ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

The ‘Diplomatic’ Okapi. A journey from Epulu to the Lisbon Zoo

• In Event: Animal Networks. Zoos in the Peripheries 3

English Abstract

In 1955, the multinational Angola Diamond Company (Diamang) offered the Lisbon Zoological Garden its first okapi, a young male called Gangala. The ‘rare’ and elusive okapi, long known by the ethno-linguistic group of the Mbuti and Efe, is endemic to the Congo tropical rainforest. Soon after the Western ‘discovery’ of the new species in 1901, okapis were intensively hunted, and Zoological Gardens in New York, Copenhagen, Paris, Frankfurt, and Basel had okapis on public display. Gangala was born at Epulu station in Ituri (Congo), where, in 1947, the Belgian government had set an operation to systematically capture and export okapis to the US and Europe. For the Diamang, established in 1917 to exploit the alluvial diamond deposits in the Lunda region in Portuguese colonized Angola, the symbolic gift of the okapi was indeed highly strategic. In fact, the Diamang company was funded by an international capitalist conglomerate and is part of the ‘Belgian colonial power bloc’ (Vellut 1982). In November 1954, the concession with the Portuguese government was renewed and it is in this context that they organized an offer to the Lisbon Zoo. Drawing on the interdisciplinary fields of history of science and environmental studies, such as the recent works of Raf de Bont and Simon Pooley, this paper follows the convoluted displacement of the okapi Gangala from the forest in Epulu to Lisbon in Portugal, as representative of interest in Angolan territories, and exposes Gangala’s violent experience, from his original environment to a 'grid' of artificial landscapes (Tsing 2021).

Author

• Catarina Santos, CIUHCT, Universidade Nova de Lisboa