Simon Kimbangu Day

April 6 recalls the beginning of Simon Kimbangu’s public ministry at Nkamba in 1921, an event Kimbanguist tradition associates with healing and the foundation of the movement that became the Kimbanguist Church. Belgian colonial authorities viewed the rapidly growing religious movement as a threat. Kimbangu was arrested later that year, sentenced to death by a military court, had the sentence commuted to life imprisonment and died in prison at Élisabethville in 1951.

Ordinance 23/042 created the holiday in 2023 as the Day of the Struggle of Simon Kimbangu and African Consciousness, adding it to the nine dates inherited from 2014. The commemoration has religious meaning for Kimbanguists and a wider official anti-colonial framing. Describing those layers separately respects Kimbanguist belief without claiming every Congolese person shares one theology or political interpretation.

Simon Kimbangu Day is tied to the nationwide list in Ordinance 23/042 of March 30, 2023, which replaced the 2014 ordinance and names ten dates. Article 2 says that when a listed date falls on Sunday its leave is taken on the preceding day, but it says nothing about Saturday. In 2026 the Ministry of Employment instead used case-specific notices to move several Sunday or Saturday holidays to Monday. Article 123 of the Labour Code leaves the holiday regime to the labour minister; because current practice is not a uniform automatic weekend rule, employees, schools and travellers should rely on the dated ministry and workplace notice for an adjusted day rather than project a Monday substitute into another year.