Mutuality, resistance and egalitarianism^53of mutualism, egalitarianism and self-sovereignty vis-à-vis the
metropolitan state, whilst promoting a non-hierarchical organi-
zation based on solidarity and respect – all of which core aspects
of anarchistic thought and ethics. In the second part of the text,
I will explain how the memory of this egalitarian and mutualist
past reverberates today as an operative concept in the church’s
contemporary internal politics of dissent, after a historical pro-
cess that has introduced diverse hierarchical structures in its so-
cial and political organization. I will also explore the ambiguities
behind these configurations, namely in what concerns the auton-
omy of the believer versus the authority of both the state and
God. This, as has been stated, has been a problematic question in
the history anarchist political thought, considering the seemingly
irreconcilable adherence to a supreme god and the rejection of
all forms of authority that subdue the individual, as well as the
traditional resistance of most (if not all) religious movements to
conceive themselves in any way as ‘anarchistic’ (the Tokoists be-
ing no exception).^7 But the acknowledgement of egalitarian, resis-
tant and utopian histories to be found in many of such cases has
progressively pushed it into the centre of debate, as this volume
exemplifies.
Resistance and political contestation in late colonial
Congo
The fact that the Tokoist Church, despite being an Angolan based
movement, emerged not in this territory but in the neighbouring
Belgian Congo, was less a surprise as it could seem from the start.
In fact, Simão Toko was but one of the many northern Angolans
of Kongo ethnicity who crossed the colonial borders and headed
towards the nearest metropolis. Despite the political frontier that
separated, since the late nineteenth century, Portuguese, French
and Belgian colonial endeavours, there was also a strong tradi-
tion of mobility, circulation and commercial exchange among the
different Bakongo groups in the region that did not necessarily
observe the juridical-political imposition on behalf of the Lisbon,
Brussels and Paris metropolitan governments.^8 Therefore, a strong
community of zombo (Angolans from the Maquela do Zombo