Pierre Kompany

Why an honorary doctorate? 

Wednesday, 17 November. Pierre Kompany receives an honorary doctorate from VUB and the Parliament of the Brussels-Capital Region in recognition of his influential role as a political refugee, a committed politician, and as the first black mayor of a Belgian municipality.

The extraordinary journey of a former sans papiers

In 1975, Pierre Kompany arrived in Belgium as a sans papiers. He fled the Congo after serving a prison sentence of more than 13 months for his involvement in a student protest against Mobutu's increasingly dictatorial regime. It would take until 1982 before he acquired his papers and could finally call himself a Belgian. Soon, he also becomes politically active, more specifically as a militant of the PS, the Walloon Socialist Party. In 2006, when he is 58 years old, the party asks him to stand as a candidate in the municipal elections in Ganshoren. He wins the election and becomes an alderman in the new municipal council. In 2014, he appears on the list of the CDH (Centre Démocrate Humaniste) for the Brussels regional elections and is elected as a people's representative in the Brussels parliament, a success he repeats in the 2019 regional elections. By then, he is also the mayor of Ganshoren, after the ProGanshoren list, on which he figures as a candidate for mayor in the 2018 municipal elections, attracts the most votes. They will never take away his title of first black mayor of a Belgian municipality.

About his career

High wind turbines catch a lot of wind

In 1988, Pierre Kompany graduates as an industrial engineer, aeronautics department. With his thesis for a turbine with a vertical axis of rotation, he wins gold medals at the Brussels and Geneva inventions fairs in 1997 and 1998.

Handy with his feet

Pierre Kompany is, of course, the father of star football player Vincent Kompany. But he can handle the ball quite well himself. In the 1970s, he even plays with second division K.R.C. Mechelen, which is later promoted to first division.

Congolese with respect for Belgium

Although everyone spontaneously associates him with his son Vincent, Pierre Kompany (71) is also a unique person. Marked by the Mobutu regime in the Congo, he arrived in Belgium in 1975 as a 'sans papier'. Over 40 years later, he is the first black mayor in Belgium (in the Brussels municipality of Ganshoren). He is living proof that Belgium is succeeding in gradually leaving behind its colonial past. He himself has never denied his origins, but at the same time he speaks of his new homeland with great respect.

From Congo to Ganshoren

In 1975, Pierre Kompany flees the former Zaire and ends up in Belgium as a 'sans papiers'. 43 years later, he is sworn in as Belgium's first black mayor.

From company to Kompany

Pierre's grandfather was a receiver at a mining company. They said of him: it is the end of the month, the 'kompany' will be coming round again. The name stuck.