The Racist Zoo Where Visitors Paid to See Black People in the 90s

This article originally appeared on VICE France.

Just a few kilometres from the city of Nantes, in northwestern France, there’s a zoo that attracts a few hundred thousand visitors a year. These days, it goes by the name of Planète Sauvage (French for “Wild Planet”) and mostly features savannah animals. But 30 years ago, this place had a very different identity. 

In 1994, two years after its grand opening, the park then known as Safari Africain (“African Safari”) embarked on a partnership with the French biscuit brand St. Michel. A few years back, the company had launched a new product to stand out from the competition – a chocolate biscuit called Bamboula. Its mascot – a Black child also named Bamboula, who lived in the imaginary universe of Bambouland – quickly became very popular among little kids. He was turned into a comic book character, spawning a popular product line that included keychains, figurines and even magazines. 

The success of Bamboula prompted St. Michel to reach out to Safari Africain. Initially, the idea was to dedicate a certain portion of the park to Bamboula and his world. But the park’s manager, Dany Laurent, decided to take things a step further and recreate a whole village in the park, complete with roads, huts and – well, people.

The jaw-dropping story behind how this racist project actually came together in 90s France is now the subject of a documentary titled Le village de Bamboula (“Bamboula’s Village”) by Yoann de Montgrand and François Tchernia, filmed for the local TV station France 3 Pays de la Loire.

Firmly convinced of the brilliance of his idea, park owner Laurent took a trip to the Ivory Coast, a West African country and once-prized French colonial territory. While there, he crossed paths with a troupe of local artists which included actors, dancers and musicians, and struck a deal with their manager, Salif Coulibaly, signing them for a six-month stint at the park. 

Twenty-five Ivorians, including children, were then hired and sent to France to entertain visitors to the park, taking them on a journey to a highly fictionalised version of Africa. “This safari is a dream come true for visitors who long to encounter exotic wildlife,” a smiling Laurent told the press on the day of the village’s opening, the 14th of April, 1994. “In today’s dreary, stressful world, we all need a chance to see our dreams come true.” 

The Ivorian performers had been tasked with building their own clay huts and thatched roofs for Bamboula’s Village, but these houses weren’t just for decoration – they actually had to live in them and sleep on mattresses laid on the ground. Needless to say, these homes were not built for Nantes’ rainy climate.

In archival images filmed after the opening, visitors are seen hurrying to take a look at the so-called villagers up close. Cameras and camcorders in hand, they rush past lions and giraffes to Bamboula’s Village and its inhabitants, without so much as batting an eyelid. “Stop, stop! Don’t move,” one of the visitors is heard yelling at one of the Ivorians while taking posed photos. Others ogle at the dancers, forced to perform bare-chested, even in bad weather.

These scenes, now presented in Bamboula’s Village, evoke memories of the racist human zoos where African people were paraded for spectacle across Europe and the US at the end of the 19th century. The Ivorian artists had to stage six 30-minute performances per day, seven days a week, with only a few minutes’ break in between, all for a salary that amounted to one-fourth of the French minimum wage of the time. Most of them lived confined to their huts and never even got to leave the park. 

Bamboula’s Village soon got onto the radar of anti-racist organisations and unions, which joined forces to create the group Non à la réserve humaine (“No to the Human Zoo”) and denounce the deplorable living conditions of the performers. Outrageously low pay aside, they were basically forced to work as their passports had been taken from them on the pretext that they’d somehow lose them. If anyone got sick, they were seen by veterinarians from the zoo – not doctors. To top that off, the children in the group were received no schooling whatsoever.

Horrified at the general public indifference to the issue, No to the Human Zoo threatened the park with legal action. A work inspection was carried out at the zoo, but very little changed after the visit. At some point, a school teacher volunteered to teach rudimentary maths and French to the village kids, and the park did make some efforts to comply with labour laws, but the damage had already been done.

Meanwhile, a number of Black people from all over France began reporting being called “Bamboula” in racist encounters – a name that is itself linked to a long history of racism. Though it was first recorded in the 1700s in Haiti and originally referred to a type of African musical instrument and the dance performed to its drumbeat, it was later used as a French slur for Black people during colonial times – only for it to be resurrected in the form of intimidation and cutesy cartoons.

Thanks to activist pressure, the Ivorian performers’ papers were eventually returned. But the story did not end there. The artists accused their own manager, Salif Coulibaly, of forcibly taking their passports once again and refusing to distribute their salary to them, claiming Coulibaly kept the stolen goods in his bedroom, the only one with a lock. In the documentary, multiple women from the group also accused him of having forced them to have sex with him. In one archive interview, Coulibaly denies there were any problems with the park.

Toward the end of 1994, No to the Human Zoo took their grievances to the courts. In order to get more eyes on what was happening at Bamboula’s Village, they also decided to temporarily re-open an exhibition on the European slave trade that was held between 1992 and February 1994 in Nantes and invited the press. The event had a considerable impact, and the media suddenly began to take interest in Bamboula’s Village. 

Meanwhile, the court in Nantes recognised the activist group’s complaint. On the 16th of September, 1994, a court-appointed expert went to the park to document the human rights violations taking place in Bamboula’s Village. Alas, it was already too late. Two days prior, the park’s manager had ordered the troupe out of the park and the country, paying them only a tiny portion of their salary on their way out. 

Despite the artists’ departure, the court was still able to collect sufficient proof of the human rights violations to prosecute the park and its manager. Dany Laurent had to pay a symbolic sum of just 1 Franc (€0.15) in damages to the organisations who had filed the complaint, and 4000 Francs (or €850 today) reimburse their legal fees. The park didn’t close, but Bamboula’s Village itself was demolished. Laurent died in an accident in his swimming pool in 2014.

The legal case also put the last nail in the coffin for St. Michel’s Bamboula chocolate biscuit. The company decided it preferred to avoid any associations with its former partner – it just wasn’t good for business.

As for the Ivorian artists, some of them chose to return to France a few years later to perform at various festivals and concerts. This time, at least, their talents were finally recognised.