What is "authenticite"

Authenticité was the name given to the Chadian president François (Ngarta) Tombalbaye's attempt to remove foreign influence and promote southern Chadian culture throughout Chad during the 1970s. One of its most unpopular requirements was that civil servants underwent the yondo initiation rites common only amongst Tombalbaye's own subgroup of Sara people in southern Chad.

A similar concept, also called authenticité, was introduced by Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaïre.

Category:History of Chad Category:François Tombalbaye

1. redirect Authenticité

Authenticité, sometimes Zairianisation in English, was an official state ideology of the Mobutu regime that originated in the late 1960s and early 1970s in what was first the Republic of Congo-Léopoldville, later renamed Zaire. The authenticity campaign was an effort to rid the country of the lingering vestiges of colonialism and the continuing influence of Western culture and to create a more centralized and singular national identity. The policy, as implemented, included numerous changes to the state and to private life, including the renaming of the Congo and its cities, as well as an eventual mandate that Zairians were to abandon their Christian names for more "authentic" ones. In addition, Western style attire was banned and replaced with the Mao-style tunic labeled the " abacost" and its female equivalent. The policy began to wane in the late 1970s and had mostly been abandoned by 1990.