Since independence the lingua franca Lingala has spread gradually throughout Zaire, and by the end of the 1980s it had even emerged in Bukavu, a traditionally Swahili-speaking city near the border with Rwanda and Burundi. The aim of this article is to explain the presence of Lingala in a city where already three lingua francas are spoken, namely French, Swahili and Indoubil. It deals with the politicization of ethnicity in Zaire on the eve of independence, the history and spread of Lingala, multilingualism in Bukavu, the spread of Lingala in Bukavu, and the relationship between language and power. It shows that Lingala has assumed remarkable significance in postindependence Zaire because it became the conversational idiom of government and the language of Kinshasa, the capital of the country. In Bukavu, Lingala enjoys a dual status. First, being the language of Kinshasa and the political elite, it is used by a number of people in ethnically neutral situations out of sheer snobbery. But secondly, for the majority of the population, Lingala is becoming an additional lingua franca as a result of the influence of traders, the military, and radio and television. Notes, ref.
