Accounts of historical change in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century East African societies typically described "great men" - hunters, chiefs, mythological founders - who through their actions brought about great changes in state, society and economics. Academic historians have long recognised that such accounts tended to personalise broader shifts, presenting one architect of processes that might have taken centuries. They have paid less attention, however, to the way that the biographical form of such narratives influenced those who heard and related them.

In this paper, I trace the role that celebrations of and stories about elephant hunters and long-distance traders shaped the aspirations of young Nyamwezi and Sumbwa men in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. I argue that stories, songs and dances memorialising historical and mythological figures made the ideals of heroic masculinity embodied by hunters and traders a presence in the lives of boys and young men. Most boys would not grow up to professional hunters, to found kingdoms, or to vanquish monsters, but they could dream. When economic changes made it possible for more young men from Unyamwezi to become hunter-warriors, and to found chiefdoms, or to discover new sources of wealth there were many ambitious men who leapt at the chance to make their dreams reality.

I focus on life stories of the Sumbwa and Nyamwezi founders of the Yeke state, in what is currently the Democratic Republic of Congo. These stories both illustrate how biography served as history, and how accounts of great men inspired others to emulate them.

L'histoire des tirailleurs sénégalais débute en 1857 pour s'achever en 1962, avec la fin de la guerre d'Algérie. Ces hommes, recrutés principalement en Afrique de l'Ouest, participèrent à tous les conflits mondiaux dans lesquels la France fut engagée durant le XXe siècle : les deux guerres mondiales mais aussi les guerres de décolonisation après 1945. Si la socio-histoire de ces soldats a déjà fait l'objet de nombreux travaux, il n'existe pourtant que peu d'études sur leur participation aux conflits indochinois (1945-1954) et algérien (1954-1962). De plus, le contexte historique de l'après Seconde Guerre mondiale en Afrique de l'Ouest, marque le début de nouvelles revendications sociales et politiques - notamment sous l'égide du Rassemblement démocratique Africain (RDA). Cette communication, en s'intéressant à la trajectoire de vie d'une dizaine de soldats sénégalais mais aussi à celles d'anciens combattants, entre 1945 et 1962, se propose d'aborder cette identité collective du soldat sénégalais, une identité qui a pu se manifester au sein de deux pôles opposés : l'engagement dans l'armée française lors des guerres de décolonisation, l'engagement politique au sein du nationalisme ouest-africain. Il s'agit alors de prendre en compte les milieux sociaux et géographiques d'où provenaient ces hommes, leurs places dans la fratrie, les conditions de leurs engagements, leurs attentes au moment des démobilisations, etc. Outre des entretiens, nous nous appuyons sur certaines archives personnelles et familiales, afin de mieux documenter les expériences de vie et les imaginaires de ces hommes durant cette période de profondes transformations historiques.

The life, work and times of Barthélémy Boganda - ca. 1910-1959 - provide insight, on a micro level, in the nature and consequences of colonialism in French Equatorial Africa. The terror of colonial conquest, its destructive consequences for Equatorial civilisation and the means of personal salvation and advancement provided by that other dimension of colonial rule - the missionary world - became encapsulated in the personal life of Barthélémy Boganda. Born in the Lobaye forest - an area that suffered particularly under concessionary colonialism - Boganda was orphaned before the age of ten as a direct consequence of colonial terror. A lone, lost child literally picked up by a colonial patrol in the rainforest, Boganda was put into missionary care, where his gift for learning was quickly noticed. An itinerary through mission-run educational institutions culminated in Boganda's ordination as Oubangui-Chari's first Catholic priest (1938). His personal diaries, recently (re-)discovered, provide, however, glimpses of troubled memories of childhood and deep-seated misgivings about missionary paternalism and the racism of the colonial order. The mid-1940s became a turning point in his life, whereupon Boganda commenced a political career marked by agitation against colonialism and its (settler) representatives. Remarkable for its ferocity even for the times, his comportment betrayed a troubled soul, while his anti-colonial discourse was marked by a syncretism of Christian modernity and old beliefs, both caricatured and venerated. Thus, the study of Boganda's life provides insight in the nexus between politics and religion as ingrained in Equatorial civilisation.

Arrie Paulus grew up in working-class Pretoria during the 1930s and 1940s. As a young developer on the gold mines of South Africa's West Rand, he distinguished himself as one of the top-earning rock breakers. In 1967, Paulus became general secretary of the all-white Mineworkers' Union, a position he held for twenty years. Under his leadership, the union administration emerged from years of corruption into a 'golden decade'. Paulus' infamous brinkmanship saw him win financial benefits and improved working conditions for the semi-skilled workers he represented. He oversaw the MWU jealously guarding the race-based protection whites enjoyed under apartheid rule, and government and mining capital alike regarded him with wary reverence. In scholarship, he remains immortalized as the personification of white working-class racism.

Yet Paulus was haunted by a rumour: that he was not South African-born, but the son of Middle Eastern immigrants who became Afrikaans on the mines. This defender of race-based privilege and staunch Afrikaner nationalist, it was whispered, was not actually white. The rumour circulated in reform-era South Africa, and persists in the post-apartheid present.

Historians have considered the meaning and function of rumour in relation to events and social groups, but it has received little attention in relation to individual biography. Through the Paulus story, this paper examines the political currency of biographical rumour in late and post-apartheid South Africa. It argues that biographical rumour provides insight into not only the time in which a person lived, but also the context in which their legacy lingers.