Rocky Production

Shekinah Kashama Mfuamba, also known as Rocky, was born in Lubumbashi and has lived and worked in Kinshasa as a publisher and scenarist since 1978.

Shekinah Kashama Mfuamba alias Rocky

He has a diploma in pedagogy, acquired at the Pedagogical Institute in Ngiri-Ngiri. In 1987 Rocky founded the label Rocky Production, under which new comic books in the style of popular comics are regularly published to this day. In collaboration with autodidact illustrators from Kinshasa, he creates short comic strips that tell fictional stories as series. These have become popular due to their proximity to the reality of urban Kinshasa. The comics are currently being distributed throughout Kinshasa at local markets and by ambulant street vendors in print runs of 5,000 to 6,000 copies per issue. The first issue appeared in 1987 under the title “Mofuteli aza Mowumbu te” (“A tenant is not a slave”). The 1990 issue “Mbanda apesi bana ya mbanda kindoki” (“The second wife bewitched the stepchildren”) attracted special attention, because the theme appeared in popular music at the same time.

The booklets repeatedly managed to add new accents to current debates, such as “Abali Marie de Nuit” (“She married the demon”), published in 2005, which artistically deals with the rumours of witchcraft spread by revival churches. Currently, the five-part series “Boloko ya bolingo” (“The Love Prison”), which illustrates well-known folk stories in the style of the popular theatre of Kinshasa, was published in 2019.