Stade Tata Raphaël
multi-purpose stadium in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo
Stade Tata Raphaël (Father Raphael Stadium) is a multi-purpose stadium in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Originally known as Stade Roi Baudouin (King Baudouin Stadium) when it was inaugurated in 1952 and Stade du 20 Mai (20 May Stadium) in 1967, it was used mostly for football matches. The stadium has a capacity of 60,000 people.
History
The stadium's most famous event was The Rumble in the Jungle boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman for the Undisputed WBC/WBA Heavyweight Championship that took place on October 30, 1974. Sixty thousand people attended the boxing match. In what was ranked as a great upset, Ali knocked out the previously undefeated Foreman in eight rounds. The associated music festival, Zaire 74, that took place at the stadium six weeks prior to the boxing match, included stars James Brown and B.B. King.
Following the downfall of President Mobutu Sese Seko's regime in 1997, the stadium was renamed Stade Tata Raphaël after Raphaël de la Kethulle de Ryhove, initiator of the stadium in 1952.
The stadium was the setting for a documentary film about Congolese women's boxing, Victoire Terminus (2008).
In popular culture
Barbara Kingsolver's novel The Poisonwood Bible (1998) includes a passage describing the Rumble in the Jungle taking place at the Stade du 20 Mai (20 May Stadium) while political prisoners are locked up downstairs.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Stade Tata Raphaël” as multi-purpose stadium in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as multi-purpose stadium in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3495887. Authority coordinates are -4.338, 15.322. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1952, 1967, 1974 and 1997.
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This entry incorporates text from “Stade Tata Raphaël” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.