The Système Grévisse

 Congolese living in post-war Elisabethville, current-day Lubumbashi D.R.C., experienced a housing crisis. In Black neighbourhoods – or Cités Indigènes – accommodation was overcrowded or of poor quality, and miners and labourers could only rely on a modest housing allowance from the Union minière du Haut Katanga (UMHK) or other companies. Although the state initiated new housing schemes as part of the post-war Plan Décennal du Congo Belge(1949-1959), the modernist neighbourhoods built by the Office des Cités Africaines (O.C.A.) were only affordable for so-called Evolués – the emerging Congolese middle-class.

In response, the Deputy District Commissioner of Elisabethville, Ferdinand Grévisse, launched a local solution. In what became known as the Système Grévisse, Congolese inhabitants could apply for a construction loan provided by the Fonds d'Avance, through which  they acquired a small square parcel with a poured concrete foundation measuring seven by seven metres. Then, at the Cité Indigène’s administrative centre, they would receive essential building materials - bags of cement, structural timber, and roofing sheets, while they were to manufacture bricks on site and built houses according to their needs with the help of family members. To guide inhabitants through this building process, but likely also as way to explicitly discourage them from hiring Congolese professional construction workers, the colonial authorities developedA Chacun Sa Maison (1953), a self-build manual dispersed widely to the users of the Système Grévisse.

Focusing on the available Belgian colonial archives - official correspondence, reports, propaganda brochures, and rich visual material - we reconstruct the administrative and building processes the Congolese owner-builder underwent. This not only raises questions about how and to what extent (Western) self-build manuals like A Chacun Sa Maisonimpacted the construction techniques effectively deployed by Congolese inhabitants. By tracking business interests and networks of (Congolese) construction companies and suppliers, it also allows to reveal the important role of hitherto understudied actors in the colonial building sector, highlighting how the lens of construction history is crucial to surface untold narratives and contribute to other historical fields such as colonial history.