Background
Nga-Nzeg Mafema was born on March 24, 1934, at Itatu in Bandundu province.
Nga-Nzeg Mafema was born on March 24, 1934, at Itatu in Bandundu province.
Educated at the Little Seminary of Kinzambi and then trained by the Jesuits from 1951 to 1953 in philosophy and classics. He took up law, specialising in maritime and aerial law, finally going to the Université Libre in Brussels, where he got a doctorate. He returned home and from 1957 to 1958 worked as a journalist on the newspaper “Horizon".
In 1965 he became an assistant professor in the law department at Lovanium University, later becoming Vice-Rector at the UOC Université Officielle du Congo at Lubumbashi.
His first job in government was as Vice-Minister of National Education, with the particular function of looking after higher education. In December 1970 there followed a few months as Vice-Minister of the Interior. In these ministries his task was to handle the Zaire students who, since the demonstrations of June 1969 had been the most outspoken critics of the government.
The second outbreak of demonstrations in June toppled the former education minister and gave Mafema his first chance as Minister of National Education on July 2, 1971. A year later on July 7, 1972, he was moved to Property Affairs, where he had the important task of administering the law of January 1972 in which expatriate property, land and plantations that had not been developed, were to be taken over with the rights of ownership reverting to the nation. But he was dropped altogether from the cabinet only four months later.
Small in stature, but large in courage. One of the few who was a minister, though he came from Kwilu a region that has been out of favour since the rebellion of Pierre Mulele in 1964. As Minister of Interior, he took a hard line during the student unrest in 1971 and was appointed Minister of National Education after the incidents in June when the whole student body at Lovanium was conscripted into the army and the former Education Minister Jacques Risasi was dismissed. When ministers were renamed “Councillors in Charge” he was moved to Property Affairs; this appeared to be a demotion. He was then dropped altogether from the National Executive Council (cabinet).