are from Kinshasa.
A way to commune with nature and the ancestors by being in contact with the Soil.
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