Abstract: This article examines a 1974 language conference in Zaire (today, the Democratic Republic of Congo) using conference minutes, newspaper articles, and oral history interviews in order to illuminate the politics of language during the regime of Mobutu Sese Seko (1965–1997). I focus especially on the attempt at the conference by regime insiders to use this language conference in order to gain academic support for their plan to make Lingala, one of Zaire’s four national languages, into Zaire’s co-official language alongside French. Unexpectedly for regime advocates, this Lingala proposal ran into significant opposition at the conference, setting off a dramatic debate. This article begins by establishing the trajectory of Zairian language politics leading up to the conference before analyzing the debate itself, and finally exploring the conference’s effects and aftermath. I argue that a careful reading of the conference, focused on the Lingala proposition and its outcome, reveals the limitations of Mobutu’s power, even at the height of his regime, and the nuanced, cautious approach through which the Mobutu regime navigated fraught issues of regional and ethnolinguistic identity that have challenged governments in Congo and across the African continent since independence. The conference episode also demonstrates how Zairian academics exerted agency and influenced policy in the face of dictatorship.