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The Rise and Decline of the Zairian State
... Moreover, the army's limited financial means had a direct impact on how it went about its work. They 'were plunder machines as well as conquering armies: not or inadequately provisioned they largely lived off the land, raiding for food, slaves and war booty wherever they passed' (Roes 2010: 637 Vellut 1984;Verweijen 2015a: 54-56;Young 1965;Young & Turner 1985). ...
... Indeed, these plans were entirely abandoned by the late 1970s (Callaghy 1984;Schatzberg 1982;Willame 1984;Young & Turner 1985). ...
My dissertation explores the state in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) through a case study of the Congolese police and their reform. In short, it is about the police and their everyday work, about the effects of police reform and the nature of the state. While scholarship on the police in the post-colony and in Africa in particular has been growing over the past decade, this is the first comprehensive academic account of the police in Congo. Moreover, despite the crucial role of the police in state-society relations, in Congo and the wider region they remain underexplored in the study of these relations as well as of the state in general. My thesis, then, aims to contribute not only to scholarship on the
police in Congo, but to broader questions of the state and its nature in Central Africa. It addresses the following question: How do the police perform the state in Congo? Or, more specifically, in what ways do police practices and encounters with the public reproduce, sustain or collapse Congo’s state?
The shortest answer to this question lies in what I refer to as the Craft of the Congo Cop. Based on a year of immersive fieldwork consisting of interviews, focus groups and participant observation, my dissertation traces this performative way of doing the police in a context marked by acute contingency, scarcity and plurality. Following police officers
from the classroom via the station to the street, I argue that officers make policework possible through their everyday performativity (Butler 1994, 2010) that draws on, combines as well as subverts rationalities, technologies and techniques of prevailing—and entangled—governmentalities. While some of these police performatives project an effect of the state that instils them with its authority, not all do. In fact, everyday police performatives subvert as much as sustain the ‘state effect’ (Mitchell 1991). The Craft of the Congo Cop lies in the ability to reconcile colliding governmentalities and to project the state as a temporary, yet convincing effect of authority as and when it is required. This effect may barely last through one interaction only to crumble in the next and call for its transformation in the one thereafter. Therefore, rather than implying weakness, failure or chaos from this inherently contingent performative process, I propose that the state in Congo is best understood as a composite of temporary and fast-changing effects summoned by police performatives to gain an edge in a given social encounter. This composite nature explains why the state in Congo seems to be everywhere and nowhere, tangible and illusive, enduring and fleeting all at once.
... Yet in the 1970s a different roadblock logic developed. An unprecedented economic crisis drastically diminished the regime's resource base, implying it could no longer properly pay state agents (Young and Turner, 1985). To top up their declining salaries, officials turned to the non-official economy and wealth extraction from citizens. ...
This Working Paper develops a political sociology of roadblocks to demonstrate how roadblocks in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) contribute to the production and reproduction of public authority. Using a dramaturgical approach, we show how during roadblock encounters, public authority is instantaneously produced through the joint performances of roadblock agents, roadblocks and road users. Drawing on structuration theory, we show how these performances are scripted by social structures–namely, norms, discourses and power relations–which imbue them with meaning and shape the agency of those involved. Because most roadblock encounters remain within the parameters of well-defined scripts, they ultimately contribute to the reproduction rather than the transformation of the structures that script public authority in the DRC–regardless of who exercises it. Our approach offers a refined conceptualisation of agency during roadblock encounters, which provides a better understanding of when and why people comply with demands made by roadblock operators and of the cumulative effects of the micro-practices enacted at roadblocks on broader sociopolitical orders.
... Things began to change in 1965 when Mobutu seized power. Because he sought to secure legitimacy via national unity, Mobutu designed specific policies, including zairianization (Young & Turner, 1985) and authenticité (White, 2006) which aimed at relocating and concentrating power into his and his entourage's hands while also promoting a sense of national identity. These policies -among others -were implemented mainly through the Mouvement Populaire de la Révolution (MPR), which formed the core of a highly centralised single-party rule which Mobutu developed as an autocratic, nepotistic and corrupt political system (Schatzberg, 1991). ...
This article explores how decentralisation policy and specifically the establishment of communes rurales in DR Congo turned into a profoundly destabilising juncture, shaking existing governance arrangements. In particular, we examine how this has led to a reshuffle of power and a renegotiation of public authoritiy. By analysing the impact of decentralisation on the construction of and competition over public authority in three Congolese towns – Rubaya, Minembwe and Fungurume – we demonstrate how decentralisation is deeply politicised, with conflicting governance actors mobilising their power in an attempt to secure their claim to public authority. We argue that the establishment of communes rurales in eastern and southeastern DRC should be therefore understood as a strongly destabilising moment, changing the access of governance actors to resources and repertoires from which they build and legitimise their public authority. Depending on the specific context of the local political arena and its entanglements with larger struggles for power and control, this destabilising moment bears the potential for (violent) conflict. As such, we conclude that decentralisation has failed to live up to its promises of stability and peace while generating new sets of political fault lines and a re‐activation of (violent) conflict.
... 63 After his 1965 coup, Mobutu gained control of Congo in the late 1960s and early 1970s through cooptation and intimidation internally, and by cultivating favorable relations with Belgium, the US, and later France externally, before seeing his power ebb under the weight of mismanagement and greed after the late 1970s. 64 Mobutu held onto power until 1997 by shifting the form of his regime whenever politically expedient, and coopting whatever opponents he could not muzzle or eliminate. 65 Cooptation, as Young and Turner explained, was "used with remarkable effect throughout the Mobutu era … as the far-flung apparatus of the state offered a large reservoir of positions for those willing to pledge faithful service." ...
This article argues for the potential of sociolinguistic methods to write post-colonial African history using a case study of the Mobutu regime’s use of Lingala as its language of power ( langue du pouvoir ) in order to rule Congo-Zaire. Oral history interviews conducted in DRC from 2019 to 2021, corroborated by sociolinguistic and political science analyses from the period under study, reveal how the Mobutu regime’s use of Lingala contributed to the privatization of the Zairian state, and the fracturing of Zairian society, but also the strengthening of Zairian and later Congolese national identity.
... 25 Bates (1981) explained why African leaders would opt for under-provision of public goods, whose non-excludability makes them particularly poor instruments for sustaining patronage networks, and instead trade money and food gifts to supporters in exchange for votes or political support. Part of Mugabe's power was managed via the highly personalized strategy of continuously shuffling occupants of high-level positions in government (see Turner and Young, 1985). This type of strategy, akin to a divide-and-rule strategy allows rulers to maintain authority over those they don't trust. ...
We argue that economic collapses can result from the adoption by political actors of strategies that generate severe negative economic externalities for society. We establish the conditions for political conflict to become economically destructive and develop a diagnostics toolkit to identify when income declines are consequence of the breakdown of conflict-management arrangements. When political conflict drives a collapse in growth, we expect the onset of the contraction to coincide with the intensification of political conflict, authority to be truly contested, politically advantageous strategies to generate negative externalities, economic collapse to be driven by productivity losses, short-term biases in policies to increase with contestation of power, and the policy framework to improve once political conflict recedes. We argue that all these conditions were satisfied in two of the largest peacetime collapses in modern history: Venezuela (2012–2020) and Zimbabwe (1997–2008).
JEL Codes: O11, D72, D74.
... 48 The national economy of DRC (former Zaire) had been worsening year by year since the country's independence. In spite of devaluation and sudden change of high-value banknotes, the prices of commodities rose 60-fold during the 15 years since independence, whereas the real wage dropped to one-quarter of its initial value during the same period (Young & Turner 1985). The national economy further deteriorated in the 1980s, with the annual inflation rate reaching as high as 100 per cent (the annual inflation rate rose to 1000 % or more in the 1990s, and the former Zairian economy finally fell into a state of hyperinflation). ...
Contemporary hunter-gatherers in central Africa face similar problems concerning their culture and environment: destruction of the forests that have been accommodating their unique forest-based culture, influences of market economy and consumerism, and nature conservation initiatives that restrict their extractive activities in protected areas. In order to cope with these problems, it is important to understand their life and culture in local ecological settings, as well as in historical and wider economic and political contexts. I will describe here three approaches that have been taken and developed by Japanese ecological anthropologists to the study of central African hunter-gatherers. The three approaches are (1) cultural ecology, which describes the way the hunter-gatherers perceive, understand and utilize the forest environment, (2) historical ecology, which shows how they modify the forest through interacting with it, and (3) political ecology, which analyzes how the economic and political situation influences their relationship with the forest. I will then examine the implications of the results from these approaches for addressing the current problems faced by the central African forest hunter-gatherers and their environment.
... Decentralisation, also enacted in the new constitution, has still not been implemented, either at provincial or district and lower levels. Local elections have not taken place and the lower tiers of state administration are built on 'traditional chiefs' and local power structures (Young and Turner, 1985). While the Congolese constitution and mining code attribute both mineral and surface rights to the state, concentrating the politics of mining in the hands of central government, traditional authorities are the main de facto authorities at local level. ...
Not only development agencies, international organisations and international NGOs intervene in postcolonial societies but also multinational companies. These companies are today expected to promote the building of liberal states and civil societies. Some of them in fact do engage in activities that follow this demand and engage in participatory community development and capacity building. In some areas in Africa, they are in fact amongst the most active promoters of what some refer to as ‘global liberal governmentality’ (Sending and Neumann, 2006). These are business spaces, and in particular areas of extraction that have received investment by large multinational mining companies, such as the Niger Delta in Nigeria or the Copperbelt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia. These companies often refer to the people living adjacent to their operations as ‘their communities’ and in engaging with them draw on the discourse of civil society. This chapter analyses companies’ practices in adjacent communities, using the case of mining companies in copper and cobalt–rich Southern Katanga in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It looks at large and medium-sized multinational companies that have committed themselves to standards of corporate social responsibility. These are for this chapter the American company Freeport MacMoRan, Canadian First Quantum and Australian Anvil Mining. Examining the everyday practices of these companies allows to show ambiguous uses and effects of the idea of civil society and participatory community engagement. Drawing on case studies from the early twentieth century and the post-2000 period, this chapter shows, firstly, that companies have always been comprehensively involved in ordering practices in adjacent communities. However, the participatory management of today is different from the coercive and disciplinary paternalism used to control local communities a century ago. However, despite this shift to a new liberal governmentality (Rose 1999), which emphasises the participation of the population in its own governance, there are also striking similarities between early colonial and contemporary corporate ordering attempts. Participation operates in concert with powerful techniques of coercion and indirect rule. While dominating official discourse, calling on self-responsible citizens coexists with fortress protection and older practices of paternalistic cooptation and indirect rule (Hönke 2013). In addition, participatory community engagement and recourse to the discourse of liberal civil society takes place selectively. Technocratic problem-solving-oriented cooperation and service-delivery is encouraged whilst other, contentious activity is silenced. The liberal claim of self-determination is in fact compromised by the recourse to indirect rule and coercion in order to secure stable working conditions, as well as managerial approaches to participation. After an exploration of the literature on participatory community development and corporate-community relations, the chapter analyses continuities and changes in corporate community practices in the early twentieth century and the post-2003 period in Katanga, DRC. It examines how Western donor agencies join in with companies in building a service-oriented ‘civil society’ while excluding more critical voices. It also criticizes the lack of sustainability of corporate participatory community programs such as in times of economic crisis.
... According to Robinson and Verdier (2013), this exchange is illegal, because democratic parameters do not allow for subjective politics. Turner and Young (1985), however, maintain that the formation of a patron-client relationship is not solely dependent on a mutual exchange, "but on some principle of affinity which supplies a social logic on the network. Kinship and ethnic affinity are the most frequent bases for network formation." ...
This article details how Siaka Stevens’ patron-client system of government directly impacted the gradual collapse of the Sierra Leone state structure. Stevens assumed presidential power in 1971 after Stevens’ loyalists overthrew Colonel Bangura and seized political power. While there are multiple studies on the patron-client system of government, the argument that the Sierra Leonean state’s preference for the consumption of the products of Western modernity opposed to utilizing modern tools of governance like a modern political elite, directly caused the fall of the newly independent state, has not been analyzed in much detail. This essay explores the specific workings of the All people’s Congress (APC) party vis-à-vis internal cohesion and state formation. In the final analysis, it is revealed that political power was highly centralized and provided little (if any) accommodation for socio-economic growth and advancement.
... Several authors have sought to identify the classes that divide Congolese society on the basis of their position in the national political economy (Nzongola 1970, Schatzberg 1980, Callaghy 1984, Young and Turner 1985, MacGaffey 1987. They did not necessarily agree on the number of classes, their boundaries, and the criteria to be taken into account in order to distinguish them but all assumed that Congolese society was composed of classes, and that their relationship reflected the dynamics of an economy in the periphery of the capitalist system. ...
... The collapse of the colonial order and the ensuing political crisis brought to the surface a multitude of subjacent political tensions. 1 For the main actors and their audiences, ethnicity was considered a major source of these tensions. 2 The way political competition unfolded all over the country in the immediate postindependence period in the Congo indicated the degree to which political discourse was laden with the politics of ethnicity. Indeed, Congo's national independence movement was largely made up of a fragile alliance of large ethno-regional political parties, which above all claimed to defend the interests of their respective ethnic groups. ...
In this paper, we investigate the nexus between ethnicity and violent conflict in the Congo. We make three interlocking arguments. First, we argue that ethnicity is a defining political resource in the Congo's politics and violent conflicts, which we call 'ethnic capital'. Second, we argue that the high political value of this ethnic capital is sustained by engrained discourses and practices of ethnicity. These discourses and practices permeate the Congo's political order, shape people's understanding of politics, conflict and political identities , and have contributed to the formation of an unstable, centrifugal , and fragmentary political order. Third, we argue that conceptualising ethnicity as capital dismantles the artificial dualism between the symbolic realm of identities and the material realm of the economy and makes it possible to move beyond primordialist, instrumentalist and purely symbolic understandings of the nexus between conflict and ethnicity. Ultimately, what is at stake in this competition is the distribution of symbolic and material resources.
... Autores como Young y Turner (1985) analizaron los primeros cinco años del gobierno de Mobutu y aseguran que la captación de impuestos se incrementó, la inflación se redujo y la economía llegó a crecer en 8% (MacGaffey, 1987, p. 420). De similar modo, Kabwit (1979, p. 401) confirma el éxito mobutista, pues durante los cinco años posteriores a la toma del poder, su régimen resultó muy exitoso en implantar la ley y el orden posteriores al caos y la anarquía, dicotomías que garantizaban la existencia de las partes a partir del todo. ...
Análisis del avance de la razón universal de carácter metonímico y su inherente y constante lógica de producción de binomios y dicotomías capaces de producir repetidamente fronteras de carácter abisal que definen las zonas de no existencia, lugares de aquello que es definido como verdadero o ininteligible. Estos límites de pensamiento abisal o fronteras del no ser han sobrevivido a los procesos independentistas de África en general, y en particular al proceso de liberación nacional de la República Democrática del Congo. La persistencia de estas líneas abisales implica que las utopías de emancipación han perdido su potencial de liberación o que incluso han terminado por convertirse en la contracara del pensamiento abisal. ¿Hay, entonces, más allá de lo que este pensamiento abisal determina como existente o no existente, alguna posibilidad de identificar fórmulas de antipoder cuyos términos de emancipación, subjetivación o instrumentalización escapen a la lógica del pensamiento abisal?
... Hickel (2017: 122) states that "Lumumba was shot, chopped to pieces and burned to ashes in a barrel." More recently, President Mobuto and President Kabila have been accused of using their armed forces to terrorize, intimidate, and massacre their own people in their pursuit of personal wealth (Nzongola-Ntalaja 2002;Young and Turner 1985;McBeth 2008). The violent removal of the democratic government and the general state of underdevelopment and poor social infrastructure serve to ensure that Western interest continues to have access to cheap mineral resources at the minor cost of supporting compliant political tyrants. ...
This paper explores the 2004 Kilwa massacre in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) through a decolonial perspective, explaining how the massacre is situated within the history of colonial power and global capitalist relations. As such, the convergence of mining and political interests that created the context in which this violence was possible is examined, rather than the specific human rights abuses committed during the massacre. This approach highlights how such acts of violence are an ongoing factor of colonial and postcolonial exploitation, as well as the difficulties in holding the responsible parties accountable. This investigation shows the importance of developing a decolonial Southern criminology that contextualizes human rights abuses within local and international systems of power and locates acts of criminal violence within the broader networks of structural violence.
... 43 A repressive campaign in 1967 led many of the Katanga gendarmes to flee to neighboring Angola. 44 Mobutu built a new regime after the chaos of the first five years. He renamed Congo Zaire as part of his authenticity policy. ...
This article focuses on the Moroccan intervention during the Shaba crisis of 1977-1978 when invading rebels from nearby Angola were destabilizing the Zairean regime of Mobutu Sese Seko. The direct Moroccan military intervention prevented a collapse of Mobutu’s rule. This article sheds light on the motivation of the Moroccan ruler, King Hassan II, to support a fellow African leader. Part of the motivation lies with the important historic role played by Morocco in the first year of independence of Congo. Morocco’s involvement in 1960-61 extended beyond the delivery of a large number of troops for the UN mission, and included direct contact with key decision makers in newly independent Congo, chief among them, a young Mobutu. The analysis adds to the existing Cold war studies, by explaining how a non-Western actor behaved and what motivated this behavior. It helps in understanding the cooperation taking place between leaders in the Global South. It also places the intervention within the larger Cold War context. This comes at a time when Middle Eastern states, among them Egypt, Iran and Saudi Arabia were linking up with Morocco and France to fill the void left by the United States in the 1970s.
... In Katanga, the nationalisation of the mining industry under Mobutu transfered ownership to the state, but did not change much in how the new parastatal Gécamines was run. A study in 1984 concludes that regardless of the nationalisation of the copper and cobalt industry, the colonial model of external control of Katanga's mining industry by the Belgian Société Général, who continued to manage the company on behalf of the state, remained in place (Ilunkamba 1984: 97). 3 The Mobutu regime used Gécamines as major source of revenue nurturing patrimonial networks in the context of declining statehood, without investing in the industry (Young/Turner 1985, Braeckman 1992. An economic scramble is taking place in Katanga and in the Copperbelt, which is being spurred by the long-term peak of prices for industrial minerals and the industrialisation process in countries such as India and China. ...
A boost in global mineral and metal prices has spurred investment in the resource-rich regions of Africa, provoking comparisons with the imperial scramble for Africa at the end of the 19th century. Transnational companies played an important role in tapping African raw material resources in the 19th and early 20th century as they do today in sourcing strategic minerals from the continent. In the past, companies were not only instrumental in opening up the continent’s mineral deposits to supply European industrialisation, but were also key in the establishment of colonial rule. Imperial and colonial states subcontracted governance functions to concessionary firms who acted as hybrid entities following private, for-profit interests while being endowed with state-like powers and functions. Today, large multinational companies, alongside a number of state-owned enterprises, seem to be involved in a new economic scramble for industrial minerals on the continent, driven either by the price boom on the international metal market, or the resource interests of their respective home states.
History seems to provide appealing analogies to capture contemporary developments, as titles like ‘the new scramble’ (this book, Soares de Oliveira 2007, Frynas/Paulo 2006) suggest. Taking the analogy seriously, this chapter engages in analysing the old and new engagement of international industrial mining companies under a particular angle. Focusing on foreign companies during two periods of an alleged scramble for African resources, the early phase of European colonisation at the turn from the 19th to the 20th century, and the beginning of the 21st century, my interest is in exploring similarities in the role of companies in producing an order of resource extraction in the African periphery. As their earlier counterparts working in contexts of weak state structures, at the first glance, mining companies seem today to be much less involved in governing mining regions. However, as contemporary companies also operate in the context of fragmented and weak political order, similarities can be expected as regards companies’ engagement in producing order as a basic condition for running mining operations. Thus the chapter analyses how strategies of securing production shape the political, social and spatial order of enclaves of extraction, and how they relate companies to local political authorities.
The analysis draws on the Central African Copperbelt, comprising the Copperbelt province in the North of Zambia and the Katanga province in the South of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as a case study. Historically the region was characterised by an economic regime of competitive exploitation (Austen 1987: 155ff) and is being most affected by the booming demand for industrial metals today. The first part of the paper introduces the heuristic perspective from which the nexus of extractive business and political order will be analysed. The second part relates the integration of the region into the global economy to the boom and bust cycles of the international copper and cobalt market, gives an overview of the role of companies in the scramble for Katanga and the Copperbelt in the 19th century, and provides background information on the recent investment boom in the region. While acknowledging a number of obvious differences, the third part analyses how companies engage in securing production in the context of weak statehood and carves out similar patterns of producing order pertaining to both periods of time.
... Thus far the literature has focused mainly on the various strategies deployed by the state to establish control over distant territories (Boone, 2003). In this regard, research on the DRC has highlighted the role of state ideology, repression and clientelist networks -including customary chiefsas mechanisms for keeping control over the country's vast territory (Young and Turner, 1985;Schatzberg, 2001;Englebert, 2003). However, multinational companies can also play a role in the expansion of government control (Hönke, 2010), in particular in areas Catherine Boone has described as l'Afrique utile (Boone, 1998). ...
Introduction: mining, land grabbing and politics in the DRC
Large-scale foreign direct investments in land are not new, as Peemans demonstrates in this volume. Foreign investors and concessions granted to multinational companies were crucial in the mise en valeur of ‘vacant lands’ in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Vellut, 1983). More recently, a ‘new [resource] scramble for Africa’ has been observed (Southall and Melber, 2009), targeting primarily oil and mineral-rich regions. As such resources are in high demand and becoming scarcer, multinationals continue to prospect for reserves and are seeking to gain and secure access to strategic mineral and energetic resources in more risk-prone environments.
Risk is a reality and, according to Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC, 2011: 1), ‘projects become more complex and are typically in more remote, unfamiliar territory’. These ‘unfamiliar territories’, in which mining companies find it difficult to operate, are often inhabited by local communities who make their own claims to the land. They frequently clash with multinational mining companies over issues such as land use, dispossession, relocation, environmental pollution, degradation of communities’ resources, human rights abuse and the loss of livelihoods (Hilson, 2002: 68; Ballard and Banks, 2003: 289). Such contestations are now occurring all over the world, as demonstrated in case-studies from Australia (O’Faircheallaigh, 1995), Papua New Guinea (Banks and Ballard, 1997; Hilson, 2002), Peru (Bury, 2004), Ghana (Hilson and Yakovleva, 2007; Aubynn, 2009; Bush, 2009), Tanzania (Carstens and Hilson, 2009) and the DRC (Geenen and Claessens, 2013; Hönke, 2013).
The DRC is known for its large reserves of mineral resources, including over 10 per cent of the world’s copper and 49 of the world’s cobalt reserves, situated mostly in the underground of the province of Katanga (USGS – United States Geological Survey, 2009). Moreover, the province of Kasai holds a considerable share of the world’s diamond reserves and the eastern provinces host substantial reserves of coltan (tantalum ore), cassiterite (tin ore) and gold, although these are hard to estimate because few geological surveys have been conducted (World Bank, 2008).
Since colonization, the Congolese economy has relied extensively on the industrial exploitation and export of raw materials (Bezy, Peemans and Wautelet, 1981; Geenen, 2011a). Mining companies such as ‘Union Minière’ in Katanga governed their vast concessions as private domains.
... Decentralisation, also enacted in the new constitution, has still not been implemented, either at provincial or district and lower levels. Local elections have not taken place and the lower tiers of state administration are built on 'traditional chiefs' and local power structures (Young and Turner, 1985). While the Congolese constitution and mining code attribute both mineral and surface rights to the state, concentrating the politics of mining in the hands of central government, traditional authorities are the main de facto authorities at local level. ...
Not only development agencies, international organisations and international NGOs intervene in postcolonial societies but also multinational companies. These companies are today expected to promote the building of liberal states and civil societies. Some of them in fact do engage in activities that follow this demand and engage in participatory community development and capacity building. In some areas in Africa, they are in fact amongst the most active promoters of what some refer to as ‘global liberal governmentality’ (Sending and Neumann, 2006). These are business spaces, and in particular areas of extraction that have received investment by large multinational mining companies, such as the Niger Delta in Nigeria or the Copperbelt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia. These companies often refer to the people living adjacent to their operations as ‘their communities’ and in engaging with them draw on the discourse of civil society.
This chapter analyses companies’ practices in adjacent communities, using the case of mining companies in copper and cobalt–rich Southern Katanga in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It looks at large and medium-sized multinational companies that have committed themselves to standards of corporate social responsibility. These are for this chapter the American company Freeport MacMoRan, Canadian First Quantum and Australian Anvil Mining. Examining the everyday practices of these companies allows to show ambiguous uses and effects of the idea of civil society and participatory community engagement.
Drawing on case studies from the early twentieth century and the post-2000 period, this chapter shows, firstly, that companies have always been comprehensively involved in ordering practices in adjacent communities. However, the participatory management of today is different from the coercive and disciplinary paternalism used to control local communities a century ago. However, despite this shift to a new liberal governmentality (Rose 1999), which emphasises the participation of the population in its own governance, there are also striking similarities between early colonial and contemporary corporate ordering attempts. Participation operates in concert with powerful techniques of coercion and indirect rule. While dominating official discourse, calling on self-responsible citizens coexists with fortress protection and older practices of paternalistic cooptation and indirect rule (Hönke 2013). In addition, participatory community engagement and recourse to the discourse of liberal civil society takes place selectively. Technocratic problem-solving-oriented cooperation and service-delivery is encouraged whilst other, contentious activity is silenced. The liberal claim of self-determination is in fact compromised by the recourse to indirect rule and coercion in order to secure stable working conditions, as well as managerial approaches to participation.
After an exploration of the literature on participatory community development and corporate-community relations, the chapter analyses continuities and changes in corporate community practices in the early twentieth century and the post-2003 period in Katanga, DRC. It examines how Western donor agencies join in with companies in building a service-oriented ‘civil society’ while excluding more critical voices. It also criticizes the lack of sustainability of corporate participatory community programs such as in times of economic crisis.
... Second, the closure of Zaire's copper export railway in August 1975 due to the Angolan civil war. Third, a rise in petroleum costs, as the cost of Zairian oil imports quadrupledfrom 1973to 1977(Young and Turner 1985).The shocks proved too great for the Zairian state to absorb, and unmasked the tensions and contradictions inherent in Mobutu's nation state-building project. The manufacturing sector was in decline (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development 1973: 4), agriculture had been neglected, receiving less than one percent of state expenditure from 1968 to 1972 (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development 1975:Table 5.8), and the economy had increased its dependence on the mining sector(Kabwit 1979: 401). ...
In January 1967, under the infamous military head Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, the Democratic Republic of Congo nationalized its mining industry based on anticolonial rhetoric of “economic sovereignty.” Only two years later, the same Mobutu government welcomed foreign companies and investors with open arms to the inaugural Foire Internationale de Kinshasa. Even at this crucial postcolonial moment when ideas of economic independence and self-sufficiency had become so highly valued, an attachment to — even affinity towards — foreign capital persisted throughout Congolese politics. This article explores the political and intellectual tensions that arose from the postcolonial utilization of foreign capital for state consolidation and synthesizes these contradictions into a broader understanding of early development approaches in Mobutu's Congo. In contrast to those who have framed the Congolese leader's ideology as a rearticulation of colonial logics or the authoritarian whims of an individual, I argue that these early notions of Mobutist development should be understood as a kind of “worldmaking,” emerging from an anticolonial ideology that asserted Congo’s economic sovereignty while simultaneously inserting itself into the global streams of finance. By tracing the Mobutu government's fluctuating relationship to foreign finance, this research offers a longer history of the “neoliberal moment” in Congo — one in which the intellectual underpinnings for liberalization had percolated in Congolese nationalist politics for several decades.
This chapter presents a comprehensive discussion and critical analysis of the language policy of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). It does so by tracing the language policy to its colonial era roots under the church missions’ dominated education for Congolese, and colonial neglect by King Leopold II (1879–1908) and the Belgian administration (1908–1960). The discussion of this language policy trajectory shows the continuities and discontinuities of the policy over the decades and points out of the underlying ideologies that informed these developments. It is argued overall that the country’s policy was and continues to be informed by multilingual pragmatism and national ideologies, and that in these regards its failures in post-colonial times are attributable to poor implementation rather than conceptualization. The chapter offers plausible new language policy proposals that address failures in previous policy implementations and take into consideration recent demographics on the national languages: Kikongo, Kiswahili, Lingala, and Tshiluba.
This chapter discusses whether the prevalent representation of education as an equaliser of opportunity and social improvement is still relevant in Argentina or whether it has been transformed by 30 years of private education development. Argentina prohibits for-profit higher education, while the country has neither very low-quality private institutions nor institutions owned by multinational consortia. After contextualising inequality in the Argentinean social structure, the authors propose a quantitative analysis of the typologies of private higher education institutions before analysing the role played by the institution and the family in the academic trajectories of students in a private higher education institution for upper-class students in Buenos Aires. Based on empirical research and quantitative analysis, this chapter highlights the social construction of private higher education in Argentina and the differentiation mechanisms at work in this sector. Students’ personal experiences at one of the most prestigious private universities based on their decisions, expectations, and perceptions reveal ‘circuits of inequality’ linked to their social origin. The different mechanisms of social distinction work through the underlying structure of private higher education circuits and mechanisms, which contribute to the (re)production of social inequalities.
The chapter on the Democratic Republic of Congo shows the difficulty of understanding educationnal inequalities and the role of private higher education in their production in a failed country characterised by porosity between the public and private sectors, lack of robustness of data on higher education, absence of public funding and regulation of higher education and informal economy. But il shows also how higher education survive since three decades by emphasizing the heavy price of this survival: very low quality of training, absence of research, reign of arbitrariness and the race for a diploma by any means that the majority of young people … don’t have.
The analysis also highlights four non-exclusive types of development logic for private institutions: land-based, social, or political; faith-based, national or local; entrepreneurial; and electoral clientelism. These approaches illustrate the different modes of student recruitment that are at the root of certain educational and social inequalities. They suggest that socio-educational inequalities are may be on the verge of a profound worsening.
Paradoxically, the private sector is merely an offshoot of academic and corporatist monopolies established in the shadow of the failed state. With the exception of a few elitist denominational institutions, the private sector offers no alternative in terms of educational justice, training or social values.
Afrika uluslararası politikanın her ne kadar çeperinde yer alıyor olarak görülse de durum gerçekte böyle değildir. Afrika ulusları geçmişte olduğu gibi günümüz dünya meselelerinde önemli bir tarihsel rol oynamaktadır. Afrika Kıtası'nın sahip olduğu toprak, ormanlar, su ve mineraller gibi somut kaynaklara kadar uzanan doğal çevresi, devlet düzeyinde ve uluslararası düzeyde ekonomik ve siyasi girişimlerin belirlenmesinin merkezinde yer almıştır. Afrika’daki sömürge öncesinden sömürge dönemlerine kadar yerel ekonomik girişimlerin, bütünleşmiş bir küresel ekonomide kıtanın çevresel kaynaklarıyla bağlantılı olduğunu da ortaya çıkaracaktır.
Son zamanlarda Afrika; kendini, küreselleşme tartışmalarının merkez sahneyi işgal ettiği bir dünyada konumlanmış bulmuştur, öyle ki kıtadaki kalkınma arayışı da bir “dünya sistemleri” analizi ile kavramsallaştırılmıştır.
Birçok farklı kültür ve topluma ev sahipliği yapan geniş bir kara parçası olan Afrika’da devlet yapıları ve politik sistemleri birbirinden farklı özellikler göstermektedir. Bir başka deyişle tipik bir Afrika yönetim şekli diye bir şey yoktur. Afrika Kıtası'nda yer alan 54 devletin neredeyse her birinin kendine özgü benzersiz (unique) politik sistemi bulunmaktadır. Bu durumun oluşmasında her ülkenin kendi özgü etnik, dinî ve toplumsal yapısının yanında kıtanın yakın geçmişine damga vuran kolonyal yönetim geçmişinin de büyük bir etkisinin bulunduğunu söylemek mümkündür. Aslında yerel talepler zorunlu olarak farklı ve bireysel politikalar ürettiğinden, tek bir siyasi sistemin tüm bu devletlere uymasını beklemek rasyonel görünmemektedir.
Afrika Kıtası'nın geçmişte uluslararası politikadaki önemi sahip olduğu yer altı ve yer üstü kaynakları, jeopolitik ve stratejik konumu itibarıyla başta Batılı güçler olmak üzere tüm dünyanın ilgisini çekerek emperyal güçler arasında bir paylaşım mücadelesine neden olmuştur. Afrika’nın Süveyş Kanalı, Cebelitarık Boğazı, Ümit Burnu, Aden Körfezi gibi önemli su yollarına ve bağlantı noktalarına sahip olması bir taraftan kıtanın stratejik önemini artırırken petrol bakımından zengin körfez ülkelerin yakınında olması ve önemli ticaret yollarına ev sahipliği yapması kara kıtayı dünya sahnesinde önemli bir bölge hâline getirmiştir.
Kavram olarak sömürge Avrupa’da koloni anlamında kullanılıyor olsa da esas itibarıyla bu kavramlar birbirinden farklıdırlar. Çünkü sömürge bir toprak parçasını ifade ederken koloni ise o toprak parçasına yerleştirilmiş göçmen topluluklarından oluşan halk kitlesini ifade etmektedir. Bir başka deyişle kolonileşme, bir ülkenin vatandaşlarının kendi ana vatanları dışında başka bir bölgeye yerleşmeleri ve bu yerde bir idari teşkilat kurmaları anlamına gelmektedir. Bu bağlamda sömürge, sömürgeci devlete ait olmak üzere başka bir devlette yerleşilen yer veya bölge demektir. Sömürgeciliğin ise bilindiği üzere yeni bölgeler veya topraklar elde etmek amacıyla yapılan sömürgeci yayılma faaliyeti anlamında kullanıldığını söylemek mümkündür. Bir başka deyişle bir ülkenin sınırları dışında uzak veya yakın bir bölgede egemenlik tesis ettiği, o bölgede kendi kurallarını uygulatmaya çalıştığı, ekonomik olarak o bölgeden yararlandığı ve siyasi olarak da etkinliğini oluşturmaya çalıştığı alan sömürge bölgesine karşılık gelmektedir. Bu noktada sömürgecilik güç kullanarak büyük devletlerin kendi ana vatanları dışındaki uzak bölgelerde egemenlik tesis ederek bu bölgeleri kendi sınırlarının bir uzantısı olarak görmesi ve bu yerlerde bir idari teşkilat kurmalarıdır.
Emperyalizm, basit olarak ele alacak olursak sınır aşırı ve tarih üstü bir imparatorluk kurma çabasını ifade etmektedir. Buna karşılık kolonyalizm ise bu amacın sadece bir bölümünü oluşturmaktadır. Ancak emperyalizmin geçmişi çok daha eskiye yani uygarlığın gelişmesi ile başlayan imparatorluklara dayanmaktadır. Yani emperyalizm, siyasal ve ekonomik tahakküm biçimlerinin bütününe işaret ederken kolonyalizm doğrudan topraksal egemenlik ve nüfus yerleşim ile ilişkilidir. Çıkarcı kapitalizm ile kolonyalizm arasında ise bir araç-amaç ilişkisi mevcuttur. Kolonyalizm, emperyalizmin oluşumunda bir süreç olduğu gibi kapitalizmin daha küresel bir forma taşınmasını sağlamak açısından bir araç olduğu da söylenebilir.
Çıkarcı kapitalizmin yayılması ve 3. dünya ülkeleri olarak adlandırılan ülkelere ulaşmasını sağlamak için kullanılmış en büyük araç olarak kolonyalizm gösterilmektedir. Bu ülkeler, daha önce kapitalizm ile hiç tanışmamış topraklar iken bu yeni gelen ekonomik modeli bir bakıma zoraki olarak benimsemek durumunda kalmışlardır. Kolonici ülkeler, kolonize olan ülkelerden çekilirken oluşturmaya çalıştıkları demokratik ve modern siyasal düzenler ile çıkarcı kapitalizmin bu ülkelerde üstünlüğünü koruyabilmesini sağlamak ve 2. Dünya Savaşı sonrası giderek
büyüyen Batılı güçler tarafından büyük bir tehdit olarak görülen sosyalist düzenin bu ülkelere etki etmesini engellemek amacı ile yeni kurumsal yapılanmalar oluşturmuşlardır. Bu kurumsal yapılanmalar ile geçmişteki sömürgeci düzen sayesinde sahip oldukları gücü kullanarak modern bir kolonyal düzenle beraber bu ülkelerin küresel kapital sistem içerisinde ekonomik, kültürel, teknolojik, askerî ve siyasal açısından yine kendilerine bağımlı olacakları şekilde sistemi oturtmayı amaçlamışlardır. Burada bilinmesi gereken önemli bir diğer ayrım ise kolonyalizm ile
sömürgecilik kavramları arasındaki farktır. Kolonyalizm, sömürgecilik kavramından çok daha geniş içeriklidir. “Sömürgecilik, bir milletin ve devletin başka bir milleti ve ülkeyi kendi devlet ve milletinin çıkarları doğrultusunda işletmesi, tekeline ve boyunduruğuna almasıdır veya elde ettiği o ülkenin her türlü imkânlarıyla insanların emeğinden yararlanarak kendine maddi ve manevi çıkarlar sağlamasıdır şeklinde tanımlamak mümkündür”. Bir başka deyişle sömürgecilikte bölgenin kaynak ve iş gücü sömürülürken halk kendi kimliği ve yaşam tarzları ile yaşamaya devam edebilmektedir. Ancak kolonyalizm bir bölgeyi kendi amacı dâhilinde kullanmanın yanı sıra aynı zamanda o bölgeyi yönetmek anlamına gelmektedir. Bunun sonucu olarak kolonici ülkeler, bu bölgenin halkının kimliğine etki etmeye hatta onu değiştirmeye çalışmaktadırlar. Bunu yaparken de birçok araç üzerinden kültür asimilasyonu yaparak toplumun öz kimliğini değiştirme çabası sarf ederler. Kolonyalizm daha çok kolonici siyaset olarak tanımlanırken, sömürgecilik sömürgeci siyaset olarak tanımlanmaktadır.
Coğrafi keşifler sonrasında Avrupalı devletlerin keşfettikleri yeni su yolları bir taraftan dünya ticaret yollarının değişmesine neden olurken büyük bir kısmı Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nun kontrolü altında bulunan İpek ve Baharat yollarının önemini azaltmış ve bu durum Osmanlı ekonomisi üzerinde ciddi kayıplara neden olmuştur. Bu durumun siyasi bir yansıması olarak Osmanlı içinde artan siyasi karışıklıklara neden olarak imparatorluğun işleyişine ciddi zararlar vermiştir. Bunun yanında zaman içinde Osmanlı ordusunun Batı’daki ilerleyişinin Viyana önlerinde durdurulması, devletin fetihler üzerine kurulu politik ve askerî yapısını bozarak imparatorluğun 1699 yılından itibaren duraklama dönemine girmesine ve yaklaşık 80 yıl sonra da gerilemesine neden olmuştur. Osmanlı İmparatorluğu'nun dünya siyasetinde gerilemeye başlaması ve toprak kayıpları sadece Avrupa topraklarıyla sınırlı kalmamış, zaman içinde Afrika Kıtası'ndan da çekilmeye başlamasına neden olmuştur.
Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nun zayıflaması Afrika üzerinde bir güç boşluğu meydana getirirken bu güç boşluğu kısa sürede Avrupalı yükselen güçler tarafından kısa sürede doldurulmaya başlanmıştır. Portekiz’in öncülük ettiği bu süreç zamanla İspanyol, Hollanda, İngiltere, Fransa, İtalya, Belçika ve Almanya gibi devletlerin bu sürece katılmasıyla neredeyse kara kıtanın geneline yayılmıştır. Bunun sonucunda kıtaya yerleşmeye başlayan Avrupalı sömürgeci güçler Afrika Kıtası üzerinde etkileri günümüze kadar devam eden ekonomik, siyasi, etnik, dinsel ve sosyokültürel değişimlere neden olmuştur.
Doğal kaynaklar bakımından esasında zengin bir kıta olan Afrika, Batılı devletlerin kolonisi hâline geldikten sonra tıpkı diğer sömürgeleştirilen Amerika Kıtası ve Asya’daki Hindistan ve Çin gibi ülkelerin zenginlikleri âdeta sömürülerek soyulmuştur. Bu kapsamda başta altın, gümüş, bakır ve elmas gibi madenleri olmak üzere petrol, tarımsal ürünleri ve iş gücü zor kullanılarak ele geçirilmiştir. Koloni döneminde Afrika Kıtası ve diğer kolonileştirilen bölgelerin kaynakları bu bölgeleri kontrol eden Avrupalı devletler tarafından kendi ülkelerine aktarılarak âdeta sömürge ülkelerin üzerinde yükselen bir refah seviyesine ulaşılmıştır. Afrika Kıtası'ndaki sömürge yönetimleri döneminde kıtanın büyük bir kesimi ekonomik ve siyasi olarak gelişememiş
dünyanın diğer bölgelerine göre her açıdan geri kalmıştır.
Sömürgecilik döneminde kolonyal güçlerin uyguladıkları politikalar ve oluşturdukları
idari mekanizmalar bağımsızlık sonrasında Afrika Kıtası'ndaki devletlerin âdeta günümüzdeki kaderlerini de belirmektedir. Öyle ki Avrupalı kolonyal güçler tarafından etnik ve dinsel dinamikler dikkate alınmadan oluşturulan politik ve sosyal sistemler bağımsızlıklarını elde eden devletlerin hem kendi içlerinde iç çatışmalara hem de komşu ülkelerle savaşlara neden olmaktadır. Böl ve yönet (divide and rule) politikası gereğince cetvelle suni olarak çizilen sınırlar nedeniyle kıta genelinde süregelen silahlı çatışmalara kötü yönetimler eklenince başka gezegenlerde koloni kurmayı planlayan dünyada bugün Afrika denilince insanların ilk aklına gelen şeyler; açlık, yoksulluk, çatışma, soykırım, hastalık ve göç gibi olumsuz görüntüler ve olaylardır.
Bu durumun en büyük nedenlerinden biri kuşkusuz Afrika Kıtası'nın yaşadığı kolonyal geçmiş sonrasında yine sömürgeci devletler tarafından miras bırakılan devlet yapılarıdır.
I explored the challenges facing work-affected states, especially their security system.
There are so many roadblocks in Central Africa that it is hard to find a road that does not have one. Based on research in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the Central African Republic (CAR), Peer Schouten maps more than a thousand of these roadblocks to show how communities, rebels and state security forces forge resistance and power out of control over these narrow points of passage. Schouten reveals the connections between these roadblocks in Central Africa and global supply chains, tracking the flow of multinational corporations and UN agencies alike through them, to show how they encapsulate a form of power, which thrives under conditions of supply chain capitalism. In doing so, he develops a new lens through which to understand what drives state formation and conflict in the region, offering a radical alternative to explanations that foreground control over minerals, territory or population as key drivers of Central Africa's violent history.
To date, the expansive social science literature on artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) in Africa has received little attention from scholars of agrarian political economy. This paper attempts to bridge this gap, based on an in-depth study of ASM in South Kivu Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The main argument is that the capital–labour social relation underpinning ASM in South Kivu has facilitated the emergence of a capitalist managerial class of dynamic and prosperous rural Congolese. This class has, in turn, been driving increasing sectoral productivity via technological assimilation and capital formation, while also making commercial and productive investments in other, non-mining sectors. Drawing from the findings, the common conceptualisation of African ASM as a low productivity, subsistence activity is questioned, and the perception in the existing literature that African ASM miners and foreign mining corporations are not in competition for the same mineral deposits is challenged.
В статті розглянуто атипові титули, неофіційні звання глав держав, як ознаку недемократичного політичного режиму, вождізму та складову культу особи. Метою є аналіз атипових офіційних і неофіційних титулів, звань, хвалебних епітетів у глав держав, як невід’ємної складової культу особи, ознаку недемократичного політичного режиму та вождізму. Встановлено, що формування культу особи глави держави або політичного лідера правлячої партії неможливе без певної атрибутики, невід’ємною складовою якої є наявність тих атипових титулів, офіційних і неофіційних хвалебних звань, епітетів, які, в свою чергу, виступають яскравим показником недемократичності сукупності прийомів, способів і методів здійснення вищої державної влади. Акцентовано увагу, що культ особи державного лідера був пов’язаний із затвердженням відповідної форми державного правління та форми державного політичного режиму. Процес становлення культу особи є характерним для деяких історичних, а також окремих сучасних монархічних форм державного правління, таких як: Східна деспотія, теократична монархія та абсолютна монархія. В період новітньої історії поява атипових титулів, офіційних і неофіційних звань глав держав в ХХ столітті пов’язана передусім із політикою вождізму.
Coping strategies of international nongovernmental organisations (INGOs) operation in authoritarian regimes have received much scholarly attention. These organisations are repressed and pushed into adopting ways of remaining operational in such hostile political environments. Analyses of coping strategies of INGOs operating in post-2000 Zimbabwe are still very low and incidental in literature. This paper described coping strategies of INGOs engaged in humanitarian and developmental work in post-2000 Zimbabwe. The aim was to contribute to a body of knowledge on INGO coping strategies in an authoritarian political environment. The paper used a qualitative case study of INGOs operating in post-2000 Zimbabwe to explore and describe the nature of coping strategies they employ. In-depth interviews were conducted on a sample of 10 INGO officials purposively selected from the array of INGOs operating in Zimbabwe. Thematic analysis was employed in analysing the data regarding the specific coping strategies INGOs employed. The study found that INGOs resorted to coping strategies such as accommodation, collaboration, complementarity, compromising and co-optation.
Keywords: Accommodation, Collaboration, Complementarity, Compromising, Coping
strategy.
Living for the City is a social history of the Central African Copperbelt, considered as a single region encompassing the neighbouring mining regions of Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Haut Katanga and Zambian Copperbelt mine towns have been understood as the vanguard of urban 'modernity' in Africa. Observers found in these towns new African communities that were experiencing what they wrongly understood as a transition from rural 'traditional' society – stable, superstitious and agricultural – to an urban existence characterised by industrial work discipline, the money economy and conspicuous consumption, Christianity, and nuclear families headed by male breadwinners supported by domesticated housewives. Miles Larmer challenges this representation of Copperbelt society, presenting an original analysis which integrates the region's social history with the production of knowledge about it, shaped by both changing political and intellectual contexts and by Copperbelt communities themselves.
African regimes commonly use strategies of balanced ethnic representation to build support. Decentralisation reforms, often promoted in order to improve political representation and state access, can undermine such strategies. In this article we use the example of the DR Congo to show the extent to which the multiplication of decentralised provinces is upending a political system largely based until now upon collective ethnic representation in the state. Not only are Congo's new provinces more ethnically homogeneous than their predecessors, but many of them have also witnessed political takeover and monopolisation by the province's dominant ethnic group. In addition, the increased number of Congolese who now find themselves non-autochthonous to their province of residence heightens their vulnerability and the potential for local conflict. Decentralisation, whose intent was proximity to governance, might well end up excluding more Congolese from the benefits of political representation. The article uses original empirical evidence on provincial ethnic distributions to support its claims.
(Open access) This article discusses the international dimension of the secessionist State of Katanga (1960-1963). It argues in favour of a reassessment of the agency of Katangese political elites. In this regard, it opposes arguments that privilege conceptions of the Katangese state as being constrained by outside forces. Contrary to the latter viewpoint, it is argued, the regime of Moïse Tshombe survived for a relatively long period of time, not least because it succeeded in establishing an international network that mobilised mercenaries to work for the state, and reached out to extensive lobby structures in France, Belgium and the United States. On a theoretical level, the article adds to the growing body of literature that emphasises African agency in international relations, and literature reconsidering the Katangese secession. Finally, it makes an empirical contribution by making use of the hitherto neglected Moïse Tshombe archival collection.
The first comparative historical analysis - local, national and transnational - of the cross-border Central African Copperbelt; a key work in studies of labour, urbanisation and African studies.
The Central African Copperbelt, encompassing the mining communities of Katanga (DR Congo) and Zambia, has been central to the study of modernisation and rapid social and political change in urban Africa. This volume expands upon earlier studies of industrial mining, male-dominated formal labour organisation and political change by examining both sides of the border from pre-colonial history to the present and encompassing a wide range of economic, social and cultural identities and activities. Bringing together scholars from a range of disciplines, the contributors explore Copperbelt communities' sense of identity - expressed in comic strips and football matches, their precarious and inventive ways of living, their involvement in church and education, and the processes and impact of urbanisation and development, environmental degradation and changing gender relations. A major contribution to borderland studies, in showing how the meaning and relevance of the border to the Copperbelt's mixed and mobile population has changed constantly over time, the book's engagement with communities at the nexus of social, economic and political change makes it a key study for those working in global urban development.
Les auteurs ont établi le texte ci-présent à partir des idées énoncées et des discussions menées lors de la rencontre « Récits et débats locaux sur la migration. Dits et non-dits de l'expérience du départ et du retour » à Bamako du 2 au 6 octobre 2019. Tous les participants de l'atelier ont eu leur part active dans la conception des approches avancées par la suite. Résumé Sortant d'un atelier interdisciplinaire sur la migration africaine, les auteurs proposent quelques pistes pratiques afin de commencer à décoloniser la recherche sur la migration. Ces pistes se résument en un réajustement de nos méthodes de travail par rapport à la relation que nous tenons avec nos sujets de recherche humains. Il s'agit justement de faire ressortir plus clairement l'agentivité de nos interlocuteurs tout en réduisant notre propre présence, qui peut parfois peser lourd sur la recherche. Dans ce but, nous proposons que le chercheur laisse plus de place à son interlocuteur de s'exprimer librement et qu'il écoute les théorisations proposées par les acteurs eux-mêmes. Au lieu de forcer nos analyses spécialisées sur le sujet, notre tâche consistera plutôt en une contextualisation pour faciliter la lecture à des personnes tierces. Nous nous devons donc de diffuser les résultats de nos recherches aussi en dehors de nos disciplines respectives afin de susciter l'intérêt pour notre travail et nos efforts. Abstract After having participated in an interdisciplinary workshop on African migration, the authors suggest some practical ways to start decolonizing migration research. These avenues can be summarized as follows: readjusting our analytical methods to speak with rather than for our human research subjects. We seek to accentuate the agency of our interlocutors by reducing our own presence, which can sometimes weigh heavily on the research. To this end, we propose that researchers leave more space to their interlocutors to express themselves freely and listen to the theorizing actors themselves propose. Instead of forcing our specialized analyses on the subject, our task is rather to contextualize the research in order to make it easier for third parties to read. We must therefore also disseminate the results of our research outside our respective disciplines in order to generate interest in our work and efforts.
I examine the reasons for the impressively consistent disinterest in African economics that runs through all the schools of comparative political economy that Economy and Society has published over the last three decades. These theoretical movements can be helpfully arranged in reverse chronological order: Callon's economization, Soskice and Hall's varieties of capitalism (VoC), Boyer and Jessop's regulationism and Foucault's governmentality. Each of them shows an intriguing indifference to the question of whether African evidence matters for their arguments. What makes this interesting was that in its first decade, between 1971 and 1981, Economy and Society was obsessed with the problem of the comparative theorizing of the African economy and its transformation. Indeed, it is not too strong to say, as I show, that theorizing African capitalism was the journal’s raison d’etre. What happened to kill off that curiosity? Reconstructing debates within the journal, the paper explores the shifts, in comparative political economy and in African studies, between 1970 and 1990 that account for the collapse of comparative interest in the features of capitalism on the continent.
The analytical framework deployed by the extensive global value chain (GVC) literature on African mining fails to consider how and from whom value is transferred within the process of establishing foreign corporate-led mining GVCs, and with what consequences. The authors explore these questions through a case study of the gold value chain in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In this context, they argue that a coalition between transnational capital and the Congolese state has marginalised and held back locally led processes of capital accumulation and mining mechanisation. Based on the findings, the developmental potential of domestically embedded networks of African production is highlighted.
What role did law play in articulating sovereignty and citizenship in postcolonial Africa? Using legal records from the secessionist Republic of Biafra, this article analyzes the relationship between law and national identity in an extreme context—that of the Nigerian Civil War (1967–1970). Ideas about order, discipline, and legal process were at the heart of Biafra's sense of itself as a nation, and they served as the rhetorical justification for its secession from Nigeria. But they were not only rhetoric. In the turmoil of the ensuing civil war, Biafra's courts became the center of its national culture, and law became its most important administrative implement. In court, Biafrans argued over what behaviors were permissible in wartime, and judges used law to draw the boundaries of the new country's national identity. That law played this role in Biafra shows something broader about African politics: law, bureaucracy, and paperwork meant more to state-making than declensionist views of postcolonial Africa usually allow. Biafra failed as a political project, but it has important implications for the study of law in postcolonial Africa, and for the nation-state form in general.
This chapter explores the politics, history and complexities in the conflicts in the DRC and their wider implications on the Africa Great Lakes Region within the context of the ‘Africa rising’ debate. While scholars have discussed the dynamics of conflicts in the Great Lakes Region in more general terms (mainly focusing on causes and effects), this chapter attempts some delineation of the conflict in the DRC and its wider implications on the entire region. Evidently, while some African countries such as Ethiopia, Rwanda, Seychelles and Uganda, to name but a few, are on the trajectory of growth and have made marked economic development progress, the armed conflicts in the DRC have continued to pose serious threats to peace, security and development in the country, with significant resonance for the larger Africa Great Lakes Region.
(Full paper on request) The Katangese secession from Congo-Léopoldville (1960-63) happened during a particularly tense moment during the Cold War in the Third World. Several scholars have started to broaden their scope away from the restrictions of a neo-colonial framework, without obscuring the role of external involvement (Larmer and Kennes 2014; Brownell 2014; Passemiers 2016). This presentation will look at the international dimension of the Katangese state and argue in favour of a reassessment of the agency of Katangese political elites. Based on the consultation of the Moïse Tshombe Papers, a hitherto neglected archival resource kept at the AfricaMuseum in Tervuren, this presentation focuses on the workings of the three most important ‘pseudo-diplomatic’ representations of Katanga, namely in Paris (Dominique Diur), New York (Michel Struelens), and Brussels (Jacques Masangu). The regime of Katanga’s president Tshombe survived for a relatively long period of time, not in the least because it succeeded in establishing an international network which mobilised mercenaries to work for the state, and reached out to extensive lobby structures in France, Belgium, and the United States. Although the Katangese political elites faced a considerable amount of constraints, ranging from (at least de jure) non-recognition by every UN member state, to conflicts with Northern Katangese population groups and the UN mission in Congo (ONUC), they succeeded in instrumentalising international actors for domestic purposes. Thus, this presentation dialogues with the literature that emphasises African agency in international relations, and literature reconsidering the Katangese secession.
In many African states, park rangers perform a variety of roles as armed state actors. Facing the overlapping challenges of wildlife management and regime security, many have become increasingly militarized, with significant degree of variation. Using case studies from Uganda, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, and South Sudan, this article provides an expanded conceptualization of militarization that configures two characteristics of Africa’s park rangers: 1) their integration into or insulation from the state security apparatus, and 2) their coercive roles of either law enforcement or combat. The article builds an argument that takes into account colonial institutions and civil-military relations.
In 2019, the Congolese government pledged to reinvigorate police reform after a pilot programme was shut down in 2014 due to human rights abuses committed by the Congolese National Police. Meanwhile, the government in South Kivu called for the establishment of Local Councils for Proximity Security (CLSP) across the province, coordination platforms dedicated to diagnosing and addressing issues of human security. These processes aim to bring government and security closer to the population in a context where security governance is competitive, fragmented and marked by violence. The introduction of CLSPs in rural areas, however, comes with a host of challenges not necessarily experienced in the cities where the programme was previously piloted.
Governing local security in the eastern Congo explores the implementation of CLSPs in the chieftaincy of Buhavu in Kalehe territory in South Kivu. The report offers valuable insights into how rural entities manage security in the context of resource scarcity, armed groups, intercommunal conflict and competition among state authorities. Although some successes have been achieved, reform efforts have the potential to disrupt prevailing security governance arrangements, which in turn, may trigger resistance.
This article analyses the production and reproduction of traditional
chieftaincy in war-torn eastern DR Congo, through the case of a
succession dispute in Kalima (South Kivu). Kalima has gone
through two decades of political instability and violent conflict
involving a plethora of local, national and regional actors. During
this period of uncertainty and upheaval, the institution of
traditional chieftaincy has remained politically salient. We argue,
that this salience is conditioned by a widespread belief in the
authenticity and sacredness of the institution of traditional
chieftaincy and by the ethno-territorial imaginary of the
Congolese political order. Both of these are historically produced
through rituals, ceremonies and narratives of origin. They imbue
the institution of traditional chieftaincy with charisma and enable
customary chiefs to accumulate resources and exercise authority
in a wide range of domains of public life in rural eastern Congo.
Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu, we call this ability to rule through the
notion of ‘custom’, customary capital. However, we also show that
‘customary capital’ does not automatically accrue to chiefs as a
variety of internal and external actors vie for customary capital. As
such it fluctuates over time as different actors move in and out of
the capacity to legitimately wield customary capital.
Over the past two decades, urban violence in the eastern Congo has reached alarming levels. However, it has rarely made it to the forefront of international policy and media attention. Violent cities, Violent Societies analyzes urban violence through the lens of the acceptability of using violence and the accessibility of violence, or the ease with which violence can be mobilized. The report argues that similar to rural zones, much violence in urban areas is driven by personalized conflict and revenue generation linked to aspirations for social mobility and status. The report also shows the analytical inadequacy of deeply ingrained distinctions between political, criminal and personal violence, which importantly shape international interventions in the domains of stabilization, peacebuilding and peacekeeping.
Drawing on an ethnographic study of Roman Catholic sisters in the Democratic Republic of Congo, I show how women in the Global South draw on religious imagery to redefine cultural ideals of womanhood and family responsibility. By taking the religious vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, the Congolese sisters I interviewed seemingly betray local expectations regarding women’s responsibility to reproduce and repair the clan. Although sisters’ vows subject them to social ridicule for violating cultural expectations to bear children and support kin, they devise new strategies to negotiate the connection between womanhood and the maternal role of caregiver and nurturer outside of marriage and fertility. In social ministries that affirm their communal, moral, and spiritual ties to others, the sisters realize these cultural ideals through a “spiritual motherhood” that transforms their traditional heteronormative obligations. Framing their decision to live outside accepted kinship structures in religious terms mutes the radicalness of this lifestyle and provides religious legitimation for what would otherwise be considered a selfish choice for a woman acting independent of family well-being. In this context, I demonstrate how doing religion is inseparable from doing gender as Catholic sisters embody alternative ways of being a woman in post-colonial Congolese society through their religious practices.
A System of Insecurity: Understanding Urban Violence and Crime in Bukavu examines the role of state and non-state actors in the provision of security, and citizens’ perceptions of, experiences with and responses to insecurity in Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu province in the eastern Congo. Facing growing urban insecurity, the residents of Bukavu have taken matters into their own hands. Improvising, fending for yourself (débrouillezvous) and taking care of oneself (auto-prise en charge) have become logics of personal action. This has produced an ambiguous order in which a plurality of actors compete to achieve the near impossible: to survive, thrive and provide security all at once.
The RVI Usalama Project is a field-based, partner-driven research initiative examining armed groups and their influence on society in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The third phase (2018–2019) explores ‘insecurity in the city’ and the role of state and non-state actors in the provision of security, and citizens’ perceptions of, experiences with and responses to insecurity. The third phase was carried out in partnership with the Bukavu-based Groupe d'Etudes sur les Conflits et la Sécurité Humaine (GEC-SH). The project is guided by a series of questions: Who are the main agents of security and insecurity in the city? What are the drivers, logics and trends of urban insecurity? What are residents’ perceptions of insecurity? And how do they deal with insecurity in their everyday lives?
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