A Territorial Post Katangese

in Transition1

DANIEL J. CROWLEY

University of California, Davis, Cal., U.S.A.

ON June 30, 1960, Dilolo Gare, the administrative headquarters of the Territoire de Dilolo in the District of Lualaba, Province of Katanga, was a thriving town of about 10,000 people, some 170 of whom were non-African. Dilolo Gare owed its size and prosperity not so much to its position as a terri- torial administrative post as to the fact that the BCK-Benguela Railroad crosses the Luao River, a tributary of the Kasai, a mile east of town and enters Angola. Thus Dilolo Gare (i.e., Dilolo Railroad Station) was the border town where the immense export duties of 2 % were collected by the Congolese Government on all copper, cobalt, and other minerals shipped out. Furthermore, the town had become the metropolis and trading center of the entire territory of 1,500 sq. mi., and to a certain extent for the Sandoa Territory to the north. The "Gare" is always mentioned to differentiate this town from an older village some 18 miles north of the railroad, called Dilolo Poste, the location of two large mission boarding schools run by Flemish Franciscans, and from Lake Dilolo in the Alto Zambeze Province of Angola 50 miles to the southeast. Dilolo Gare's population, like that of many another border town, was extremely heterogeneous, and indeed the town was built at the confluence of three chefferies (chiefdoms) of three different ethnic groups, the Chokwe Tshi- senge to the northeast, the Minungu Mume to the northwest, and the Ndembu or Southern Lunda chefferie of Dumba to the south, ruled by a "Royal Lunda" from the court of the Mwata Yamvo at Musumba. These three groups were joined by the Kete and Sala Mpasu from Kapanga Territory, Luba-Kasai and Lulua from the Kasai Province, Mbunda from Angola, and large numbers of Luena (Luvale) from their three Congolese chefferies south of Dilolo Gare on the Angola border. In this respect, Dilolo Gare was a typical Katangese town, sharing with Malonga, Kasaji, Kolwezi, Kisenge, Jadotville, and Elisabethville itself the special appeal of "bright lights," possible employment for cash, and

1 The data in this paper supplements "Politics and Tribalism in the Katanga," Western Political Quarterly, XVI, No. 1 (March, 1963), 68-78. An earlier version was read at the 33rd Annual Meetings of the Southwestern Anthropological Assn., Los Angeles, April 16 1965. The author wishes to record his gratitude to the Ford Foundation for the Foreign Area Training Fellowship which made possible this field research. 178 opportunities to learn of the world beyond the bush. Since Dilolo Gare had no industry like Jadotville's mills, and no natural resources like Kisenge's man- ganese mine, the opportunities for employment were not plentiful. Except for the "Royal Lunda" aristocrats, the Katangese are willing to accept almost any kind of work if it takes them away from farming in the deep bush. Although this paper is primarily concerned with the changes in the non- African community from Independence to the present, the African social structure has also been profoundly modified. By far the highest-placed African in Dilolo Gare was a Mukongo medical assistant in the Hospital, who was paid at the European rate, lived in Government housing in the European section of town, and drove his own car. A similar position was held by a half-Belgian Congolese woman married to the Belgian Government veterinarian. She and her sister, attractive and relatively well-educated, were members of CADi, the local European club, and her children attended the Ecole Officiel and sat with the Europeans in church. Actually, by 1960 there was little social segregation in the Congo, and Africans and Europeans mingled freely in hotels and clubs. The local chiefs of chefferies and secteurs, the next group in the hierarchy, where often entertained at CADi Club, as occasionally were the civil service employees in the customs house, the border post, the post office, the police, and the administrative headquarters of the Territory. Many of these men, especially the police officers, were non-Katangese, but those from local tribes have taken over the political and administrative machinery left by the departing Belgians. Educated non-civil service Africans such as school-teachers, priests, ministers, and lay readers are next, closely followed by the few Africans success- ful in business, usually dealers in cloth, salt, tobacco, and beer. Service positions were next, such as store clerks, merchandise and customs clerks, hospital employees, house servants for Europeans, mechanics, and other trained personnel in the local cotton gin, oil press, and railroad repair shed. Then came those Africans primarily concerned with the non-European world, the sorcerers and diviners, metalsmiths, furniture makers, potters, professional basketmakers, market gardeners, professional dancers and musicians at the courts of chiefs, and the village chiefs themselves, followed by the lowest class, the rural agriculturalists, who might be subdivided further between those who kept cattle or who produced an excess of peanuts, cotton, or manioc for sale, on the one hand, and subsistence agriculturalists on the other. It will be noted that women do not figure in this outline, because only a few were permitted to participate in activities outside the home. Only one woman, an extremely independent widow, was employed as a nursemaid by Europeans, but all other servant jobs were coveted by men. A Kasai woman ran a popular bar, and she and another local Chokwe woman were notorious prostitutes with powerful political connections. A few rural wives were allowed to sell in the weekly market, but their husbands or brothers were always nearby.