Artisanal Mines, Governance and Historical Generations in the Congo Copperbelt

Home , Jean Bosco Mwenda, Luba people, Lufira River

Timothy Mwangeka Makori

A thesis submitted to conform with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto

Artisanal Mines, Governance and Historical Generations in the Congo Copperbelt

Timothy Mwangeka Makori

Doctor of Philosophy

Department of Anthropology University of Toronto

2019

Abstract

What insights about social change emerge when we analyze the liberalized present as a temporal period comprised of a palimpsest of generational experiences, recursive elements and residual layers of the past? This thesis is a response to this question through a look at the

Congolese mining sector from the perspective of individuals who are often marginalized by it or rendered less visible due to a popular emphasis on the intractable problems of the

Congolese state, transnational mining corporations, and the on-going violence in Eastern

Congo. The subjects of my inquiry are artisanal miners, customary authorities, state agents working in the artisanal mining sector, retrenched pensioners, and mineworkers’ families.

Analyzing how the recently instituted liberalized regime of mining is given form through the interaction between a diverse range of social groups is intended to elucidate the distinctiveness of the (neo)liberalized present relative to the regimes of mining it purportedly replaced. To be precise, I am referring to pre-colonial modes of resource extraction and, their successor, the Belgian colonial regime of mining that was inherited and maintained after

Congolese independence.

Interrogating how the dynamics of mining in existence today are qualitatively different to the past is an attempt to analyze social change by comparing the dynamics of the present with the succession of political topographies governing mining in the past. Understanding how the various regimes of mining succeed, overlap and compare with one another allows this study to ask: how post-colonial is the present in the Congo Copperbelt? In doing so, this research contributes to other scholarly attempts aimed at understanding the structural continuities and discontinuities that define how the global economic order differentially impacts resource-rich countries like the Congo. I demostrate that the contemporary unfolding of late capitalism in the Congo Copperbelt is a complex mix of different durées that overlap in the lives of miners, local authorities and residents revealing the unfinished nature of the colonial encounter. What this signifies in the now-liberalized Congo Copperbelt is that for a wide range of actors in the resource extraction sector, there has been negligible substantive social change in society.

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Acknowledgements

This thesis is a labour of love. So many people have helped make it possible starting with my

Congolese family. My deepest thanks go to my host family and their children, who invited me to their home in Likasi and provided me with the support necessary to undertake key aspects of my work. Their care, attention and friendship made research in Congo not only possible but also enjoyable and, at times, very memorable. I am profoundly grateful to Mama

Kyungu who, sadly, passed away a few years ago. She was my emotional pillar during difficult days of fieldwork, a source of deep insights about life in Congo, a witty and absolutely wonderful human being. May she rest in peace. Her husband, Papa Kyungu, offered me a place to stay and introduced me to key figures in the mining sector in Likasi as well as his relatives and friends. Without his help, fieldwork in the Gécamines neighbourhoods in Likasi would have been impossible. Wafwako Papa! His children,

Pascale, Benoit, Didier, Kizito, Gabrielle and Gilbert made my stay in Lubumbashi and

Likasi comfortable and also exciting. Special thanks go to Didier for introducing me to his parents and to Kizito for accompanying me to the mines and to many of my interviews with customary authorities.

In Likasi, I owe immense gratitude to Vieux Kakompe, the artist, for providing me with valuable information about the monuments in the city. I would also like to thank Papa

Kafusha, a living library of knowledge about Katanga and the Basanga people. It was he who navigated me through the intricacies of Sanga migrations, settlement, and traditions through the personal history of his father and grandfather—forming the basis of the data in chapter one of the thesis. Papa Kafusha was also instrumental in providing me with the contacts of

iv knowledgeable elders and balopwe in the Sanga community. I also owe a big thanks to my research assistants, one of whom worked in the Gécamines office in Panda commune and the other in the EMAK office in Likasi, their help in the early stages of research allowed me to identify, interview and follow up with informants. The confidence I gained from them allowed me to continue working in the artisanal mines and in the neighbourhoods of Likasi for many more months. In Kilobe mine, I would like to appreciate the friendship, chauffeur skills, endless demands and valuable insights offered to me by my creuseur informants and friends, most notably, Francis, Jules, and Stino. Aksanti sana!

Research in Congo would not be possible without the academic support of Professor Dibwe dia Mwembu at the University of Lubumbashi. I wish to thank Prof. Dibwe for his mentorship, assistance with documents and permits and encouragement during my fieldwork.

His immense wealth of scholarship about the history of Congo has been important in shaping my thinking about how to understand the dynamics of the liberalized present in Katanga. I also wish to thank Dr. Aime Kakudji, Dr. Olivier Kahola and Pascale Kakudji for sharing their wealth of knowledge, and also for always picking me up from the airport and making my stays in Lubumbashi interesting and insightful. I wish to remember Gulda el Magambo and Ralph at the Halle de l’étoile, who introduced me to many impressive photographers and artists in Lubumbashi. Thank you to Kedrik and Christian Mushayuma for giving me a place to stay in Lubumbashi, for good company and enduring friendship. Special thank you to

Mama Yvette at the guest house, for introducing me to her daughter, Yvette, who helped me find a place to stay in Likasi.

In Belgium, I would like to thank Prof. Benjamin Rubbers for accepting to meet me in Likasi in 2009 and introducing me to some of his informants in Panda commune. His contacts and extensive knowledge about the political economy of Central Africa continue to influence my thinking about the region. In the Netherlands, huge thanks go to family Dingemans, for supporting this research in cash and in kind throughout the years. I remain in your debt and truly appreciate all your support. Joop and Toos deserve extra special appreciation for accommodating me in their home during different stages of the writing and providing me with delicious food, knitted sweaters, a warm bed, sober advice and many lessons in Dutch language.

To my people in the 416, a massive thanks must first go to my fellow strugglers in the journey to gain professional accreditation. My brothers; Wesley Oakes, Nathan Okonta, and

Walter Ojok-Acii, thank you for being there when it really matters and being an endless source of intellectual emotional, physical and material support. Vivian Solana, Columba

Gonzalez and Jacob Nerenberg, I will always be grateful for all the hours you lost sifting for meaning in my sentences, I will always be thankful for your kindness, your patience and constant desire to help me make this thesis the best it could be under conditions beyond my control. Your friendship and cutting-edge ideas continue to inspire me. Fellow friends,

Lameck Zingano, Chris Little, Anna Kruglova, Dylan Gordon, Behzad Sarmadi, Asli Zengin,

Secil Dagtas, Hollis Moore, Kate Rice, Laura Sikstrom, Jenny van der Aar, Rastko Cvekic,

Aaron Kappeler, Jaby Matthew, Ozlem Aslan and Hulya Arik have all contributed to shaping my ideas, ethics and approach to knowledge production and I wish to recognize their brilliance and thank them for it.

Faculty at University of Toronto and elsewhere have shaped my scholarship and left indelible marks in this thesis. First and foremost, I wish to thank Todd Sanders and Janice

Boddy, my thesis supervisors, for suffering through many previous versions of this work. It is because of their meticulous attention to my writing, their determination to question my presumptions, their demand to sharpen my analyses, nuance my arguments and clarify my claims, that this research study took form and was ultimately completed. This thesis bears their imprint and I will always be grateful to them for both their academic and personal support. Nashukuru sana. Others at the University of Toronto who mentored, taught and inspired me include Michael Lambek, Girish Daswani, Katie Kilroy, Valentina Napolitano,

Naisargi Dave, Andrea Muehlebach, Tania Li, David Turner, Marieme Lo, Julie MacArthur and Dickson Eyoh. I also wish to thank Stuart Kirsch at University of Michigan for inviting me to a workshop on artisanal mining, Elizabeth Povinelli for her Masterclass on intimacy at the University of Toronto, and Franco Barchiesi at Ohio university for sharing an unpublished manuscript.

Finally, I wish to thank my family in Kenya for suffering and smiling in my long-continued absence. My mother for her worries, prayers and love. And, to my wife, the mother of my twins, ik hou van jou, it is obvious that none of this would have been possible without your unwavering support over the years. I dedicate this to you and our two diamonds, may they one day come to know the Congo in all of its wonder and majesty!

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Table of Contents

ABSTRACT ...... II ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... IV LIST OF FIGURES ...... X MAP OF (FORMER) PROVINCE OF KATANGA...... XI PREFACE ...... 1 INTRODUCTION ...... 10 THE COPPERBELT AS TOPOS OF SOCIAL CHANGE ...... 10 AFRICAN MINE LABOUR: FROM PEASANTS TO THE PRECARIAT ...... 15 NEOLIBERALISM, STATE POWER AND MINING ...... 27 ON LABOUR AND GENERATIONS ...... 39 ETHNOGRAPHIC METHODS ...... 46 OUTLINE OF CHAPTERS ...... 52 CHAPTER 1 ...... 56 HISTORICITIES OF THE CONGO COPPERBELT ...... 56 ON MONUMENTS AND MEANING ...... 58 Figure 1: La violation de la femme, 2011 (Taken by the author)...... 60 Figure 2: Les mangeurs de cuivre (back side, taken by the author) ...... 64 Figure 3: Panorama of Likasi (Taken by author) ...... 65 IN THE TIME OF BLACKSMITHS AND KINGS ...... 68 FROM L’UNION MINIÈRE TO GÉCAMINES ...... 79 INDUSTRIAL RISE AND POST-INDUSTRIAL DECLINE ...... 91 LIBERALIZATION OF THE ECONOMY AND MINING SECTOR ...... 98 Figure 4: Before Liberalization...... 100 Figure 5: After Liberalization ...... 101 CONCLUSION ...... 106 CHAPTER 2 ...... 108 ABJECT PENSIONERS AND ENTRAPPED YOUTH: NARRATIVES OF DECLINE AND THE MULTIPLICITY OF THE TIMES AMONG GENERATIONS IN THE CONGO COPPERBELT ...... 108 MINING CONTEXTS: BETWEEN RUPTURE AND CONTINUITY? ...... 111 MIRED IN NOSTALGIA AND FORCED INTO SELF-RELIANCE: GÉCAMINES PENSIONERS ...... 116 THE SURREAL FUTURES OF CREUSEURS ...... 125 CONCLUSION ...... 134 CHAPTER 3 ...... 136 DESPOTISM IN THE ARTISANAL MINES OF KATANGA ...... 136 SPATIALIZING PUBLIC AUTHORITY IN RURAL CONGO ...... 139

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IN THE NAME OF SECURITY ...... 146 A MINE FOR THE WIDOWS AND CHILDREN OF GÉCAMINES ...... 154 COMPANIES AND THE POLITICS OF PRIVATIZATION ...... 162 Scene I – KMP ...... 162 Scene II: United Nations in Kilobe ...... 172 CONCLUSIONS ...... 183 CHAPTER 4 ...... 185 CUSTOMARY CLAIMS OVER ARTISANAL MINING LAND ...... 185 ORALITY AND BELONGING IN THE CONGO SAVANNAH ...... 188 Figure 6: Kilobe mine (Photo by author)...... 189 Figure 7: Congo Savannah region based on its major rivers ...... 201 Figure 8: Ethnic communities in south Katanga in the early 20th century ...... 201 SPATIALIZING CLAIMS OF BELONGING ...... 203 CUSTOMARY “OWNERSHIP” AND REGULATION IN AN ARTISANAL MINE ...... 208 MONETIZING A MINE ...... 215 CONCLUSION ...... 218 CHAPTER 5 ...... 220 MOBILIZING THE PAST: CREUSEURS, PRECARITY AND THE COLONIZING STRUCTURE ...... 220 ON THE EMERGENCE OF THE CREUSEUR ...... 225 PRECARITY AND THE COLONIZING STRUCTURE ...... 229 THE CREUSEURS OF SOUTH KATANGA ...... 232 Militarism and seizure in the mines ...... 242 Possessing pasts and dispossessing presents ...... 246 “ITS WORK FOR THE LIVING DEAD” ...... 256 CONCLUSION ...... 259 CONCLUSION ...... 261 REFERENCES ...... 269

List of Figures

Figure 1: La violation de la femme, 2011 (Taken by the author) ...... 60 Figure 2: Les mangeurs de cuivre (back side, taken by the author) ...... 64 Figure 3: Panorama of Likasi (Taken by author)...... 65 Figure 4: Before liberalization...... 100 Figure 5: After Liberalization ...... 101 Figure 6: Kilobe mine (Photo by author)...... 189 Figure 7: Congo Savannah region based on its major rivers ...... 201 Figure 8: Ethnic communities in south Katanga in the early 20th century ...... 201

Map of (former) Province of Katanga1.

Courtesy of International Crisis Group 2016.

1 In July 2015 the former province of Katanga was legally divided by its parliament into the new provinces of Lualaba, Haut-Lomami, Tanganyika, and Haut-Katanga. This was part of the further division of Congo from 11 to 26 provinces under the current Presidency of Joseph Kabila. The map above shows the newly added provinces, old and new infrastructures and major towns and cities. In this thesis, I retain the use of the old name Katanga, not Haut Katanga, to refer to the Congo Copperbelt region and its surrounding areas of influence. xi

Preface

Jean was well known in the artisanal mines as a quiet fellow who was very successful at mining. He worked as an artisanal miner, or creuseur. Like many of his peers in Katanga, he worked with a small group of young men who were his relatives. Between them they sold a lot of copper ore in the mine of Kilobe2 and garnered a complex mix of jealousy, envy and pride. Their success prompted rumours that Jean and his team, équipe, used charms (lawa) to coax the spirits in the mines into releasing copper ore. Like most accusations of sorcery in the mine, this claim was largely unfounded until one morning in 2012, when tremors were heard in an area of Kilobe mine known as “the basin”—a place where the industrial state-run mining company, Gécamines, dumped soil extracted during mineral exploration.

Tremors in “the basin” caused the earth to shift causing widespread fear and panic in Kilobe mine. The sense of alarm caused creuseurs to rush out of their mining shafts to safety. As young men started accounting for fellow miners, others went to search for the source of the tremors. Those who went to the entrance of Jean's mining shaft found a young man badly injured but still alive. He was near the entrance of a collapsed mineshaft signaling to everyone that the problem may have been with Jean’s mine shaft. The injured miner told those who came to his aid that there were two more people in the mine. Immediately a search and rescue mission was mobilized to save the other trapped creuseurs but, as frantic attempts

2 Kilobe is a pseudonym of the name of the mine that forms the basis of the artisanal mine fieldwork in this study. 1 were made to shovel into the collapsed mineshaft, those at the frontline of the rescue kept collapsing, complaining there was too much heat emerging from the mineshaft.

The difficulty in rescuing the trapped creuseurs sent some to the village adjacent to the mine for urgent help.

As information of the mine collapse spread, all operations in Kilobe ground to a halt. The rescued miner was given first-aid and he explained that typically four of them worked in that mineshaft but only three were present during the mine collapse. It also came to light that they had bought a very powerful charm from a local mfumu, or ritual expert, named Bigum. That very morning when they went to use it, the eldest among them refused to accompany the group because he did not agree with the conditions set by the mfumu. So, he stayed home either out of fear, disagreement or recognition that it was taboo to use charms in the mine.

The rescued miner explained how they went into their mine, placed the lawa and watched it work. He said that he saw the “hand of a dragon” move the earth beside them revealing copper ore and it was after they saw the ore that the tremors began. All three started to run but two of them got trapped in the mine column leading out, leaving only him scrambling out to safety.

Bigum, the mfumu that provided the lawa, was contacted after the rescue operation had begun and he arrived shortly afterwards riding a red motorcycle. He was a tall, dark-skinned man with a huge beard. It is said that as he was arriving in the mine, creuseurs were singing

2 and chanting in sorrow beside the mineshaft trying to muster courage to make another foray to save their colleagues. As Bigum approached the crowd it grew more hostile towards him for they blamed him for polluting the mine with his charms and thereby causing the entrapment of the miners. The crowd cursed him saying,

“we will kill you today, you animal, we will burn your motorcycle, you sorcerer (mulozi). Today, you will die!”

Tension gripped the crowd but Bigum remained unmoved. He walked right through the massive gathering of people and, in spite of their taunts, not a single person touched him or his motorcycle. Everyone feared him. He slowly pushed his motorcycle to the entrance of the affected mineshaft and set his eyes on it. Unfazed by what he saw, he turned and set his eyes on the angry crowd.

Bigum then spat on the palms of his hands saying, “whoever feels he is strong can come and grab my hands.” Upon his invitation, the crowd drew back but kept provoking him. No one was so bold as to touch him or his motorcycle. He dared them again and once more, no one accepted the challenge. Bigum’s incitements drew even more people on to the mountain as everyone was eager to see what would happen to this so-called sorcerer.

The crowd encircled him. He looked around and lifted his head to the sky for a few minutes, as if in prayer, and then he lowered it down and looked at the remonstrating mass. The moment his eyes descended down to face the crowd, those on the hill said that a dark cloud started moving towards them from a distance. It was not until the cloud was very close that

3 people realized that Bigum had sent for help in the form of a swarm of bees. The swarm attacked the crowd, forcing everyone to hastily scatter for safety. In the melee that ensued,

Bigum mounted his motorcycle and left the mine. He did nothing to help the trapped miners.

Local authorities called several ritual experts, including renowned local wrestlers, but none of them was able to convince the “dragon” to release the bodies of the two young men. For 5 days there was no work in the mine of Kilobe. Then, a young man came to the mine authorities claiming to be a medicine man and ritual expert, a mfumu of the Basanga people—the indigenous community whose territory includes the mine of Kilobe. He declared that he could speak to the spirits of the mine so he was sent to Jean's mining shaft where he performed a ritual.

The mfumu put what looked like white powder (pemba) on a cloth and twisted it into a knot that he then placed on his ears. He then called out to the “dragon.” It looked like he was on a mobile phone because he was able to engage the “dragon” in a conversation that was heard by those present at the mineshaft. First, he politely asked the “dragon” to release the bodies of two trapped miners. The “dragon” refused, saying it wanted to speak to Kilobe, the spirit of the mine. It added that it had come looking for Kilobe, but Kilobe was not there. When the mfumu asked what the “dragon” wanted with the spirit of Kilobe, it said it had come to

“marry her.” The mfumu then summoned Kilobe asking if it knew about the “dragon” that

4 wanted to “marry her.” Kilobe was heard saying that she3 had left the mine and would only come back after the “dragon” left because she did not want to marry it.

Back and forth the discussion went with the mfumu as medium. Eventually, the “dragon” agreed to leave the mine. There were offerings given to appease it into releasing the bodies of the two young men. People knew the “dragon” had left after a huge cloud of smoke was seen coming from the hill. The Sanga mfumu went down the mineshaft and retrieved the bodies of the two young men, both of whom were dead.

The representative of the customary “chief” paid the mfumu and thanked him for his service before he left the mine.

***

The story above was narrated to me by Jules, one my key informants who worked as a creuseur in Kilobe mine, and it was corroborated by local officials and miners who had also witnessed the events. Many questions arise about the events leading to the death of Jean and his colleagues in the year 2012. Many of these questions may never be answered. We may never know, for instance, whether this was just another case of a landslide in the terribly unsafe artisanal mines of Katanga. If it was, why did it happen in that specific mineshaft and not in any other of the several hundred mining shafts surrounding theirs? Given that the relative depth of most mineshafts is around 30 meters, why did it take five days to rescue the

3 As I discuss in chapter four of the thesis, ancestral spirits animating mining areas are often considered to be female in gender because they are the source of the fertility of the land, be it in the form of crops, minerals or other forms of natural resource. 5 miners? Was the obstruction to the rescue operation the physical terrain, a lack of technological equipment, or was it metaphysical, linked to the spiritual forces that populate this area? If spirits were to blame, how do we reconcile the deaths of the two creuseurs with the physical dangers of artisanal mining and the claims made against them – that they broke the local taboo that prohibits the use of charms in artisanal mines? These questions, and many others about the organization, social control, moral order and historical underpinnings of artisanal mines and miners are asked every day in many parts of the Congo, where scholars estimate there may be as many as two million artisanal miners (Geenen 2011;

Peemans 2014:26). What should arrest our attention is not only the scale of this activity, but also the reality that while the circumstances leading to Jean’s death in an artisanal copper mine in southern Congo are indeed special, the outcome—his death and the deaths of his colleagues—are by no means unique. They speak of a desperate attempt to gain some advantage over hardening circumstances that, as this thesis shows, have led to the systematic disenfranchisement of an entire generation in the Congo.

What specifically captured my interest in Jean’s tragic story was how its emplotment reveals the irruption of the past in the present. Three young men went into a mine, two died and one survived, but was badly injured. The survivor spoke of having bought magic from a medicine-man to yield minerals that never materialized, but instead brought death and suffering onto the group. For five days, the bodies of the dead could not be collected from the mine and, until they were, the customary authorities brought mining to a standstill. Not even the sorcerer who conjured up the magic could placate the spirits to release the bodies of the dead miners and after days of searching for a solution, a local medicine man arrived,

6 placated the spirits to leave the mine and retrieved the bodies of the dead finally resolving the matter. The need to call up various local experts with indigenous knowledge reveals that local elders in the community suspected that the cause of all the turmoil and drama in the mine may have been ancestral spirits, mizimu ya bankambo. To be sure, most people working in the mine repeatedly informed me that they were convinced of the presence of spirits.

Elders I spoke to acknowledged that every hill in their territory has a name and the fertility of the land is understood to be a sure sign of the presence of spirits. That is why before working on the land, elders often implore people to “recognize” the spirits of the land either through sacrifice or supplication. Absent any “recognition” of the invisible agency of the past, customary authorities and elders all warned that the “land will rise.” To them, it was only a matter of time.

This study is in many ways an account of the conditions that make an event like the death of

Jean and his colleagues possible and even probable. In what follows, I seek to illuminate a

“history of the present,” one which shows how a figure like Jean came into existence, how he and his colleagues ended up in a mine, why they sought to use magic there, the cosmological logic of the tragedy that befell them, the roles of those who caused, ignored and ultimately resolved the event. Though the events leading up to Jean’s tragedy may be unique, the context and victims of this tragedy are not. If the victim of my narrative is the creuseur, what forms the ellipsis of his story—the context—is also equally important. The story I tell of the

Congo is about a nation geologically endowed with fabulous resources but that, over time, has lost control over both the governance of its people and its natural resources to the point that it is capable of producing two million young men mining mineral ores by hand, in the

7 age of automation. To understand this paradox, it is necessary to grasp the ground from which politics, power struggles and performances of natural resource extraction emerge. I suggest that it is only by elucidating the changes in the organization of mining in Congo that one can fully appreciate why the character of the present can at times seem baroque yet possess very real, sudden and often devastating effects.

Artisanal mining is an especially useful means of understanding the circumstances producing the historical present and economic life in Congo because of the recursive nature of the practice. For centuries, even prior to the arrival of Europeans on the continent, metallurgy and artisanal mining flourished. However, with the advent of colonial industrial mining, the activity was almost completely eradicated only to re-emerge after almost a century as industrialization began to decline from around 1990. Its return to a new present, one which has been restructured by colonial and post-colonial regimes of governance, has meant that the activity contains within it the paradoxes of both these eras while still mobilizing fragments from the distant past. It is for this reason one can speak of creuseurs, “dragons” and a mfumu in the same sentence as an artisanal mine in post-industrial Congo. Thinking of the precolonial moral matrices that underpinned resource extraction is possible because, as I highlight presently, the ways in which land is encoded with conflicting meanings is also mirrored by the various regimes of power that have sought to order resource extraction in the

Congo Copperbelt. As a consequence of these layers of governance, artisanal mining acts as an apt lens through which to view the vagaries of governance over time while listening to the voices of the land—many of which speak of its conquest.

It is partly because most scholarly approaches to understanding the mining sector in Congo have laid emphasis on the intractable problems of the Congolese state or the presumed socioeconomic importance of transnational mining corporations that I have sought to understand the sector from the perspective of individuals often marginalized by it or rendered less visible: that is, creuseurs, customary authorities, state agents working in artisanal mines, retrenched industrial mineworkers and their families. The voices of individuals in these social groups add a different texture to the historical conjuncture that continues to define social experience in the Congo Copperbelt today: the 2002 liberalization of the mining sector driven by the World Bank Group. Analyzing how the now liberalized regime of mining is given form through the interactions of actors whose interests and perspectives were hardly thought to be relevant to the enactment of the process is intended to elucidate the distinctiveness of the (neo)liberalized present relative to the regimes of mining it purportedly replaced. To be precise, I am referring to pre-colonial modes of resource extraction and, their successor, the Belgian colonial regime of mining that was inherited and maintained even after Congolese independence in 1960. Understanding how the various regimes of mining succeed, overlap and compare with one another is intended to address the question to which this thesis is a response: what insights about social change emerge when we apprehend the liberalized present as a temporal period comprised of a palimpsest of generational experiences, recursive elements and residual layers of the past?

Introduction

The Copperbelt as Topos of Social Change

How do we analyze the dynamics of social change in Central Africa? This question preoccupied a generation of anthropologists working at the Rhodes Livingstone Institute

(RLI) in Northern Rhodesia in the 1950s and 1960s and, I will argue, still remains a question worth asking today. Its contemporary merits obtain not only due to the realities of post- industrial decline or the occasional boom-bust cycles of capital-induced mining growth but, rather, due to the array of paradoxes and multivariant characteristics that currently define the

Copperbelt. Questions need to be asked about: the flood of private investment into extraction yet the scarcity of jobs, why welfare and social opportunities continue to decline, why there is less fiscal transparency and accountability despite legislative attempts to institute these through the liberalization of the mining sector, why there is increased state intervention in mining despite claims that liberalization would produce the contrary, and why there are conflicts between artisanal miners and private companies over mining sites. It is not as if these concerns never existed prior to liberalization of mining in the Copperbelt. They did, but what has changed with liberalization (and the flood of billions of US dollars in private investment) is the balance in the social contract between state, society and the private sector.

With liberalization turning the state in favor of the private sector to the detriment of the interests of Congolese society, I propose refocusing our attention on the problem of governance in the history of mining in the Copperbelt so as to grasp how the social orders defining the present have come into being.

In the mid-twentieth century, enquiry into social change in the Copperbelt was driven by rapid and wide-scale industrial development that led to urbanization, rural-urban migration, and proletarianization – making these key concerns of scholarship (Epstein 1967; Gluckman

1961). In developing an anthropological approach to deal with issues of urbanization, industrialization, and social transformation, the anthropologists of the Rhodes Livingstone

Institute (RLI) in Central Africa were moving away from the classic and synchronic “tribe study” promoted by Malinowski (1945:160) which, as Max Gluckman argued, presumed that rapid social change in African societies was an almost natural outcome of “culture contact” rather than the product of the coercive forces of colonialism and industrial capitalism (in

Ferguson 1999:25). Gluckman encouraged subsequent Copperbelt anthropologists to trace the patterns of social change and their attendant myths by studying the life of the African mineworker and his family (Epstein 1981; Ferguson 1999; Gluckman 1961; Mitchell 1956;

1961; Powdermaker 1962; Wilson 1941).

Of interest to RLI anthropologists were questions about how Africans were adapting to the multiethnic character of urban life in mining towns (Epstein 1981; Mitchell 1951;

Powdermaker 1962). Aside from a look at the relations between different ethnic groups of

Africans, questions regarding the “adaptation” of Africans in towns coalesced around concerns over the emergent forms the African family was taking (Powdermaker 1962;

Mitchell 1961; Wilson 1941); the often antagonistic nature of marital relationships in the domestic sphere (Epstein 1981; Mitchell 1957; Parpart 1983); as well as the influence of

Christianity and missions on religion and domestic urban life (Fabian 1971); and the role of extended kin on the marital relations among Africans living in towns on the Copperbelt

(Hansen 1997). The stress in this literature was on the emergent social forms made possible by industrialization. Clyde Mitchell (1961) and Godfrey Wilson (1941:13) in particular argued that with urbanization and the rising influence of missionaries in the Copperbelt during the mid-twentieth century, traditional forms of religion and unilineal descent groupings would break up, leading to the formation of structurally nuclear, sexually monogamous, and conjugally companionate families. These predictions have been criticized by Ferguson (1999) who maintained that RLI scholars were complicit in perpetuating a

“myth of modernity” for they viewed the emergent forms of domestic and urban life not in their specificity but, rather, as teleological forms representing an assumed “modern progress.”

Recent studies of urban life in the Copperbelt contradict Mitchell (1961) and Wilson (1941) for not only does polygyny persist but also, extended kinship relations remain significant in the Copperbelt and its neighboring towns (Dibwe dia Mwembu 2001; Hansen 1997;

Ferguson 1999:203). For Ferguson (1999: 15-17), RLI scholars were seduced by semantics of progress4 that led them to the consensus that industrialization was contributing to the

“emergence” of urban centers and the “adaptation” of tribal rural Africans to modern life as well as a complementary process of “tribal breakdown” in rural areas. This meta-narrative of emergence led RLI scholars to overestimate the permanence of rural African in urban areas, the frequency and rate of urban-rural return and the dynamics of household formation and dissolution on the Copperbelt. 5 For Ferguson (1999: 6), the diverse strategies Africans used

4 While Ferguson’s (1999) argument is convincing it nevertheless establishes a uniformity to the discourse of RLI scholars which may not exist. For a review of the RLI literature see Sally Falk Moore (1994). 5 Ferguson’s (1999) claim here is based on a presumption that the ‘problem space’ occupied by RLI scholars, which is the discursive space to which their work was a response, is the same problem space that he occupies 12 to deal with rapid industrialization confound any simple linear narration because both their forms and temporal existence have shifted over time and therefore, one ought to consider their “whole spread.” To look at the “full-house” of Africans’ reactions and activities to prevailing politico-economic shifts over time, Ferguson employs the RLI extended-case method to capture the experiences of retiring mineworkers and he also develops the idea of

“cultural style” so as to map changing forms of localism and cosmopolitanism in the

Copperbelt.

In place of the “emergence” of earlier anthropological approaches to social change on the

Copperbelt, Ferguson (1999:21) proposes an “ethnography of decline.” This refers, he says, to a “mode of conceptualizing, narrating, and experiencing socioeconomic change and its encounter with a confounding process of decline.” I want to focus on his “mode of conceptualizing socioeconomic change” to make sense of the contemporary dynamics of social life in the Congo Copperbelt. However, my interest is not on “social decline,” which implies a compression of supposedly “relevant” events and processes to a few decades but, rather, on the warps and wefts, succession and overlap between the precolonial, colonial and postcolonial eras as each of these continue to inform the present.

My attention to the composition, layering and overlap of periodicities in the Congo

Copperbelt takes its cue from Ferguson’s (1999) critics who decry the object of his analysis—a “myth of modernity” crafted by RLI anthropologists— as being far “too

and to which his critique of modernity is a response. To evaluate the contributions of scholars in the past by a yardstick conjured up by the demands of the present is anachronistic. It is insufficient to only focus on the answers offered by problem of the past for that overlooks the questions that form the epistemological condition of those answers (see Scott 2004:6–7). 13 academic,” for it sidesteps any attempt to address the politics of colonialism which, through governance by indirect rule, made it possible to produce “a working class that is not free and straddles town and country, industry, agriculture and formal work in order to reproduce itself” (Sichone 2001:373). To elucidate the enduring structures and effects of colonialism as the key impetus for social change in the Copperbelt, I outline what Michel Foucault

(1979:31) called a “history of the present” for the mining world of the Congo Copperbelt. As

David Scott (2004:40) reminds us, what is morally and politically at stake in histories of the present is not merely the reconstruction of the past but, rather, the critical appraisal of the present itself. Attention to the discursive arena or problem space in which this critique is a response means grappling with the confounding nature of the process of liberalization as it has unfolded in Congo, but also as its been experienced elsewhere (Harvey 2005). The

Congolese photographer, Sammy Baloji, has grappled with the social decline of Katanga by juxtaposing black and white colonial images of haggard and half-naked Congolese men in chains with background scenes of contemporary industrial ruins in vivid colour. For Fréderic

Jacquemin, this stark super-imposition of the injuries of the past on a scene displaying contemporary ruin demonstrates two things: one is the small space separating memory from forgetting, the other is that “the equation between man, earth and machinery brings out the tension between capital and labour” (in Baloji 2014: preface). My attempt to write a “history of the present” draws inspiration from local artists like Baloji and others6 for similarly, I try to link the confounding nature of the present with historical events that are today slowly fading into the past, yet remain the sources of the tension between capital and labour in the

Congo Copperbelt.

6 For an overview of inspiring modern Congolese artists, see the book from the exhibition Beauté Congo (Fondation Cartier 2015). 14

By providing an appraisal of the historical conjunctures that have produced the liberalized present in Congo, my aim is to move beyond the tendency of defining the socioeconomic problems in Africa in terms of abstract cognitive-political terms such as “modernity” or the

“postcolonial.” Recourse to these terms as explanatory principles not only masks local realities but also, according to David Scott (2004:41), risks producing histories of the present in which the present obtains a certain “stability of duration,” even as the past develops usable contingency.7 To guard against giving the present a “stability of duration,” while also responding to the concerns of historians of Africa some of whom lament the foreshortening of the African past due to the marginalization of precolonial history,8 this study outlines how both colonial and precolonial modes of governing resources consequentially shaped the dynamics of mining in the liberalized present. It is to these concerns that I will now turn.

African mine labour: from peasants to the precariat

“In the beginning was the stone, and the stone prompted ownership, and ownership a rush, and the rush brought in an influx of men and women of diverse appearance who built railroads through the rock, forged a life of palm wine, and devised a system, a mixture of mining and trading.” Fiston Mwanza Mujila, Tram 83, (2015:1)

7 Think here of the enduring utility of a discourse on the “resource curse” in Africa, which often implies that problems arising from resource extraction are endemic to specific countries due to poor local governance or corruption all the while ignoring the long-standing history of imperialism on the continent (for an example see Humphreys et al. 2007). 8 To read a critique of how colonial studies have contributed to the foreshortening of African history and an inattention to precolonial histories see Richard Reid (2011). Concern that pre-colonial African history has been overshadowed in favor of social histories aimed at highlighting the atrocities of the late nineteenth century colonial era is particularly given voice by Jan Vansina (1994). Often silenced by this approach are the deep histories of transformative processes such as the transatlantic slave trade whose effects and memories in west and central Africa still live on to the present day (Shaw 2002).

In his Man Booker International Prize nominated novel, Fiston Mujila condenses the sequence of events leading to the creation of a system of mining and trading “somewhere” in

Africa. We know he is referring to Congo because his biblical opening— “In the beginning was the stone”—implicitly refers to the arrival of Europeans in central Africa whose efforts led to the commodification of resources, the restructuring of everyday life and, most memorably, the violent construction of “railroads through the rock.” It was the latter task that earned the colonial state the local name bula matari, or, “breaker of rocks.”

The eloquence of the opening sentence in this novel about students, artisanal diggers, sex- workers and foreign workers in an unpredictable, fast-paced, oneiric mining town, invites the reader to imagine that the history of the town (in what is probably southern Congo) commences with the arrival of Europeans— “men and women of diverse appearance”—in the late nineteenth century. Repeating a common motif in many texts about the Congo,

Mujila wants the reader to accept that nothing existed prior to the arrival of Europeans and the construction of the railway. This foreshortening of central African history is just as popular as it is convenient because it reinforces the epistemological importance of the

“colonial library” (Mudimbe 1994) through the implicit suggestion that what came prior to the late nineteenth century colonial encounter is not known, hard to verify, or may even be unknowable because it was never written down or has been corrupted by time. Congolese historian Jacques Depelchin (2005:15) argues that periodizing history without attention to the social formations that predated 19th century colonialism compartmentalizes and silences the

16 past; it also wrongly presumes that the Congo (and Africa by extension) was a terra nullius brought into history proper by Western imperial benevolence.9

Michael Oakeshott (1983:8) reminds us that “future and past emerge only in a reading of the present; and a particular future or past is one eligible to be evoked from a particular present and it is contingently related to the particular present from which it may be evoked.” The implication of this quote is that if the present from which we write is one we view as full of radical departures from the past then even the past and futures we describe will come to echo that same motif. Oakeshott’s warning is especially pertinent to postcolonial histories of central Africa, many of which unwittingly presume the onset of colonialism was the late eighteenth century arrival of Europeans in central Africa (Hochschild 1999; Hunt 2016;

Mudimbe 1994; Nzongola-Ntalaja 2002; Dibwe dia Mwembu 2001). What such a literature often overlooks in its critical engagement with the late nineteenth century colonial past are the reverberations and dislocations produced during the precolonial era, especially during and after the end of the transatlantic slave trade.

To give greater emphasis to the actions of Africans in the creation of their own history, Jean-

Francois Bayart (2000) argues that rather than emphasizing the marginalization or disconnection of Africans through the process of globalization, it is far more illuminating to consider how the continent has been incorporated into the world through what he refers to as the process of “extraversion.” For him, extraversion is not a structure but a historical process

9 If in doubt about the continued existence of this claim – which postcolonial theory so thoroughly sought to demolish –look no further than Bruce Gilley’s (2017) controversially published (and later withdrawn) viewpoint essay in Third World Quarterly, “The case for colonialism.” 17 observed from the perspective of the longue durée of African history that has entailed overt and covert strategies employed by imperial nations to incorporate Africa into the world thereby generating the dependency, inequality, deficits of democracy and wars observed on the continent (Bayart 2000:234). Foregrounding extraversion as a motor of central African history allows us to consider that the colonial encounter in the region began with the transatlantic slave trade and not the scramble for Africa in the late nineteenth century. Only when the approximately four hundred years of the slave trade are linked to the more than seven decades of European colonialism that established the modern nation-state in Congo is it possible to imagine the magnitude and scope of historical violence that has defined the incorporation of central Africans into global social history.

The arrival and friendly reception of the Portuguese navigator, Diogo Cão, in west central

Africa in 1483 heralded the beginning of significant transformations to the Congo region.

Not long after the arrival of Cão, the Kongo King, Nzinga a Nkuwu, converted to

Christianity; he also instituted the religion, adopted European dress, literacy and trade on the west central African Atlantic (Thornton 1999:100). For close to eight decades, the

Portuguese maintained strong diplomatic relations with the Kongo Kingdom, which acted as an intermediary between the Portuguese and its neighbors such as the Ndongo. This relationship soured once the Portuguese sought direct relations with the Ndongo in 1560 and, from then on, internecine conflicts escalated between the Kongo, Ndongo, Jaga and Imbagala communities. Many of the conflicts were over expansion, centralization or loyalty but their effect was the enslavement of thousands of people whom the Portuguese traders captured or purchased in exchange for weapons or wares (Thornton 1998: 109). From 1500 to 1800, the

18 combined effects of the collapse of the Kongo kingdom, the Portuguese slave raids in west-

Central Africa and the Imbagala attacks in south-Central Africa contributed to the dispatch of more than 3.6 million central Africans to the Americas (Lovejoy 2012:73–74). A revolution in military technology in Europe in the early eighteenth century made it cheaper to produce plentiful firearms. These firearms flooded African states nearest to Portuguese territories in the Atlantic zone of Central Africa ultimately contributing to the expansion of the slave trade but also to wars and the decentralization of local states. Joseph Miller (1983:148–151) notes, with the movement of the slaving frontier eastward in the late eighteenth century, merchants captured more slaves while those left behind were ensnared by the extension of European goods on credit that left many Africans with debts they could not pay except through the sale of their close relatives. By the 1840s, the exchange of ivory and slaves for firearms had permeated the entire western part of Congo river basin. Using their skill in hunting, a group of highland hunters called the Chokwe traded ivory and wax for guns that they used to raid neighboring communities capturing slaves (that they traded for guns) and women—whom they forced to work processing wax for sale. Even after the end of the Atlantic slave trade the

Chokwe peoples maintained the use of forced labour to expand their influence. They were forced beyond their original home in the Kasai basin after the exhaustion of elephants for ivory in their region and thus, along with their legions of female labour, entered and ultimately dominated the rubber trade in the 1880s. Overexploitation of rubber vines, demographic pressures and a dependence on imported firearms all contributed to the political defeat of the Chokwe by the Portuguese in the late nineteenth century (Miller 1983:158).

Following the end of the transatlantic slave trade came the extension of the Arab slave trade into Central Africa,10 which began around 1850 and ended in 1890 with the European

“scramble for Africa.” Although King Leopold II of Belgium declared that ending the Arab slave trade was one of the main aims of his colonial project, from 1890 to 1908 he would preside over a regime that was just as brutal as the transatlantic slave trade. Leopold laid the groundwork for creating his personal colony, misleadingly named the Congo Free State11

(CFS), by funding various expeditions that sought to “pacify,” sign treaties and evaluate the resource wealth of the Congo. Reports such as Jules Cornet’s study of the geology of

Katanga in 1891 verified long-standing rumours of Katanga’s mineral wealth and helped justify the annexation of the region as part of the Congo Free State. While initially Leopold was mainly interested in ivory, rising rubber prices in the global market encouraged him to lease parts of the CFS to two main concession companies, Abir company and Anversoise,12 both of which used forced labour, taxation, extremely punitive measures such as maiming and a commission system for its agents to maximize rubber production (Harms 1975:79).

From 1890 to 1910, it is estimated over 10 million Congolese lost their lives through the systematic violence of rubber concession companies and the Belgian state (Hochschild

1999). If the use of unfree labour, that is, the use of coercion and violence to force individuals to work, was the foundation for the creation of the modern nation-state in Congo

10 For a more detailed account of the Arab slave trade see (Lovejoy 2012:219–243) and (Middleton 1992). 11 The CFS was not a state, par excellence, for states operate under the rule of law which grants rights to citizens. The CFS was run in absolute lawlessness because, as Achille Mbembe (2003:24) reminds us, this stemmed from “the racial denial of any common bond between conqueror and native,” not even humanity. For the conqueror savage life was just as incomprehensible as animal life, which may explain why Leopold was at ease with granting concession companies the permission to mutilate and kill millions in the service of profit. 12 Abir and Anversoise were two companies created in 1892 and, in the following year, were given the sole right to purchase products from Africans in the Equateur region. The companies were business associates with the CFS, which gave them unfettered control of the human and natural resources in their concession (Jewsiewicki 1983:97–98). 20 in the late nineteenth century, it continued to be so even into the late twentieth century

(Loffman 2017).

The transfer of Congo to the Belgian state in 1908 did little to end the colonial demands for the labour, land and resources of the Congolese. Land not directly occupied by Africans was considered “vacant” and was annexed by colonial trading companies such as the Compagnie du Kasai and Comité Spécial du Katanga, ostensibly for the collection of rubber and ivory through a network of colonial trading posts, or boma (Vellut 1977:297–303). During the

Leopoldian era, the state favored large companies in which it was a stockholder so companies were created to harness African labour for colonial ventures such as the Matadi-

Kinshasa railway and industrial mining in Katanga. The creation of l’Union Minière du Haut

Katanga (UMHK) in 1906 by Société Générale de Belgique and Tanganyika Concessions

Ltd effectively began the process harnessing the mineral wealth of the Congo Copperbelt.

John Higginson (1989:11) points out that during the UMHK’s first thirty years of existence

(1910-1940), between 180,000 and 250,000 men were conscripted into service for the company. Men who were initially hunter-gatherers, fishermen and small-holder subsistence farmers were first transformed into mineworkers and then converted into an urban mining proletariat. The process of doing so began with the reorganization of village life by restricting the movement of villagers, abolishing large chiefdoms, and installing cooperative customary authorities. However, arguably one of the most important changes was the monetization of the village economy by implementing a head tax payable in cash, trading goods for cash and paying workers in wages (Jewsiewicki 1983:99). With the introduction of

21 large scale agricultural companies in 1920, colonial agricultural priority shifted to plantation farming of cotton and palm oil in the Kasai and coffee and cotton in the Kivu regions. After the early success of these cash crops, in 1928 the Belgians enacted a strategy of harnessing

African agriculture for the international market using plantations, compulsory labour policies and buying monopolies. Fixed agricultural prices, head taxes, and compulsory labour forced peasants to sell their produce at a minimum price or, alternatively, leave their villages to sell their labour (Jewsiewicki 1983:115). From 1919-1940, the colonial government aggressively controlled the economy and populations of Katanga by moderating food production and the social reproduction of the labour force from the “traditional” village structure using

“enlightened” local administrators. The policy of indirect rule instituted between 1931-1933 turned the Tanganyika and Upper Katanga region of Congo into “agricultural zones” where compulsory cultivation was undertaken to guarantee food supplies for a growing urban mining industry (Jewsiewicki 1977:326).

By designating rural areas as agricultural zones controlled through indirect rule, the Belgians guaranteed a wide gap between rural and urban spheres. Africans driven out of their villages in Katanga were recruited by agents working for the Bourse du Travail du Katanga and directed to mining areas to work as wage labourers. From 1914-1928, the violence and coercion of the state led to a declining carrying capacity in rural areas, which aided the

UMHK in its efforts to harness labour power using state and private labour recruiters to obtain cheap African labour for its mines (Higginson 1989:37). Long hours, back-breaking work with minimal mechanization, rampant disease and ultimately low wages kept Africans fleeing the mining camps. The effect of the 1929-1932 Depression and a collapse of

22 collaboration among international copper producers led to a more than 80% drop in the price of refined copper. To absorb the price drop and remain competitive in the market the Central

African mining companies adopted labour intensive production techniques that only required large numbers of cheap unskilled African labourers (Perrings 1979:99–100). Charles

Perrings (1979:78) mentions that to hire and retain a cheap labour force of thousands of workers, the company instituted a policy of “stabilization” which entailed expanding the training and retention of its “voluntary” and part-time workers from twelve months to three years.

Donatien Dibwe dia Mwembu (2001:53–86), a Congolese historian, explains that from 1928 to 1961, the UMHK oriented their policy of stabilization towards a politics governing the family life of its workers living the company’s mining camps. Conjugal unions between male workers and rural women were facilitated by the company; improved food, housing, medical care and running water modestly raised the living conditions in mining camps with the aim of enticing workers to sign longer contracts (Hunt 1997:299). The strategy had some success for in 1965 the average length of an employee contract with the Union Minière was nine years (Fabian 1973:301). All the children of mineworkers went to primary school; thirty percent of the boys went to professional school and the rest to the worksite.13 Homemaking schools prepared wives and mothers for their new role as a “support system for salaried male workers” (Jewsiewicki 2010:9). The welfare capitalism of UMHK mining camps was paternalistic and it offered guarantees in exchange for a restricted role of the worker in the

13 The “benevolence” of the company nurtured a “myth of philanthropic paternalism” (Higginson 1989:185) based on the fact that at independence in 1960, the Union Minière was directly responsible for the destinies of twenty thousand workers and total of a hundred thousand people (Jewsiewicki 2010:9). 23 control of their work, leisure, lodging, healthcare, education, marriage, and even spiritual life

(Rubbers 2013). Evidence of the paternalism of the company in post-independence Congo was reflected in the often-heard remarks that “Union Minière [kazi] njo baba, njo mama,” that is, “Union Minière (salaried work) is father and mother” (Petit and Mutambwa

2005:470). Furthermore, because welfare guarantees were channeled through the employment of the male mineworker, he gradually became the domestic patriarch through whom the Catholic church and the colonial state sought to model a monogamous nuclear family. By offering bridewealth to new recruits, restricting the movement of its workers and controlling their leisure time, the company was gradually trying to substitute itself for the clan and extended family (Dibwe dia Mwembu 2001:55). The success of the paternalism of the company came in the form of improved maternal health in the UMHK camps in the

1950s, which contributed to some of the highest birthrates in the world (Jewsiewicki 2010:9).

For historians of Congo, this was further proof that the company basically intended to “breed its own labour force” (De Meulder 1996; Dibwe dia Mwembu 2001; Fetter 1976:46).

At the peak of industrialization in the 1960s, UMHK workers held some of the most coveted jobs in Congo due to the welfare benefits they enjoyed but, notwithstanding their hard-fought welfare gains, these were still precarious workers. By 1965, UMHK workers were locked into employment contracts that were on average about 9 years long (Fabian 1973:301).

Workers supported large families, all of whom relied on the welfare benefits of the company while living in camps policed by the Catholic church, a racialized colonial state and an exploitative company. Those who opted out of life in the mining camps did so to restrict the coercive control of the colonial trinity away from their home as well as maintain closer albeit

24 often demanding ties with local kin. As much as workers tried during the colonial era and even thereafter, wage relations of UMHK workers—like those of their peers in southern

African mines— were structured around dependency on unrewarding jobs that, over time, deepened the social vulnerability of workers by eroding their livelihood choices while exposing them to political and economic uncertainty and instability (Barchiesi forthcoming).

After independence in 1960 and the rise to power of President Mobutu in 1965, the government commenced a nationalization programme called zairianisation ostensibly aimed at wresting control of the national resources and assets of the country from “foreign” interests while also fostering cultural pride and national unity in the aftermath of Belgian colonialism (Adelman 1975). In truth, the programme was an ideological ploy used by the new ruling class to expropriate private wealth for personal gain – a strategy that crippled the private sector and led to tremendous capital flight14 (Nzongola-Ntalaja 2002:168). As local investment in the country diminished, the Mobutu government borrowed heavily from international lenders from 1970 to 1994, plunging the economy into a debt crisis when revenues from copper began to drop starting in 1989 (De Herdt 2002; Ndikumana and Boyce

1998). In Katanga, social instability was triggered by a combination of the 1973 oil crisis and the subsequent collapse in global copper prices in 1975, mismanagement and state failure under President Mobutu’s leadership, and post-cold War realignments that diminished the strategic role of Pres. Mobutu to the United States and its allies. The culmination of these changes in the mining sector of Katanga were manifest in the decline of Gécamines,15 the

14 From 1968 to 1990, capital flight from the country is estimated at US $12 Billion (in 1990 US$) (Ndikumana and Boyce 1998). 15 UMHK was renamed Gécamines in 1967 in the course of the nationalization of the state’s public assets. 25 emergence of creuseurs in abandoned industrial mines and the closure of Kamoto mine16 in

1990.

Leading up to 1990, Gécamines workers and creditors had been going for months without pay as the production levels of copper and cobalt declined from peaks of 486,000 tonnes of copper and 14,000 tonnes of cobalt in 1986 to 19,000 and 1,800 tonnes respectively in 2002

(Rubbers 2010:330). The company which, prior to collapse, contributed almost 40% of all of the foreign exchange revenue earned by the country (De Herdt 2002:448), had accrued more than a US $ 1 billion in debt at the turn of the century. With an economy in shambles and the worsening plight of workers, Joseph Kabila, who took over the presidency in 2001 after his father overthrew Pres. Mobutu in 1997, was forced to liberalize the mining sector. Under the guidance of the World Bank and IMF, the Congolese government enacted new mining laws in 2002 whose intended focus was attracting foreign investment rather than stabilizing the socioeconomic conditions of the regions where mining was taking place (Mazalto 2004). The new mining code permits private concession mining as well as artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM), however, given that the ultimate authority governing mining rights rests with the minister of mines in Kinshasa, provincial actors with little means and far from the center of power were disadvantaged in negotiations over mining sites compared to multinational elites. Furthermore, the new mining code also failed to consider the practical manner in which land in Congo is governed through multiple systems, institutions and practices, all of which overlap to moderate a statutory land system, customary systems and a plethora of informal governance practices. One consequence of such an oversight is that the new mining

16 To this date this is still the largest open pit mine in the Central African Copperbelt. 26 code takes legal precedence over laws governing land tenure and agriculture. This means farmers and other local residents are faced with the risk of removal if they are found to live in an area whose mining rights have been leased to a private company (Vlassenroot

2012:3).17

At the time of its enactment in 2002, it was also particularly surprising to civic groups that the new mining code was skewed to favor private investment over the needs of the public because eastern Congo was in the middle of a protracted war that would claim the lives of up to five million people mainly through hunger and disease (Reyntjens 2009). As I discuss in chapter 2 of this thesis, by prioritizing private interests in natural resource extraction at the expense of public good, the Congolese state expanded the scope of precarity in public life, ensnaring even those who historically were afforded relative privilege by virtue of their employment or status in public institutions. In this way, liberalization of the mining sector and, by extension, the economy, led to pervasive marketization of public resources at a rapid and disorganized pace that reaffirmed the filiation of the state to its founding father, King

Leopold II.

Neoliberalism, State power and Mining

Tejaswini Ganti (2014:93) points out that neoliberalism as a concept originates from a political agenda that is fundamentally against the notion that economic decisions ought to be

17 Conflict between private mining companies and local actors in Congo appears in Cuvelier (2011b) and Geenen and Hönke ( 2014). For more on the complexities of land governance in Congo see Vlassenroot and Huggins (2005). 27 predicated on working class interests. In Congo, that agenda has been the modus operandi of the state since its very inception, from its primitive accumulation origins in the era of the

Congo Free State (CFS) where millions lost their lives collecting rubber, to the exacting demands of the colonial developmental state under Belgian rule, followed by the kleptocratic post-colonial patrimonial state under Pres. Mobutu to the now institutionally-weak predatory/prebendal state. There is hardly any era in Congolese history when popular interests have determined the nature of governance in the country.18 This antipathy to the will of the people was enforced in the colonial era and, as I will argue, it appears to have been maintained, if not exacerbated, after independence.

Scholarly critique of the legacies of colonial rule has often focused on the political and moral character of the post-colonial state in Congo and pointed to the elitist, patrimonial and predatory constructs of power (Bayart 1993; Schatzberg 2001), the extensive nature of institutional failure and decline (Young and Turner 1985; Young 1994) as well as the bifurcated nature of governance between rural and urban areas (Lemarchand 2002:392;

Mamdani 1996). More recently, with the retraction of state power along its frontiers and the ensuing violence against civilians in various parts of the country, concern has been raised about various types of non-state actors usurping the authority of the state to further private interests (Hönke 2010; Kabamba 2015; Mbembe 2001a; Reno 1999). Threats to the sovereignty of the state in the DRC, as in many other parts of Africa, reflect how the

18 Possibly one exception here is the very brief post-independence rule of Patrice Emery Lumumba in 1960. The two elections of Joseph Kabila as president remain controversial not only because he was parachuted to power by Western allies following the death of his father in 2001, but also because his tenure as leader has been marked by the withdrawal of the state in the provision of services, corruption, violence and the privatization of national assets. As a consequence, he is widely viewed as a weak and unpopular president who is beholden to foreign interests. 28

Weberian model of the “territorial state,” which boasts a centrality and verticality of political relations, spatial demarcation, a monopoly on the exercise of legitimate violence and the collection of taxes, appears to be exhausted (Mbembe 2001:86). In eastern Congo various types of militia seek to displace the state as the arbiter of rule. In Kasai, customary authorities pose a threat to the state whereas, in Katanga, because of the important role of mining in economy, state capture has been authored by multinational mining companies.

To grasp how the extraverted nature of the economy contributed to the hijacking of governance and fiscal policy in Congo, one would need to go back to the year 1973, when the collapse of global commodity prices caused the international price of copper to drop precipitously causing a sharp decline (in 1974) in the real value of copper exports in Congo

(De Herdt 2002:449). Analysts have shown that the government of President Mobutu Sese

Seko bridged the difference in lost revenue from the sale of copper, which was (and still is) the state’s main source of foreign exchange, by borrowing from bilateral and multilateral lenders. Despite being aware that the economy was held afloat by debt, and knowing that the president was misappropriating the money lent to his country, multilateral donors such as the

World Bank continued lending to (what was then) Zaire until the year 1990. For sixteen years (1974-1990), which also coincided with heightening of Cold-War politics in Africa,

Pres. Mobutu enriched himself with financial aid from the World Bank and Western nation- states even as he bequeathed tremendous debt to the country. All the while he was preaching a neoliberal mantra of responsibilitization stating, “people sort things out from their respective social locations,” “moto na moto abongisa.” To make matters worse, from 1968 to

1990, Mobutu and his elites amassed almost as much national debt as the total amount of

29 capital that is known to have left the country in the same period—approximately US$ 12 billion. The situation was so acute that by 1994, the value of the country’s debt to export ratio was the highest in the world (Ndikumana and Boyce 1998:205). 19 It is in the context of colossal national debt, declining revenues of copper, inflation, rampant insecurity, crumbling public institutions, increased individual responsibilitization, deep economic decline and contraction, that liberalization of the mining sector in 2002 was presented as a fait accompli by the World Bank Group.

By the time the Congolese were negotiating with the IMF and the World Bank in 2001-2002, the reality is that they were powerless to dictate the terms of the reform of the mining sector.

What this fundamentally points to is how the state in Congo ceded important aspects of the governance of the economy to external actors. The overbearing influence of external actors explains why the mining sector was liberalized with the intention of attracting foreign investors so as to supposedly obtain revenue necessary for the Congolese state to meet the debt demands of its lenders. In both Congo and Zambia, demonstration that the needs and interests of Copperbelt residents were an afterthought was provided in the under-pricing of mining assets, the closure of some mines, and the retrenchment of more than 50% of mineworkers in Zambia (Larmer 2007:189) and almost half of the Gécamines workforce in

Congo (Rubbers 2010:330). Undoubtedly, these were seismic changes to the economies of the Copperbelt region. They were accompanied by the privatization and restructuring of state-run mining companies and the divestment of social welfare programmes that supported

19 By 1994, Zaire had amassed 12 times more debt finance than the revenue they were obtaining from their exports. As a comparison, this was more than three times more than that of Argentina and four times that of Brazil in the same period (Ndikumana and Boyce 1998:205). 30 millions of mineworkers and their families. When one considers that even prior to 1990, the

Copperbelt region was already experiencing structural adjustment policies that loosened state intervention and allowed for the privatization of public services20 and, after 2002, those same policies were maintained and combined with the reform of the mining sector, it is possible to see why the constant refrain among local residents in the Copperbelt at that time was captured by the words “la crise,” “the crisis” (Petit and Mutambwa 2005).

However, for elites in Congo, privatization has been a boon. Signs that liberalization of the mining sector has altered the balance of power between state and society in favor of the private sector have become more evident with the proliferation of multinational companies and the enclosure of vast tracks of land for mineral exploration. Many, if not all, of the major mining companies that have established themselves in Congo have done so through joint- venture agreements involving Gécamines, which represents the government’s minority stake.

Practically all of the ventures are located in what are often large-scale mining sites previously operated by Gécamines.21 By 2006, 160 joint-venture agreements had been signed between the state-run company and numerous private mining companies (Hönke 2010:121).

These agreements, only made public in 2011 after intense pressure for transparency from the

World Bank and the African Development Bank, revealed that in just five mining deals signed by the company between 2010-2012, assets valued at US $1.63 billion were sold to offshore companies for US$ 275 million, a loss of US$1.36 billion (Africa Progress Panel

2013:55–57).

20 It from around the mid-1980s that public services such as schooling and healthcare were either privatized and/or made fee-paying services. 21 Examples of such sites include the Tenke-Fungurume project, Kamoto mine project, Mukondo mine project and the Dikuluwe-Mashamba project. 31

To complicate matters further, civic interest groups like the Carter Center in Congo have conducted research on the privatization of the copper sector in Congo and they report that from 2009-2014, the company earned US $1.5 billion from its partnerships but remitted to the national treasury less than 5% of that amount (The Carter Center 2017:7). This finding is made more plausible because of the opaque nature of Gécamines’ financial transactions and accounts, fueling a widespread view that the substantial revenues from partnership deals are rarely forwarded to the national treasury and therefore, do not benefit the Congolese. The allegations by the Carter Center come despite a 2011 World Bank effort to transform the company into a commercial entity at arm’s length from the state—a process that sought to make it more efficient, accountable, transparent and profitable. Not only has the reverse happened but, because of the massive revenue from partnership agreements, the Carter

Center now decries privatization for transforming Gécamines into a “parallel state” that is accountable to neither the state bureaucracy nor the citizenry. It has become an instrument for enriching political elites.22 What is more, it is increasingly accepted that successful investors in Congo are those “willing to make significant payments to state-owned companies and other parastatal agencies rather than to the official agencies that collect taxes for the treasury” (The Carter Center 2017:10).

While Gécamines categorically denies the claims made by the Carter Center,23 the foreign press continues to document high-level corruption scandals involving various multinational

22 Without surprise, the Carter Center (2017) makes clear that the funds earned by Gécamines are being siphoned off to a “parallel treasury” controlled by those at the very highest levels of power. 23 The company claims that the vast majority of gains from its agreements with mining companies went towards the “acquisition of strategic assets, the realization of directly productive investments as well as the certification 32 mining companies and persons thought to be close to the President (Biesheuvel et al. 2017;

Burgis 2015). 24 This, along with the glaring poverty and heightened inequality in Congolese society, feeds a popular perception that the Congolese people hardly benefit from the liberalization of the mining sector because Gécamines and its business partners continue to be the main conduits for private accumulation. How else can one explain the incredibly vast international portfolio of companies directly controlled by members of President Kabila’s family?25 Elite accumulation through the abuse of state power reflects continuity with the past. While President Mobutu used external debt to finance his hold on power, nowadays it is

“liberalization” and “sectorial reform” that are the contemporary analogues used by political elites to achieve a similar end.26

The endurance of kleptocratic authority signals, more than anything else, the absence of an implicit social contract between the state and its people. Since mining remains the main source of foreign exchange for the Congolese state, the relations, organization and actions of various actors in the sector are a key barometer of the legitimacy of the state (or lack thereof) in the eyes of its people. From the vantage point of the mining sector, neoliberalism ought to be viewed less as an ideology of governance, a technology of self-making or even a site or specific agent of action,27 than, as Brad Weiss (2004:4) notes, a distinctive process that is a

of reserves for future projects.” See https://www.miningreview.com/news/gecamines-retaliates-derogatory- report/ 24 See https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-21/u-s-sanctions-israeli-billionaire-gertler-over- congo-deals 25 See https://pulitzercenter.org/reporting/all-presidents-wealth-kabila-family-business 26 As of December 2017, the Congolese general election had been postponed twice by President Kabila to December 2018 for many reasons, one of which is the claim that that gubernatorial elections needed to precede presidential elections. Another being the state did not have enough funds to successfully undertake any elections let alone a presidential election. Both claims have been interpreted as an attempt by the President to extend his mandate in office. 27 For a review of relevant literature on neoliberalism in anthropology see Ganti (2014). 33

“dimension of the long-standing encounter of modernity in Africa.” Modernity here might be viewed as the “juxtaposition of disparate understandings and practices into a common social purview” (cf Miller 1994 in Weiss 2004:5), which in the experience of most Africans emanates from an encounter with capitalism and colonialism. As I will show in this study, the experience of the present in places like Congo is able to sustain dramatic differences and reflect unyielding contradictions and contrasts because capitalism and colonialism—while extremely violent and transformative—only managed to incompletely restructure the spaces, social orders and categories underpinning indigenous African experience (Mudimbe 1994, italics my own). The deficit, or incomplete character of this encounter, is sometimes what makes expressions of contemporary African experience tend to appear obverse, oblique or even baroque relative to presumed global trends. Nothing reflects this more succinctly than the damaging domestication of neoliberal reform in Congo.

Carol Greenhouse (2010:5) has noted that increased anthropological attention to the new forms of regionalism and translocal modes of governance produced by neoliberalism (Gago

2017; Ferguson 2005; Mbembe 2003; Roitman 2005), has brought more attention to large- scale processes, but it sometimes has left localism in need of retheorization. She argues this is because “privatization and marketization collapse important elements of difference between what used to be thought of as ‘levels’ of society and government,” creating openings for highly localized forms of authority and alliance which cannot be assumed to be the elements of a whole system. Congo attests to her latter claim since, for over the past four decades, the executive branch of government has strategically maligned the bureaucracy and used Gécamines as a conduit for financing their personal exploits and brokering agreements

34 with multinational companies. By disconnecting administrative process from legal procedures, elites have profited and consolidated power from what Greenhouse (2010:5) views as a central contradiction of neoliberal reform: the expansion of the private sector as the basis of governance through a process that requires extensive action from all arms of government, especially the executive.

To be precise, it is not only in instances where state institutions are weak that neoliberal reforms consolidate the interests of elites. Even where governance structures and institutions are supposedly robust, neoliberalism as a process can lead to “market-conforming state crafting,” that is, as Loic Wacquant (2012:66) argues, a process in which the state is redeployed or re-engineered as the “core agency that sets the rules and fabricates the subjectivities, social relations and collective groupings suitable for realizing markets.” In this variant of neoliberalism, the state emerges out of social struggles between neoliberal policy makers and those executing these policies through the state bureaucracy. According to

Wacquant (2012), the United States is such a state, for through its bureaucratic machinery it has created what he calls a “neoliberal leviathan” or, a “centaur state,” in which the form of the state depends on the respective level of society where one encounters it. Wealthy elites in the upper echelons of society enjoy the fruits of a state-sanctioned liberal market ideology while the lower classes are disciplined by low-wage workfare programs or punitive prison time (Wacquant 2012).

For Wacquant (2012), the neoliberal state “thinks” through the optic of the market to produce different kinds of citizens due to the diverging logics of governance it applies to groups at

35 specific levels of society. By analyzing neoliberalism as a central mechanism in a process of contemporary state formation, Wacquant (2012:76) shows neoliberalism is neither just a form of market ideology nor simply a regime of governmentality but, rather, it is a multifaceted reform process that crafts discrete types of political subjects suitable to the realization of specific markets. Borrowing from Wacquant (2009; 2012) the insight that neoliberalism can operate as “market-conforming state crafting” whose effects produce discrete types of political subjectivities, I explore the types of political subjects produced in a context where state administration is severely compromised by a loss of legitimacy, abdication from the development agenda, cronyism, low pay, arbitrary application of rules, incapacity to maintain a monopoly on coercion, and an inability to generate or manage internal and external financial resources (Trefon 2009). The Congo is the polar opposite of the “neoliberal leviathan.”

Within Africa at least, the trend in ethnographic research on neoliberalism has overwhelmingly been to focus on the responses of individuals or social groups to the withdrawal of state influence in the areas of social welfare, governance and sovereignty

(Ferguson 1999; Piot 2010; Roitman 2005; Rubbers 2013; Trefon 2004). Far less attention has been given to the work of state agents, yet, as Brenda Chalfin (2010) outlines, it is invariably through the work of state institutions and their agents that economic reform is both channeled and effected. 28 Through a focus on artisanal mining, all the chapters of this study explore “neoliberalism from below” (Gago 2017). For instance, in chapter 3, I analyze how the “foot soldiers” of the state in artisanal mines (state agents) have extended the state in

28 See also De Herdt and de Sardan (2015). 36 itself but not for itself. By this I mean, while artisanal mines have seen a proliferation of state agents in the name of improving “security,” these increased figures of authority only nominally represent the state for, in practice, they do not use their position to regulate mining activities but, rather, to illicitly prohibit, forestall, seize and extract revenue from the mining public for private gain.

Although even prior to the liberalization of the economy, state authority in Congo was viewed as being systematically compromised by patrimonialism, prebendal practices and clientism, my fieldwork in Katanga in the aftermath of liberalization of the mining sector has led me to think these practices may have expanded in administrative scope and scale because of the ebbing away of the regulatory capacity of the state and the entry of hundreds of cash- wielding multinational companies and hundreds of thousands of artisanal miners. My focus on the relationship between industrial and artisanal mining reveals that liberalization has transformed not just the central state administration but also its coterie of agents, from the executive arm of government down to public administrators policing artisanal mines, into gatekeepers who operate on the logic of seizure. In large part, seizure is a legacy of the colonial history of extraction in Congo that endures and has been revitalized by a liberalization process which inequitably divided the management of mining between the federal and provincial government to the benefit of the former. Whereas the federal government in Kinshasa, through the office of the minister of mines, is charged with overall control over issuing and cancelling a range of private and public mining permits, licenses, authorizations and agreements for semi-private and private mining, the role of the provincial government is legally limited to issuing cards to mineral traders and miners working in

37 artisanal mines, and opening quarries for the purposes of conducting public utility works

(Code Minier RDC 2002: Article 10-11). This skewed division of labour means that the provincial administration is largely by-passed by private finance capital when it “descends” on mineral resources because the infrastructural needs of most companies tend to be met through the agreements they make with the national government in Kinshasa. If anything, they may purchase only private security for their concessions from the provincial administration. As a consequence, provincial mine officials–of whom there are too many— are forced to be ‘creative’ in how they obtain a share of the lucrative mining revenues.

As I show in chapters three, four and five, state agents turn to the communal artisanal mines to obtain “quelques chose,” or “side money.” However, given that the wages of a majority of state agents are low, hovering between US $50-100 per month and, worse still, very infrequently paid, the incentive to move into artisanal mining spaces is largely motivated by necessity. In spite of this, state agents claim their presence is necessary in the interest of

“security.” In this way, rural and peri-urban spaces are witness to an extension of state authority in itself but not for itself. Naturally, this has placed state agents in conflict with creuseurs, customary authorities, and village residents, all of whom view the actions of agents of the state as illicit and their presence as unwarranted. Analyzing neoliberalism in

Congo from “below” reveals that the recent reform of the mining sector has contributed to the progressive mobilization of state authority for private ends, both at the highest and lowest levels of governance of the mining sector. To observe the effects of this systematic privatization of governance and to understand why the mineral wealth of Congo continues to

38 provide such negligible social benefit to the majority of residents in Katanga, I attend to the lived experiences of past and present generations of mineworkers.

On Labour and Generations

How does the social location of specific generations of workers influence the manner in which they make meaning of the structures ordering their lived experiences in the Congo

Copperbelt? In what follows, I address this question by first examining how labour can be mobilized as an analytic for studying temporality, which in this study is a means for understanding how people make meaning of the structures ordering their experiences in the

Congo Copperbelt.

An emerging anthropological scholarship on time in capitalism clarifies how human labour in modern institutions mediates divergent representations, techniques and rhythms of human and non-human time (Bear 2014a; Ho 2009; Miyazaki 2003; Riles 2004). This literature builds on earlier scholarship whose interest was in outlining how representations and techniques of time-reckoning in modern institutions abstract time in a manner that makes it a measure of value within capitalism (Marx 1992; Weber 1978; Beck 1992 in Bear 2014).

Through a focus on modern institutions, Bear (2014a) has tried to side-step the phenomenological approaches to discussing time (Heidegger 1962) by framing her concerns according to what Alfred Gell (1992) calls “time maps,” which people develop to help them organize their personal experiences. For Gell (1992) time exists in three forms: non-human cosmogonic time, social time, and the personal experience of time. Within each of these

39 forms of time, Gell argues, individuals create short-term, pragmatic representations of time— time maps—that may emphasize the becoming and flux of present-day existence (‘A series time’) or, the sense of periods before and after (‘B series time’).

While Gell’s (1992) focus was on individual trajectories of time, Bear (2014a) and others29 mobilize Gell’s anthropological approach to time to demonstrate how human labour in the world tries to create harmony using time-maps in various modern social settings such as public-private partnerships (Hodges 2014), environmental conservation regimes (Mathur

2014), public deficit payment (Bear 2014b), human reproduction technologies (Franklin

2014), and declining post-industrial cities (Ringel 2014). In each of these settings the authors discuss how individuals align divergent social rhythms, contingent causalities, and the effects of multiple representations in a manner that reveals the “heterochrony of modern time” (Bear

2014a:19). According to Bear, modern time is produced out of conflicting and incommensurable rhythms of the social time of institutions, economic production, social reproduction and politics yet, in spite of it, people try to bring order and synchronicity to the multiplicity they encounter in their activities. These attempts to make and manage time –to

“labour in/of time”—so as to resolve the contradictions in life make social time a “site for conflict and a symptom of inequalities within capitalism” (Bear 2014a:17–19).

In my inquiry into how different historical generations of mineworkers experience the present in relation to the past and future horizons, I borrow from Bear (2014a:21) the idea of labour as a creative act of mediation that captures the multiplicity, discordance, and strain of

29 See Bear 2014a, edited special issue on “Doubt, Conflict and Mediation: Anthropology of modern time.” 40 social times in particular settings. This is made possible because for more than a century, mineworkers have historically served as the source through which social transformation in the Copperbelt has been channeled, institutionalized and rendered effective. By paying attention to the labour of different generations of mineworkers, I explore how contemporary artisanal miners and retrenched industrial mineworkers reconcile experiences of the past with the hierarchies, social conflicts and inequalities produced by the era of liberalization. As I will make clear, my focus is on the historical experiences of generations of minerworkers and not on kinship or the structures of authority between fathers and sons or daughters and mothers. For me, the labour of mineworkers has had such deep and diverse consequences for the process of social change in Katanga that it appears as if it were a “total social fact”

(Mauss 1982:50–59). Mine labour is a source of historical connection between ancestors thought to be “living” on the land and their descendants working today as creuseurs. It is also a source of moral sanction by state and customary authorities who limit the range of activities that are possible in mines, turning artisanal mines into hyper-masculine spaces that exclude women (chapter 5). Mine labour is also politicized due to contestations over land by creuseurs (chapter 3&4), the state and private mining companies and, finally, it has historically been a source of economic livelihood for various generations of mineworkers in the Congo Copperbelt (chapters 1 and 2).

Labour as an analytic for exploring the qualities of temporality as structured by various periods of late capitalism in the Congo Copperbelt gains force in chapter two of this study.

Here the notion of labour as a creative act mediating the multiplicity of social times is ethnographically explored through an analysis of two historical generations of mineworkers:

41 pensioners of UMHK and their ‘sons’, young men currently working as creuseurs. I explore how the recent structural changes in the mining sector have engendered particular “structures of feeling” as individuals in each generation deal with their marginalization in the new economic order. Common to both generations of miners is the experience of “abjection” – what James Ferguson (1999:236) views as the casting away of particular groups of people from a global imaginary. Abjection for the pensioners of Gécamines elicited colonial nostalgia, a sense of loss, but also self-reliance. Among creuseurs it produced presentism: a being in the here and now characterized by tireless hustling, gritty enduring, and a hunt for more.30 So, although industrial decline and the liberalization of the mining sector in Congo have been devastating and life-changing events, they have featured in the lives of different generations in unique ways. The uniqueness of the work experiences of each generation when placed in comparative perspective characterizes the multiplicity of time or, as Karl

Mannheim (1972) terms it, the “non-contemporaneity of the contemporaneous” (in Pilcher

1994:486).31 In this way, temporality enters into this study as a means of understanding how individuals in specific generations make meaning of the structures that order social experience in the Congo Copperbelt.

Grasping how the historical and sociological positioning of an age cohort affords its members a sensibility of being different from their predecessors is a means of contextualizing them within a “field of forces” so as to analyze the experiences of youth as aspects that define their emergence as a cohort (Mannheim 1972:289 in Christiansen et al.

30 This form of struggle is not unique to creuseurs, it is also an aspect of other groups within Katanga's informal economy and beyond. See Petit and Mutambwa( 2005:471–474), De Boeck (1998) and Lindell (2010). 31 See also Karl Mannheim (1972:276–320). 42

2006:34). I borrow from Mannheim (1972) the approach to viewing youth as a “historical generation” for it allows one to pay closer attention to the social location and political relations that facilitate the creation of a particular generational consciousness. Mannheim makes the point that each generation of youth differs in the way it makes “fresh contact” with the cultural material offered by its particular historical location, and it is often “town youths” who tend to influence the perpetuation of a generational consciousness for it is they who have access to the forms of public culture through which such an awareness may be forged

(in Cole and Durham 2007:16). However, it is inevitable that with the passage of time, there is a certain amount of loss of cultural material from one generation to the next as each generation discards some aspects of the past while keeping or recreating others (Mannheim

1972:294). That said, the concept of generation has a wider analytical value than just referring to the biological spacing of groups of among individuals or forms of structuring social succession (Fortes and Evans-Pritchard 1940; Meillassoux 1981; Turner 1957).

According to Mannheim (1972), it indexes the social positioning, emerging consciousness, and the contact or “thrownness” of experience among a particular age group. Taken this way,

Mannheim’s approach to generations offers a useful interpretive frame through which to look at the influence of history and structural economic change on social relations in the

Congolese context.

Recent anthropological approaches to the study of generations (Cole and Durham 2007:15–

18; Whyte et al. 2008) extend Mannheim’s theoretical approach to point to the importance of the “intergenerational contract,” that is, the culturally implicit expectation that parents will take care of their children until they can support themselves and, children will support their

43 parents when they become unable to do so themselves. Fulfilling the obligation of this contract is often viewed as a sign of reciprocity and intergenerational care (Mazzucato 2008) whereas the failure to do so or the reversal of the intergenerational contract, is a source of conflict, division, and even collapse within families (Ngwane 2001; Roth 2008; White 2001).

In rural South African households facing a decline of the apartheid era migration to mining centers, patriarchal domestic reproduction is gradually being rendered obsolete creating generational conflict and what Zolane Ngwane and Hylton White term a “crisis of social reproduction” (Ngwane 2001; White 2001). White shows the inability to maintain cattle kraals in rural villages due to decreasing remittances from migrant workers in mining areas has depleted the authority of elder men who used cattle as a means to encompass the labour of women and the service of young men (2001:472). Ngwane (2001:404–405), on the other hand, shows that local forms of gerontocracy and patriarchal control in rural Eastern Cape communities rested on a relation between institutions of social reproduction such as the chiefly court, schooling and initiation rites and the precarious migrant labour market. Heads of households used the proceeds of their employment to monopolize control over the labour of women and children by sponsoring schooling, the initiation ceremonies of their sons, as well as cattle and small-scale farming undertaken by their wives – all of which were central to reproducing the rural domestic economy.

Similarly, in a study on the shege, street children accused of witchcraft in Congo, De Boeck

(2004: 192-4) observes that adults’ accusations of children as witches index a generational conflict rooted in anxieties about the changing social world in Kinshasa but also concerns of a wider “crisis of modernity” in Congo. He notes that the dynamics of social change in

Kinshasa have not necessarily dismantled principles of gerontocracy and seniority, rather, it has allowed them to be appropriated and accessed in new ways as part of gender and generational conflicts by social actors (like the shege), who were formerly excluded from positions of power. To him, the existence of child witches, the reframing of middle-aged men as “adolescents” and petits, small people, and certain petits/petites as grands/grandes, or “big men/women,” the increasing importance of women’s role in Kinshasa households all sociologically signal a shift in urban Congo from absolute age, signified by rituals marking the transitions in life-cycle, to relative age modeled around social position, status and the capacity to redistribute.

What inquiry on intergenerational relations in Africa makes clear is that age can be mobilized to understand how changes in local norms, social institutions and the economy can affect the process of social reproduction. The mining communities in Katanga province provide a valuable site for observing the articulation between changes in political economy and generational relations for in this part of the Copperbelt, the decline of the corporate welfare regimes of the state-run industrial mining giant, Gécamines, coincided with the liberalization of the mining sector and the disenfranchisement of thousands of children whose lives depended on social welfare guarantees offered by the company. Unable to continue with school and lacking any other source of income, many of these young people went to work as creuseurs in abandoned industrial mines that their “fathers” had mined as industrial workers. The contemporary artisanalization of former industrial mines has echoes with the way mining was undertaken by precolonial local inhabitants in southern Katanga who came to be known as the “mangeurs de cuivre,” or “eaters of copper.” This guild of

45 local specialists mined, processed and traded copper all across the Congo basin (De

Hemptinne 1926). At least in southern Congo, artisanal mining is not something new; rather, it speaks of the recursive nature of time and of the return of the past in the present as a potential future for a great many young men.

In this study, age—as a social institution of time—becomes a way of capturing the relationship between the subjectivity of individuals in specific generations and their experience of temporality. This approach reinforces the claim made by Mannheim (1972) stating that for each time and each age there exists something particular, a “spirit of the times.” Especially, in Chapter two, I attempt to capture the “spirit of the times” through the

“structures of feeling” (Williams 1977:132) of pensioners and creuseurs, both of which are unique historical cohorts of mineworkers living in the Congo Copperbelt. Doing so is a means of highlighting how age—viewed from the perspective of generations—offers a unique means of understanding the “entanglement of time” (Mbembe 2001:17), that is, how multiple durées interpenetrate and are reinscribed in the longue durée and in indigenous durées.

Ethnographic Methods

Fieldwork for this study was primarily carried out in the city of Likasi, Katanga province, as well as in its environs. I was in Katanga periodically beginning in the year 2009 where I conducted two months of preliminary fieldwork; then again in 2011 I returned for six months of extended fieldwork and finally, in 2014, I was back in Congo for 3 months of further field

46 research. In each of these visits I obtained my visa and research permits as an affiliated scholar with L’Observatoire Changement Urbain, at the University of Lubumbashi.

Professor Donatien Dibwe dia Mwembu was my supervisor and I regularly visited him to discuss my progress and to obtain advice on fieldwork and life in Congo. It was with his help that I was able to access affordable local accommodation near the university in Lubumbashi.

Fortunately, the caretaker of the residence at which I stayed in Lubumbashi was a wonderful woman who had the grace to introduce me to a family in Likasi who interviewed me and supported my work by agreeing to host me. The members of this household in Likasi, whom

I have called the Kyungu’s, eventually, became my adopted family during my stays in 2011 and 2014.

With the help of my host family I was introduced to officials working for Gécamines, local municipal officials, and other families who lived in Likasi. My host father, Papa Kyungu, was a senior official at a local mining company and he introduced me to the manager of the social welfare office of Gécamines in Panda commune in Likasi. I explained my interest in speaking to retired and retrenched workers of the company in a bid to find out how these individuals and their children were supporting themselves in their retirement and with the end of welfare benefits from the company. The manager at the company office was interested in following up with his past welfare claimants and he assigned me to work with one of the social workers of the company. We visited the homes of approximately fifteen different retired mineworkers and I was able to conduct structured interviews with these individuals and on some occasions with a few of their relatives. Almost all of those interviewed were former colleagues or friends of the social worker with whom I worked. The interviews

47 conducted with pensioners and retrenched and retired workers form the basis of the ethnographic data in chapter two and the latter sections of chapter one.

Being a guest of the Kyungu family also provided me with intimate insight of the experiences of a unique segment of Congolese society, that is, a relatively middle-class household in Katanga. More than most, the Kyungu households reflected the promises and paradoxes of a now vanished industrial welfare project in Congo (see chapter one). This was an urban household in which both parents were alive and relatively healthy; both employed and working as professionals in a local mining company; they owned their house and had enough disposable income to afford a private vehicle and, most significantly, Papa Kyungu and his wife were able to offer each of their six children access to education all the way to university level. Yet, despite these relatively significant achievements, the family was not insulated from the economic decline and political upheavals that ravaged the Congo over the last three decades. On a few occasions, Papa Kyungu lost his job as part of the restructuring efforts to transform the mining sector. In the mid-1990s, one of his sons left university and disappeared for two years when he joined the guerilla army of Laurent Kabila that sought to liberate Congo from the tyranny of President Mobutu. Mama Kyungu suffered from numerous health problems, which were made worse by the dysfunctional health care system in Katanga. But, through all these difficult times, the household stayed together and, at times, even thrived. Through them I was able to intimately observe generational relations in action for I was actively immersed into the daily rhythms of life in Likasi and I played an active part in the family despite being an insider-outsider. I went grocery shopping with my host brothers, repaired various household appliances, helped my host brother plan and host his

48 wedding, attended funeral vigils for local neighbors, mediated conflicts among household members, and organized various celebrations for members of the family. As a guest and member of the Kyungu household I tried to ensure that I was not a financial burden to my hosts so I also paid my host mother a small sum of money for my food and accommodation but, as much as I tried, I could not fully compensate her for the enormous privilege of being a part of her household.

I collected most of the data on artisanal mines that appears in chapters three, four and five on my return trip in 2014. Access to the artisanal mine of Kilobe was granted to me by local authorities (Customary leaders, Mining Police [PM], National Intelligence Agency [ANR],

Association of Artisanal Miners of Katanga [EMAK], the National Immigration Office

[DGM] and the Office of the Rector of the University of Lubumbashi.32 Obtaining the permits to conduct my research was at times very complicated but it was even harder organizing interviews with artisanal miners, mineral traders (négociants), customary authorities and local mine officials. The reason for this was that these individuals (especially miners and mineral traders) were highly mobile and often moved their locations as the need arose. In total, I interviewed approximately ten mine officials working in Kilobe and representing customary authorities, EMAK, Mining Police (PM) and the provincial ministry of mining. Most of these were structured and semi-structured interviews that I conducted at artisanal mining sites or in the urban offices of these local agencies. Of greater value than these interviews were the participant observation data I collected in my solo visits to the

32 PM refers to Police des Mines. ANR, Agence Nationale des Renseignement. DGM, Diréction Générale de Migration. EMAK, Exploitants Miniers Artisanaux du Katanga. 49 mines, or, as was initially the case, in the company of a research assistant or informant- miner.

As I describe in the thesis, in some instances, the mines were inaccessible due to bad weather, strikes or “security operations” (see chapter three). Rather than follow miners in the various artisanal mines they worked in, I opted to focus on the prevailing dynamics of a single mine: the mine of Kilobe. On occasion, I ventured to other mines but only with the team of miners with whom I had established strong personal connections after my

“induction” to life in the artisanal mines. What I consider my induction to life in Katanga’s artisanal mines was an interrogation session at the hands of rasta creuseurs while on my first visit to Kilobe mine with a local official. Initially, my main interlocutors, that is, young men working as creuseurs, did not perceive me to be a researcher but rather as a businessman with a thick “Tanzanian accent” and head full of dreadlocks. It took numerous visits to convince creuseurs that I was not interested in buying minerals like most other visitors to the mine (which points to the desperate opportunism and transactional nature of social relations in artisanal mines). My questions about their work were a source of discomfort for some but many young men tolerated my presence because I often caught them on their break and offered to buy them some them water, cigarettes, or liqueur as we passed time talking.

To creuseurs, mine residents as well as local authorities my appearance as a short, young

African man sporting dreadlocks, a notepad in hand and big smile generally marked me as unthreatening. If anything, I was a source of confusion to local groups such as the Rasta creuseurs who very early on arraigned me before their leader and demanded to know if I was

Rastafarian and whether I abided by their rules of conduct. During my interrogation by the

Rastas of Kilobe, I tried as much as I could to resist being labeled as a Rasta by claiming I did not know how they understood that appellation. While working in the mines I was very keen to ensure that my intentions were not misconstrued to be aligned with any particular social group in the mine be they local officials, creuseurs, mineral traders (négociants), local residents or petty commerçants. This was easy in the early days of my fieldwork because my

Swahili accent repeatedly gave me away as a foreigner, possibly a Tanzanian. The fact that I asked a lot of questions about “how things work” in the mines also revealed a level of naivety that was uncharacteristic of a Congolese person.

To most of my informants, my Kenyan and Canadian backgrounds were a source of fascination. Elderly individuals working in the mines as traders or local officials were especially keen to question me for they viewed me as a reference for business information about goods, products and services that were available in the East African region but lacking in the Congo. That initial interest in business soon faded after they spoke to me for a while or it shifted to a conversation about what life was like in Canada. Only on a few occasions did I encounter immediate hostility while working in the mines and that was mainly due to being in the wrong place at the wrong time (see Chapter three). Even in instances when “security operation” sought to jeopardize my presence in the mine, I was still given the benefit of the doubt because I could explain myself in fluent Kingwana, the dialect of Swahili spoken in

Katanga. In most artisanal mines in Katanga, suspicion of foreigners and visible minorities was a source of open confrontations among creuseurs and the individuals visiting the mines because creuseurs were justifiably suspicious about the intentions of foreigners (especially

51 white men) because they “always took and never gave back.” Thus, my identity as a young black African raised less ire and suspicion, making it possible for me to move around freely in hyper-masculine artisanal mine-spaces.

Outline of Chapters

Chapter one provides a history of the Congo Copperbelt from the perspective of various generations of workers who resided in or around the city of Likasi and were directly, or indirectly, engaged in building the architecture that allowed for the copper mining economy to thrive. Contextualizing the Copperbelt in the lives of its residents of various generations is a way of linking the serialized temporalities of individual lives with a longer arc of imperialist strategies in this region to show how, over time, the governance of resources has also entailed governing lives.

In chapter two, “Abject Pensioners and Entrapped Youth: narratives of decline and the multiplicity of the times in the Congo Copperbelt,” I explore generational tensions between pensioners of the industrial giant, Gécamines, and their “sons,” young men working as creuseurs. This chapter is based on data collected in the homes of pensioners and retrenched workers of the company and in artisanal mines in Katanga. It analyzes the generational experiences of liberalization of the mining sector through a comparative look at the

“structures of feeling” elicited by each of these social groups. I show that the aporia of modernity in the Congo is such that the generation of ex-Union Minière pensioners and retrenched workers harbor colonial nostalgia for times past in an attempt to recuperate a period before the postcolonial as an ideal time and also as a resource for reparations while their heirs, the creuseurs of today, intensely locate themselves in the here and now and but draw on the deep precolonial past as the source of the legitimacy of their claims over mining land. Placing pensioners beside their “children,” the creuseurs, is a way of interrogating social change by asking: what is truly new about the postcolonial present in Congo? I show that as scholars we gain greater understanding on the dynamics of the present when we foreground continuity over rupture in attempts to understand social change in postcolonial contexts.

Chapter three, “Despotism in the Artisanal Mines,” is an exploration of how artisanal mines are governed in Katanga. Using participant observation data and informant accounts of events that have happened in the peri-urban mine of Kilobe, I demonstrate that the presence of state agents in artisanal mines is justified by claims that their efforts are aimed at

“securitizing” artisanal mines but, in practice, their work is primarily centred on seizure; the

53 daily seizure of copper ore and occasional attempts aimed at the annexing an entire mine for the benefit of private interests. I analyse seizure by state agents as a legacy of indirect rule and as a modality of governance that reveals how state authority has been extended and instrumentalized in rural and peri-urban mining areas. This instrumentalization of the symbols of state authority for private gain is, as I argue, yet another sign of how colonial structures endure in the present.

Following my discussion on governance in the mines I move to a chapter on “the power of a customary chief in an artisanal mine.” Here, I go deeper into the role of customary authorities by exploring the ways they formulate, express and enforce their claims to land and natural resources using oral traditions. By analyzing myths, oral histories and customary titles I show the logics of precolonial regimes of governance in the Congo Copperbelt and, secondly, demonstrate how such logics are being questioned in the contemporary context of liberalization as customary authorities seek opportunities to earn rents from private and public mining operations. I argue that by mobilizing their claims of “ownership” of resource land based on oral traditions, some customary authorities have been able to remain relevant thereby guaranteeing themselves financial benefits in the form of tribute payments from miners, traders and even companies. However, these gains have not led to any demonstrable changes in the plight of artisanal miners or residents living around artisanal mining sites and this has emptied the social importance of customary authorities in the eyes of the public. By instrumentalizing their precolonial claims over mining land, customary authorities have remained relevant but at the expense of miners, who have the added burden of paying taxes

54 to them and to the state. My claim here is that the burden of shouldering the precolonial past rests heavily on the backs of artisanal miners.

In the final chapter, attention is focused on the significance of the figure of the creuseur in relation to the dynamics of late capitalism in Congo and more broadly in terms of African labour history. Using participant observation data gathered while following a team of miners in Kilobe artisanal mine I describe some of the hardship and transiency that characterize life in the artisanal mines of Katanga. Furthermore, I explain how young men working in the mines organize themselves in militaristic groups while at the same time employing modes of violence that in many ways reflect an internalization of the historical violence of the colonial past. I also argue that one of the ways creuseurs mobilize against private interest groups who aim to usurp land used for artisanal mining is by claiming that the land belongs to the[ir] ancestors. Advancing a claim tracing ownership to a timeless antiquity attempts to counter the alienation and commodification of land as a resource while at the same time delegitimizing the authority of the state and its agents whose motives run counter to the communal interest of local residents. Thus, to fight the dispossessions of the present, creuseurs possessed their past out of necessity for it offered strategies of combating some of the uncertainty in their lives as well as a viable means of tirelessly trying to meet the demands of the here-and-now.

Chapter 1

Historicities of the Congo Copperbelt

Kalungu bukula mba: ne ka Ntanda kapitako Even if you try to hide it, your [people’s] customs will betray you. – Sanga proverb (in Kyoni 2004:127)

Before the arrival of Europeans in Katanga, the name of the place where the city of Likasi is now located was Dikashi. The Sanga, or, Basanga people, were one of the earliest inhabitants of the area and they named it so because the place had “the odour of wild animals” (Kyoni

2004: 101). Dikashi was a beautiful plain traversed by a stream flowing northward and, to its south, this plain was bordered by a long line of rolling hills that appeared to curve northwards from the west all the way to the horizon. Only once you are perched atop one of the many knolls that dot the city are you offered the vantage point necessary to imagine a time when antelopes and termite hills reigned supreme in the plain of Dikashi. In 1932, this pre-colonial hunters’ paradise was transformed into a mining town named “Jadotville” after

Jean Jadot,33 an engineer turned director of the colonial mining company L’Union Minière du

Haut Katanga (UMHK).

33 Belgians celebrated Jadot as a pioneer. First hired by King Leopold II in 1906 to build a railway from Katanga to Bas Congo, he would go further and promote the industrial modernization of the Congo through mining and railway development. At the time of his death in 1932, he was governor of la Société générale de Belgique, the parent company that owned a controlling stake in UMHK. To honor Jadot’s empire-building efforts, the colonial masters named the burgeoning urban area in south-central Congo where UMHK had operations, Jadotville.

With the expansion of industrial mining in the early twentieth century, thousands of people from neighbouring provinces and regions were forcibly settled in Jadotville, altering its ethnic make-up but providing badly needed manual labour for the burgeoning industrial mines, workshops and colonial enterprises. The hunters’ paradise grew into an operational hub for the UMHK and, with time, it became the centre of mining in the province of

Katanga. A copper processing plant was built in a neighbourhood known as Shituru, mine exploration was undertaken in surrounding villages of Kamatanda, Kambove and Luisha and a railway was constructed linking Jadotville to Kasai province to the north west and Ndola in

Northern Rhodesia (later, Zambia) to the south.

After the Congo became independent in 1960, the original name of the “place with an odour of animals” re-emerged, but with a twist. President Mobutu Sese Seko renamed not just the country, but also all its towns and cities and Jadotville became “Likasi,” a mispronunciation of the original Basanga name, Dikashi. This subtle mistake is quite telling for it speaks of the palimpsestual nature of the history of this place, its people and their environs. Dikashi,

Jadotville and Likasi are names that reflect the recursive nature of the past, the emplacement of multiple temporalities within particular social locations and the various historical actors that have sought to define the social production of space in the Congo. My aim in this chapter is to map out how the present has come to take on its particular form based on the relationships of different layers of the past. To explore this entanglement in time, let me turn to a few spatial markers of what is today the city of Likasi – the operational centre of mining in the Congo.

On Monuments and Meaning

Every day on my walk home, I passed by a monument at the entrance of the city and was left puzzled by both its form and message. On a dusty roundabout surrounded by browned flowers and spot lights that no longer functioned, was a two-meter tall statue of a woman seated uneasily on a stool with her hands in the air. From her waist up, she looked naked. Her face was indiscernible but she was looking at the palm of her right hand in which a bird was about to fly off. Upheld in her left hand was an egg. The title of the monument was la violation de la femme, “the violation of the woman.”

I had promised myself that I was going to see the artist who had designed and ultimately created that monument because, as I had discovered, he happened to be the cousin of my host father and was a highly respected figure in the art scene in Katanga. They called him “Vieux

Kakompe,” “old man Kakompe.” My host mother liked to tease him by calling him

Muzungu34 wa Basanga. “The “white man” of the Basanga.”35 When I asked her why she nicknamed him she would say, “Ule ni kitoko,” “that one is [always in] a classy suit.” To her,

Vieux Kakompe’s own body was as much a source of signification as his works.

34 The meaning of the word Muzungu is context specific. It often – but not always – refers to Europeans or people with European-like habits. People of Asian descent are also often referred to as muzungu, so are Africans who look or speak in a manner unfamiliar to local residents. It also does not simply denote a “foreigner” because those who may be foreigners but of a ‘familiar’ origin are not often referred to as muzungu, for instance, people from Zambia or Rwanda. Muzungu in an analytic sense refers to alterity or a form of otherness that is assumed to have no reference to the cultural norms and values of Swahili speaking peoples. 35 Basanga is the name (in plural) of the main indigenous community who have lived in and around the vicinity of the city of Likasi. “Musanga” refers to a single “Sanga” person while “Disanga” is the name of the spatial collectivity of the Basanga in Kisanga language. 58

A few weeks after talking to my host mother, I got word that Vieux Kakompe had been told I was living with his relative and that I wanted to speak to him about his monuments and the history of Likasi town. Of course, Maman had called him and put in a good word for me. I was very excited to meet the muzungu wa Basanga and, doubly so, because we were to meet at his house. Vieux Kakompe lived in a modest bungalow in a prestigious area of Likasi that formerly housed colonial government officials.

On the day of my visit, I brought Vieux Kakompe some packets of South African fruit juice as a small gift. When he received me, I could not help but notice how well he had aged. The skin on his face had a few wrinkles but was otherwise quite taut and dark. He wore a crisp white shirt, burgundy chinos and sandals. As he ushered me to his house, I observed that he had a lumbered gait so we walked slowly around the compound of his house. To me, the only sign he was in his eighties were the cataracts in the whites of his eyes that sometimes made him tear up as he spoke. Otherwise, he was lively, poised, and very calculating.

We sat in Vieux Kakompe’s garden. As I took my seat I was pleasantly surprised to see a life-sized bust of the Late Mzee Laurent Kabila, the former Congolese president. He brushed off my compliments saying “that is something small.” Mzee Kabila gave me the opening I needed to ask him about the significance of his more famous work, la violation de femme.

I went straight for it and asked Vieux Kakompe what message he sought to convey with la violation de la femme. In response, he quickly retorted, “haina bunji, mimi shiko bazimu,” “it is not naked, I am not crazy [to make a naked statue].” Without even mentioning the nudity

59 of the statue, Vieux Kakompe homed in on what I thought was the least remarkable issue. He felt he had to clarify to me what sounded like the main public controversy over the monument. That is, though the statue looks sexually provocative because the woman appears nude, it is not to be understood that way. It cannot be, he explained. The image of the girl off her stool and on her knees with her hands opened and up in the air, a dove in one hand, and an egg in another, symbolized distress.

Figure 1: La violation de la femme, 2011 (Taken by the author)36

36 Taking photographs in public places is not easy in Congo because of police harassment so I had to take this photo in the evening when the police had wound up their duties. The harassment by police is generalized because they are so poorly paid but the cops take special offense to photography because it was one of the aspects that the old dictator, Pres. Mobutu tried very hard to control. Images of the city of Likasi, and for that matter most other urban centers in Congo, are hard to find because the intelligence and police agents have maintained a firm grip on the circulation and production of photography ever since the Mobutu era. It is one of the ways they attempt to “securitize” spaces and, in so doing, supplement their otherwise low wages. More on securitization in chapter 3. 60

“This was a girl of royal stature, hence the stool. She was a virgin as shown by the band of soiled blood on her waist and she has been sexually assaulted and left dishevelled in the dark [which is why only her form and not her facial features are distinct]. The dove in her left hand is a symbol of peace. She is begging for peace from those who have the power to give it. On the palm of her right hand is the egg, a sign of fertility, of power, of the unity of the country – which must be preserved.”

- Vieux Kakompe, translated from Swahili by the author.

Vieux Kakompe did not end there. With a tone of deep concern, he proceeded to lament, “the women of Congo are crying to us to stop it. To respect them or we will destroy everything.”

La violation de la femme was unveiled in 1998, after the ousting of former President Mobutu and the end of the First Congo War, which was marked by unspeakable acts of violence against women in the Kivu provinces of Eastern Congo. In my conversation with Vieux

Kakompe, I gathered that he had designed the monument to be a symbol of forewarning to the people of Katanga, informing them that acts of violence such as those perpetrated against women in Kivu not only denigrated women but also posed a very potent threat to the viability of social reproduction.

But why was the monument in the middle of the city in Likasi and not the city of Goma in eastern Congo where the rapes and atrocities took place? What was it that Vieux Kakompe was trying to convey to the people of Likasi about the sanctity of women that had to be signified in such an arresting manner at the main road leading into the city? And, what was he implying about the relationship between fertility and peace?

There was a lot I was not “getting” about the underlying moral matrix signified by the monument of a distressed woman. For instance, why was she the daughter of a “chief”?37

Despite being puzzled by his responses, I sensed the old sculptor did not want any more questions about the controversial monument. He was shifting in his seat and visibly irritated because it appeared to me he may have had to defend his art piece so often over the years yet, it was just one of the many he had made.

Noting his discomfort, I did what I had to and changed the subject.

“They say you also made the monument of les mangeurs de cuivre,” I commented, hoping to lure Vieux Kakompe to say anything about another monument in the city. He nodded in calm approval and then proceeded to explain that from 1972 to 1973, at the height of industrialization, Gécamines, the state-run mining company, commissioned him to design a monument in honour of les mangeurs de cuivre or, “the copper eaters.” These were the earliest “miners” of Katanga, a pre-colonial guild of copper specialists of Sanga origin who smelted and smithed copper ore into iconic X-shaped crosses (De Hemptinne 1926). For more than a century before European colonialists arrived, these crosses functioned as a currency in central African trade networks and were the main symbol on the flag of the failed secessionist movement in 1960s to create the independent state of Katanga.

37 I put the word chief in quotations henceforth because it is a very imprecise colonial moniker for customary leaders in this area especially, given the differentiation of various customary authorities and the multifaceted roles they play in central African societies. As I discuss in Chapter 3, the heads of various ethnic communities in the Congo savanna are best described as “sacred kings,” due to the politico-religious function they play in their communities. Below such kings are various other titled leaders who administer people and natural resources on behalf of their paramount leader – the sacred king, or mulopwe. 62

On the road to Panda neighbourhood, where the camp for Gécamines workers is located, is the monument paying homage to the "copper eaters" of Katanga – the most famous of whom were from the Basanga community. Vieux Kakompe built the monument atop a hill. It is a giant statue of a man hoisting a croisette and facing east, the direction where the factory of

Gécamines lies. Vieux Kakompe revealed that every year following the construction of the monument, Gécamines celebrated the “day of the copper eaters,” journée de mangeurs de cuivre. He explained that these celebrations happened with great pomp and festivity in the years following the construction of the monument but, at some point in the 1980s, a huge fire destroyed the pavilion around the monument and the whole area around it was looted. With the gradual decline of Gécamines in the 1990s, festivities have become relatively subdued – an effect of the frugality of the post-industrial times but also a solemn reminder of the dwindling fortunes of the Basanga community.

When I visited the monument, it was the only object on the small hill that was not in ruins.

Around the giant man, tall grass had sprouted, blocking some views of the city of Likasi.

Cracked walls were the only reminders of the pavilion built to celebrate local culture and more specifically, the Basanga community who claim Likasi and its environs as “their” territory. The bush surrounding the statue was slowly reclaiming the shattered gazebo on the hill. With the giant statue facing east, arms hoisting the copper croisette, it appeared to be posing for the industrial city sprawling forth beneath it. The giant man towering above me was at least ten metres tall, seemingly naked, but elevated above the ground by a 3-metre stone platform. His face was undefined but it pointed up as if in prayer, with his hands on the

63 croisette. It seemed as if the man was giving thanks to a higher power for the copper he held, the same copper that made it possible to build the declining industrial city sprawling before him.

Figure 2: Les mangeurs de cuivre (back side, taken by the author)

In the foreground of the monument was a derelict railway yard browned by rust and languishing in the sun. To the right of the yard was an industrial depot with metal roofs that had been oxidized by the elements. To the left of that yard were columns of houses radiating

64 towards the horizon and, in the right middle-ground was a knoll upon which were the main offices and homes of upper level management of the Gécamines perched strategically above the mining camps built by the company for its workers. Beyond the knoll and rusting industry, the view gave way to a middle-ground of green trees and indistinguishable houses.

Beyond that in the background were cascading hills. The panoramic view from the hill where the monument of le mangeurs was built evoked in me a sense that the city had been planned for the factory, not the other way around.

Figure 3: Panorama of Likasi (Taken by author)

Les mangeurs de cuivre and la violation de la femme are two monuments in Likasi that speak of and for the times. In a sense, they are signifiers of the contrasting feelings about industrial mining, its antecedents and aftermath. Les mangeurs de cuivre was built in the heyday of industrial growth and, although it appears somewhat forgotten today, it still towers above

65 everything else radiating confidence, stability, and a feeling of gratitude about the pre- colonial past. The man hoisting the croisette stands almost in defiance of time. If he were to speak one could imagine him saying, “in spite of what we have lost, we still remember who we are and how we came to be.” There was something deeply nostalgic about the monument, which stands there as an ode to a past erased by colonial industry but later memorialized in the early postcolonial era.

La violation de la femme reveals the opposite. It is placed on street level at a roundabout on the main road leading into the city. The statue captures the anxiety, shame, and distress of the present. The transgression suffered by the daughter of a “chief” is symbolic proof of moral panic over the deplorable status of women in Congo, a poignant marker of decline that is mirrored in the dispersed, rusty ruins of the industrial era littered across the city of Likasi.

What is also disconcerting about the statue is that it speaks of the dismembering of pre- existing social orders and thus also hints at prevailing anxieties not only over women but, as the egg on the palm of the girl suggests, over life itself. Unlike the mangeurs de cuivre monument, le violation de la femme is a nagging, everyday reminder of how some of the practices of the present not only break with cultural values of the past but also threaten the future viability of social reproduction.

What these monuments rehearse is the story of a post-industrial world in a pre-industrial landscape.38 In my attempt to outline a version of this story, this chapter traces the social history that led to the emergence of the contemporary post-industrial world of mining. To do

38 I thank Michael Lambek for coining this phrase in an early review of the chapter. 66 so, I employ the personal histories of a blacksmith, a missionary chef, a retired expatriate architect, Gécamines workers and other local residents of Likasi to characterize the world of mining. So as to offer greater context to the social circumstances impinging upon my informants and their forebears at particular periods in Congo Copperbelt history, I borrow from oral literature and various written historical sources. I do so to provide a history of the

Congo Copperbelt from the perspective of various generations of workers who resided in or around the city of Likasi and were directly, or indirectly, engaged in building or maitaining the infrastructure that allowed for the copper mining economy to thrive. Using life-history narration augmented with details of historical events, I outline historicity,39 that is, as Hirsch and Stewart (2005:262) argue, “how an individual operating under the constraints of social ideologies makes sense of their past while anticipating the future.” To Emiko Ohnuki-

Tierney (1990: 4-20), historicity is the culturally patterned way or ways of understanding the past. It often entails selective remembering or forgetting, plays of power and contestation, emphasis on the connection between past and present and, the interpretation of the past with respect to motivations and intentions borne of the present (see Ballard 2014: 96-124). As a final note, historicities tend to place the contextual knowledge of names and events on par with the context of specific performances or utterances that are the exemplars of such knowledge. In my attempt to balance the knowledge of events in the Copperbelt with the utterances, recollections, and speech acts of individuals in unique social locations, I describe how the lives of individuals of specific generations were shaped by the historical forces that produced the Copperbelt. This move is also a way of linking the serialized temporalities of

39 Historicity, as I define it here, is not historical accuracy or authenticity (as the Oxford English Dictionary [2012] would suggest), rather, it speaks to how one’s situatedness in the present (“culture”) shapes their understanding of the past or future. For more on historicity see Trouillot (1995). 67 individual lives with a longer arc of imperialist strategies in this region to show how, over time, the governance of resources has also entailed governing lives.

In what follows, I attempt to link the precolonial, colonial and postcolonial eras through a focus on the mobility of people and metals—specifically iron and copper. From the precolonial to the postcolonial eras, what I intend to show is that the mobility of people and the flow of metals in the Congo basin has increasingly been constrained and narrowly defined by successive regimes that have sought to govern the resources of the Copperbelt region. In spite of this general historical trend, the recent liberalization of mining shows that attempts to structure the social world of mining have not been able to restrict, limit or contain the present from the social orders of the past.

In the Time of Blacksmiths and Kings

A few days after meeting Vieux Kakompe, he introduced me to a Sanga elder renowned for his command of the oral history of the region. The elder’s name was Kafusha and, out of respect, I always referred to him as “Papa Kafusha,” as did the rest of my peers. In my many visits to talk to Papa Kafusha we spoke about the world that he had grown up in, but also of the oral histories he was told by his father about his grandfather. As I would later realize,

Papa Kafusha had obtained his name from his grandfather who was a locally renowned nineteen-century blacksmith. It is his story that I begin with in a bid to show how the pre- colonial world in which Kafusha the blacksmith lived was characterized by the mobility of people, ideas and things—especially metals.

The name Kafusha can be traced back to the Bakunda people living on the shores of Lake

Mweru, in the south-eastern part of Congo. Kafusha, the blacksmith, was nicknamed by his people because to them he was “the one who produces things in abundance.” In pre-colonial

Congo, the notoriety of blacksmiths was largely a consequence of societal appreciation for their skills as master craftsmen of tools for food production and protection as well as status symbols for economic and ceremonial functions. From as early as the ninth century, metal goods of copper and iron were a part of everyday life in the Congo basin. Iron hoes were used to clear and plough the land while various types of knives made of iron were used in spears for hunting and gathering across the Congo basin. The importance of iron in food production among early societies living in the Congo basin is given further emphasis by Jan

Vansina (1978:178) who points out that smelting and smithing of iron was the most significant craft of all. A blacksmith’s role in these early societies was to forge iron and copper into wares of two types: charms and ornaments worn on the person, and tools used for food production, warfare or craftwork (Kriger 1999:37). It was the work of miners to extract metal ore, smelters would then convert ore into metal and smiths would finish the metal into useful artefacts. Across central Africa, women were neither allowed to work as smelters or as smiths, nor could they work with them. Colleen Kriger (1999:225–227) mentions that as late as the nineteenth century the most prominent ironworkers were primarily blacksmiths (less so smelters) because smiths were able to enter into complex social networks within the numerous prestige markets for ironwares in the Congo basin. She also argues that the admiration of smiths arose not only because their craftsmanship, but also because they were instrumental in the creation and conversion of iron and copper metal into artefacts that

69 circulated as currencies thereby facilitating exchange and markets all across the Congo basin and beyond.

Mwelwa Musambachime (2017:21–23), a historian of mining in the Copperbelt, describes that if a blacksmith had a good reputation he was often busy and frequently visited, turning a smith’s forge or foundry into something of a “trading place.” Because he made tools for everyday use, everybody was welcome to his workshop and, in some cases, that workshop was under a big tree or in the village in an open hut. Typically, she mentions, it was

…one room with a large fireplace—the forge—from which extended the bellows, an accordion- like instrument that draws air in through a valve and expels it through a tube that serves as an air supply for the fire. Near the forge was a large bucket or barrel of water and the tools the smith used. In the centre of the shop the blacksmith kept the anvil. He kept the shop dark at all times so he could determine the temperature of the metal.

Central to a smith’s work was understanding and controlling the use of fire. A smith was master of the forge, a site known as luanzo in the Sanga40/Luba and Luchazi languages of

Congo and northwest Zambia respectively, lutengo in the Luvale/Lwena language of western

Zambia and chipala in Chichewa and Chinyanja languages of present-day Malawi. To become an expert blacksmith was not only arduous and expensive, but it could take up to ten to fifteen years in many parts of central Africa (Musambachime 2017:23–39). Smiths learned their trade from a guild of experts who were at times from the same family or clan, but it is also known that technology transfer in the Congo basin took place across ethnic and linguistic boundaries. Oral histories inform us that the Kongo, Luba, Kuba and Ovimbundu

40 The city of Likasi was the home of an association of journalists, historians, and citizen-scholars who documented contemporary and historical activities related to the city of Likasi and its mining economy. The association was aptly named luanzo lwa mikuba, or, the forge of copper. 70 kingdoms of the Congo basin all attribute their foundation to the acts of wandering blacksmiths, a coincidence that led some historians41 to characterize the land north and south of the lower Congo basin as the “land of the blacksmith kings” (Kriger 1999:42).

Some of the earliest groups known to celebrate the notion of “smith-as-king” were the Kongo and the Tio peoples living at the mouth of the Congo river and in areas surrounding the lower

Kasai river, respectively. The Kongo kingdoms has been dated to the fifteenth century whereas the Tio go back to the sixteenth century, when they are said to have challenged the

Kongo paramount kingdom for supremacy (Vansina 1966:37; Herbert 1993:137–144).

Among both these groups the notion of “smith as king” is related to a claim that the insignia of customary power, which included copper plates, knives, iron axes, hammers or an anvil, were made by smiths who drew their knowledge of ironworking directly from nature spirits

(Herbert 1993; Kriger 1999:165–189). These nature spirits communicated to the living through smiths who, in Kongo antiquity, were considered autochthonous “chiefs.” When the

Kongo kings replaced autochthonous “chiefs” as rulers, they were still forced to draw their spiritual authority from them and this was reflected in the investiture ceremony of a King.

During the investiture process, an anvil made of stone was retrieved from a river and used by the smith (representative of autochthonous people) to forge iron insignia of power that was possessed by the Kongo King. The insignia effectively granted the King religious authority and re-enacted the “historical” position of the founder of Kongo dynasty vis-à-vis the

41 Studies of the Kongo, Luba, Kuba Kingdoms tend to attribute ironworking and the acts of blacksmiths to the rise of the state systems developed by these communities (Reefe 1981; Kriger 1999:42–54). However, Colleen Kriger (1999:42–43) argues that this is a misrepresentation because evidence linking the presence of iron deposits to the rise of organized Luba state-systems has primarily relied on oral literature, which has not been corroborated by geological reports of the area. It is also not likely that iron ore was traded over vast distances due to its bulky form. 71 autochthonous “chiefs” (see (Herbert 1993; MacGaffey 2000).The Kongo and Tio Kings were known to be smiths and rainmakers (Balandier 1965; Vansina 1973:374–378). Jan

Vansina (1966:67) argues the invasion of the Kongo kingdom by a group of Imbagala warriors from the Kwango region destroyed the Kongo capital in the early seventeenth century, but it also led to the spread of aspects of early Kongo culture west and south to the

Luba-Lunda peoples in the interior of the Congo river basin. It is not clear if this is one of the ways the idea of “smith-as-king” spread in the Congo basin but the notion that smiths forged the symbols of power came to be shared across the Congo savanna by the Luba and other groups (see Herbert 1993).

The seventeenth century influence of the Luba in the Congo basin was so diverse and far reaching that its political organization was misconstrued to have been an “empire.” More recent studies on the Luba explain they were groupings of tribute-paying communities along the Lualaba river that recognized varying degrees of allegiance to a dynastic line of kings in exchange for security and trade relations (Roberts and Roberts 2007:8). Among the Luba, whose influence in the seventeenth and eighteenth century contributed to the rise of the neighbouring Lunda, Bemba, Sanga, Lamba, Kunda and Tabwa peoples, iron smelting and smithing were attributed to the ancestral founder of their dynasty, Kalala Ilunga.42 In the

Luba myth of origin, Kalala Ilunga deposed his maternal uncle, Nkongolo, establishing

“civilized” rule linked to kinship through a royal lineage and an ideology of power perpetuated through a sacred king known as a mulopwe (see chapter 4). Just as among the

42 Upon defeating his uncle in war, Kalala Ilunga is said to have declared himself ‘Lord of Munza’ and created his capital in a place called Munza, known for the presence of near iron ore deposits. The myth claims that he then brings smiths from east of the Congo river to teach the Luba to smelt iron. 72

Kongo and Kuba peoples, Luba mythology outlines how ornamental objects made of iron and copper metal were attributed ritual authority and conferred upon noblemen and women of the kingdom to denote their relative status, kinship and their tributary authority in relation to, or as symbolic equivalents of, the Luba King (Herbert 1993:145; Mary Nooter Roberts

2013:72). The lukano, a wrist bangle made of iron or copper is one such status symbol worn by nobility in the Congo basin.

For the Sanga, Nyanga and Luba peoples, the relationship between the smith and King was re-enacted during the enthronement process. A significant ritual during enthronement was the

“striking of the anvil” in which two hammers and anvils were struck to remind the king that his forefathers brought ironworking to the land thus enabled hunting, war and peace, and food production. Implicit in this ritual was the notion that the anvil was the “secret of power and progress” (Womersley and Burton 1975:82–83 in De Maret 1985:80) . Similarly, David

Newbury (1991) outlines how the ritual enthronement of Rwanda King rehearsed his

“mediation between technology, society and ecology.” For Luc de Heusch (1982:15) and

Pierre de Maret (1985:79), blacksmithing, hunting and rainmaking were a unique trilogy of ritual activities in the Congo basin associated with the sacred qualities of a king because these activities promoted fecundity, that is, both the productive and reproductive forces regenerating life.

Associating kingship with the ritual power of smiths was a way of accentuating the role and importance of kings as mediators between the living and the dead, whose spirits were thought to be the source of both ritual and regenerative power (MacGaffey 2000; more in

73 chapter 3). It appears that the sacred nature of kingship as it emerged in the Congo basin was related to the social role and capacities of smiths as ritual specialists capable of performing extraordinary transformations. If smithing was linked with the phenomenon of sacred kings across the Congo basin, then by tracing communities whose leaders were venerated as sacred kings one may also obtain a rough sense of the diffusion of the technology of blacksmithing and hints at the traffic of people, ideas and things in the pre-colonial era. Geographically, sacred kings in the Congo basin are noted as being present among the Kongo in the west, the

Kuba and Luba-Lunda in the central region, eastward among the Banyarwanda and south among the Bemba and Lunda-Kazembe peoples. Furthermore, it is also within this region of the Congo basin that scholars have observed the existence of diverse iron and copper currencies linked to a flourishing pre-colonial trade network (Herbert 1984:185–207; Kriger

1999:86–113).

One of the most significant, yet widely ignored, indices of mobility and exchange in the pre- colonial era of the Congo basin are the various forms of iron currencies that circulated there.

Colleen Kriger (1999:92–93) has studied nineteenth century ironworking in west-central

Africa and explains that from around the 1870s in the Maniema region, bar iron in the shape of two cones joined together at the base, was a standard form of currency that was reworked by blacksmiths into the haft of a spear, arrow or knife blade. While this form of bar iron was used in the eastern Congo basin, other recognizable forms of ready-to-work iron observed in the northern and southern parts of the Congo basin were in pyramidal forms. In the lower

Kasai flat rectangular shapes known as kimburi served as a form of bridewealth payment over an extensive geographical area of multi-ethnic populations (Kriger 1999:94). Hoe

74 blades referred to as shoka are also known to have circulated across the entire Congo basin and they are said to have been traded as a currency particularly in the purchase of foodstuffs, pointing to their importance in long-distance trade. In the Uele basin in the north, the Azande and Mangbetu peoples traded in what was known as “knife money” with communities to the south of the Congo river. The most notable of these knife currencies were the konga, which was also a widely used term for a spear in the region (Kriger 1999:101–108). As with bar- irons, hoes and hatchets, the knife and spear currencies were made by nineteenth century blacksmiths into various units of differing shapes, sizes and weight that were used to move goods, exchange goods and services and get work done across parts of the Congo basin.

Copper ingots in the form of H-shaped crosses of various sizes were excavated from an archaeological site that appears to have been a gravesite in the Upemba depression and dated to between the tenth and eighteenth centuries (De Maret 1977:321–328). In the latter half of this period, the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries, De Maret observes an increasing standardization of the format of the crosses, a uniform reduction in both size and weight, all of which suggest that they were gradually transformed into a commercial currency.

Corresponding to these changes may have been the expansion of the Luba state, which led to a greater demand for copper as a currency, especially if considerable amounts of it were being withdrawn from circulation to be buried with noble persons (Herbert 1984:189).

Trade in copper in the eighteenth century spread southwards and eastwards linking central

Africa to the Indian ocean coast. In 1782, the Portuguese traders on the east African coast reported that the Lenje and Soli people living near the Zambezi region traded copper, ivory

75 and slaves for imported cloth, beads, earrings, sea shells, porcelain, ironware and muzzle loading flintlocks from India and Europe (Musambachime 2017:267). Slave trading agents of the Portuguese are recorded as having arrived in the court of Kazembe in 1806 and observed the presence of Nyamwezi traders from the Tabora region of present-day Tanzania. These traders would continue trading for slaves, copper, ivory and guns thereby facilitating the east

African slave trade. There is evidence of exchange of copper for slaves in the central

Katanga region in the middle of the nineteenth century, for the Sanga were producing a 50 kilogram and 12 kilogram curved bar of copper called “mukuba wa matwi,” “copper with ears”—the larger version of these was sufficient to purchase a female slave (De Hemptinne

1926:8 in Herbert 1984:190). It was also around this period that copper became so generalized in circulation in this region that it started to lose its influence to beads, ivory and guns.

Historical events such as the arrival of Arab slave traders in the Congo basin in the middle of the nineteenth century and the establishment of Mushiri, a Yeke trader from Lake Nyasa, as regional despot in the Lufira valley, ultimately restructured trade and the movement of people in the Congo basin but also signalled the beginning of the end of pre-colonial metallurgy. Mushiri was the son of a trader from the region of Lake Nyasa (now Lake

Victoria) and he is known to have come to the upper Lualaba region around the year 1856.43

He came in search of ivory but, rather than obtaining goods and leaving, he stayed and offered his services as a warrior to the Sanga King, Pande Kyamulemba. As a reward for his victories against Luba peoples, the King allowed him to settle in the valley of Bunkeya,

43 See Hugh Legros (1996). 76 eighty kilometres north of the present-day city of Likasi. By around 1880, Mushiri had conquered and subjugated most of the communities in Katanga including his original hosts the Sanga and the Lamba peoples. He traded with the Zanzibar Arabs or Balungwana offering slaves, ivory and copper for guns, cloth and beads thus establishing himself as a regional despot. To ensure a steady supply of gunpowder for his local raids, he supplemented his sources of gunpowder from East Africa by trading with the Ovimbundu in the west, who eventually became his leading source of both guns and gunpowder (Musambachime

2017:275). To maintain control of the copper trade, he is known to have brought in blacksmiths to work for him in the communities under his rule.44

According to Papa Kafusha, it was during the reign of Mushiri that his grandfather left Lake

Mweru area and settled in the Lufira region. While powerful rulers were known to invite famed blacksmiths to settle in their territories and offer services to a community, smiths like most other specialists were preyed upon in regional internecine conflicts. It is not clear the circumstances leading to the departure of Kafusha the blacksmith from his homeland but he was somehow “recruited” by Mushiri to train his people how to smelt and smith copper.

Mushiri’s violent reign ended in 1890 when he was shot and killed by Captain Bodson, a member of an expedition sent by King Leopold II of Belgium to “negotiate” treaties between groups in Katanga and the Belgian crown. Using the treaty signed by Mushiri’s son and successor, King Leopold was able to incorporate Katanga into his then nascent Congo Free

State and away from the empire of Cecil Rhodes, the British imperialist. Though Mushiri’s

44 For related reference to Mushiri’s tributary control over copper mines see De Hemptinne (1926). 77 death ushered in European dominion over Katanga, it came at a huge cost for the local

Basanga and Balamba communities who, for almost a year preceding his death, had waged a war and surrounded the despot only to realize he had been replaced by another foreign master. Shortly after the death of Mushiri, the Basanga warriors went to war against

European forces but they were eventually surrounded in Kyamakele hills, thirty kilometers

West from Likasi. Local elders claim that the warriors took refuge in caves that European troops blocked with fires lit at the entrances, thereby suffocating almost two hundred men.

Following the deaths of their warriors, the Basanga people were subdued. The upheaval caused by the Europeans forced many people—including Kafusha’s grandfather—to flee the upper Lualaba region. Around 1892, Kafusha the blacksmith returned to his home in the

Luapula basin, which was by then a province of Northern Rhodesia. It was there that Papa

Kafusha’s father was born.

With the arrival of Europeans and the inclusion of Katanga as part of the Leopold II’s Congo

Free State the pre-colonial era comes to be overshadowed by the violence of the colonial era.

The ubiquitous presence of blacksmiths, the rise of sacred kings and their kingdoms, and the trade networks that moved iron and copper currencies in the Congo basin would cease to feature as prominently as they did in the past. In their place, mobility was redefined and structured in line with the demands of the colonial mining economy.

From l’Union Minière to Gécamines

Soon after his return to Northern Rhodesia, Kafusha the blacksmith had a son whom we shall call Lukasa. The young Lukasa, like his father before him, left the Lake Banguela region

(west of the upper Luapula basin) in 1912. He did so to seek a job in the booming Copperbelt town of Elizabethville (later renamed Lubumbashi).

At that time, Katanga was run by the Comité Spécial du Katanga (CSK), a semi- governmental organization formed by the colonial Belgian state in partnership with private investors. The CSK laid exclusive claim to mining rights in half of Katanga but it was also in charge of the region’s political administration and police (van Reybrouck 2014:121). In

1906, the organization financed the establishment of the mining company, L’Union Minière du Haut Katanga (UMHK) and, subsequent to that in 1910, UMHK financed the creation of a railway connecting Elizabethville to Rhodesia. With the money from investors and a railway in place, the rapid industrialization of Katanga duly began.

When Lukasa got to Elizabethville in 1912, very few of the people living there had voluntarily arrived to work in the mining industry. Most of the thousands of Africans living in the Copperbelt region had been conscripted to work for colonial mining companies such as

UMHK in Katanga and the Anglo-American Corporation in Northern Rhodesia. Accounts of the early colonial era can be found in the “Vocabulary of Elizabethville” by André Yav, a houseboy for the early European colonialists in Katanga, who recounts being compelled by the whites of the “Comité Spécial” to go along prospecting for rocks. He mentions,

…we suffered hardships beyond belief, sleeping on the naked ground, being bitten by snakes, and by mosquitoes and all sorts of insects…And more than that, the Whites and we, the boys, [we had to follow] all the rivers of Katanga and of the entire Congo, everywhere (Fabian et al. 1990:75).

The hardships of the houseboys of early colonialists reflect the generalized condition for all

Africans. For instance, Africans conscripted to work for the UMHK came from villages in

Katanga but also distant places in Kasai and Rhodesia. However, many mineworkers did not remain in Elizabethville for very long because conditions in the UMHK mining camps in the early 1920s were appalling and the majority of those working in the mines died from diseases and mine collapses. Mine labour was characterized by short stays as thousands deserted the camps and thousands more were conscripted from as far away as Lake Malawi and Lake Nyasa regions (Higginson 1989; Fetter 1976). John Higginson (1989:22) explains how agents working for the “Bourse du Travail du Katanga,” a coercive labour recruiting agency, scoured rural Congo, seizing men to work in the mines or build the railway in

Katanga. Customary authorities were compelled to organize workers to build the railway, depleting the labour they needed for subsistence. Furthermore, those sent to work on the railways were exposed to sleeping sickness, malaria and yellow fever in the hinterland, oftentimes leading to death. If certain customary leaders opposed railway construction in their territories, they were brutally killed as an example to others.45 The plight of Africans in the labour mining camps was no better. Dysentery, pneumonia, tick fever, tuberculosis and influenza ravaged Africans, killing thousands slowly at first, and then in great waves as of

1916 (Higginson 1989: 29). The hard labour and humiliation of African workers endured in

45 The story of the resistance of Kienda Biela to European railway construction in northern Katanga is one such example. Kienda Biela bravely fought and killed colonial forces but was captured and sent to Elizabethville where he was skinned alive (Fabian et al. 1990:79). 80

Elizabethville at the behest of their white masters was described by Léon Tshilolo Kalume, a long retired UMHK worker, as being akin to “slavery” (Mutombo 2004:44). Both in the labour camps and rural areas, the colonial demand for local labour produced a hitherto unprecedented displacement of people, and ensuing illness and death. In the collective memory of some Congolese, Katanga became “le pays de la mort,” “the land of death”

(Cuypers 1956:161).

Knowing he would have been forced to be a mineworker if he remained in Elizabethville, the young Lukasa, like many other workers, fled the city. He heard rumours that an American

Methodist missionary, John Springer, had recently opened a Protestant school in what was at the time a predominantly Catholic missionary region.46 Springer was one of the earliest

Methodists to go to Katanga after working in Northern Rhodesia and it is possibly his connection with Rhodesia that convinced Lukasa to seek the American on foot, walking the one hundred and fifty kilometres from Elizabethville to the village of Kampobe (later renamed Kambove). Initially, Lukasa went to Springer hoping to be enlisted as a student in the Methodist school because “he was inspired by the things the white people were doing and had a desire to learn them.” Instead, the missionary made him a cook. Confined to the

Springer’s house, Lukasa requested Springer to teach him what he was teaching the other students. After many years, Springer agreed. Lukasa became a cook by day and a student by night for every subsequent Methodist pastor sent to Kambove. After almost a decade of working as a cook in Kambove and later in the village of Mulungwishi, Lukasa sat and passed the examination to be a local Methodist pastor. He earned his clerical collar but he

46 The colonial administration favored Catholics over Protestants only allowing the latter to establish missions in areas outside Catholic influence. 81 was never offered a congregation. Frustrated by the Methodists, he left Katanga with his family and went back to the Luapula region of Northern Rhodesia in 1929.

It is unclear how Lukasa was able to journey back to Northern Rhodesia because, by 1929, there was a pass-system in effect in Belgian Congo that prohibited the free movement of rural residents. Passes imposed by the colonial administration were intended to limit the desertion of mineworkers in Katanga who were escaping the hard labour and death of the

Union Miniére. The situation in the male-only mining camps changed from 1927 with the introduction of a “policy of stabilization” that was primarily aimed at enticing workers to sign and adhere to longer contracts with the company. To do so, the company began to address the terrible living and labour conditions of mineworkers in Katanga. Simple policy changes such as prolonging the contract of mineworkers to three years rather than a few months, recruiting married male mineworkers and encouraging them to bring their families to mining camps, providing unmarried workers with facilities to promote marriage and residency in mining camps, were combined with more material changes like improving the housing and rations of mineworkers (Bakanjikila 1993:135–136).

From the mid-1920s to the 1930s Union Minière also used employment as an instrument for facilitating conjugal unions between urban workers and rural women (Dibwe dia Mwembu

2001). Through its labour recruiters in rural areas, a worker was able to request his family to find him a woman who was willing to move to an urban centre to be his wife. The company would organize the transport of the wife-to-be in the hope that such women would come to the city, experience urban life, and reject any return to rural areas. Marriage to an urban man

82 conferred upon a woman the respectable status colonial society offered her husband. Thus, in spite of her upbringing or background, the wife of a salaried worker gradually came to be seen as a “femme moderne,” a “modern woman” (Jewsiewicki 2004:ix).

Copperbelt historian Bruce Fetter ( 1976:112) mentions that between 1926-1927, expenditure of the company on labour increased 40% per worker but these increases came in the form of social services as wages accounted for less than 20% of the company’s labour costs. The rest of these costs went for recruitment, food, lodgings, medical care and other expenses. In his analysis of the labour policies of colonial mining companies in southern

Africa, John Higginson (1989:216) reveals that “stabilization” was a metaphor for policies designed by industrial companies in southern Africa to conceal the low rates companies were willing to pay to maintain and reproduce their labour force.

In the years preceding the Second World War, the labour problem in Katanga was viewed as being a part of the wholesale reordering of urbanity in the Congo. Urban Katanga grew out of mining and was thus divided into organized industrial zones around areas of mineral exploitation, la ville, and a peripheral customary neighbourhood - what came to be known as la cité. This urban plan, which was a template for cities like Likasi, was envisaged in 1933 by Gaston Heenen, the commissioner of the province of Katanga. He viewed the industrial zone as a modern space containing residential areas, schools, offices and tribunal meeting spaces, recreational spaces, police and industrial security (Bakanjikila 1993:146). Heenen was part of the colonial trinity composed of Catholic missionaries, the Union Minière company and the colonial administration that governed all aspects of urban life in Katanga.

Benedictine monks provided moral and educational training to Africans in the mining camp,47 the Union Minière company organized and controlled the daily necessities of domestic life for workers (a majority of whom lived in mining camps) and the Belgian colonial administration planned and policed public life outside the camps.

In the camps, the Belgian chef de camp and the Catholic priests controlled the social and moral world of mining. Fabian (1971:58) explains that the duties of the chef de camp as outlined by his manual, were total. He was to: maintain a personal file of the worker; administer and allocate food and housing, pay the workers’ wages, control social privileges, and set working hours. He also enforced disciplinary action and organized social work and schooling for the workers’ families. The policy of stabilization succeeded in creating a self- reproducing labour force whose basic unit was no longer the worker but a monogamous

“nuclear family” (Hunt 1997:300). Even as the company took increasing control of various aspects of a worker’s family life from sanitation to the use of Swahili as a language,48 it was never entirely able to control familial relations or the form they would take. For instance, despite attempts to ban polygyny in the mining camps (because the Catholics deemed it immoral), Donatien Dibwe dia Mwembu (2001:91), a Congolese historian, notes that the practice was increasingly common in the years just prior to independence. Adultery, divorce, and marital quarrels were as common in Katanga during industrialization as they were in the

Zambian Copperbelt as wives sought to make claims to the wages of their husbands (Dibwe

47 Fabian (1971:53) notes that the Catholic Church was the center of social life in the mining camps in Kolwezi for, not only was the physical layout of the camp arranged around it, but it was also the Union Minière’s moral authority. 48 The hierarchical organization of the Union Minière facilitated the spread of the command-centered pidgin form of Swahili that was spoken in the mining camps (Fabian 1996:107). 84 dia Mwembu 2001:95–97; Parpart 1983:2). In the mining “camps,” even though the Catholic missionaries insisted and tried to create marriages based on romantic love and bourgeois, monogamous, nuclear families, in practice urban households in Katanga were often far from these ideals. The predominance of accusations of witchcraft, the persistence of polygyny, concubinage, transactional sex and the performance of customary rites during weddings and funerals as documented by Dibwe dia Mwembu (2001) sufficiently highlight that urban

Africans were not becoming “detribalized” as Wilson (1941) suggested. Nor were they blindly conforming to the ideals of urban life promoted by Belgian colonialists. What

Copperbelt literature highlights is that urban Africans were involved in a politics of mixing aspects of European domesticity with local values they intended to uphold (see Dibwe dia

Mwembu 2001:88–98).49 As much as l’Union Minière tried to inculcate European domestic ideals on its mineworkers and physically separate the camps from the cité and the rural areas, it was not able to uproot precolonial modes of sociality, nor could it fully substitute for the role played by the clan and ethnic community in mineworkers’ lives.

To get an idea of the effect of colonial structures on the lives of the Congolese not living in mining camps, let us return to Lukasa. In 1940, the trained pastor had returned and was living in Northern Rhodesia. He had a second son whom he named Kafusha, after his father the blacksmith. Unfortunately, just six years after the birth of Kafusha (my informant),

Lukasa died. To make matters worse, Kafusha’s mother, a Sanga woman from

49 An example of the anxieties over European domesticity was reflected in the local critique of conservative voices who favored customary norms over emerging charismatic movements such as Jamaa in Katanga. To those who wanted to preserve local customary norms, the equality of man and wife within a nuclear family as promoted by adherents of the Jamaa movement was an invitation for women to dominate men in their households (Dibwe dia Mwembu 2001:102). 85

Mulungwishi—a village about forty kilometres west of Likasi—was deemed by her in-laws to have no customary claim to her husband’s property. It is quite likely that matrilineal principles of inheritance were at play here and, as a consequence, she was expelled by her in- laws from the Luapula basin in Northern Rhodesia and returned to Mulungwishi in 1946 accompanied by all her children.

Kafusha revealed that upon their return to Mulungwishi, his family found their maternal relatives unwilling to help them settle. Ignored by the family they thought they knew,

Kafusha and his family were forced to rely on the generosity of the Methodist missionaries who had once educated his father. Some years after their arrival in southern Katanga,

Kafusha was granted enrolment in the Methodist mission school where he went on to complete l’école de moniteur program to become an elementary school teacher in 1960. To put this opportunity into perspective, it is worth recalling that in the years prior to Congolese independence in 1960, formal education was structured to produce only a limited range of colonial assistants, namely: nurses, clerks, clergymen, elementary school teachers and domestic servants.

As late as 1955, there were only two educational levels in the Congo colony: primary and secondary school. Getrude Mianda (2002:146) notes that primary school was reformed in

1948 and divided into two parts, both of which allowed students of both genders. Early primary schooling offered students a general education sometimes taught in local languages while the second half was taught in French to those students selected to continue their learning. Secondary school was sex-segregated and trained boys to become assistant clerks

86 or tradesmen for the Belgians, while girls received training in homemaking and an apprenticeship in teaching. Initially, secondary school was designed to be exclusively for boys and lasted a duration of six years. However, after some debate, the Catholics, to whom the education system was entrusted by the colonial administration, decided to create three- year long homemaking schools and four-year teachers' training programs for women. Only six schools across the entire colony were able to prepare girls for post-secondary education

(Mianda 2002:146).

A select few men were granted access to Lovanium University in Kinshasa, the only university in Congo. Unfortunately for the Congolese, university education only offered two programs: theology and languages and literature (see Mianda 2002). Nevertheless, those individuals who were fortunate to obtain a university degree went on to hold important posts in newly independent Congo.50 This was possible because formal education in independent

Congo was not only a necessity for social mobility; the Belgians also deemed it a civilizational marker and awarded those whom they deemed to be evolué (evolved) with

“cards of civic merit” (Stengers 1989). In Katanga, one of the effects of colonial paternalism was the rise of a discourse that promoted industrial work, kazi, as a sign of civility and progress. Donatien Dibwe dia Mwembu (2004:5) notes how renowned musicians of Katanga in the 1950s extolled the virtues of kazi and denigrated those who were unemployed or skipped work, the balofwa. Jean Bosco Mwenda wa Bayeke exemplified this trend in a hit song titled Bulofwa nabo ni bubaya sana sana, Unemployment is a very bad thing. He sings,

Bulofwa nabo ni bubaya sana sana (x2) Unemployment is a very bad thing

50 Individuals such as Patrice Lumumba, the first Prime Minister of independent Congo, and Joseph Kasavubu, Congo’s first president, were early graduates of Lovanium University. 87

Hautakula, hautavala sana sana, baba You will not eat, you will not dress at all, father Watu wengine ni wasenji sana sana Some people are really uncivilized Wanaacha kazi wanekala paka bure, mama They leave work and remain with nothing, mother Umutazame na bilaka fazi yote If you look at them, everywhere they have patches [on their clothes] Usifwate ile mifano ya wasenji Don't follow the lead of the uncivilized Buzima bwetu paka kazi ya wazungu, mama To be whole one must work [for the White man], mother

Jean Bosco, as he was known, was probably the most popular Katangese musician of his times and part of his musical fame was based on his mobilization of tropes about daily life into catchy songs. Undoubtedly, bulofwa was one of his most famous songs and it became so because, I would argue, it captured the “spirit of the times” which, in the 1950s in Katanga, was the view that waged work was a marker of civility and modernity. The idea that those without work do not eat and end up wearing patched up rags was moral commentary on how urban folk ought to conduct themselves. Of course, the foil to well-dressed wage labourers was the basenji, the “uncivilized,” who were supposedly poor and backward peasant folk. To appreciate the civilizational injunction of waged labour on urban life, Bosco ends with the startling admission that in the colonial era being “whole” or complete as a person demanded one work for the white man. The notion advanced here is that both the material and moral basis of personhood in urban Katanga was mediated through waged labour.

To appreciate the contrasting ideas about wage labour in Katanga, Donatien Dibwe dia

Mwembu (2004: 4) explains that in the early colonial era (1910–1927) the popularly held view was that “kazi ni butumwa,” “waged labour is slavery.” By the 1950s, the pervasive sentiment in urban Katanga—given the dominance of the wealth in la ville relative to that in la cite—had changed into, “Kazi njo baba, njo mama,” “waged work is father and is

88 mother.” This transformation was especially noted among Union Minière workers for whom waged work was viewed as the source of both physical and metaphysical needs to the employed mineworker. To appreciate the ideological depth of this discourse in urban life, it is worth highlighting how even the passage of time came to be signified with reference to the days of work. Monday came to be known as “kazi moja,” or “workday one,” Tuesday, “kazi mbili,” or “workday two,” on and on until Saturday, which was called “siku ya mposho,” or,

“the day of rations,” the day when workers of most state-run companies received their food rations. Sunday was the day those in the mining camps were “encouraged” by the Catholic priests to go to church. Thus, in local parlance Sunday has remained (even in the postindustrial present), “siku ya mungu,” or “the day of God” – the only day when it was not imperative to do waged-work.

For a further sense of the paternalistic nature of colonial experience in Katanga just prior to independence, let us briefly return to Papa Kafusha. One may recall that it was through the

Methodist Church that he got an education. That in itself was something of an anomaly because in the colonial era, the Methodists were rivals with the more administratively- favoured Catholic Church in Katanga. As a consequence of his Methodist links, when

Kafusha completed his primary education in 1960 he could not continue to secondary school because the Catholic Church ran all the secondary schools in Katanga. His allegiance to the protestants denied him access to further learning; therefore, he had to wait for the Methodists to establish their first secondary school in Mulungwishi, Katanga, in 1962 to continue with his studies. After graduating from secondary school, Kafusha went on to teach at the Atelier de Likasi in 1965. It also happened that this was the year in which Joseph Desire Mobutu, the

89 head of the Army, came to power in Congo through a coup that overthrew and murdered the

Prime Minister-elect, Patrice Emery Lumumba. The ensuing political turmoil arising from the rise to power of President Mobutu –who was backed by the Catholic Church and Western allies –would lead to the departure of thousands of Congolese citizens and foreigners. Facing the prospect of ostracization by a Catholic-educated local elite, Kafusha parlayed his connections with the Methodists and brokered a way to Zambia in 1968. While in Zambia, he obtained a contract to work abroad and that is where he lived until his return to Congo in

2009.

One thing that marks the personal histories of successive generations of men in the Kafusha family is the importance of movement as a strategy for responding to the depredations of the regimes that have governed the Congo from the precolonial era onwards. However, as precolonial boundaries were redrawn in the colonial and postcolonial eras, movement was made increasingly difficult. For Congo Copperbelt residents who lived to see post- independence, more than seven decades of colonialism had transformed what was once a mobile peasant society into Africa’s leading industrial hub. By orienting the local economy towards a singular focus on mining, restricting the movement of rural and urban residents and segregating urban spaces, Belgian colonialism ultimately hoped to produce “modern” urban Congolese residents who were unencumbered by the weight of pre-colonial tradition.

Not only was this process not successful, it also lay the foundations for reactionary policies in the post-colonial era.

Industrial rise and Post-industrial decline

The history of post-independence Congo features most prominently in the imaginaries of the

West due to the plunder, personality cult, and arbitrary nature of Congo’s president for thirty- two years, Mobutu Sese Seko (Michel 1999, Wrong 2001). What such accounts are good at revealing is the nature of the political climate of uncertainty in Mobutu’s Congo, rather than the strategies employed by the Congolese to address the effects of such uncertainty in their daily life. By the time that President Mobutu secured power in 1965, the Congo was primarily structured as a resource extractive economy oriented towards international markets.

Pres. Mobutu inherited a state in which all major roads and railways led to border towns from where the wealth of the country departed in exchange for revenue and foreign imports.

Furthermore, because for more than seven decades the country had been governed from

Belgium, Kinshasa, its administrative centre, was very poorly linked to the key resource frontiers of Kasai, Kivu and Katanga provinces. Evidence of a weak central government was manifest in waves of secessionist movements that racked Katanga and Kasai provinces in the

1960s and 1970s (Kennes and Larmer 2016; Nzongola-Ntalaja 2002). As a consequence, one of the main objectives of the Mobutu government upon taking power was to quell civil unrest and to foster nationalism. Early in his presidency, Mobutu quashed protests and consolidated power by passing a series of laws that nationalized numerous colonial assets including l’Union Minière, which was renamed Gécamines51 in 1967. Nationalization of key foreign assets in Congo happened in tandem with the establishment of a national ‘back to the roots’ movement known as “retour a l’authenticité” in which the European names of towns, cities

51 La Générale des Carrières et des Mines. 91 and even individuals were replaced with local appellations.52 Initially, the movement was aimed at gaining control of the Zairian economy using a discourse of economic nationalism aimed at foreigners exploiting the country’s natural resources. However, from 1970-1974 the movement took a turn ostensibly aimed at fostering local culture as a source of national pride and economic development,53 all of which was a cover for the nationalization of foreign- owned businesses (Schatzberg 1980). By the end of 1975, thousands of Congolese residents of both local and foreign birth had left the country due to the moves by the state to expropriate their private property. The President did little to appease local investors but instead, in that same year, he launched the third instalment of l’authenticité as Mobutisme— broadly defined by his party as the philosophy and teachings of Mobutu—which would come to be remembered for sanctioning widespread corruption and the gross abuse of political privilege (White 2008:71).

In spite of the changes brought on by the Mobutu regime in the 1970s, life for the educated class was marked by significant upward mobility. Take for instance my host parents, Papa and Mama Kyungu. Papa was born on the outskirts of Likasi to a single-mother who moved to the cité indègene, or indigenous neighbourhood, where Africans who did not work for the colonial administration or the mining company were allowed to live. Papa Kyungu was a precocious child who, from very early on, was favoured by Catholics and ultimately gained access to Lovanium university as a student in 1969. He would graduate with a degree in

52 It was at this time Jadotville was renamed as Likasi. Similar nationalist movements were sweeping other parts of the African continent such as the Ujamaa movement by Mwalimu Nyerere in Tanzania, Hastings Kamuzu Banda in Malawi and Kenneth Kaunda in Zambia. For more on the role and influence of African liberation nationalists in the East African region during the overthrow of Pres. Mobutu see Roessler and Verhoeven (2016). 53 It was during this period that foreign owned businesses were nationalized and the discourse of the President and party officials spoke about traditional African values. 92 literature and languages that guaranteed him waged employment for the next four decades, culminating in a directorship at Gécamines. When Papa Kyungu married his wife in 1975, she too was educated. As one of seven children of a low-level manual worker of Gécamines in Lubumbashi, she and her siblings received free schooling from the company and grew up in a mining camp. Relative to those who were raised in the cité, children in the mining camps of Gécamines had a higher standard of living, better schooling and work opportunities but they lived under the watch of company authorities. Mama Kyungu was trained by Catholic nuns as a femme de ménage or, housewife, and obtained a job in the service d’action sociale of Gécamines.

As a femme travailleur, or woman performing waged labour in the 1970s, Mama was entitled to social welfare, status, and material comforts that were unattainable by most other means.

From 1970 to 1986, she revealed, “nous avons été gaté,” “we were spoiled.” She recalls the

Sundays they spent getting dressed to go to church and then driving to the house of their friend who had a good job at the local brewery. There, they would enjoy the latest beers and soft drinks in such abundance that the afternoon extended into a feast lasting late into the night. For Papa Kyungu, this period was remembered through specific highlights such as his modest wedding to Mama Kyungu, the subsequent purchase of his first car (a Volkswagen

Beetle) in 1974, and the birth of Pascale, his first child in 1976. Two years later, in 1978, his second-born child, David, was to follow. That same year Papa Kyungu sold the Volkswagen and bought a much-coveted Peugeot 504. He spoke of having enough disposable income those days to enjoy many a celebration on weekend evenings. He even recalled how in the early 1980s, the Chief Executive of Gécamines paid all employees a one-time bonus that

Papa Kyungu used, along with his paid leave from work, to travel to Johannesburg, South

Africa. The purpose of that trip was to buy a vehicle, which he later drove back to Katanga.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, the upper level management of Gécamines had exceptional privileges relative to other workers in Katanga. Mama Kyungu disclosed that not only were their welfare benefits some of the most generous in the country, but they could also expect monthly rations of food in proportion to the size of each household. In addition, higher ranked employees like Papa Kyungu would get their houses painted for them every two to three years and a sanitary unit from the company made sure that the drainage and sewer systems around Gécamines neighbourhoods were fumigated to keep mosquitoes and other pests away. It was also not unheard of for some Congolese to send their children for further studies in Belgium, South Africa or Zambia, for at that time the wealth of the company was redistributed far more widely than it ever had been. However, this period of relative prosperity for Gécamines households also coincided with the intensification of President

Mobutu’s hold on power and the solidification of the personality cult surrounding him.

Signs that the Congolese economy was ailing were noted as early as 1973. The combined effects of the global oil crisis in 1973, a drop in global metal prices in the 1980s, and the pillaging of finances from mining by Pres. Mobutu and his elites manifest as inflation of the

Congolese franc and salary arrears for state employees in many sectors. In Katanga,

Gécamines households, which had on average seven children per family, intermittently received their wages and many were forced to find unorthodox means of survival. Mama

Kyungu recounted that it was not uncommon to find the heads of households selling some of

94 their household appliances to cover debts undertaken to feed their families. Distant relatives sought refuge in the homes of Gécamines workers thereby expanding the size of families.

There were lootings in almost all the major cities in Congo and mass redundancies in state- run organizations (see chapter 2). This period, beginning in the late 1980s, was characterized by generalized dysphoria and has been described as somalisation, that is, when life in what was then Zaire became as bad as in post-Siad Barre Somalia (Devisch 1995:595).

An acute financial crisis in early 1990 was emphatically marked by the closure of Kamoto mine in Kolwezi, arguably the largest open-pit copper mine in Central Africa, due to declining commodity prices in global markets. That closure triggered a cash crisis in the country because Gécamines was the main source of foreign exchange revenue for the

Mobutu government. The deepening economic crisis led to a range of protests against the

Mobutu government, with the most notable in Katanga being student riots at Université de

Lubumbashi on the 11th of May, 1990, which led to the deaths of scores of students at the hands of the military (Nkongolo et al. 2000). Social protests across the Congo against

Mobutu’s leadership were met with increased repression but this did little to stop protests or the hyperinflation of the economy from mid-1990 to early 1994 (De Herdt 2002:456).

At the time when inflation was at its peak in 1993, households were buying a 25kg bag of maize flour at 5 million Zaires, almost 30 times its price two years earlier. The value of basic commodities skyrocketed, creating shortages at a time when wages were paid infrequently.

In the Kyungu household, which by mid-1995 had grown to six children, these political and economic changes manifested themselves in the choices made by the two eldest children in

95 the family. One evening in 1995, Pascale came home and asked his mother for 15,000 Zaires to pay his university fees. Mama sold some maize that was in the house and borrowed some money and got the 15,000 Zaires. As she gave him the money, she felt he was not himself.

Days after he had left for university in Lubumbashi, they found a note in his room apologizing and explaining that he was going to give up university and join the Simba liberation army of Laurent Desiré Kabila to try and liberate Congo from the tyranny of

President Mobutu. The despondency with the grinding economic decline in the country was so deep that young men like Pascale from relatively well-off households, and hundreds of other disaffected young men in Congo, went to war. Pascale was not to be seen for over two years leading his parents to presume him dead.

Sometime in 1998, after the violent removal of President Mobutu from power by Laurent

Kabila, Mama Kyungu received a phone call from her son saying that he was back in

Lubumbashi. He had returned after fighting for Kabila in the dense forests of Equateur province in northeastern Congo along with hundreds of other young men. Many of his colleagues had died in the swamps of Equateur province. He finally returned home in 1999, very ill and malnourished. Mama Kyungu mentioned that from 1999 until 2001, during

Laurent Kabila’s Presidency, Pascale was a decorated, well-dressed, and respected soldier.

His elite unit commanded wages of US$100 a month, which, at the time, was considered a decent government wage. Pascale explained that after they helped “Mzee” Kabila oust

Mobutu from power, members of his unit, who were only answerable to the new President, were hired as members of the Presidential Guard. Les simbas, as they were called, had their living expenses taken care of by the President and were better equipped than their colleagues

96 in the national army (FARDC). However, in 2001, after the assassination of President Kabila by those under his command, accusations were laid against members of elite units in the

Congolese army and soon the Simbas were disbanded and forcefully integrated into the

Congolese army. Pascale talked of this reintegration as being very demoralizing for many who felt betrayed by their leaders and this betrayal was compounded by a dramatic fall in both pay and prestige. Consequently, hundreds were decommissioned from military service—including Pascal.

For many Gécamines households in Katanga, the Mobutu era was synonymous with a decline of living and moral standards that was hitherto unimaginable. The situation after the overthrow of Mobutu in 1997 did not substantially alter the fortunes of many families, rather, things got progressively worse. Economic decline went unabated under President Laurent

Kabila and, with his death and the rise to power of his son, the situation has barely improved.

It is for this reason that many pensioners and retired mineworkers that I interviewed lamented over post-industrial decline in Katanga while nostalgically recalling the Belgian colonial era as a time when they enjoyed guaranteed welfare benefits such as regular pay, healthcare, free education, monthly rations and paid vacations (see chapter 2). For an older generation of mineworkers, the stability and promise offered by the colonial past remains a key resource for imagining a way out of the hardship and unpredictability exacerbated by the liberalization of the economy.

Liberalization of the economy and mining sector

Following the assassination of President Laurent Kabila, his son Joseph Kabila was parachuted into power. A year later, in 2002, facing pressure from the World Bank and IMF over mounting public debt and global financial constraints, President Kabila liberalized the mining sector of Congo. Prior to liberalization, Gécamines owned and operated all mining concessions in Katanga and was under the control of the provincial government and the ultimately the governement in Kinshasa (see figure 4). With liberalization, the global world of mining was attracted to the huge deposits of gold, copper (malachite) and cobalt buried in the Congo Copperbelt leading to what Theodore Trefon (2016) has termed as a “renaissance” of mining. For Katangese residents, liberalization of the economy has primarily been associated with the changes occurring in the mining sector. Two of the most significant of these changes in the mining landscape of Katanga has been the widespread emergence of artisanal mines and the arrival of hundreds of private mining companies.54

While artisanal mining has long been practiced in Katanga, the activity boomed from 2003 when the state mining giant, Gécamines, began the process of retrenching more than 10,000 workers, or 45% of its workforce as part of a restructuring process authored by the World

Bank. The outcome of this restructuring process created a large segment of pensioners whose lives were upended when they were forced to accept paltry sums of money as severance packages after having depended on the welfare guarantees offered by the company for decades. Children who once went to schools run by the company abandoned their education

54 For a spatial view of the presence of these companies in their hundreds see the DRC Mining Cadastre portal (http://portals.flexicadastre.com/drc/en/). 98 and sought work in the informal sector as salesmen, truck drivers, petty merchants, mineral traders and creuseurs. Furthermore, because liberalization of the mining sector legalized artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) and private concession mining at a time when global metal prices were rising, thousands of youth descended on abandoned Gécamines mines.

Given financial muscle available to many private mining companies and the often-fraught confrontations between local residents and mining companies, security around most private mining concessions has created enclaves, or, de-facto areas where the rule of law is in abeyance and “indirect discharge” by company authorities is the norm (Hönke 2010; see chapter 3). In part, this is an outcome of the way in which the new mining code centralizes the control of mining and prospecting rights with the central government in Kinshasa leaving provincial authorities with the limited task of regulating artisanal mines (see figure 5). Since private mining companies tend to employ private security personnel for the daily control of their mining concessions and are subject to regulations emanating from the Ministry of

Mines in Kinshasa, they are hardly beholden to the dictates of local residents or even the provincial government.55

55 Good examples are the large mining concessions run as private enclaves by companies such as Tenke Fungurume Mining, Boss Mining, Katanga Mining, George Forest Mining. 99

Figure 4: Before Liberalization.

LEGEND

CONGOLESE Delegates/ controls STATE Ministry of Mines (Kinshasa) Reports to

Works at

Provincial Govt. (Div. of Mines)

GCM

Customary Authorities

Rural Public Industrial Mines Urban public

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Figure 5: After Liberalization

LEGEND Congolese Presidency Delegates/Regulates (Kinshasa) Reports to

Works at

Leased to Ministry of Mines Para-state org (Kinshasa)

Broker relation Provincial Government Katanga (Div. of Mines)

Immigration Provincial Mining Intelligence Dept Admin. Police Dept Mining Tech. Service

EMAK

Customary Auth. Private mining company [Concession] Artisanal Mines

Rural Public

Urban Public

101

To obtain some degree of influence over the local mining scene, public authorities from the provincial government, cooperatives and associations of artisanal miners and customary authorities vie for control over artisanal mines as these are one of the few remaining sources of rent. Compounded by the fact that most state officials are poorly paid, if at all, artisanal mines have attracted a myriad of state and para-state agents (see figure 5). Most notably are the provincial government representatives from the Congolese intelligence agency (ANR), the mining police, the immigration department (DGM), the provincial civil administration, and the mining technical service (SAEMAPE). Add to that the association of artisanal miners of Katanga56 (EMAK) – a para-state organization that claims to represent the interest of artisanal miners but often attempts to broker lease agreements for the access of private mining companies to artisanal mines (see chapter 3). A rival organization to EMAK that plays a similar role is CMKK, Cooperative Madini Kwa Kilimo. External to all these public organizations in the mines are the customary authorities that claim the land and the resources therein as their inalienable heritage. To many of them, private mining companies, the state and migrant artisanal miners are all imposters who will never adequately compensate them for the destruction of “their” territory.

As I discuss in chapter 3, the presence of numerous state and para-state officials in artisanal mining sites does not imply greater regulatory control of artisanal mining, rather, it reveals the way state authorities mobilize a discourse about “securitization” so as to extend the reach of the state for private ends. Most miners understand this fact and try their utmost to evade the taxes levied upon them by various mine officials because these officials are illegitimate

56 Exploitants Miniers Artisanaux du Katanga. 102 individuals profiting from the hard labour of miners without contributing anything in return.

Neither state nor customary authorities did anything to improve the labour and safety conditions of miners in the mine I frequented but both these groups were ever present and used seizure as a tactic to exact a fee on mineral ores collected (see chapter 3).

Miners, all of whom were young men between the ages of twelve and forty years and a significant proportion of whom had migrated from the neighbouring provinces of Kasai, often lacked the means or social capital to contest the claims of various mine officials.

Working in artisanal mines were young men who had university degrees, other forms of tertiary education; there were also illiterate people, young men of various ethnic, religious and ideological backgrounds, ex-child soldiers, the children of Gécamines workers and other retrenched industrial professionals, orphans, refugees from Angola and other young men escaping different forms of persecution. As an example, the first place Pascale went to work after he decommissioned from the military was in the mine of Kanfunda, some kilometres outside of Likasi. A few years later his younger brother, Benoit, who had dropped out of university started to work in the mines in Miringi as a mineral buyer, or négociant, and he continues to do so to this day. Both Benoit and Pascale joined the world of artisanal mining having received substantial schooling, yet they entered at different tiers of the industry,

Pascale as a miner and Benoit as a mineral buyer. To join other miners working in Kanfunda mine, Pascale, like most miners, tried to find his relatives, school mates, neighbours and friends in the mine so as to join their teams. It is not uncommon to discover that a team of miners may all be related in one way or another. Miners in a team tend to know each other very well for the risks involved in digging mineshafts demand mutual trust in a team. What I

103 found less common was the existence of lateral relationships between teams of unrelated miners and this was largely because of competition between teams of miners, differences in ethnicity, class status, prior occupation, migration history or ideological leanings. For instance, tension existed between miners of Kasai origin and those who claimed Katanga heritage. In addition, educated miners often denigrated young men who had no schooling; those who had served in the army or in rebel groups often played up their military backgrounds to attract their peers and dispel others, and Rastafarian youth often sought to distinguish themselves through their discourse, discipline and group actions. In my view, it was only when miners faced an existential threat in the form of a collapsed mine shaft or the forceful expropriation of the mine by a private investor that they unified as a social force. For the most part, the social diversity of miners made it difficult—but not impossible—to build consensus as a group, especially against the local mine authorities or mineral buyers.

The commodity chain of artisanally mined minerals in Katanga, that is, copper (malachite), gold and cobalt equally incorporate a diverse range of players. Once a miner has extracted mineral ore from the ground, he collects it in small sacks of about ten to fifteen kilograms. In the case of copper ore (malachite), these sacks are then hoisted to the ground and sent to nearby streams for rinsing by (quite often) children. Thereafter, a miner may sell his rinsed ore to a mineral buyer who will re-sell to a trading house, or maison, for a profit all depending on the purity of the ore. The trading house fixes the price, grades the ore and re- sells it to a refiner who processes the ore, turning it into heavy copper plates in the case of copper, gold bars, or bricks or powders of refined cobalt. In this chain, from miner, négociant, trading house, to refining plant the key arbiters of local value are the latter two

104 since it is the trading house that owns the ore analysis equipment that determines the purity

(and hence value) of copper and cobalt ores while the industrial refining plant is responsible for producing commercial grade copper for export. Because the artisanal mining commodity chain of the metal(s) eventually leads to a handful of industrial processing plants, where chemical processes purify the metal thereby substantially raising its value, speculation in unrefined copper or cobalt ore – which is what creuseurs deal in–is relatively limited. It does not compare to the nature of speculation observed with small precious stones such as diamonds (De Boeck 1998; Walker 2014) or sapphires (Walsh 2004) because copper and cobalt ores are bulky, less precious and they depend on a handful of local, large scale processing plants to elevate the value of the metal.

Copper and Cobalt in Katanga have a commodity chain that funnels their ores to very specific sites of value maximization. This is not to say there is no speculation. Generally, information about the local market price of copper is an issue that centrally concerns négociants, who typically know how to visually discern the relative purity of copper and cobalt as well as the trading houses offering the best prices for their ores. This knowledge of purity, price and place is what they apply to undercut the price of copper or cobalt ore when purchasing from artisanal miners. Typically, it is the trading house that will export the refined metal ore to international markets. And, by Congolese law, gold, copper and cobalt are only to be exported in their refined forms. Hardly any statistics exist on the volume and value of mineral ores extracted by artisanal miners but, given that close to two million miners are thought to work across the Congo, undoubtedly their contribution to the economy is substantial (Peemans 2014:26).

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Conclusion

After more than three decades abroad, Papa Kafusha returned to the city of Likasi in 2009.

The city, like much of the rest of the country, was undergoing rapid post-industrial transformation as numerous private mining companies of diverse origins established operations across the Congo Copperbelt. In tandem with the arrival of mining companies, vast tracks of land were annexed for mineral exploitation causing the proliferation of securitized enclaves of mining. Many of these companies are in joint venture agreements with Gécamines and there is little if any public scrutiny of these transactions.57 Due to memories of the colonial injustices of the past, the contemporary lack of accountability of private mining companies has contributed to distrust of the government in Kinshasa, especially in transit-hubs like Likasi where giant trucks ferrying the buried wealth of the

Congo to the border towns are a constant fixture of daily life yet the once vibrant factories of

Gécamines languish in rust. To retrenched mineworkers of the company, pensioners, children of mineworkers now turned creuseurs, customary authorities, and other local residents in the

Congo Copperbelt, the liberalized post-industrial present is deeply unjust. This is because neither the state nor its partners, the private mining companies, respect the social past of this region. Neither do they offer any substantial material benefits or guarantees to local residents even though the pace of extraction remains seemingly constant, or, is on the rise.

57 The Africa Progress Panel (2013) published a report about the extractive sector in the DRC detailing that the country had lost up-to US$ 1.3 Billion in its joint venture agreements. 106

The nostalgia for a past prior to industrial mining monumentalized in the statue of the mangeurs de cuivre remains as a symbolic ode to a valuable past that was erased by industrialization, but never forgotten. In some ways it has now gained greater visibility and attention due to the salience of communally organized, state-sanctioned, artisanal mining in

Katanga because some miners view themselves as contemporary “eaters of copper.” The rise and spread of artisanal mining across Katanga is not only significant but also surprising because it has happened in spite of the lack of support and, in some cases, notwithstanding the collusion of state authorities with private mining companies in the annexation of artisanal mines. Unable to rely on the state for impartial assistance, creuseurs whose livelihoods are threatened by the land enclosures are often forced into violent confrontations with authorities. As we shall see in chapters 2 and 5, they couch their claims to the land in the moral matrices of the precolonial past by claiming the wealth of the Congo as being the gift of their ancestors. Like most of the retrenched Gécamines workers and pensioners and the customary authorities whose territories have been usurped by private interests for mineral exploitation, the existence of hundreds of thousands of creuseurs toiling away in remote mines in Katanga is further proof that the paradox of plenty in Congo is not an immutable fact of life but, rather, a consequence of historical circumstances that if traced over time reveal how pre-colonial and colonial social orders continue to reverberate and impinge upon the present. In the following chapter, I tease out the generational differences between creuseurs and retrenched workers of Gécamines—two unique generations of mineworkers in

Katanga—so as to explain how each generation understands and responds to the rapid social transformations brought about by the liberalization of mining.

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Chapter 2

Abject Pensioners and Entrapped Youth: Narratives of Decline and the Multiplicity of the Times among Generations in the Congo Copperbelt

In the previous chapter, I offered historicities of the Congo Copperbelt from the perspective of a segment of precolonial, colonial and postcolonial residents with the aim of linking the lives of individuals with the longer arc of imperialist strategies that have shaped life in the region. Here, my focus is on the experience of contemporary decline as it has been structured by liberalization of the mining sector and experienced from the perspective of two unique generations of mineworkers.

In 2002, liberalization of the Congolese mining sector finalized a process of privatization that had begun in the 1990s, when industrial mining went into decline. Under the stewardship of the World Bank, liberalization led to the opening up of the Congolese mining industry to foreign investment but it also resulted in the annexation and closure of divisions of the former industrial, state-run, mining company, Gécamines (Mazalto 2009:196–197). The main beneficiaries of this economic restructuring have been private mining companies and elites within the state. In this chapter, I focus on industrial decline and highlight how it was differentially experienced and framed among two generations in Katanga.58 pensioners of

58 Since research for this thesis was undertaken prior to 2016, when the Congolese state split the eleven provinces into twenty-six, I retain the name Katanga to refer to present-day Haut Katanga province in which the Congo Copperbelt is located. 108

Gécamines, and young men, many of whom are the children of retrenched Gécamines workers now working as artisanal miners or, creuseurs. Creuseurs in Katanga are predominantly male. During my fieldwork I interviewed young men working as creuseurs whose ages ranged from 10 to approximately 38 years, a majority of whom operated relatively independently outside the domains of commercial concession mining in areas demarcated by the state as sites for artisanal or small-scale mining. Estimates put the number of men and underage boys working in the mines at between 50,000 and 150,000 (Global

Witness 2006:5; Dibwe dia Mwembu 2005:7).

Placing these two distinct generations in the same investigative frame is in response to calls by anthropologists to move beyond the singular study of particular age groups – such as youth or children – and to focus on age itself (generations) as a relational process tied to social reproduction (Alber et al. 2008:4–6; Christiansen et al. 2006; Cole and Durham

2007:14; Comaroff and Comaroff 2006). In this chapter, I do so by attending to particular

“styles of thought” of different generations, or what Williams (1977:132) refers to as

“structures of feeling,” that is, affective elements of consciousness and relationships which, though private, upon analysis may have a dominant set of characteristics. My focus on the

“structures of feeling” of different generations is aimed at understanding how the rapid social transformation of during industrial decline was experienced. For me, the shared sentiments of industrial decline elicited among particular social groups in the Congo act as a marker of each generation’s entanglement in time. That is, the experience of the present as a mixture of absences; absences of pasts that one remembers and the absences of anticipated happenings yet to come (Mbembe 2001a:16).

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Below, my objective is twofold: first, I discuss the social ideologies informing industrial decline and the liberalization of mining by analysing the narratives of both pensioners and creuseurs in Katanga. I outline how the recent structural changes in the mining sector have engendered particular “structures of feeling” as individuals in each generation deal with their marginalization in the new economic order. Common to both generations of miners is the experience of “abjection” – what James Ferguson (1999:236) views as the casting away of particular groups of people from a global imaginary. Abjection for the pensioners of

Gécamines elicited colonial nostalgia, a sense of loss, but also self-reliance. Among creuseurs, on the other hand, it produced presentism: a being in the here-and-now characterized by tireless hustling, gritty enduring, and a hunt for more. So, although industrial decline and the liberalization of the mining sector in Congo has been a devastating and life-changing event, it featured in the lives of different generations in unique ways. This uniqueness of experience in each generation characterizes the multiplicity of time or, as Karl

Mannheim terms it, the “non-contemporaneity of the contemporaneous” (Pilcher 1994:486; see also Mannheim 1972:276–320).

Temporality in my research is thus a way of interrogating how particular social subjects make meaning of their emplacement within the social structures in which they are embedded.

For the pensioners of UMHK, the liberalization of the mining industry in Congo was but the latest of a series of plots by the state and its elites to usurp the livelihoods and guarantees of the past. If for the pensioners the liberalization of the mining industry was one of the several disruptions to impact the industrial welfarist way of life, for creuseurs it was the opposite: a beginning. Liberalization of mining in Congo resulted in the formalization and state

110 regulation of small-scale artisanal mining in 2002. These were but a legal means to enshrine a practice that has been underway for almost a decade, following the decline of Gécamines and its industrial subsidiaries in the 1990s. Placing pensioners of UMHK alongside their

“children,” the creuseurs of Katanga, thus invites an interrogation of some of our scholarly approaches towards continuity versus rupture (Mbembe 2001:13; McClintock 1992:87; Piot

2010:12–14; Sanders 2008:107–132). It forces us to ask, what is truly “new” about the recent liberalization of the mining sector? Viewed from the perspective of the longue duree, what is post-colonial about the present? And furthermore, what analytical purchase might we gain over the changes of the present when we foreground continuity over rupture?

Mining Contexts: between Rupture and Continuity?

The present-day province of Katanga has historically been synonymous with the production of copper. From as early as the ninth and tenth century the people of the savanna in southern

Congo were renowned for producing X-shaped copper croisettes and copper ingots that later became a precolonial form of currency traded as far south as in the Mwene Motapa kingdom

– in present day Zimbabwe (Bisson 1975:279–289; Herbert 1984:49–60). This flourishing precolonial trade in copper would later attract the interest of Omani slave traders and

Europeans in the nineteenth century. In 1891, the Belgian King Leopold II sent Captain

William Stairs on an expedition to subdue the Yeke leader, Mwenda Mushiri, who remained defiant and was violently killed leading to the incorporation of Katanga province into

Leopold's Congo Free State. Shortly afterwards, in 1906, the mining company, Union

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Minière du Haut Katanga, was formed and, with the extension of the railway from southern

Africa to Elizabethville (present day Lubumbashi) four years later, industrialization began.

As mentioned in the previous chapter, prior to the First World War, Africans in mining centres such as Elizabethville were recruited by force and lived in camps that had, at best,

“primitive” conditions (Fabian et al. 1990:75–77; Fetter 1976:35). To reduce worker desertion and increase labour supply, the mining company, Union Minière, began improving the living conditions in its mining camps. It did so by enforcing a policy of “stabilization” in the mid-1920s which, according to its executives at the time, consisted “of making the black worker like his work and stay attached to it as long as possible.”59 “Stabilization” was a metaphor for policies designed by industrial companies in southern Africa to conceal the low rates companies were willing to pay to maintain and reproduce their labour force (John

Higginson 1989:216). In mining centers like Elizabethville, Union Minière, the Catholic

Church, and the Belgian colonial administration planned and policed public life both inside and outside the mining camps.

In 1967, the government of President Mobutu Sese Seko nationalized the Union Minière and renamed it Gécamines. Unfortunately, by the early-1970s the Congolese economy began to unravel due to the combined effects of the global energy crisis, a drop in global metal prices in the late 1980, and the pillaging of finances from mining by Pres. Mobutu and his elites.

For Gécamines, the combined effect of these economic pressures culminated in the collapse

59 African worker contracts were made no less than 3 years so that the links between a worker and his traditional environment could grow weaker. See Fabian (1971:59). 112 of Kamoto mine in Katanga60 in 1990 and a subsequent drop in copper production by more than 93% between 1987 and 1994 (Dibwe dia Mwembu 2001:160). Plummeting global demand for copper threw the resource-dependent economy of the Congo into freefall.61 Cold war realignments saw the international influence of Pres. Mobutu decline as local pressure for democratic change increased, ultimately resulting in a coup d'état by Laurent D. Kabila in

1997.

By 2002, the economy of the country was in shambles as liabilities of Gécamines stood in the region of US $1.3 billion. Facing immense foreign pressure, President Joseph Kabila liberalized the mining sector and from March 2003 to February 2004, an agreement was reached between the Congolese government and the World Bank to pay lump sum amounts to workers with over twenty-five years of service as of December 31st 2002. The amounts ranged as follows: US $2,000 to US $4,000 for low-wage workers; US $ 8,000 to $15,000 for managers; and between $20,000 to $70,000 for directors (Rubbers 2010:330–331). This

World Bank driven redundancy scheme was named L’Opération Départ Volontaire, despite the fact that it forced the retrenchment of 10,655 workers of Gécamines, many of whom signed off on their severance packages in 2003 after having gone for a total of almost three years without any pay. Starting in the early 1990s, when the company entered into serious crisis, until 2003, when it paid out its workers, the families of workers were living by chance, wishing, and waiting to see if their employed family members would be paid this month or the next. The children of Gécamines workers particularly embodied the precarity of their

60 Kamoto mine is the largest open pit mine in Congo and is located in the town of Kolwezi. 61 For a detailed analysis of the systematic collapse of Gécamines see Rubbers (2006:115–133). 113 parent's lives as some young men took up work as creuseurs, redirecting their futures from schools to the abandoned mines of the company.

Both the pensioner and particularly the creuseur compel us to rethink the event history of

Congo because, as narrated above, it is premised on what Johannes Fabian (2002) refers to as

“physical time,” a calendric time unaffected by cultural variation. Though seemingly objective, Fabian (2002:30) notes that physical time is not “value-free” but frequently incorporates typological framings to distinguish various points in time. Typologies order the interval between socio-culturally meaningful events such that it is possible to speak of a

“colonial” and “post-colonial” era or, as in the case of the mining in the Congo, the

“industrial past” and “liberalized present.” Abstracting time in these ways is more than just a heuristic means of ordering temporality for it also works to qualify “the new” as rupture – irrespective of the continuities and discontinuities that configure local experiences of time.

Given the tumultuous history of the emergence of pensioners and creuseurs in Congo, what particular event can be designated as the rupture that fundamentally altered economic life in

Katanga? Surely, if no single event can be deemed to be generative of social subjects like the pensioner or the creuseur then, heuristically can we “wager on rupture” – as Charles Piot's

(2010:12–14) recent analysis of Togolese history would like us to? For Piot, the end of the

Cold War led to the abandonment of dictatorships in Africa that resulted in the withdrawal of the money supporting them, forcing the state to massively cut back on social welfare and development projects. Being strapped for cash, Piot argues, these changes forced African states to abandon customary authorities leading to the end of indirect rule in rural areas and a reconfiguration of relations with the past. A weakened state allowed for the emergence of

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“fragmented/ pluralized/privatized sovereignty,” which subsequently contributed to the

“liberalization of the political, media and religious spheres” (Piot 2010: 15). In places like the Congo, it is hard to deny the importance of an event like the end of the Cold War and the dwindling support of the dictatorship of President Mobutu. But, equally important to appreciate is the larger arc of history as it pertains to the central Africa economy. What is today Congo, Zambia, and even Angola was incorporated into the global from the 15th to the

19th century through slavery and resource extraction—activities that fundamentally served external interests at the very expense of Central Africans. The end of slavery in Congo in the late nineteenth century ended but one form of exploitation, but it did not alter the resource extraction imperative in this region, neither did the end of the Cold War. Viewed from that optic, the end of the Cold War was an event that features more as a marker of transition in the longer march of colonial capitalism in the Congo than as rupture with the past. If anything, the end of the Cold War and the social changes brought about by the subsequent liberalization of the economy led to a reinvigoration and, possibly even, an escalation of structural injustices of the colonial era.

In the ethnographic portraits of pensioners of Gécamines and creuseurs that I sketch below, I try to outline the lived experiences of Katangese residents in the wake of industrial decline to show how colonialism endures. Of course, the portraits I sketch are but partial snapshots of much more complex lives. Nevertheless, rather than simply situating the narratives of my informants in the neat typological frames in Congolese history – precolonial/colonial/postcolonial eras – I try to show how my informants narrate and

115 experience contemporary life in ways that often confound such strict periodicity. It is to this entanglement in time that I now turn by looking at the pensioners of the Gécamines.

Mired in nostalgia and forced into self-reliance: Gécamines pensioners

With the decline of industrialization in the Copperbelt, scholarly concerns have come to be centred around: the macro-structural causes and ideologies underpinning industrial decline in the Copperbelt (Dibwe dia Mwembu 2001; Ferguson 1999; Rubbers 2013), the fluctuation of economic fortunes related to the liberalization of the mining sector (Fraser and Larmer 2010;

Mazalto 2009), changing political topographies with the entry of foreign investment capital in the Copperbelt (Hönke 2010; Jansson 2011; Lee 2010:127–150), and the consequences of artisanal mining on local gender dynamics and family relations (André and Godin 2014;

Cuvelier 2011b; Mususa 2010a:185–204). In the recent past, inadequate attention has been given to the forms of longing that Africans express towards the industrial colonial past, 62 partly because, as William Bissell (2005:224) argues, colonial nostalgia is viewed as a false or fictitious history lacking “proper” distance or objectivity. However, Richard Werbner

(1998) has shown that nostalgia and suppressed memory can also be a potent source for subjectivities for whom "politicized" memory is a site of struggle. Rather than dismissing colonial nostalgia as bad history, I attempt to unpack its “work” in places like the Congo where for some, the postcolonial context is experienced as being hardly qualitatively better

62 Exceptions here are the works by Fabian (1996), Jewsiewicki (2005), Rubbers (2009b) and Werbner (1998). 116 than the Belgian colonialism which preceded it. Doing so by way of analyzing the narratives of reluctant pensioners reveals how the past enters into present-day struggles in Congo.

During my fieldwork in Panda commune in the city of Likasi, I interviewed several ex-

Gécamines workers who had received their pensions or opted to “depart voluntarily” rather than keep working for the “dying giant,” as some called the company. 63 I met many of these individuals at their homes in Panda commune in Likasi or in the town of Kambove. A number of the pensioners in Likasi made visits to the administrative office of Gécamines to lodge claims or meet their working friends. On these visits to the administration office I met many of the pensioners through my research assistant who worked for the company as a social worker, and he too was soon going to retire and thus could empathize with what his forerunners had endured. It is he who led me to pensioners like Papa David, a 77-year-old man who worked as a company driver for Gécamines. When I went to see Papa David at his house, it was basically empty. In the living room was a tired brown couch that looked like it doubled up as a bed for someone, two wooden seats missing their cushions, and a television armoire without a television in it. We sat for a while in his living room as I introduced myself to him but after a few minutes he suggested we go outside to do the interview. He seemed acutely embarrassed about his furniture as well as his inability to offer me—a visitor—anything to drink. We sat under a tree in his small garden. Beside us was the hollowed shell of a rusty car propped up on stones, a poignant symbol of the times.

63 This research is based on structured interviews, group discussions, and participant observation with pensioners living in Panda commune in Likasi city and Kambove. 117

Papa David shifted in his seat a little anxiously and then began to speak in Katanga Swahili.

His tone was sharp and angry like an activist seeking justice. Our discussion began with him speaking rather fondly of his 44-year career as a Gécamines worker, but he was unable to hide his pain when he started reflecting on his past in light of his contemporary situation. He said:

From 1998, we suffered. We went to bed hungry. At times we went four months without pay and we could do nothing, not even complain to the authorities. [For] Ten years we suffered. We used to receive maize flour as pensioners but today that is no more. After working for 44 years, they paid me $5,000. Most got $2,000 but, we are all the same. None of us get any maize flour. We are like slaves. Belgian colonialism was better.

See the children today; they don’t know minced meat, apples, pineapples, or bananas. We do. We grew up drinking tea with bread in the morning and we would only eat bukari (maize meal) at night. During the times of the Union Minière children went to school, they were given school uniforms, they got biscuits and porridge at 10am, and their parents received wheat flour, maize flour and fish [from the company].

…I don’t admit to being independent. I go on leave and they don’t pay me for 4 months, how am I independent? My wage arrears are unpaid, how am I independent? If you are independent you cannot agree to work for two or three months without being paid. When you request your money, they shout at you or they tell you we will pay you when the company wakes up [from the dead].

Around the time I interviewed Papa David, people in the city of Likasi were preparing for the

51st independence celebrations of Congo. Among the older generation of mineworkers, independence was tinged with a sense of betrayal, loss, resentment, and nostalgia. For instance, Papa David saw the abjection he experienced as a pensioner as being akin to enslavement providing further validation to an often-heard claim among elderly residents in

Katanga that “we (the Congolese) asked for independence too early.” The decline of

Gécamines has forced some retrenched workers to take up odd jobs in the city of

Lubumbashi as shoe-shiners, watchmen, taxi-cab drivers, errand-boys, or petty commodity

118 traders. In smaller cities like Likasi and Kambove where urban jobs are fewer, many ex-

Gécamines workers have unwillingly had to take up farming in peri-urban areas.64 The evidence marshalled by pensioners and elderly Congolese I spoke to was irrefutable: life for the majority of working-class Congolese had severely deteriorated since independence in

1960 and it was getting worse.65 Papa Ngolo, an active member of the collective of pensioners and retrenched workers of Gécamines, believed that, more than 4,000 (over 40%) of the 10,655 workers who received their severance pay in 2003 have since passed away as a direct result of poverty-related illnesses ushered in by their retrenchment and the restructuring of Gécamines. I have been unable to find reports that support this statistic but this does not mean it is an unlikely evaluation of the pensioner's situation. Rather, it points to a perceived sense among pensioners of the injustice of the liberalization of the mining sector in Congo.

In saying “Belgian colonialism was better,” Papa David was expressing nostalgia for the colonial era due to a commonly held understanding of the relationship between temporality and declining material means. As William Bissell (2005:221) notes, for nostalgia to emerge and flourish a “sense of linear time is essential…time must not only be irretrievable but tinged with loss …of power and position by a social group.” To these aging pensioners kazi, or salaried work (see chapter 1), was remembered as being a defining feature of daily life: employment placed a worker in the mining camps where the company was able to control the professional and private lives of its employees to the point of determining the churches, schools, and leisure facilities that workers and their families attended. Thus, the loss of wage

64 A similar observation is noted by Rubbers (2013:151–159). 65 For a Kinshasa perspective of social decline see Trefon (2004). 119 employment starting in 2003 was far from liberating for Papa David; rather, it was experienced as a form of betrayal since the company had reneged on its implicit colonial social contract to be “baba,” “father,” and “mama,” “mother,” to its workers.

In my discussions with pensioners, nostalgia for the past was often cued by a discourse about food, or the lack of it. Anxieties about hunger, or njala, were a constant source of talk in the

Gécamines camp66. In stating that his children "do not know" hachée (minced meat) or pommes (apples), Papa David was making plain the perceived distance between the experiences of his generation – who knew these foods because they ate them – and those of his children. The point he was making is that though apples and hachée can sporadically be found in the camps, they have become luxury items today that the younger are unlikely to afford in their daily struggle to make ends meet. No longer does the company offer food to pensioners so those pensioners who are able-bodied have been compelled to live off the land as farmers. In less than three decades, ex- Gécamines workers had effectively shifted from salaried wage labourers to peasants – not by choice, but by necessity. Individuals like Papa

David and his wife openly confessed to me that they resented farming because it was tedious and they lacked the machinery to make it more efficient. This was not a strange remark coming from pensioners and retrenched workers of Gécamines who had grown up in the urban, metallic, modernity of mining towns – where they came to learn that machines make light of work. Many of these individuals had also grown habituated to the freedoms, restraints, and systematic rhythm of urban life scheduled by their employment or that of their parents. Cushioning some of the strain of employment and urban life in the mining camps

66 For in-depth analysis of social practices and beliefs around food in Katanga see Petit (2004). 120 were cherished monthly provisions of food. Consequently, the cessation of food provisions was for some pensioners a significant temporal marker of the precipitous decline of

Gécamines but also, by extension, the country as a whole. Colonial nostalgia among pensioners was a part of much deeper anxieties in Congo today over past social contracts, shared expectations between the state and its citizens, companies and their labourers, but also the relationship between parents and their children.

In the absence of some level of financial security provided by wage labour, one of the

“structures of feeling” that I identified among pensioners was an acute sense of failure. For some it was a failure to provide for their children a lifestyle that at least matched the one they had experienced when they were growing up, while for others, failure was an attribute of unavoidable fate (God's will), or the personal inadequacies of their children. It was far less common to come across pensioners who saw their retrenchment and subsequent loss of benefits as an opportunity to fashion new dispositions and ways of relating to her kin that were in line with Article 15, the paradigmatic idiom of Kinshasa residents, “Debrouillez vous” or, “[however you do] make ends meet” (Petit and Mutambwa 2005:468). Mama Jene, a former social worker of Gécamines, saw in the present an opportunity for personal change and explained it as follows:

You must hustle to get [by]. You have to be independent. Gécamines turned us into very lazy people, it gave us everything and it made us forget [not know] how to put effort. [Nowadays] You have to “tighten-up” if you want the future of your child to be good. Take your child to school and if that means you have to eat only vegetables because there is no lunch, then you eat them. It’s a life of nothing. If you sit and think about it you die… You have to rely on yourself. Your child has his own family, you cannot always disturb them; doing so is directing their life.

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As one of the few female pensioners I interviewed, Mama Jene highlights the complex tension that post-industrial collapse in Congo has placed on the generational contract between pensioners and their children: do you help yourself or help your children? These concerns were less common prior to collapse of the company because it was assumed, and rightly so, that the company would satisfy the needs of those it considered its “children.”

Like a few other pensioners, Mama Jene worked selling clothes in a shop in the city of Likasi and she prided herself on her self-reliance and determination. As a female ex-Gécamines worker, Mama Jene's situation was exceptional for she only had four children and all of them had university training and jobs within their fields of expertise. Her husband had opted to leave for South Africa in the mid-1990s and he had helped to finance her business and the education of one of her sons in India. As a result of the family support Mama Jene received, she was better cushioned than individuals such as Papa David who, in spite of having more children, had a family of lower social means. It is hard to gauge exactly how Mama Jene's forced retrenchment or the influence of her family support has affected her entrepreneurial spirit and logic of self-improvement. Nevertheless, she had imbibed the ideals of self- sufficiency – as per The World Bank and Congolese state's ODV67 intentions – to a larger degree than any of the other pensioners that I encountered. In clamoring for “independence,”

Mama Jene – unlike other pensioners I knew – did not view the past as a resource or loss to be recalled with nostalgia or lament. She saw it as an invitation for change.

Ignored in her quest for greater self-reliance was the incredibly defining issue of unpaid wages among ex- Gécamines workers. It was not lost on most pensioners that the

67 Opération Départ Volontaire. 122 implementation of the ODV sought to summarily discard and abject old workers in the name of liberalization of the mining sector. Benjamin Rubbers (2010:335) captured the collective sense of injustice experienced by pensioners in a speech by the President of the committee of former Gécamines to the Head of the National Assembly of Congo on deposit of a memorandum for retrenched workers.68 It points out:

These men and women who today, Friday 9 November 2007, stand before you in protest are ex-Gécamines employees who have sacrificed 30 to 50 years of life and hard labour to the development of this country. As champion producer of copper and cobalt, they have raised high the flag of the Democratic Republic of Congo across the whole world. These men and women are also champions; they should be seen as a model of the way we value work and receive the respect and recognition we deserve. But, here in the DRC, they are forgotten, bruised and condemned to die a slow death, surrounded by the total indifference of the very people who should be guaranteeing them a level of social protection appropriate to the services they have rendered the nation (emphasis, my own).

The slow death of ex-Gécamines workers closely mirrors the decline of industrialism in

Congo and the downward slide of patriots to present-day paupers. It is important in this speech that the characterization of the experience of abandonment is framed as: the erasure of memory (“forgotten”); punishment (“bruised”); and ultimately, as a slow and grinding annihilation. The appeal to make the state accountable for the lives of its citizens should be a legitimate claim to a state whose mentality of rule is focused on biopolitics.69 Such a state, as

Foucault (2008) argues, should care or be concerned with nurturing life. The pensioners are appealing to the Congolese state (through its representative) in this same register of care.

They wish it to see their worth not just as citizens and workers, but also as fellow human

68 The memorandum was a document outlining the effects to former Gécamines workers of the mass redundancy program termed Opération Départ Volontaire. 69 Foucault (1978[2008]). 123 beings. This is an appeal for recognition from a liberal citizen subject to a sovereign pleading: do not kill me with your indifference; remember my importance in the past. The injunction to act, to show compassion or mercy, is framed in what Elizabeth Povinelli

(2011:11–16) has termed as a “social tense” that brackets the present and appeals to a past

(my worth as citizen and worker) so as to secure a redemptive future (life rather than slow death). Benjamin Rubbers (2010:335–337) points out that in spite of this compassionate appeal, framed in a manner that is legitimate enough to get an audience with those wielding state power, it fails and pensioners continue to die. Why does it (and others before it70) fail and, as a consequence of this failure, how does one understand the death of social subjects that are legible to power?

Povinelli (2011:30) suggests that it is the “politics of recognition” – the act of allowing the liberal subject to speak back and be heard by the sovereign – which aggregates harm in such a way that the ethical and political demand is dissipated. This is because the “subjects of recognition” – the pensioners – “are called to present difference in a form that feels like difference but that does not permit any real difference to confront a normative world.” The pensioners’ demands can be given an audience but their specific claims have no ability to challenge the status quo. In the moment that the pensioners voice their demands to the state through its representative, their present suffering is bracketed; it is cast as either a failure of the past (“we did what we could”) or ignored altogether. Either way, the social tense of the other – my present suffering – is suspended or closeted in a past perfect tense (“they have sacrificed”) so that emphasis can be placed on securing the future (“we will see what we will

70 For a look at excerpts and summaries of the reports, notes, and statements to the Inspection Panel of The World Bank, the Congolese National Assembly and also the President of the DR Congo see Rubbers (2010). 124 do”). More than a decade since the commencement of the redundancy scheme, ODV, ex-

Gécamines workers remain unpaid and despite their passionate pleas, neither the World Bank nor the Congolese state have sought to reckon with the pensioners' wage arrears. Theirs is an entanglement in time in which their continued presence today, their subjectivity, is a stark reminder of the absence of recognition, respect, and remembrance for those who toiled for the nation in the past but have in recent times been rendered abject.

The Surreal Futures of Creuseurs

One of the worst political clichés to be thrown around in the 2011 elections was the claim that: “the youth are the future of tomorrow, so vote for Joseph Kabila.” The implied corollary to this statement was: “do not vote for Etienne Tshisekedi because he is an old man, a relic of a by-gone past and if he is elected, he will take us back to that nasty past.”

Underscoring the platforms of both candidates were systemic ethnic cleavages between Luba

Katanga and Luba Kasai but, in order to camouflage ethnicity, the contest was pitted as a generational match-up: youth (the promising future) versus the elderly (a failed past). The present here was bracketed as the terrain of contestation and the relationship between past and future was effectively masked. Let us try to unmask it with a look at the generation that came to maturity following the collapse of industrialism: the generation of youth in urban and peri-urban areas in Congo.

At least once a week during my fieldwork in Katanga in 2011, I woke to the sound of gunshots. My host parents assured me these were just warning shots from company guards

125 who were trying to ward off thieves pillaging scrap metal or unprocessed ores from the

Gécamines factory in Shituru, Likasi. It was widely known that the thieves stealing from the company were young men living in the communes of Panda and Shituru beside the

Gécamines factory complex. As I later discovered, some of these young were the children of retrenched company workers who had made salvaging, stealing, and selling the metal and mineral waste from Gécamines a full-time activity. Officially, these incidents of robbery were viewed as criminal acts but according to residents living near the company complex, the gunshots did not deter the thieves nor was it thought that company security could stop them. After some months in Likasi, I came to know it has long been rumored in the mining

“camps” that the thefts happen because of – rather than in spite of – the “security.” To be sure, young men had made pilfering the company a form of work because the company, just like the hills it mines and people it exploits, was equally viewed as a resource.

To acquaint myself with the world of mining outside urban centres, I made daily visits to artisanal mines on the outskirts of the city of Likasi and I came to know of many more young men working as creuseurs but few had the patience to elaborate for me the circumstances that had placed them in the mines. I would often arrive in the mines around midday and after hours of deliberations with the “officials” in the mines I would then be allowed to go ahead with my visit. By that time very few of the young men were finished work so I would have to wait until sun down, when the young men came from the mines, tired, dusty, and thirsty. It was never easy and many people were not keen to speak to me “about work as a creuseur” after enduring a gruelling shift. It took time but, at some point, one individual spared time to speak to me. He was a 36-year-old man whom I will call Mulenda, and he was introduced to me as the Vice-President of creuseurs in the mine of Kilobe, where I made numerous weekly

126 visits. He lived with his wife and four children at a village next to the mine. Mulenda was a trained electrician; and had studied and completed technical school, but never managed to get a job in his field of study. His father was a retired ticket-master for the Congolese national rail company, SNCC, and though he was born in Lubumbashi, he lived most of his life in

Likasi with his 7 siblings in the SNCC “camp.” He was born and raised in the industrial architecture of resource-extraction in southern Congo.

When I met him in 2011, he had been working as a creuseur continuously for 13 years. He impressed me because Mulenda did seem to appear like many of the other young men I had become accustomed to meeting in the mines–he was articulate, very polite, and well regarded by his workmates. They had elected him as the Vice-President of the creuseur association in the Kilobe mine and this sparked my curiosity so, I asked him how he ended up as a creuseur. He explained:

I studied to be an electrician but employment was hard to come by. You must know someone… The situation at home was serious, it forced me to look for work in the mines. Many of us have diplomas but no work. The benefits of education are unknown to us today but they may exist tomorrow. For me, creusage is a risky activity and I don’t know if I will ever leave this work. I think of myself as having a gift [for creusage]. I started this work and I have stayed in it for long, am used to it. Am waiting to get a certain amount of money to buy a house and a business. Maybe, $15,000 or $20,000.

Mulenda points to having started work as a creuseur out of necessity but gradually becoming used to it because it gave him a daily wage. On a regular day, he took home approximately

15,000 FC (~ US $16). The day I met him had been a particularly bad day because he had made only 4,500 FC (~ US $5). He told me that to satisfy the daily basic needs of his family he needed roughly US $8 a day, most of which went to buying food. Mulenda was one of the

127 few creuseurs who owned the mineshaft he worked in and so he had to pay those who worked on his shaft a daily wage, food costs, and the cost of any equipment needed. That amounted to US $20 per day for a team. Equipment for artisanal mining was not expensive but it needed constant replacing. Shovels, buckets, chisels, and torches constantly get worn down, broken, stolen or misplaced. For a creuseur to own a mining shaft in Katanga meant substantial monetary and personal investment and there was no guarantee that the shaft would be a productive one with high-grade copper, cobalt, or gold ore. For the vast majority of creuseurs I met, artisanal mining was a high-risk low-return activity and this made planning a household very difficult. Mulenda’s wife supplemented their domestic income through her small business run right beside their tented home where she sold water, cigarettes, soap, sweets, snacks, and sachets of whisky to other creuseurs and fellow villagers.

The unpredictable nature of his creuseur earnings hindered Mulenda from making concrete plans not just for himself and his mining business, but also for his children. Mulenda’s two eldest children were of school-going age but for him to facilitate their formal education, he would have to move his entire family out of the mines, thereby jeopardizing their domestic income. Even if he chose to become a migrant mining worker, he would not earn enough to pay for his own living costs along with those of his family. As I viewed it, Mulenda was strapped to the mines and his deepening involvement could be quantified by his future- oriented hope for that one big pay-out of $15,000 – almost a thousand times his daily income. This was a common story that creuseurs told themselves about themselves. The belief that “very soon you will get rich” drove many young men from one mine to the next in

128 the quest for that elusive rock that would end their troubles. However, even after more than a decade of searching, the rock had not appeared for Mulenda. The precarity of his everyday life had robbed him of options and it tended to orient his aspirations to imaginary futures that often contradicted the historical structures that produced his contemporary reality. Dwelling on luck brought on by a charm, lawa, or a fantastic mineral discovery was a way to endure the vagaries of daily life in the mines. Mulenda like many of his colleagues were grinding it out in the mines; they endured the hardening present and persisted guided by their wits and their dreams.

To escape this stasis – the repetitive cycle of living day by day – it was necessary to dream.

To be sure, a prevailing “structure of feeling” among many of the youth in the mines was that of the “dreamer” who displaces the alleviation of the material conditions informing his life onto a future horizon of possibilities. Categorically breaking away from mining was a way to

“make it” in life so, aspiring to leave the Congo for Le Sud, South Africa, was imagined by some young men as a key way forward (see also Walker 2014:67-97). One pensioner family that I came to know quite well was the talk of their neighbourhood for they had sent six of their nine sons to South Africa and, until today, not a single one of them had returned to

Congo even for a visit. However, if you could not leave, then you endured like the multitude of children and grandchildren of pensioners and retrenched workers. Theirs is a life defined by hardship in remote peri-urban or rural enclaves where housing is made of sackcloth; electricity, piped water, as well as plumbing are non-existent; and social services are limited to the activities on offer at restaurants, bars, and boutiques. Motorcycles – "bajaj" – transport everything from mattresses to crates of beer. Portability and the demand to quickly move

129 both people and things points to the transient nature of these spaces (see Chapter 5). The concerns of classic Copperbelt literature with permanence, urbanization, and cosmopolitanism (Epstein 1981; Ferguson 1999) seem to have been reconfigured in these artisanal mines by a sense of impermanence and the ascendancy of ruralisation.

Especially in the remote carrières in Katanga, the principles of work mirror those of the diamond smuggling Bana Lunda for whom, “French is not money” (De Boeck 1998:803). In other words, there is no necessary equivalence between education, status, and wealth. To prove it, creuseurs will point to colleagues who have university degrees and those whose parents are elites in Congolese society mingling together with former child-soldiers and military officers gone absent without leave. The mélange of social classes in the carrière is astonishing because, as Jeroen Cuvelier (2011b:298) has observed, young men will leave behind their social statuses and families when they enter the mines, which is suggestive of the existence of spontaneous communitas (Turner 1969: 132). Upon entering the mines,

Mulenda and others like him were physically and materially distanced from their urban kin in town and forced to develop solidarity with fellow strugglers in the mine. As a consequence, his hope, like that of others in his situation, lay in the surreal future: that rock that was yet to be discovered.

Neither Mulenda’s vulnerability nor his fanciful attachments to future riches were unique qualities. Life in the carrières may be structured by material lack but it engendered a diversity of behaviours and styles of thought that sometimes bewildered this very lack. Take the case of Olivier, a 21-year old young man from a family of twelve children. His father,

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Papa Kasesha, a friend of mine and menial labourer of Gécamines in Likasi, introduced me to his son upon hearing I was doing research on small-scale mining. No sooner had I met

Olivier than his father started explaining how important it was that Olivier leaves the carrières. For Papa Kasesha, the carrières were no place to raise children and Olivier had two and a wife so, according to him, it was time he started to prioritize their welfare. Smiling back at his father, Olivier explained to me that there was nowhere in Congo where he could earn $300 in a week except in the carrières. The amount was approximately the total monthly salary of Papa Kasesha who had worked the Union Minière for 31 years. Irritated by the arrogance of his son, Papa Kasesha demanded to know where all the money he earned went because, only the day before, Olivier had surprised him by asking for money to buy food and pay for fare back to the carrières. Olivier looked unmoved by his father and openly told us that he was broke because he drank, partied, and bought prostitutes with everything he had earned. “Why,” I asked? He responded:

kesho nayuwa nitaenda mu njimo na nitapata cobalt comme chaque jour. Richesse iko mu bulongo na ayiishake.

Tomorrow I know I will go down into the earth and we will find just as much cobalt [as we did the previous day/other days]. The riches come from the earth, and they don’t run out.

Paradoxically, despite the endless riches, Olivier went on to admit that he felt as though they were cursed because all the money they earned in the carrières “just disappears; it always runs out so fast.” Part of the reason he was talking to me that day was because, as I later discovered, he wanted 3000 FC (~ US $4) to get back to the carrière. An anthropologist is a resource, so he indulged me. I asked him why he thought they were cursed and he said that it was as if that area where the carrière exists forced creuseurs to spend everything they earn

131 right there. He hinted that there were some local spirits, mizimu, that controlled the mining area and that, to stay safe at night in the depths of the mine, he had “lawa” – a charm that protected him from cave-ins. Like other creuseurs, Olivier worked anytime of the day or night. His fear of the spirits was grounded in a moral economy within the mines that viewed accumulation negatively, as a form of blockage that hinders reciprocity. Borrowing from

Marcel Mauss’s work on the gift, Filip de Boeck (1998:790) has noted that blockages, within

Congolese popular understandings are often understood to be a sign of witchcraft since the reciprocity entailed in the gift is co-opted into a uni-directional transaction with restricted access. In this way, a person accumulating without redistributing can be viewed with suspicion: he/she could be a sorcerer. Similarly, among creuseurs, spending was a way to establish relations between people, just as it was also a measure of people. Those in the mines who did not expend their earning with others or fixated on “things” could be judged as engaging in a negative form of accumulation. Therefore, it was incumbent on one either to hide his riches from sight, or to spend them lavishly. Oliver had obviously chosen the latter.

If a spirit had possessed him, it was the spirit of “giving.” Money for Olivier was a means of accessing experiences that transcended the grinding hardship of mundane life; it was possibly a way of living out his fantasies.

George Bataille (1991) has argued that an analysis of economy need not necessarily start from classical Marxist readings in the organization of production but from a general economy perspective where the main concern is how to deal with non-productive surplus, or, excess. Bataille's (1991:190) optic on the economy is not premised on the scarcity of resources rather, it is more focused on the way in which surplus – “excess” – ought to be

132 dealt with through expenditure. To Bataille, Olivier could be considered a “self-conscious” individual in so far as he has freed himself from the tyrannical appetite for perpetual increase and accumulation through his lavish acts of expenditure. However, to Papa Kasesha, his son's expenditure was downright irresponsible. It only confirmed local misgivings that creusage activities led to voyoucratie,71 a local sub-culture characterized by indecency, disrespect for authority, decadence, and extravagance founded on the financial autonomy offered by artisanal mining. Rubbers (2013:220) has noted that, at least among creuseurs, the voyou, or, rogue disposition, is a form of self-fashioning that is in opposition to the social values, conventions, and hierarchy that informed the colonial paternalism of the Gécamines social order. It is, as Cuvelier (2011b:161) argues, a form of display of creuseur liminality.

However, as André and Godin (2014) also point out, not all children working as artisanal diggers adopt dispositions that are disruptive of social norms. Some children from low- income families perform this work as a part of their domestic duties that may include other household chores. Indeed, for Mulenda at least, creusage was a means of earning a livelihood and supporting family.

For creuseurs, unlike the pensioners, the past was not necessarily a resource since their entanglement in time was more defined by the overbearing pressures of the present than by the paternalistic order of the industrial past. Defiance of local social norms and even the spatial limits were one of the reactionary ways some creuseurs contested the discipline and regimentation of the past. Despite the openings offered by the future, for creuseurs, the present has an overbearing weight because the price of everyday survival, le taux du jour,

71 Voyoucratie is coined by Benjamin Rubbers in reference to a counterculture among youth in Katanga see: Rubbers(2013:220). On creuseurs as voyou see also Cuvelier (2011b:69). 133 fluctuates so much that it forecloses the actualization of many of their plans and dreams.

Unlike James Smith's (2011) observation on coltan miners in Eastern Congo who espoused a

“progressive” view of time in which digital minerals were thought of as a source of connection to an imagined global, people like Mulenda and Olivier seem to have been hanging on to their dreams so that they could endure the grinding hardship of the present.72

If, as Smith, suggests digital minerals signify for Kivutiens a connection to the global, for creuseurs in Katanga, where mining has a century-long history, the “global” is impetus for escape. Especially for an older generation of Katangese residents, the “global” already came as industrialization, it declined, and has recently returned in a sinister form as profitable private mining for elites and artisanal digging for everyone else. If you are not an elite and are struggling to simply survive, it makes a lot of sense to aspire to escape the hardship offered to you by this returning “global.”

Conclusion

The paradox of experience with industrial decline in Congo is that the teleology of linear time and social improvement, aspects that an industrial colonial modernity worked so hard to create, has been eviscerated in two distinctive ways. The generation of ex-Union Minière pensioners and retrenched workers have sought to recuperate a time before the postcolonial as an ideal time and also as a resource for reparations while their heirs, creuseurs, intensely

72 My point here differs from James Smith's view on coltan being viewed by artisanal miners in Eastern Congo as a potential future connection to the world beyond Congo. In their materiality, copper and coltan ore do not differ drastically. It is no less a “digital mineral” than coltan (the main metal used for conducting electricity in circuits). Both copper and coltan are mined as voluminous rocks whose quality can be hard to ascertain for artisanal miners. See Smith (2011:32). 134 locate themselves in the here and now. It would seem that the optic of the state on the other hand – at least in relation to mining – sees not the pensioner past perfect or the present- durative of creuseurs. Rather, its orientation appears to be in the future-redemptive. As the adjudicator of interests, the state has bracketed the social tenses of its people as being asynchronous with an imaginary late capitalist future.

The spatial alienation of creuseurs in remote rural environments, their distancing from kin networks, along with their economic disenfranchisement coming in the wake of the liberalization of the mining sector in Congo, are a microcosm of a wider disconnection of a cohort of youth from their “fathers,” the generation of salaried industrial workers. Conflict over the social comportment of young male miners suggests that this distancing is not just physical but it is also ideational as each generation jockeys to create coherence, order and meaning of the present. Nostalgia, self-reliance and endurance emerge out of the agony of industrial decline as “structures of feeling” and point to the continuing ways that the colonial encounter is locally experienced but differentially described as an unfinished project in enclaves of resource extraction in Africa.

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Chapter 3

Despotism in the Artisanal Mines of Katanga

In the previous chapter, I discussed how different generations of mineworkers narrate the experience of social decline in ways that are not only contrasting but also reinforce the idea that the present is composed of an entanglement of different durées. I argued that this periodization of experience is reflected in “structures of feeling” among different generations of mineworkers and it highlights the unfinished nature of the colonial encounter in the Congo

Copperbelt.

In this chapter, I move beyond social narration to show how forms of governance dating from the colonial era have endured and continue to define the conditions of possibility of mining in peri-urban spaces. My specific interest is with the practices of state and non-state officials in the artisanal mines in southern Congo. Artisanal mines offer a unique window into how the Congolese state manages communal resource extraction because in these sites the state, through its officials, is compelled to interact with multiple agents including local residents living near mine sites, customary authorities, creuseurs, négociants as well as private mining companies. Furthermore, because many artisanal mines are outside urban centers, state officials have a level of relative autonomy they would otherwise not enjoy. The effect of this relative autonomy is that the exercise of public authority in rural and peri-urban sites tends to be defined less by the strictures of the law or bureaucratic process than by the

136 practicalities of lack, improvisation, the urgency of events, and the caprice of state officials.

I started to understand the arbitrary role of state officials in artisanal mines after I was hailed by an official and required to explain my presence in the mine of Kilobe,73 more than a month after my arrival. On that day, as I was arraigned before a collection of state officials, it was impressed upon me that my activities needed investigation as part of a wider process of

“securitizing the mine.”

For state officials, securitizing the mines entailed controlling the movement of people and mineral products, patrolling the borders of the mine, taxing all economic activities, maintaining surveillance on miners and mine residents, collecting information about the activities of the mining public, resolving local disputes, suppressing social unrest, limiting the spread of public scandals and silencing critics. As I will explain, the all-encompassing nature of the role of state officials in Kilobe is the outcome of a historical process that has gradually transformed indirect-rule in Katanga by diminishing the role of customary authorities in influencing natural resource exploitation. To make sense of this marginalization, I begin by explaining the general trends of governing rural areas in colonial and postcolonial Congo. The aim of this analysis will be to elucidate the legacies of colonial forms of governance in the contemporary moment, or, in the words of Franz Fanon

(1967:121), the colonial “modes of presence” informing the governance of artisanal mines today. After the brief historical analysis, I explain the emergence of Kilobe mine in a bid to show how political struggles between state officials, customary authorities and artisanal miners shaped the administration of the mine. These struggles reveal how, over time, the role

73 Kilobe is a pseudonym for a mine near the city of Likasi. 137 of state officials has come to eclipse that of customary authorities and creuseurs resulting in a discourse about governance that is centered on the loosely defined problem of “security.”

Two conflicts elucidate the problem of governance in Kilobe mine.

The first conflict (scene I) is between state officials and creuseurs and it arises over attempts to privatize the mine. The second conflict (scene II) is a struggle over the image and public representation of the mine between state officials and customary authorities. Through these conflicts, I show how the more strategic influence state officials exerted over access to the mine, the less regulatory control they were able to maintain over miners, minerals and the movement of people. That means, the more state officials exercised and even extended the privileges stemming from their role as agents of public authority, the less de facto control they had over people and things moving in and out of the mine. In short, the extension of state power over the mine led to a decrease in regulatory control over it through acts of evasion, smuggling, destructive rioting, and even fraud by artisanal miners. Though officials claimed to be “securitizing” the mine, I argue that their actions did exactly the opposite: they sowed fear, physical insecurity, evasion strategies and violence in the lives of people working in and around the mines. I suggest viewing the deleterious effects of the actions of state officials in artisanal mines today as being consistent with how the Congolese state has historically intervened in the lives of rural residents.

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Spatializing public authority in rural Congo

From 1890 to 1908, when King Leopold II was forced to cede control of the Congo Free

State to the Belgian government, it was not unusual for the Belgian colonial administrators to hold hostage or even kill indigenous leaders who refused to supply rubber collectors (slaves) to private concession companies. The exacting nature of the Belgian King’s colonial administration, in which local villagers had their hands severed or maimed if they failed to meet the quota of rubber demanded by the colonial administration, earned the state the appellation bula matari or, “breaker of rocks.” Adam Hochschild (1998) argues that it also resulted in the direct and indirect deaths of up to ten million Congolese. The transfer of the

Congo to the Belgian colonial state lessened the carnage of violence but it did not mitigate the burden of the colonial state on the local population. As early as 1906, Belgian colonial policy transformed “chiefs” into auxiliary agents of the state. Nzongola-Ntalaja (2002: 35) argues, initially the Belgians recognized African rulers through a decree passed in 1891 but subsequent policy changes in 1906, 1910, and 1933 gradually modified their role into functionaries of the colonial administration whose work was to meet the “collective obligations to the state.” In Katanga and Kasai provinces these obligations entailed the maintenance of roads, the forced recruitment of labourers for the mines, compulsory cultivation of cash crops, and the mandatory collection of taxes from villagers. Recruited labourers of the industrial giant, Union Minière du Haut Katanga, were conscripted from as far away as Maniema and Kasai provinces and forced to walk a few thousand kilometers on foot to the mines in Katanga. To achieve fiscal and labour control over the Congolese, the

Belgians under the Minister of Colonies, M. Louis Franck, instituted a French-style prefecture system dividing the entire Congo into provinces, districts, and territoires of three

139 or four secteurs whose centers came to be sites for the establishment of dispensaries, schools and, more importantly for the Belgians, local courts called tribunal indigène (Anstey 1966:

62-63; Ngozola-Ntalaja 2002:36).

In theory, the prefecture system of rule masked what was a system of colonial administration that allowed the Belgians to intervene directly in the lives of villagers. Where local "chiefs" became recalcitrant to the administrateur they were replaced and often times a suitable evolué was nominated to the post or, alternatively, the administrateur de territoire could tamper with the succession process to ensure his favored candidate got into power (Young

1965:132). In other instances, Roger Anstey (1965) notes that "chiefs" who were heads of chefferies were left to be chosen by customary means but those of the secteur – which was not a customary entity since it was a construct of the colonial regime – were directly appointed by the administration. “Chiefs” who were disfavored by the administration at times had their chefferie status changed to that of a secteur and an individual suitable to the administration was assigned to replace them (Anstey 1965:69). Colin Turnbull (1962) writes a poignant memoir of one such “chief” in Orientale province who, in the early era of Belgian rule, was replaced by the colonial administrator in favor of an educated Christian man in his village. The old “chief” explained he was replaced because he continued to permit the payment of bridewealth and allowed for initiation ceremonies, which were viewed by the

Belgians as “savage” practices that “…made boys and their fathers...fall behind in the work demanded of them by law” (Turnbull 1962:79).

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For more than sixty years after the establishment of Belgian colonial rule, the administration utilized “chiefs” as proxy agents of the colonial administration. Chiefs were provided with treasuries funded through court fines, tax revenue, and government grants. For some, these perks were enough to guarantee their allegiance to the colonial master. At independence in

1960, those “chiefs” who had become comfortable with the status quo even opposed the movement for independence led by Patrice Lumumba's party, Movement National Congolais

(MNC). Ngozola-Ntalaja (2002:70) mentions that they allied themselves with a state- sponsored party with conservative pro-imperialist values titled Parti National du Progrés.

Opponents of the PNP derisively referred to it as “Parti des nègres payés,” “the party of paid blacks.” Post-independence in 1960 brought an attack on secteur “chiefs” who often had little customary legitimacy since many of them were known to have allied themselves closely with the Belgians. Crawford Young (1985:234) mentions that in Bas Zaire and Kwilu provinces secteurs were abolished altogether by the MNC when they rose to power in 1960 while in areas such as Katanga and South Kasai, moderate politicians took governorship and reinstalled formerly deposed chiefs. Significant changes took place when Mobutu Sese Seko rose to power in 1965 for he reinstalled the post-independence territorial zones of the

Belgians and started courting chiefs as the “cornerstones of our society” (Young 1985:235).

In another quick turnaround, President Mobutu in 1966 passed a land acquisition law, Loi

Bakajika, stipulating that all public land and subterranean resources were the sole property of the Zairean state. Initially the law was a measure to prevent profiteering of the resources of the state by colonial charter companies but this law would come to have far-reaching consequences for resource extraction management on customary lands, as I discuss in the

141 following section. Having legally consolidated all land as property of the state, President

Mobutu in 1969 began curtailing the influence of customary “chiefs” through a law demanding that all chiefs of secteurs and administrative centers be elected by the people for five-year terms. Customary “chiefs” of chefferies were not affected by this law; however, less than a year afterwards, between 1970 and 1972, the President repudiated his earlier law and abolished the distinctions between chefferies, secteurs, and administrative centers, insisting that “chiefs” be integrated into the existing regional administration. The reasoning behind this latest law was the elimination of preferential status granted to individuals based on their royal ancestry for this was “against democratic principles and the constitution”

(Young 1985:237).

Further changes to customary authority came in the form of ordinances creating “collectivity chiefs” and requiring that they and their deputies have, at minimum, two-years of post- primary schooling, physical and mental fitness, and be militarily supportive of the President's ruling party, MPR.74 A screening process for chiefs was put in place that eliminated most of the candidates, stirring up such intense unrest that it forced the administration to abandon earlier ordinances and the changes to customary authority. Crawford Young (1985:238-9) explains that in the 1970s, the heydays of Pres. Mobutu’s power, arbitrary changes to the territorial administration were communicated by the Minister of Interior through telegrams that were often vague, leaving the application of policies to the discretion of territorial bureaucrats. The latter were poorly equipped with the means to effect orders, or were so remote that changes would be obsolete by the time they reached them. Such was the

74 Mouvement Populaire de la Révolution. 142 upheaval and arbitrariness in Pres. Mobutu’s changes to the prefectural system of administration that some of the more powerful “chiefs” – such as the Mwant Yav of the

Lunda and the Nyim of the Kuba – simply ignored the state’s directives. Waves of directives and measures were invented and sent out by Mobutu’s state to a hierarchically structured administration that had few regulatory controls and minimal means of ensuring any compliance with state policies.

Pres. Mobutu's attempts to integrate customary authority into the regional administration of his one-party state further solidified the reach of the state into the lives of peasants much to their detriment. As in colonial times, rural areas continued to be a resource extraction zone for the demands of urban life especially through agriculture (Jewsiewicki 1983). The state exerted pressure on rural populations through indirect taxes, export duties, keeping agricultural prices artificially low, and seizing land and other resources to subsidize urban life while subjugating peasants (Jewsiewicki 1983; Young 1985:98). Being far from centers of power also hugely disadvantaged those in rural areas, for in Mobutu's one-party state, patrimonial networks were the main means of securing government positions and furthering business interests. The disconnection between rural and urban spheres emerged as a source of opportunity for bureaucrats in Mobutu's Congo for it gave them tremendous leeway to

“improvise,” “debrouiller,” state policy. In a study of the political dynamics of class formation in Lisala town in Equateur province, Michael Schatzberg (1980) outlines how bureaucrats and government officials coopted state resources to intentionally stymie social change by diverting funds for development to provide personal amenities to commissioners, chiefs and other state employees. Schatzberg suggests that when studying postcolonial

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African governments, one cannot presume apriori that the principal commitments of the state necessarily entail widening political representation and achieving meaningful social development for citizens – as is the case for governments in most liberal democracies.

Congolese experience has for a long time proved the opposite: that Congolese bureaucrats and elites can suppress social change, exclude a largely rural population from upward mobility by foreclosing access to education or employment, and intentionally limit the types of resources that reach the lower strata of society (1980:182-3).

Reflecting on the postcolonial state, Mahmood Mamdani (1996:16-18) argues that although independence enabled most African countries to achieve the de-racialization of the state, many countries struggled to entrench democracy because they were unable to reform the colonial structure of indirect rule that caused the bifurcation of the state into two unequal parts: an urban civil society of citizens under the rule of law and a rural population of subjects governed by a state-enforced customary authority. This bifurcated state is an often- unrecognized aspect of what Mudimbe (1988:2) has called the “colonizing structure,” that is, sets of actions aimed at organizing the “domination of space, the reformation of natives’ minds, and the integration of local economic histories into the Western perspective.” The perpetuation of the “colonizing structure” in Congo resulted in the growth of urban and rural spaces as separate and distinct spheres of society but, we must also ask: what is the effect of this legacy on the governance of resource extraction—an activity that increasingly occurs in rural and peri-urban spaces?

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Below, I explore some of the effects of the bifurcated state in the contemporary era of economic liberalization in peri-urban artisanal mines in southern Katanga. Delving into this issue helps us grasp not so much what the postcolonial State does75 (the literature on this is extensive) but how the state is made use of–instrumentalized–by its agents (Trefon 2009).

Literature on the instrumentalization of the Congolese state by state and non-state actors builds on scholarship supporting the view that the postcolonial state is not the exclusive purveyor of public authority in many parts of Africa (Lund 2006).76 As scholars working in

Central Africa note, there is often a diminishing influence of the state with increasing distance from capital cities (Bierschenk & Olivier de Sardan 1997; Trefon 2011:248). One of the effects of this in Eastern Congo has been the emergence of rebel groups controlling swathes of territory giving credence to the phenomenon of “governance without government” (Vlassenroot et. al 2008). An analogous sign of the reconfiguration of sovereign control in Congo is the devolution of governance of security and the protection of property rights in southern Katanga to transnational mining companies (Hönke 2010). As these examples suggest, one can no more presume that the sovereignty of the Congolese state extends to its entire territory nowadays, or, as the literature on indirect rule suggests, that it ever did in the past.

75 For a review see Young (2012) and Mbembe (2001). On the patrimonialism in Africa, see Jackson and Rosberg (1982).

76By public authority I am referring to a semblance of mutual recognition between ruler and ruled that is separate and distinct from personal relations (Lund 2006: 678). For a review of the African literature on contexts where government institutions are not the only source of public authority see Lund (2006). On recent work that looks at multiple public authorities and the practical norms of actors who are both making and unmaking the state see De Herdt and Olivier de Sardan (2015).

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In the name of security

Most of my field research on artisanal mining was undertaken in a mine that was a few minutes from the city of Likasi by moto, or, motorcycle taxi. Despite this, the trip to the mine always took longer. Part of the reason was that as one moved away from the city, any semblance of urbanity quickly faded from view beginning with the smooth tarmac road detouring rather abruptly to the right and ending at the gigantic gate of a private mining company. Straight ahead we proceeded, the smooth tarmac giving way to potholed earth. My motorcycle chauffeur, or manseba77 as they were known, had to slow down just long enough for me to grasp the metal luggage carriers behind my seat for much-needed support. As we tried to dodge potholes, the grass beside would linger in my peripheral view long enough for me to appreciate its sheer height. Stone-built houses became harder to spot as the size of the road narrowed and became a bike path. As it narrowed, the road became more treacherous and bumpier. To calm myself I usually talked to my motorcycle chauffeur and invariably the topic of discussion was helmets. Most motorcycle riders in Likasi did not wear helmets in spite the fact that many whom I spoke to owned them. A common reason I was offered was that it made their heads hot and heavy over the course of their workday. I argued with many of the manseba and eventually decided that whenever I had to choose between riders at the bus-stand, I would select the one with a helmet as a way of sensitizing the rest of the riders about safety. The other “unorthodox” habit I developed was refusing to ride three people on a bike, as was the norm. This meant that I paid a little extra for my trip but the convenience and comfort was worth it for me, my manseba and his bike. Over time, I became awfully

77 Manseba is a word in Tshiluba that means “uncle.” Part of the reason that motorcycle chauffeurs are referred to in this way is because many in the trade are ethnically Luba people from Kasai province. 146 conspicuous along the road to the mine because I made trips there every other day, rode without another passenger and sported a rather flashy bright orange helmet. The upside to my visibility, I thought, was it showed local authorities that I had nothing to hide. Over time, I presumed that I would be considered a regular fixture in Kilobe mine.

My fantasy of acceptance came crashing down one afternoon as we were riding past the main gate leading into the mine. The officials at the entrance waved me to stop but because I knew that the majority of them had been informed of my presence and the nature of my work, I waved back at them and told my manseba to keep going. Stopping at the main barrier was inviting unwarranted questioning or possibly a bribe. I figured I would deal with the officials when departing the mine later that evening. However, for some reason, my manseba got worried as the waving from the officials became more frantic and he eventually stopped. He turned back and we went to the small gazebo made of sticks and sackcloth where the local authorities were seated. Inside there were about seven men, all of whom were familiar to me except for one. It was the unfamiliar man who requested I come in and speak to them. I stopped at the entrance to the gazebo to take off my motorcycle helmet and greeted everyone saying, “Yambo enu.” They replied, "Yambo sana.” The unfamiliar man motioned for me to sit down across from him. As I was moving to do so, he told me to first “liberate” my manseba. I did so, knowing that the official planned to detain me for questioning. As I returned to the gazebo, everyone was eagerly staring at me. The unfamiliar man glared at me and accusingly asked:

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"Comment unakatala kushimama ku barriére?" (Why do you fail to stop at the gate?). Before

I could answer he added, "Tunapashwa kuyua uko wapi saa yote, il faut unashimama na kutulamukia" (We ought to know where you are all the time, you must stop and greet us).

I calmly replied, saying that I waved to say hello like I always do. I did not stop because I was late for a rendezvous with an informant. He was unconvinced by my response so I asked him: “How do you want me to greet you?” At that point, another man on my left interjected, saying that I did not understand what was being asked.

I feigned confusion and then the unfamiliar man asked me to present my mikanda, documents. I handed over copies of my research permits to him and he went through each and every one of them meticulously either because his French was rusty or because he was looking for an opening to ask a question. For the most part, the other state officials skimmed through the papers searching for stamps from their specific state departments. My research permits were signed and had seals from a number of public institutions and state agencies.

After verifying the signatures, the unfamiliar man passed my documents back to me in exasperation.

“You don't understand,” the man on my left said, “Dany (the unfamiliar man) is saying that since the United Nations visited this mine, we have been getting reports saying little children

(minors) are working in the mine.”

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I replied by nodding and informed the man on my left that on the previous day there was a report posted on the website of Radio Okapi78 saying that children were working as child labourers in Kilobe mine. As it were, the story was already in the news.

The official seated to my left looked a little surprised and turned to the others who were now visibly disconcerted. Dany then interjected asking, “do you have the article from Radio

Okapi with you?”

I said, “no. But, I can print it and bring it to you tomorrow.”

He then continued saying, “You see, we want to securitize (ku-sécuriser) this area. Do you think this is a small job? Have you ever seen creuseurs rioting?”

I responded saying, “yes I have.”

Dany looked at me with anger because he thought I was trying to outwit him with my responses which, I have to admit, were meant to annoy him as much as he was annoying me.

So, I reciprocated his dirty looks with an indifferent stare to show him that I knew he was implying that it was me who leaked to the news agencies the information about minors working in the mine.

78 The United Nations-run news agency in Congo. It is an important part of the UN mission in Congo and it broadcasts across the country. 149

Two days prior to my visit, a delegation79 of ministers, city officials, and state officers accompanied the Head of the United Nations stabilization mission in Congo, Martin

Kobler,80 on a tour of Kilobe mine. The visit by such a high-ranking UN official was unprecedented and it posed problems given the sorry conditions of artisanal mines in Congo.

On that day, Martin Cobler was likely shown only what the officials wanted him to see.

Without a doubt, the mine officials at the entrance to the mine were still mulling over why the Head of the UN in Congo would bother to visit that particular mine. And why, in spite of being told the contrary, a story had emerged about minors working in the mine. To me, there was no coincidence between that visit and the questioning I was facing. I was certain that

Dany suspected that I may have been some sort of UN informer.

An hour after my initial exchange with Dany, he was still not done. He took it upon himself to explain to me for a few more minutes about how “security was in decline” in the mine and, therefore, every time I arrived at the mine I ought to "present myself to the officials at the gate.” He insisted that officials would then appoint someone to accompany me as I went about my work. I nodded approvingly at his suggestions (even though I did not intend to follow through on what he was proposing) and this acquiescence finally silenced him. When he was satisfied, he folded his hands across his chest, motioned to me to collect my papers and, as he slouched back on his plastic seat, waved me off.

***

79 The visit of this delegation is discussed later in the chapter. 80 http://radiookapi.net/actualite/2014/02/10/katanga-femmes-enfants-toujours-actifs-dans-les-mines- kamantanda/#.U9kYpqjey84 150

As I departed from the gazebo, I began contemplating being trailed by a state functionary. It quickly occurred to me that such an arrangement would completely impede my work and raise suspicion among my creuseur informants that I was a state collaborator. In the mines state agents were considered opportunists because, to most people, all they did was demand money from people working in the mines. They often sat around all day at the entrance to the mine demanding fees from the manseba, as well as the men who transported washed copper on old bicycles and also négociants, or buyers of copper ore. Only on rare occasions did they visit the mining shafts to see what was actually going on. And, even when they did, such visits were often personal trips to check up on mineshafts they had sponsored or those where they could purchase copper ore. Few if any people in the mines cooperated with the agents de l’état and even fewer shared information with them mainly because they worked for themselves under the guise of the state. It was widely understood that state agents lived off the hard-earned income of creuseurs, négociants, and local village residents, rather than the low and infrequent wages they earned from their salaried employment. Most people in the mine found this objectionable because the state, through its agents, did not provide any tangible benefits from the taxes and daily fees levied on mine workers, traders and other local residents. The only valid claim brandished by agents of the state was that it was the law to pay for resources extracted from the land. Indeed, it was, but to what end were these payments made?

The vast majority of creuseurs knew little about the laws governing resource extraction so when faced with a belligerent enforcer of state policy they were left with few choices but to pay the fee or evade their captor. At one point the number of officials I counted numbered

151 sixteen and were from agencies as diverse as the mining police, the National Intelligence

Agency (ANR),81 the Provincial Ministry of Mines,82 the Provincial Administration, the

Department of Immigration (DGM),83 the Association of Artisanal Miners of Katanga

(EMAK),84 the artisanal mining technical service (SAEMAPE)85 and the municipal office in the city of Likasi. The sheer range of various state agents and their coordinated attempts to control and limit the movement of people and minerals made it agonizingly hard to evade them so, while many individuals reluctantly paid fees for working in the mine, they unanimously felt that the presence of the les agents de l’état was not only unjust but also illegitimate. It was illegitimate because they did almost nothing to improve the conditions of work of miners or local residents yet they were ever demanding of the mandatory 10% tax for mineral extraction and, oftentimes, even more. One négociant who was struggling to make ends meet outlined the conundrum he faced when he posed to me the question: “why should I be burdened with the task of paying the salaries of agents of the state when I have almost nothing for my own household?”

Although Dany talked about “securitizing” the mine, I will show below that in fact the actions of state officials often result in the opposite: that is, the tactics of control employed by state officials in the mine under the guise of officialdom produce physical insecurity and

81 Agence Nationale de Renseignement 82 Police de Mines 83 Direction Générale de Migration. 84 L’Association des Exploitants Minier Artisanaux du Katanga. This is a para-state organization formed in the year 2000 after the rise to power of President Laurent Kabila. Its mandate is twofold; it is a cooperative (federation) that finds a market for the sale of minerals from artisanal mines and, it is a trade union (syndicat) that is meant to support and represent the interests of artisanal miners before the state. Its proximity to state mechanisms of control is generally viewed as very close.

85 Service d'Assistance et d'Encadrement des Mines Artisanales et de Petit Echelle. 152 violence in the lives of the mining public because they are aimed at seizure, the daily seizure of products of mining or the attempted seizure and annexation of the entire mine. My discussion of the modalities of control and exploitation in the peri-urban locations where artisanal mines exist intends to highlight how, in what are often rural and peri-urban spaces, the state and non-state actors like customary officials have competing logics of public authority that often disregard the rights of individuals working in the mines. The harassment faced by miners and the mining public at the hands of state officials reveals that they are not citizens with civic liberties and inalienable rights; rather, for as long as they remain in peri- urban mining spaces they are the subjects of despotic state officials.

To map out the emergence of public authority in Kilobe mine, I begin by first reconstructing the emergence of the mine based on interviews with local mine officials, a majority of whom were customary authorities. As such, one must keep in mind that though customary officials may lament transgressions to their authority due to the rising influence of state officials in their territories, their positions of privilege and power were augmented and maintained by an enduring (colonial) structure of indirect-rule that was just as problematic, if not worse, than what is now emerging with the liberalization of the economy. If, as I argue, state officials in artisanal mines in the Congo Copperbelt are attempting to substitute themselves for customary authorities, it is not because they want to eradicate the system of indirect-rule.

Rather, as I show, extending the authority of the state to areas outside urban centers is a means used by state agents to privatize the public authority of the state for personal gain.

This struggle over public authority in peri-urban and rural sites of mining changes nothing but the figure of power.

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A mine for the widows and children of Gécamines

The year was 2006. President Joseph Kabila had been voted into office after a run-off with

Jean Pierre Bemba in which the President officially won by a margin of 16%, or approximately 2.6 million votes. In Katanga, a stronghold of power for the incumbent president, I was told there were celebrations. Back then there was a strong sense that the youthful leader, who at the time was only 35 years of age, could spur growth and development in the mineral-rich province. Moise Katumbi Chapwe, a renowned Katangese businessman allied to the President’s party, was campaigning to become Governor of

Katanga, and won. Copper prices were on the rise and there was a modest mining boom underway in Katanga that created much optimism in the sector. New private mining companies were establishing themselves and coincidentally, artisanal mining was also attracting thousands of jobless youth to the mines – many of whom were children whose parents had been forcibly retrenched from the state-run company, Gécamines. By 2006, the company had already completed the retrenchment of 45% of its 23,000 plus workforce

(Rubbers 2010:330) and thousands of children, who were once supported by the company's welfarist programs, were by then out of school because their parents could no longer support them with the paltry pensions they had received from the company. A number of young men living in the mining camps beside the Gécamines factory in Likasi created jobs for themselves sifting through murky factory run-off, looking for small nuggets of gold. Others had become experts at stealing processed minerals from the company’s factory. Hundreds more had ventured beyond the local neighborhoods and squatted on property owned by a

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Catholic mission, starting an artisanal mine named “Di-Giovanni,” after the Italian priest who ran the mission.

One morning in September of 2006, members of the Association of Artisanal Miners of

Katanga (EMAK) arrived at the mine of Di Giovanni with some bad news. They announced that everyone at the mine had been given 48 hours to leave with whatever they owned because the mine had been “bought.” Creuseurs, négociants, and other petit commerçants protested claiming they were being forced out of the mine with nowhere to go. Others lamented the huge investments they had made were all going to go to waste if they were forced out because they would receive no compensation as they had illegally occupied private property. A small number of people packed and left. Those who refused to leave claimed that they had been betrayed by EMAK whose mandate, they argued, was to fight for the rights of creuseurs. EMAK was formed in the year 2000 with a twofold mandate: to be as a cooperative (federation) that finds a market for the sale of minerals from artisanal and small-scale mining and, two, to be a trade union (syndicat) meant to support and represent the interests of artisanal miners before the state. In recent years, EMAK has come to be seen less as a bridge between artisanal miners and the state and more as a para-state organization allied with elites in government (Global Witness 2006). No wonder many of those who remained claimed that EMAK had either willfully or negligently facilitated the sale of the

Di-Giovanni mine. Either way, the time had come for creuseurs to push back against the take-over of the mine. On the day following the warning, the “robots” arrived. These were uniformed riot police dressed in black, kitted with helmets, bullet proof vests, rifles, ankle pads, and heavy army boots. The “robots” descended on the mine and engaged in running

155 battles with creuseurs who retaliated by stoning them as the “robots” set about systematically destroying all the shack structures in the mine. What were once restaurants, bars and bedrooms of various residents of Di-Giovanni were reduced to rubble. Within minutes, the entire village around the mine had been razed to the ground and young men were scampering for safety, women were wailing from a distance over their lost property and guards were standing at the entrance to the mine brandishing rifles.

The wanton destruction of squatters’ property and violent uprooting of people from the Di-

Giovanni mine caused tension in the city of Likasi as creuseurs decided to publicly demonstrate at the city hall demanding a solution to the loss of their livelihood. There were rumors of rising insecurity because Di Giovanni mine had been shut down denying many a legitimate means of making a living. Word got around to the mulopwe86 of Kilobe and a meeting was organized between him, officials of Gécamines and Likasi municipal representatives. At that meeting, it was agreed that since the company was not exploiting

Kilobe mine, it ought to be designated as an artisanal to accommodate those displaced from

Di Giovanni. The argument put forward by the mulopwe and others was, rather than leaving the mine unutilized and the youth unemployed, the company could carve out a section of the mine for the “widows and children of Gécamines workers who had died waiting for their pensions.”87 A few weeks later, Kilobe mine was re-opened, some kilometers from the city of Likasi.

86 Mulopwe is the traditional title given to customary leaders in the conglomeration of Luba ethnic communities that make up a large part of south-western Congo. The meaning of this title and its historical significance is profoundly simplified when such leaders are referred to as chiefs (that is why whenever I refer to them as such I put the word in quotations). A mulopwe in Luba understandings often holds both political and spiritual power in his community (see chapter 4). 87 Interview with Baraka, March 2014. 156

As with all the artisanal mines in Katanga, the state was involved in the establishment of the mine. To legally create an artisanal mine in Congo, approval must be sought from the

Minister of Mines and the Governor of the province where the mine is to be located (Article

109, Code Minier). When this was done the mine opened. At first it was overseen by three state officials and the representative of the mulopwe of Kilobe, making a total of four officials. Those from the state were from the national intelligence agency (ANR), and the mining police (PM). Then there was a member of EMAK, the association of artisanal miners

– a voluntary non-profit organization created on the 7th of August 2000 to support and defend the interests of artisanal miners in Katanga (Lutundula et.al 2006: 164). It is technically not an arm of the state but it operates as if it were. Global Witness (2006) has called it the “eyes of the state” in the artisanal mines and several of its agents openly explained to me that their organization was a “service de l’état” for they had taken on the role of organizing and supporting thousands of creuseurs into a union and a cooperative that supposedly promoted their mining interests. Exactly how did it do so?

To find out more about Kilobe mine, I spoke to Didier, a local official at the mine representing the interests of the customary authorities of the region. He was in his early forties and had worked on the Likasi city council before quitting and moving into the artisanal mine administration for a local “chief.” Having worked in the mine since its inception in 2006, he was a source of institutional memory on the emergence of artisanal mining. I interviewed him in 2011 and again in 2014, when he offered me a moving story of the history of Kilobe mine and the drama of its privatization.

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When the mine of Kilobe was opened, Didier and three other officials (rep. from intelligence,

EMAK, and Mining police) installed themselves as managers of the mine. They began by enforcing a mandatory 10% tax on all raw mineral production from the mine. While this tax was in accordance with Article 262 of the Code Minier du Congo, it is officially supposed to be collected by the Division des Mines, the provincial department charged with enforcing the rules and regulations of the mining code in Katanga. Since officials from Division des Mines were absent and remained so for some reason, the original four officials, the representatives of customary authority, EMAK, ANR, and Police des Mines, improvised and began enforcing taxation in the mine and dividing it among themselves. Legally the 10% tax is applied upon the sale of mineral ores but, in practice, when minerals leave an artisanal mine they are likely sold by mineral traders more than once to various maisons, or depots, before finally arriving at a local processing center.

Creuseurs may sell their copper ore right at the mining shaft if the ore is of high purity and requires no cleaning or they may sell at the river where cleaning of the ore takes place. Most creuseurs in Kilobe sold the ore at the river once it had been washed and packed into bags because at the river there were more buyers (négociants). Whether or not they got paid and how they did was a separate issue altogether for most creuseurs took loans from négociants, which they used to meet their production needs. Some were thus obliged to pay their debts first; meet their physicals needs, domestic obligations and, finally, pay the authorities. In the scale of priorities, the state was quite unimportant. Mine officials also knew this and thus, they used seizure as the main strategy of obtaining their dues. If they discovered a mine was

158 producing substantial ore, they descended on it and levied their fee, which was paid in kind with bags of ore. Even then, creuseurs often told me that they made every attempt to make sure that the officials received what was quite often the lowest quality of ore. The point here is that, though the 10% tax introduced a revenue generation measure for the state, in its application it neither regulated nor controlled the work of miners or officials. It was easy for miners to evade it or subvert its effects by hiding the ore they extracted or smuggling it outside the mine. Furthermore, because the amounts declared as state revenue were at the discretion of mine officials, it is not clear if any money was ever declared as state revenue from the mine.

The tax on mineral production was the first of two taxes. A second tax was applied upon exiting the mine with sacks of ore. It was never clear to me whether this tax was applied to the transportation of minerals or to their final sale. In any case, it was usually paid by négociants who purchased sacks of clean ore from creuseurs and thereafter, had to transport the sacks to the mining depots in the city of Likasi. The sacks weighed 100-150 kilograms and were called a bombé for they looked like (and were imagined to weigh as much as) a bomb. Old men with reinforced Kinga88 bicycles or young upstarts from the city on motorcycles were often tasked with ferrying the ore to the depots. The tax on a bombé leaving the mine was about US $1-2 per sack and collecting it was far easier than the first tax because it was paid in cash on exit along the only direct road to the city. For as long as there

88 Kinga is a reference to the King Edward bicycle introduced in Katanga by early British traders that came up to Elizabethville (Lubumbashi) from Rhodesia after the establishment of the Congo Free State in the early 1900s. 159 was work being done in the mine, the mine officials were seated at the entrance to the mine, ready to collect the tax ostensibly for “the state.”

In claiming a fiduciary role over the mine on behalf of the state directly, as agents of the state, or, indirectly, as customary officials, the mine officials were collectively able to impose an unquestioned guise of officialdom, which masked their private interest. Of course, the mining public knew, or at least suspected, that officials were appropriating the taxes collected, but the reality was that there was little one could do to change that because all the mine officials had, to some degree, the provisional support of various arms of the state bureaucracy. Furthermore, because of the systemic weakness of the regulatory capacity of the state, mine officials could easily claim to be collecting revenues that would otherwise be lost to the state if their presence in the mine were lacking. It seemed to me that what mattered more in the eyes of the state was not what mine officials were actually doing in artisanal mines but what they were able to preclude, restrict and forestall. All the more reason why some mine officials used the language of “securitizing” the mine.

At the time of the opening of Kilobe mine, global copper prices were rising after almost two decades of decline and the demand for the metal was mainly coming from China. The newly opened mine attracted hundreds of people from the city of Likasi and far beyond. They all came to work as creuseurs, petty traders, négociants, and all manner of service providers, causing upheaval in the tiny village of Kilobe near the mine. Young men in the village, some of whom were school-going children, subsistence farmers, or petit commerçants threw themselves into the creuseur lifestyle seeking quick money. The village grew, attracting all

160 sorts of opportunists and compelling the local “chief” to designate land for the newcomers in a section apart from where older residents lived. Since the mine was not too far from the city of Likasi, many of those who came to Kilobe for work returned to the Likasi at the end of their business day. When I interviewed the retired customary head of the village of Kilobe in

2011, he revealed then that there were a lot of tensions between newcomers and old residents of the village because the area had grown from a small place of less than a hundred people to over two thousand at its peak around 2009. Older residents of Kilobe village informed me that the rapid influx of miners to the area attracted the attention of the officials in the city and, with the artisanal mining regulations in place, it was not long before all sorts of functionaries appeared at the entrance to the mine with papers claiming to represent municipal, provincial and national departments of the government. Didier and the other three overseers of the mine kept sending these officials away but this did not stop them from repeatedly returning with the same claim. State officials from the Mining Technical Service

(SAEMAPE), a section of the department of mining, as well as representatives from the provincial administration laid claim to the mine in light of the fact that they too were from an arm of the government whose mandate expressly extended to artisanal mines. To Didier, these were just the “hungry officials” suffering from their low pay. So, he and the original group of officials made it hard for the new officials to settle in the mine and for months they kept chasing them back to the city. Such was the audacity involved in “securitizing” their personal interests against those of fellow state officials.

Eventually, Didier explained, after almost two years of disputes and negotiations, the new officials were included in the mine and a share of the taxes was given to them. However, as I

161 explain below, this increase in state agents created internal competition among officials over the resources and revenues in the mine.

Companies and the politics of privatization

Scene I – KMP

The mine of Kilobe may have been designated as an artisanal mine but that designation was subject to different interpretations by the various state agents working there. Starting in 2008, shifts in local level politics raised concerns that the mine was going to be privatized due to the lucrative nature of the mineral deposits it held. Fears of the privatization of artisanal mines are always circulating in Katanga and, more than anything else, reveal citizens’ mistrust of the state. The symbols of this mistrust in Kilobe were the state officials whose number had increased from four in 2006 to sixteen by 2011.

From around 2011, relations between customary authorities and the state officials in the mine were strained over a host of issues. None was more contentious than the withdrawal of mulambo, or tribute, paid to the customary “chief”, or mulopwe, of Kilobe. Such tribute was always paid in one form or another, even in colonial times when mineral extraction was taking place within areas under traditional authority. Failure to allow the mulopwe to collect tribute was viewed as tantamount to disputing or negating his authority. According to Didier, mulambo is the mulopwe’s “droit de terre,” his “right to the land” and, it draws its significance and meaning from a pre-colonial moral matrix that views the mulopwe as a central figure capable of influencing the fertility of the land (see Chapter 4). It did not matter

162 to Didier that the notion of mulambo, or any legal sense of customary control of land, had been effectively nullified in the post-colonial era when Mobutu passed Loi Bakajika granting the state sole rights over “all the soil and subsoil” in the Congo. For Didier and other followers of the customary authority, no law could summarily dispossess them of what they knew was their ancestral heritage: their land. And, it is in terms of customary rights that they have continuously made a successful claim for the revenues generated in the mine (more on this in chapter 4).

Changes in the relations between customary and state authorities took a turn for worse around 2009 when the Likasi office of the Association of Artisanal miners in Katanga,

EMAK, appointed a new director. The organization had been formed by former employees of Gécamines with the mandate of supporting small-scale miners by providing them placements in given mines, registering working miners, facilitating their occupational health and wellness, and lobbying for their demands with the provincial government. Initially, the founders of EMAK sought a market for minerals produced by its members so they struck an agreement to supply Gécamines with raw minerals in exchange for cash payments. This venture with Gécamines fell through in 2010, discrediting both organizations in the eyes of creuseurs as debts accumulated to EMAK and its members went unpaid. Subsequent dealings in EMAK have been almost exclusively with private mining companies and they have often entailed the recruitment of creuseurs to work for private mining companies at below-market remuneration. According to people working in the mines, EMAK holds a dismal record at just about everything it does, especially its main function: championing miners’ rights. In large part this is because many in the organization’s employ were rumored

163 to be beneficiaries in the contracts signed by private mining companies for the exploitation of artisanal mines.

The emblematic source of derision in the eyes of many local residents was the head of

EMAK in the city of Likasi. She was known to own numerous residences around the city, luxury off-road vehicles, and more recently, a new private primary school named “école des elites,” “school for the elites.” As hinted in the name, the school was attended by the children of upper-class residents in the city. A few kilometers from Likasi, in the village of Kilobe, the children of creuseurs can be found studying in two tiny rooms whose walls are a patchwork of recycled iron sheets nailed together on wooden planks. Students sit on tree stumps, immovable makeshift benches, or broken plastic chairs. There are no desks, windows, doors, or electric lights to illuminate the classroom. Like students in “école des elites,” those in Kilobe also wear the national uniform for primary school students: a white shirt and navy-blue shorts for boys or, navy blue skirts for girls. That, though, is the extent of the similarities between both schools, or so it would seem. In every other visible regard, the schools were worlds apart except for the confusing fact that the director of EMAK was, by association, responsible for the existence of both schools. She privately owned the elite school and, in her professional capacity as the head of the association of artisanal miners in

Likasi, had helped create the other through her organization’s efforts to “improve” the welfare of creuseurs. The irony of this situation was not lost on creuseurs who understood the neglect they experienced as an outcome of the apathy and corruption of their leaders.

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When the director of EMAK in Likasi was installed in 2009, her presence coincided with the arrival of a private mining company called KMP in Kilobe mine. Didier described KMP as a

“muzungu,” or foreign, company that set up in the mine with the intention of enclosing the space for private exploitation. One of their first acts was disbanding the entire group of state officers, leaving behind only EMAK officials and the mining police – both of whom were maintained to ensure that all copper creuseurs’ produced was sold directly to the company at its on-site depot. This move effectively established a monopoly in the mine and rendered the work of négociants obsolete since the individuals made their living by buying minerals at source and selling them in the city for a small profit. In addition, KMP blocked access to and from the mine, making it impossible for the representative of the customary chief or the state intelligence agents to collect the taxes they usually levied on minerals leaving the mine. This basically suppressed the main source of income for all the mine officials, with the exception of EMAK and the Mining Police. The plan was simple; EMAK was to regulate the labour of creuseurs while the mining police were charged with monitoring the mine to ensure that minerals were sold to the company at its on-site depot.

Over time, Didier explained, there was growing resentment towards the situation in the mine as it increasingly began to look like a coup instigated by EMAK and enforced by the Mining

Police against all the other officials. The new arrangement went against the previously negotiated order in which all the state officials and the customary representative shared out the taxes levied at the mines’ gate. It confirmed the lingering suspicions that EMAK officials may have played a role in “selling off” the mine since, rather than protest against the private company, they were in fact its main proponents and beneficiaries. If the privatization of the

165 mine was lamentable for the other mine officials, it was utterly disastrous for creuseurs because they were now forced to sell their copper ore to the muzungu at a non-negotiable price that was lower than prevailing market rates. Lower prices confirmed the oppressiveness of KMP towards the people of Kilobe and this was the tipping point for creuseurs, who understandably mistrust any organization, state or otherwise, that tends to regulate their operations by force or fiat. Young men vowed to stop selling their ore to the company and instead started smuggling sacks through the bush in an attempt to get a better price in town.

Those who EMAK officials and the mining police caught were forced to pay large bribes to avoid getting their sacks confiscated. Bribes ranged from US $8 - $12, more than double the

US$ 3-4 gate tax they had previously paid. To reduce the chance of getting caught, the disenfranchised mine officials helped creuseurs evade the mining police so that they could smuggle copper ore at the nominally lower tax rate. In this way both the creuseurs and former mining officials were able to survive temporarily under the KMP monopoly.

After nine months of the oppressive KMP monopoly, Didier said that the mine became a shadow of its past. It had lost much of its bustling energy as some creuseurs had moved on to other mines, restaurants closed down, and négociants slowly abandoned the mine. The remaining miners in Kilobe began organizing for a strike against the company and asked for help from officials who had been marginalized by KMP, EMAK and the mining police. The idea behind the strike was straightforward: walk to the office of mayor of Likasi, request an audience with the mayor and explain to him the difficulties creuseurs were facing in the mine.

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In reality the strike was anything but simple or straightforward. A local official recounted that on the morning of the strike, creuseurs launched the opening salvo by stoning the car carrying KMP’s muzungu owner, thus preventing him from accessing the mine. Next, they informed former officials that they were going to the city of Likasi to get answers from the mayor. They warned everyone in the mine, saying those who stood in their way would be viciously fought. To signal their rage and overflowing discontent they burned the small local market of Kilobe. Residents living around the road leading to Kilobe scattered for safety upon spotting the rowdy group of creuseurs on the advance, covered in dust, shovels and pick axes in hand and rapturous in song. It is fairly uncommon to witness a demonstration of creuseurs in the city unless the young men are in a funeral procession, and even on those occasions mine officials will accompany the young men to ensure that there is limited destruction of private property. On this occasion though, Didier said either négociants or former state officials who sympathized with the plight of the creuseurs exhorted them with liquor and money to “boost morale” before the short trek to the city. The creuseurs insisted that Didier, as the representative of the customary “chief,” accompany them to explain to the

Mayor their grievances. He became one of those in the crowd chanting,

Woo wooo wooo, today, today, Moise89 will answer, today, today, Moise will say, today, today, the mayor will answer, or we will burn the city.

Just before reaching the city, an EMAK official pulled by on his motorcycle and went towards the crowd in a hopeless attempt to calm the enraged creuseurs. He was quickly

89 Moise Katumbi Chapwe was the Governor of Katanga at the time. 167 surrounded, grabbed, hoisted high in the air and heaped on the ground. His motorcycle was seriously vandalized and he was beaten and rolled around in the dust, left too bruised to walk. Upon seeing the treatment to the EMAK official, local residents in Likasi scattered as the crowd marched on to the mayor's office. Rumors quickly spread that creuseurs had killed a state official and were baying for blood. There were fears the protest would result in the pillaging of the city but sober minds in the crowd urged the creuseurs to focus on the task of conveying their intended grievance, which was the presence of KMP in Kilobe. By the time they arrived at the northern end of the city, the crowd had grown by hundreds as street children and the homeless joined the protest. People I spoke to talked of the incident as a raid of sorts, saying that the creuseurs walked on the city and took it by storm causing panic at the central bus station. Commuters scampered for safety, businesspeople boarded-up shops and hastily departed, fearing the worst. Fortunately, cool heads eventually prevailed that morning and the crowd somehow managed to congregate at the office of the mayor of Likasi to demand an immediate audience with him.

Didier mentioned that the mayor was forced to stand his ground and speak to creuseurs, otherwise the city center would have been destroyed. Such was the rage of the young men that only once the crowd was calm enough did the mayor ask that they elect a representative to speak on their behalf. A digger named Simo came forward and made a strong appeal for assistance to stop the operations of KMP on the grounds that Gécamines and the Governor of

Katanga gave the mine of Kilobe to creuseurs to exploit. Simo explained to the mayor and those who were present that just prior to the arrival of KMP in Kilobe, the Governor of

Katanga, Moїse Chapwe, had passed by their mine on an official visit in the area and he had

168 personally guaranteed creuseurs that the mine was not for sale. The question Simo wanted the Mayor to answer was simple: “how was KMP able to establish itself in Kilobe after the

Governor had guaranteed them the mine? Did the Governor lie to them or was the company acting against his word?”

The mayor replied, saying he was going to call the Governor on the spot and in the presence of the creuseurs to verify if he had indeed given approval for the privatization of Kilobe mine. In the presence of the creuseurs, the Governor responded to the Mayor saying he did not want any unrest in Likasi and was not aware of any company called KMP. He demanded the creuseurs return to their work immediately saying that Kilobe mine was given to the

"widows in Likasi.” Immediately, the crowd of young men erupted in joy and began their triumphant return to the mine, much to the Mayor’s relief. Didier returned with them and he remembered seeing the crowd of creuseurs arrive at the mine and attack KMP, looting and destroying equipment that belonged to the company. The muzungu of the company never returned to the mine and lost his entire investment.

It is worth underlining here the illocutionary character of the state authority in Katanga; a power that makes it possible to grant or take away privileges by fiat based on an impromptu verdict of a central figure of state authority. This verbal performativity of authority is a long- standing motif of state power dating from the times of le maréchal, President Mobutu, who made the now infamous claim, “moto na moto abongisa,” “let each person sort things [out at his own level]” (Petit & Mutambwa 2005: 482). Through this claim, Pres. Mobutu effectively idealized the suspension of all rules of political gamesmanship and critiques on

169 the origins, aims, or operation of state authority. He not only made state power opaque and arbitrary in its logic but also transformed his word and, by extension, the word of central figures of the state into practical law.

The resolution to the case of KMP shows that the improvisational character of popular justice tends to favor locals in the fight against “foreigners,” especially when the peace and security of the wider public is leveraged as a threat. In such instances, only the highest public authority of the land can be the arbiter of a dispute in which the plaintiff (creuseur) is not at the same level as the defendant (KMP). When disadvantaged and marginalized groups in

Congo revert to local authorities they may do so out of desperation but this does not take away from the idea that such a move is also informed by a historical understanding of state power as arbitrary, normatively indivisible and vested in a singular social figure. The singularity of power, that is, the sense that “power is eaten whole” is an artifact of the political ideology of Mobutuism which, as Valentin Mudimbe (1994:148-9) notes, framed the President as “guide-messiah” whose speeches and acts were the basis of an ideology that sought to claim sovereignty over the entire nation without revealing either the reasons for its existence or the connections it had with the realities it claimed to account for. In a similar fashion, the words of the governor of Katanga – who ironically happened to be named Moїse

(Moses) – “saved” the creuseurs and reinstated state authority over the mine but also rehearsed theatrics of power, painting himself as a sort of messiah whose illocutionary power resembles that of le Marechal Mobutu and, by extension, the Belgian masters.

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While officials in the mine may claim to have the interests of creuseurs at heart, in no way were their actions indicative of this. On each occasion that private companies have come to

Kilobe mine promising jobs, good purchasing prices for copper ore, or improved mineral exploitation techniques, the beneficiaries were always either state or customary officials.

Other than the formation of the artisanal mine itself, there has been no single deliberate initiative undertaken by either state or customary authorities to improve the lives and working conditions of creuseurs and this highlights the ways in which artisanal mining is organized by each of these groups so as to prey upon miners and local residents. Despite the reality that the mine of Kilobe and tens of other artisanal mines in Katanga are organizationally structured in a manner that informally exploits local villagers and miners through unwarranted extortion payments, officials had no qualms about making deals with private mining companies because the money from deals and extortion rackets essentially substituted for their low and infrequent salaries. So, while the official claim may be that artisanal mines exist to provide some low-income social groups with a subsistence survival strategy, the picture is more complex. Income earned by anyone working in the mines is subject to “taxations” that directly supplement the irregular salaries of lower level state officials, justifying their presence there and the very existence of artisanal mines in Katanga.

On the other hand, state officials that were higher up the social ladder had few scruples about facilitating the privatization of artisanal mines when it financially suited them, despite knowing the disastrous effects this could have on the lives and social arrangements miners.

On the whole, the cascading effect of the hierarchy of exploitation in artisanal mines meant that, except at the lower level, there was little in the way of solidarity between state officials, customary authorities, or creuseurs. On the day the UN delegation came to the mine, this

171 lack of solidarity and the effects of the power struggles between state and customary authorities was laid bare for all to see.

Scene II: United Nations in Kilobe

The failed attempt to install KMP and more mining companies that attempted to establish themselves in Kilobe mine severely strained the relations between EMAK officials, who were closely aligned with the interests of private mining companies, and customary authorities. EMAK officials maintained that the customary authorities were thwarting efforts to modernize the mine through collaborations with private mining investors who were ready to deploy machines to excavate ore and partially process copper ore on-site. Officials of

EMAK escalated the political feud by suspending the tribute payments of the mulopwe and they began to find ways to limit customary authority in the mine. Politically this enabled the mulopwe and his agents to claim the moral high ground by stating that they were not opposed to modernizing the mine but, rather, vehemently opposed attempts to do so that did not benefit the people. In private circles the rumor was that EMAK officials had siphoned off money promised to the mulopwe by a private mining company (see chapter 3). For a creuseur, négociant or village resident of Kilobe it was just as impossible to verify the rumors about EMAK as it was to believe the mulopwe’s claims because both were equally compromised. Like other state agents, the mulopwe stood to benefit financially from whomever undertook resource extraction in the mine. As I would discover, state officials’ attempts to “securitize” the mine were as informed by financial necessity as they were by a desire to mask local political struggles and the unpleasantly harsh realities that these power plays produced in miners’ lives. Here’s how I came to know of this.

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A few days before my incident with Dany and the other state officials at the entrance to the mine, I received a call from a teacher at the local primary school in Kilobe village requesting

I meet her. I had been planning to interview Mama Mati for a few days but she was always busy. On the day she called me she insisted that I avail myself as soon as possible because, at that time, she was also with her brothers, one of whom happened to be the mulopwe of

Kilobe. From what I knew about local customs, meeting a mulopwe necessarily meant coming prepared with a small gift and some cash, as is expected in Katanga.

I got to the meeting place in Kilobe village by motorcycle and immediately spotted the mulopwe who was carrying a short staff in his right hand. He wore a baseball cap, a striped shirt and khakhi trousers that were a badly faded brown. As I arrived, he was talking to someone in a brown suit similar to those worn by Gécamines geologists on field operations.

Not too far from them was Mama Mati in a colorful patterned maxi-dress. I got off the motorcycle and Papa Flo, the elder brother of the mulopwe, accosted me. He led me to a corner, aside from everyone else, and asked me if I had brought the mulopwe “something.” I eagerly answered, “yes” and showed him the 450ml bottle of Amarula liqueur. Papa Flo took it and asked me if I had “quelque chose,” “some small money,” to “open the mouth of the mulopwe.” I nodded and gave him 2000FC (~$2) not knowing what was enough or expected.

With the cash and the liquor in hand, we went to the mulopwe who was still standing outside.

It looked like he was waiting for someone or something. Papa Flo briefly introduced me as the “Kenyan student” researching artisanal mining in Katanga. And then, he offered the money and bottle of Amarula to the mulopwe while gently bowing his head. The mulopwe

173 did not touch the gifts. Instead, someone who appeared to be his bodyguard took everything as I waited for more questions. None were asked.

We then walked into a small room where a group of five people was seated on plastic chairs drinking beer. As we approached the room, they all got up and left. I sat down with Papa Flo,

Mama Mati, mulopwe, his bodyguard, and the advisor of another customary chief. To the assembled members I explained that I wanted to speak to the mulopwe about customary issues pertaining to the history of the Basanga people and how he had risen to power. The topics made the mulopwe smile and he asked for the bottle of Amarula liqueur to be poured out to “help us talk.” They divided the liqueur and everyone, including Mama Mati, had some. She thought the aroma of the liqueur was delightful and, going by the stimulated looks on everyone’s face, I thought this was a first taste for everyone. Just then, the mulopwe asked me: “how did you know I like Amarula?”

After the excitement about the liqueur subided, I asked the mulopwe to tell me about the origins of the Basanga people. He started by telling a story about Kiluba and how she got married to Mutobo Kora from Ruund kingdom (see Chapter 3). The story was moving along beautifully but after around twenty minutes in, the mulopwe got a call informing him that a delegation of high-ranking government officials had arrived in the mine. I then realized that all along the mulopwe and his group had in fact been waiting for this group’s arrival and I was just helping them pass time.

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The phone calls to the mulopwe got more frantic and he eventually told me we would continue talking after the delegation left the mine. He got up and was instructed by his bodyguard to wait for the government delegation at the main entrance of Kilobe mine, the same place where the state officials sit and control the movements of goods exiting the mine.

I decided to join the mulopwe and his group but, by the time we got there, we were told the delegation was already on top of the hill talking to creuseurs. I was walking with Mama Mati to the entrance of the mine when she received a call informing her that the delegation consisted of United Nations officials, the Minister of Mines, the Interior minister of Katanga, and a large contingent of armed security personnel. Mama Mati registered this and got worried. She decided to go to Kilobe village rather than the entrance of the mine.

When we arrived at the entrance of the mine with the mulopwe some young men got us chairs. Everyone passing us by was made to slow down and take off his hat in respect to the mulopwe. Didier was sent to go and talk to the delegation’s protocol manager to inform them that the mulopwe was at the entrance of the mine and that he wanted to greet the delegation and know the purpose of their visit.

He returned fifteen minutes later and said he had spoken to the delegation’s protocol manager and had been informed that the mulopwe should wait for an audience at Kilobe village. Didier returned up the hill as we left for the house of the representative of the mulopwe, a sack-cloth structure close to the river where copper ore was washed. We got to the house and found it was deserted. It seemed that everyone had gone to the hill to see what the delegation was after. We waited for the delegation to descend the hill, not knowing the

175 guests’ agenda. And, because it was taboo for the mulopwe to enter the area where mine shafts were located, we had to wait for the delegation to come down from the hill. It was not fully explained to me why the mulopwe was prohibited from going into the mining area but what I had gleaned from my discussions with his assistants was that the mulopwe viewed the mines as a source of pollution due to the presence of mine spirits and incidents of death due to cave-ins.

I wanted to talk to the mulopwe about local history but I decided against it for he looked nervous and preoccupied. Instead, I sat outside the house where the mulopwe was waiting and talked to Mama Mati. After about thirty minutes we heard a rush of vehicles in the distance and I suspected that the delegation had left the mine. Sure enough, minutes later I saw Didier walking towards us with a disconcerted look on his face. It appeared that the delegation had snubbed their host, the mulopwe.

Rumblings outside the sack-cloth house made him aware that something had happened so he walked out of the shack and learned of this slight to his authority. Almost immediately he turned accusingly towards his minders lamenting, “tu est faible, tres faible,” “you are lax, very lax.” He started blaming those who had gone to talk to the protocol of the delegation for not telling them that he was in the village and also for misleading him to move from the entrance of the mine to the village. This way, the delegation was able to leave without seeing him. Accusations flew about among the mulopwe’s minders for a few minutes, but Papa

Wimbo, the local representative of the mulopwe, revealed the truth of the matter when he said that the UN delegation was informed very clearly of the mulopwe’s location and his

176 request for audience. However, because the delegation was being led by state officials from the department of mining and EMAK, they may have intentionally decided to avoid the mulopwe because seeing him would have meant acknowledging the influence of customary authority in Kilobe.

The worst news was yet to come.

As the mulopwe was unravelling the reasons for the delegation’s snub, a small group of local villagers began gathering around the remonstrating “chief” who, by then, was asking hard questions about who was on the hill and what was being discussed there. Murmurs in the crowd revealed that the UN delegation included mzungus and female journalists with a local news agency.

In Katanga, it is considered taboo for a woman to set foot on a mountain where mineral ore is being mined since it is believed that her presence threatens the spirits in the mine and may hinder the flow of the ore. The presence on the hill of women and muzungus, who are considered a threat as mineral prospectors, further enraged the mulopwe. He wanted an explanation as to how women could be allowed to set foot on Kilobe in spite of the taboo against their entry. Where were all the creuseurs when women were going up the hill? And, why did they not react to the intrusion of the delegation and, especially, to the presence of women?

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The first person called to answer was Didier, the customary representative in Kilobe. He began by saying that it was true that women were on the hill but he was the only person who had struggled to make it known to the delegation that women were not allowed on the hill.

However, the delegation’s security personnel merely shoved him aside and ignored him.

Didier was adamant that he had informed the delegation but it was far too big and he had too few people with him to prevent their entry. Basically, he was implicating the creuseurs for not coming to his aid, as they had done in the past, to prevent women from coming up the hill.

The crowd gathering around the mulopwe grew and the atmosphere began to take on the aura of an inquisition with the mulopwe as judge and executioner. Didier’s words implicated creuseurs. Francis, the president of the creuseurs, was next to be called upon to explain why they had just watched in silence as the taboo was being broken. In defense of creuseurs he said, and he was being honest, that by the time they heard of a delegation it was already on the hill with their fancy vehicles and armed security personnel in tow. It was not creuseurs’ job, he added, to deal with high profile visitors like the head of MONUSCO,90 that was the work of the officials in Kilobe. To Francis, the task of receiving visitors in the mine was for the “ba-chefu,” “the bosses,” or rather, the state and customary officials such as Didier who are more legible to those in positions of power.

The mulopwe’s advisor began screaming at Francis; “No! muliona ma pompa mukaongopa, sema verite,” “No! You saw the guns and got afraid, tell the truth!” As he belted out these

90 Mission de l'Organisation des Nations Unies pour Stabilization en République Démocratique du Congo. 178 words, Francis turned to me, as if for approval and nonchalantly said, “hiyo haina kazi ya creuseur kusumbulia na ba chefu, Haina vile?” “It’s not creuseurs’ job to speak to bosses, is that not so?”

The secretary angrily countered, “Bongo. Na tosha hiyo chapeau na makalashi wewe, tooosha, tosha apa sasa,” “Lies. And take off that hat and those sunglasses you, take them off, take them off right now!”

Francis noticed the aggression of the advisor’s tone and quietly did as asked, which allowed the mulopwe to regain the parole. Seated on his stool he looked at the crowd and stated,

Mi nasikia munasema ku bazungu munapataka 27000FC (~US $30) per jour kutoka ii kazi ya creusage na munasema muko na ma moto ya kubapeleka ba malade ba mu carrière huko mouville ku opitalo. Est-ce que njo vile? Nani anasema vile?

I hear you say that you get US $30 per day from work as a creuseur and you say that you have motorcycles to take injured miners to the city hospitals. Is this so? Who said this?

The crowd murmured. While waiting around for the delegation to meet him the mulopwe had received information about the nature of their visit and he had heard from his people that the head of MONUSCO asked creuseurs about their wages and occupational hazards. The responses given suggested that creuseurs earned considerably more than one might imagine and that they had the means to cater to injured mineworkers. None of these were true, so the mulopwe obviously wanted to know who had uttered those falsehoods, and why.

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The crowd called out to Manu, who had acted as the creuseurs’ mouthpiece. Manu hesitantly came to front of the crowd in his tattered black trousers and dusty brown shirt. The first question he was asked was, "wewe ni creuseur?" “Are you a creuseur?”

Manu looked defeated and refused to answer.

Then he was asked if he earns US $30 a day? To this, he responded by saying he was tricked by the way the question was posed in French, because he thought he was being asked, "What is the most you can earn in a day?"

People in the crowd began laughing because Manu pretended to be a creuseur—and an educated one at that—but he was neither.

The advisor then asked him, "What did the delegation ask you?"

Manu stuttered a little and said that they tricked him with their language. When they asked him if creuseurs get injured in the mines, he admitted that they did. Then, they asked how creuseurs dealt with that and he responded by saying that they had motorcycles to take the injured to hospital. Manu explained that the "having" was assumed to mean that said motorcycles were owned by creuseurs and are used as ambulances. He then said that he did not clarify that these motorcycles were in fact rented. He also forgot to say that they were not owned by creuseurs nor were they solely used as stand by ambulances. Following from this confusion, he was further asked the maximum amount of money he makes in a day, to

180 which he said that “on a good day I make 27000FC (~US$30).” Manu said he was not asked for his daily wages, rather, they had only asked him the maximum he could earn.

The mulopwe grew furious with Manu and glared at him shouting, “do you even know what you are saying? We know you are not a creuseur, you are a local farmer. Who told you to speak for creuseurs and where were the real creuseurs when you were saying this?”

To this question, someone in the crowd responded saying, “they chose him because he spoke

French.” Apparently, Manu wanted to make it seem like creuseurs had asked him to speak but those in the crowd countered, saying “it is the EMAK people who sent you.” With this revelation, it became clear to the mulopwe that it was his rivals in EMAK who were responsible for guiding the movements of the delegation in a manner that would neglect recognizing his customary authority as well as the cultural taboos placed upon the land.

Furthermore, allegations that EMAK officials deliberately fronted Manu as a local creuseur added insult to the situation and revealed just how far state officials were willing to go to control narratives about the mine. Convincing Manu to speak for creuseurs was a cunning attempt by EMAK officials to mask the realities of the mine.

After Manu had mumbled some form of apology, he was shoved off. Then the mulopwe turned to the remaining crowd and finished by saying,

Hhii mambo inapita hapa ni kazi yenu. Munakubari bamwanamuke ku kirima je. Bamwanamuke ni kijila na kutoka sasa bamwanamuke bote banaweza kupanda ku kirima. Mi nasema banamuke bote baingie mu kirima mais, musinifuate apres kwa sababu miye sitatoa pemba kutengeneza kirima mambo ikiharibika. Munaharibisha kirima. Munayua asema miye sipataki kintu kutoka kirimaa. Ba

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Emak banabeba byote. Hakuna kintu ya coutume. Muwafuate bo kirima ikiharibika.

This issue before us is your fault. How do you allow women on the hill? Women are taboo [on the hill] and from now on all women will go on the hill. I say to you, let all women go on the hill but do not follow me afterwards because I will not give out the white kaolin powder to cleanse the hill once things go wrong. You are ruining the hill. Do you know I get nothing [no tribute] from the hill? EMAK takes it all. There is nothing for customary authority. Follow them when the hill is total ruin.

After these words, I left with the mulopwe to finish the interview we had begun before being interrupted.

In distancing himself from the actions of the delegation and engaging in a theatrical juridical display, the mulopwe was trying to emphasize his legitimacy over the land. The tussle for recognition and control of resources between state officials and customary authorities placed creuseurs and local villagers in an awkward situation. If you were to side with the state officials (EMAK) you were likely to get some money, possibly a job, but you would be labeled a traitor by fellow miners and customary authorities. Support the mulopwe and you expose yourself to the coercive violence of menacing state officials, but you may be sheltered by the supposed keeper of tradition, the mulopwe. Neither of the two options appealed to creuseurs because both state officials and customary authorities behaved as if they were accountable only to themselves.

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Conclusions

The mining public is placed in an impossible situation in Congo today. On the one side is a state that was structured to exploit, divide social space, and entrench itself without any regulatory controls to check its excesses of power. On the other side is customary authority, whose legitimacy has been so effectively distorted, corrupted, and underwritten by colonialism and postcolonial state interference that its relevance has been rendered contestable in the present. The complexity of this power trap is heightened when we consider the new opportunities of control offered by the liberalization of the Congolese economy, and their entanglement within old systems of administration that delegate authority without any means of regulating it and, thus, create despots. Power plays between various mine officials were a means of solidifying total control over the artisanal mine. This scenario exists as a holdover of indirect-rule in which power was “liberalized,” granting “chiefs” carte blanche over the administration of rural territories.

As a feature of the colonizing structure, indirect rule has never been abolished and attempts at reform have been contradictory at best. Granted, Mobutu’s efforts were in part ineffective because of the arbitrariness of his policies but it is worth noting that the structure of state power in Congo was never designed to effectively transmit, implement, and regulate state directives from the centers of power to the periphery. Rural and urban spheres were never integrated into a rationale of power that balanced the existence of both in the name of national interest. The urban was, and remains, the locus of state power. Therefore, forays of power beyond urban centers tend to create despots essentially because the state was never equipped to regulate authority beyond the urban sphere. It is for this reason that sites like

183 artisanal mines, which have sprung up in rural and peri-urban zones with the decline of industrial mining and the liberalization of mining industry, now offer lucrative opportunities for seizure, taxation, and discharge by state officials. When state officials speak of

“securitizing” the mine, they are literally talking about protecting their personal interests from you, the state itself and para-state figures: the customary authorities. Extending state authority to sites like artisanal mines has merely extended the figure of power but not, as I have shown, regulatory control over mining operations. It did more of the opposite: facilitating riots, arbitrary seizures of mining site by private companies, smuggling rings, and farcical attempts to display the realities of the mine as being better than they appeared. All of these missteps reveal that the extension of state authority in mining sites occurs in itself through actions of state officials but not for itself since, it does not necessarily widen regulatory authority over the new sites of intervention grasped by the state.

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Chapter 4

Customary Claims over Artisanal Mining Land

In the previous chapter, I highlighted how state officials strategically deployed a discourse on securitizing an artisanal mine in Katanga so as to extend their private interests rather than the regulatory capacity of the state. I also exposed the political fissures resulting from the competition between state officials and customary authorities. Here, I go deeper into the role of customary authorities by exploring the ways they formulate, express and enforce their claims to land and natural resources in the Congo Copperbelt. As outlined in the previous chapter, customary authorities are active players in the management of natural resources in artisanal mining sites because both local communities and the state recognize them as having historical rights to the land, what in local parlance is glossed as droits de la terre. For local residents, customary authorities are custodians of the land and, as I will explain below, are viewed as having politico-religious authority that draws upon oral tradition (Vansina

1985:13) in the form of myths and origin stories to assert territorial claims over natural resources. These claims to territory are complex and multidimensional stories passed between generations explaining the migration and settlement of specific groups. One of the issues I highlight here is that these claims over territory undergird attempts by customary authorities to elevate their importance as custodians of the land and its resources in a liberalized present replete with political maneuvering and competition between the mining public, the state, and various private interests.

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In my analysis of oral traditions collected from customary authorities, I am less interested in the timing or historical accuracy of stories and “myths” told by customary authorities than I am in the claims oral histories advance to explain early settlement of peoples in the Lufira valley of the Congo Copperbelt. Marshall Sahlins (in Graeber and Sahlins 2017:216) argues that for both historians and anthropologists interested in separating facts from tradition so as to understand how a set of events has been constructed by a particular social process of valuation, what is of greatest importance is not what actually happened but the meaning ascribed to a historical event by that particular people. As I will show in the first half of this chapter, the implication or meaning of certain oral history claims serve to link the settlement of specific ethnic groups—in this case the Basanga—to economic activities undertaken in particular areas of the Lufira valley. To memorialize these activities and claims to the land, the Basanga embed the actions of the past in stories and charter traditions explaining how specific customary leaders acquired, construed and even perpetuated particular titles signifying politico-religious authority. By outlining oral traditions linked to myths, stories and titles, I intend to demonstrate how customary authorities have historically framed their claims of “ownership” of particular resource-land. My aim in doing so is twofold: first, I intend to highlight the competing logics of the different regimes of governance vying for control of mineral resources in the Congo Copperbelt; second, I seek to show how such logics are under revision in the contemporary context of liberalization as opportunities to earn rents from mining operations come with risks that threaten to undermine the social relevance, economic advantage and political claims of customary authorities.

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My attention to the role of customary authorities in Congo is informed by my fieldwork observations of the public authority customary leaders enjoyed relative to the state (see chapter 2). While customary authority over land is not overtly recognized in the laws governing property in Congo, customary rights over specific domains of territory are in practice often observed by local residents and they are provisionally guaranteed in two articles governing property in the Congo. Article 387 of the 1973[revised 1980] Code

Fonciere, Land Law, in Congo mentions that land occupied by local communities is dominion of the state. The subsequent article of this law defines “community land” as

“individual or collective areas inhabited, cultivated or exploited in accordance to local customs and practices”91 (Article 388, Code Fonciere du RDC). Though the law does not mention them, the individuals involved in ensuring that practices are undertaken in

“accordance to local customs and practices” in the Congo Copperbelt are customary leaders.

In this chapter, I suggest that this implicit recognition of customary authorities in the law underestimates the practical influence and public authority they maintain over people, their social practices and natural resources especially in areas where the state may be absent or compromised (see chapter 2). In these areas, which are often rural or peri-urban spaces, I have observed that the liberalization of the mining sector has augmented the authority of customary officials, allowing them to broker agreements, regulate land use and supervise the extraction of natural resources. In the first part of this chapter, I explore historical claims of

“ownership” by customary authorities. In the second part, I consider how such claims are currently enforced or operationalized in artisanal mines in response to the greater private-

91 Translated from French by the author. 187 sector investment ushered in by the liberalization of the mining sector and the nominal nature of state regulation.

One could think of this chapter as a response to a two-part question: What is the nature of the claim over resource-rich land advanced by customary authorities? And, how has the liberalization of the mining sector influenced customary claims over the land and the governance of resources in artisanal mines? I proceed by first outlining how customary leaders frame their autochthonous claim to peri-urban lands in which mining takes place.

That description is followed by explanations of how such claims are given form and content in the artisanal mine where I undertook most of my fieldwork. I close the chapter with an analysis of how customary authorities operationalize said claims to resource-land in ways that further their personal economic interests rather than those of the state or the communities they purport to represent.

Orality and Belonging in the Congo Savannah

Kilobe village is a few kilometers from the city of Likasi. It comprises no more than fifty stone and mud houses spread out over approximately ten acres of land and, to its west, is a group of cascading hills from which flows a shallow stream. The stream is the main source of water for local villagers and it also acts as a social marker separating the village from the hills where young men mine for the greenish malachite rock that is copper ore. When you ask residents of Kilobe village about how long copper has been mined there many say that

188 the mines near their village have been in operation for longer than they can remember. After asking the same question and obtaining similar responses I began to suspect that the mine may have been from the pre-colonial era. My frustration with the villagers’ responses took me to a local elder whom I asked: who were the people to first mine copper in Kilobe?

Rather than try to date the mines, the elderly village headman simply said, “bankambo barikuria mukuba apa,” “our grandfathers (and great grandfathers) ate copper here.” The reference to “eating copper” rehearses the actions of the Katanga’s famed precolonial copper miner-smiths whose influence in the region is centuries old. And, because the area where contemporary artisanal miners dug their mineshafts was only a small fraction of the expansive but sparsely vegetated space in Kilobe, one would not be able to tell just by looking that before them lay a post-industrial scene in a pre-colonial landscape.

Figure 6: Kilobe mine (Photo by author).

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When I first began talking to elders in the mine, including the customary head of the area, I was pleasantly surprised to find that he had chronicled the history of his community and was able to elaborate, with some help, how his people, the Basanga, came to occupy the resource- rich lands they now inhabit. It is worth noting that the Basanga, or Sanga people, enter popular Central African history by virtue of their fame as the “eaters of copper,” that is, as the community harboring some of the most skilled metallurgists in all of Central Africa (see

De Hemptinne 1926; Herbert 1984). Aside from this claim to fame, little else is written about the people living between the Lufira and Lualaba rivers in the Upper Congo River basin.92

Central African history tells us that prior to the nineteenth century arrival of Zanzibari traders and European colonialists in the upper Congo basin, the Kings of the Luba and Lunda ethnic communities exerted the greatest influence on the people living in the savannah region between the Lubudi and Luapula Rivers (Vansina 1966).

The Lunda and Luba used a combination of warfare, trade and marriage alliances to spread their influence across the Congo savannah region establishing tributary leaders in regions far away from their central homelands (Macola 2002; Reefe 1981). The radiating pre-colonial influence of Luba and Lunda created confederations that were allied through political ideologies, religious and kinship systems, and the transfer of insignias of power. To maintain their influence, Luba and Lunda leaders transferred knowledge and symbols between center and periphery, spreading the political architecture of the Luba sacred King, the mulopwe, and the Lunda leader, Mwant Yav to communities like the Sanga, Lamba, Bemba and Tabwa

92 The exception here is the dissertation of the Basanga written in Portuguese by the Congolese anthropologist (and now Brazilian professor) Kabengele Munanga (1986). Wilmet (1963b) also undertook a geographical study of the Lufira valley in which most of the Basanga people currently live. 190 peoples. Leaders of these tributary communities justified their hereditary systems of rule based on their kin relation to the Luba or Lunda Kings (see Gordon 2006; Macola 2002;

Munanga 1986; Reefe 1981; Maurer and Roberts 1985). Elaborate systems of tribute and marriage maintained the links between Luba and Lunda Kings and their client “chiefs.”

Oftentimes, such links were memorialized in the stories and myths of communities neighboring the Luba and Lunda centers of influence.

With the exception of the Yeke, who arrived in the region around the middle of the nineteenth century, almost all the other communities (the Sanga, Ndembu, Lamba, Kaonde,

Zela, Tabwa and Bemba) trace their origins to seventeenth century migrations of Lunda and

Luba communities. An important way that these communities claimed tenure over the land and resources in areas where they settled was by developing elaborate charters or dynastic epics. Victor Turner (in Graeber and Sahlins 2017:17) viewed these epics as a “paradigm” explaining how their ancestors established themselves and their authority over specific areas or over communities indigenous to the territories in which they settled (see Gordon 2012;

Munanga 1986; Maurer and Roberts 1985). For the people of these areas, these charters and epics are a priori true and they function as precepts of organization and action irrespective of whether the events they depict actually happened. Since the veracity of the specific events outlined in an epic is not in question, to call historical epics of the Congo savannah “myths” or “fanciful stories” is to undervalue both their truth-value and historical contribution for the people concerned. It is also to misunderstand how said “myths” engage in both making history—as a paradigm of a various precedents—and also how they are history, or, reports of what actually took place. As Marshall Sahlins (Graeber and Sahlins 2017:212–213) argues:

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“…if the so-called myth is known to be the historical reality by the people concerned, what actually happened becomes the means of historical wisdom rather than the end…Too often scholars have worked from the tradition to the event by a process of rational abstraction, supposing historical truth is factual; whereas a comparative anthropology would work from the event to the tradition by a process of exegetical elaboration, supposing the cultural truth is historical.”

The value of Sahlins’s approach is that it seeks to understand that what is important to

Africans “is the implication present in the form which the history finally takes” (Cunnison

1951:22 in Graeber and Sahlins 2017:215). Charter narratives give substance and meaning to the reasons why specific groups moved to an area in the first place, they explain how settlement of the land took place in relation to neighbouring groups or those whom they were forced to live with. Meaning is what is at issue.

In the upper Congo River basin region, charters and epics were—and continue to be—an essential part of oral history and they went as far as serving as a form of evidence of claims to ownership over particular regions. They employed a narrative structure that, more or less, sought to explain how a wandering royal—who was often of Luba or Lunda descent— married a woman who was typically the daughter of a very important man in the village and, through their union, established the lineage from which kingship in that community arose

(Gordon 2012; Pritchett 2001; Reefe 1981; Maurer and Roberts 1985). Because the central purpose of these epics was to explain ownership of natural resources by individuals of a specific lineage, David Gordon (2006:10) argues they are best thought of as “oral charters of fluid types of wealth and ownership.” In my fieldwork discussions with customary authorities of the Basanga community and local elders, I collected and corroborated one such myth explaining the origins of customary rule among the Basanga. Though the myth follows

192 the pattern described above, it also attempts to explain certain signature features of Sanga society, such as how the community acquired knowledge about producing copper and how their leaders share kinship relations with the Lunda and Luba royal houses. Below I describe this myth and analyse its importance as a political charter of rule explaining how leadership in their community arose and embedded itself to specific areas in the Lufira region, laying claim to the natural resources in certain areas.

***

The first ruler of the Basanga was a woman named Kiluba. She was of Bazela and Baluba background.93 Her father was called Kyamba and her mother was Mwadi. When Kiluba arrived in southern Katanga province she had in her possession an ancient mystical pot, a “nongo,” and a statue known as “Kala ya Lobe”—both of which were endowed the power of speech. Kiluba and her parents made their home in Katanga and it is said that one day while she was cooking with the mystical pot, she set three big stones to act as support (mafiga) for the pot.

As she sat by the fire she noticed that the stones started to melt into a thick liquid as they supported the pot on the fire. She asked her mother if she knew what was happening but Mwadi could not explain what was happening to the rocks. Kiluba then turned to the statue to ask it what was happening and it revealed to her that the liquid was “mukuba,” or copper, which forms when the green rocks are melted. In this way the Basanga discovered how to make copper.

When Kiluba's parents grew old and were about to die they received a visit from the King of the Baluba. Along with his council of advisers they had to decide who would succeed Kyamba and Mwadi when they died. Rather than give the power to men, who are too often away from the home either hunting or fishing, they decided to give the authority to rule to a woman since it was women who remained at home and guarded the village in the absence of men. In this way,

93 It should be noted that the ethnic background of the parents of Kiluba is a subject of considerable local debate. Depending on who is asked Kiluba can be said to be of from the Bakunda people of Shamwange (Munanga 1986:58–59) or from Lunda background (Wilmet 1963:76–78). 193

“bulopwe”, the sacred authority of the King obtained by virtue of kinship with the ancestors, came to be associated with women.

Kiluba’s reign is said to have begun around the period when the Lunda people of Mwant Yav migrated from their Kingdom in Kora eastwards toward the Lualaba and Lufira Rivers. This migration brought Mutombo Kora, a Lunda royal who traded in salt, to the area close to Kolwezi.The salt trade was lucrative and Kiluba sent her servant to buy salt for her chiefdom from this man. The Basanga say that either the amount of salt the servant bought or the manner in which the servant presented himself really impressed Mutomo Kora and he asked this servant where he came from. The servant said he was from the land of Inamfumu Kiluba, or,“Queen Kiluba.” Mutombo Kora then inquired if Inamfumu Kiluba was married and he was surprised to discover that she was not. He decided to send the servant back with a symbol of his intention to marry Inamfumu Kiluba. Sometime thereafter, the marriage between Mutombo Kora and Inamfumu Kiluba was realized.

Mutombo Kora moved from the Kolwezi area and settled with Queen Kiluba in Shààmpenge (a place between the villages of Luambo and Kabungo). Among the Lunda people, Mutombo Kora was known as “Pant.” This name was changed in Kisanga into “Pande,” which henceforth became the title of the King of the Basanga.94 The title of “Pande” united two important sources of power in the person holding it. From Mutombo Kora of the Lunda people, is the “Bulopwe wa Muba,” which speaks of the glorification of the King based on the traditions of the Lunda people. From Kiluba comes “Bulopwe Bwanshi” – the sacred authority over the land emanating from Kiluba’s ancestors.95

During the end of Kiluba’s reign, there were wars in the land that made it difficult for a woman to hold power because of the need of the ruler to direct warriors. It is during the time of war that Pande Penge wa Lubunze was appointed as King of the Basanga. Following him there have been at least twelve

94 Bipande in Kisanga language also refer to conch shells, which are a key symbol of the authority of the Lunda King introduced into the Basanga territory by Mutombo Kora as a sign of his royalty and kinship to the Lunda King. 95 The motif in the myth of a wandering man (or royal) encountering a local woman during his migrations and marrying her is common among the Luba, Bemba and other communities in Central Africa (see Gordon 2006; Reefe 1981; Schoffeleers 1979). 194

subsequent Basanga leaders that have held the title “Pande,” the most recent being Pande Kyala Jean.

***

This myth was narrated to me by the customary authority in charge of Kilobe mine and its surrounding areas whose title was Kyala Nkungulu Kalunkumia. It was corroborated by two other Sanga elders. A lot can be said about it but I want to seize on two aspects of this myth that are especially pertinent to my discussion on how customary leaders claim rights over the land. The first is the assertion in the myth that knowledge of how to smelt copper was first discovered by a woman who was, incidentally, also the first ruler of the Basanga. The second important point the myth elucidates is that the Basanga are a community formed by union of the Luba and Lunda communities thus, they borrow and pragmatically blend various cultural norms from both communities, including the patrilineal and matrilineal principles of the

Luba and Lunda, respectively. Some evidence of this can be found in the political structure of kingship among the Basanga. For the scope and purpose of this chapter, I will focus on the latter claim first for it is through that claim that one can understand how the Basanga understand the relation between their Kings, their social practices and the resource-rich riverine environment their leaders claim they belong to. Grasping the relationship between rulers, social practices and the environment helps us understand why, even to this day, individuals working in artisanal mines such as the one in Kilobe remain cognisant of the structures and injunctions of the pre-colonial past.

Historians working in communities within the Congo basin have long argued that some of the earliest “empires” to exist in the Central African region were those of the Luba, or

Baluba (Reefe 1981; Vansina 1966). The Luba developed a large centralized state from their

195 homeland in the Upemba depression moving southwards and westward into the Congo savannah region from around 1600 to around 1800AD. Jan Vansina (1966) argues that the crowding of strangers around centers of rare natural resources such as salt pans, copper outcrops and iron deposits formed the early basis of political centralization among the Luba peoples of southern Congo (see Map 1). Thomas Reefe (1981:84) adds that the increase of trade among the Luba led to the control of these items for the purpose of establishing prestige and developing political power. This accumulation and redistribution of prestige goods such as iron, copper, cowrie, and salt ultimately facilitated the rise of powerful centralized states such as the Kongo, Kuba, Lunda and Luba Kingdoms.

Oral historians in most communities in the Congo basin are likely to say that the Luba King incorporated neighbouring communities into his sphere of influence primarily using warfare; however, such a retelling would ignore the complex tribute system that incorporated neighbouring communities into the Luba axis of influence. Reefe (1981) describes that the

Luba King maintained his relation to his client “chiefs” through a system of tribute, mulambo, in which the resources were sent to the ruler in exchange for titles and potent insignias of politico-religious power. For instance, the Luba ancestor and culture hero,

Nkongolo, whose proto-Luba state is said to have existed before the 1700s, is described in

Luba myths as conferring on his client “chief’s” titles such as Mwadi whose symbols of investiture were often a copper bracelet, an axe with a blade of copper, and a paddle covered with copper strips (Reefe 1981:80–86). The objects conferred on the client chief established him as a symbolic “son” to his “father,” the Luba sacred king or mulopwe (Reefe 1981:92).

Alternatively, the Luba King would marry women from a number of his neighboring villages

196 and confer upon them the authority to appoint a tributary chief from the lineage of the newly appointed queen. Kingship would then flow through the queen to that chiefdom making it a tributary to power (Roberts 1991:170–171). It appears that the latter approach hints at the manner in which the Basanga claim filiation to the early Baluba Kingdom. Furthermore, this link is not only consistent with the oral traditions explaining how the early Luba states’ territorial expansion beyond their heartlands involved the political conquest and assimilation of smaller neighboring communities, but it is also captured in the contemporary recognition of the concept of sacred kings or, mulopwe, among the Basanga and other communities in the

Congo savannah.96

The Sanga myth mentions that the marriage of Kiluba to Mutombo Kora unites the ancestral power over the land (bulopwe bwanshi) with the “glorification of the King” based on Lunda traditions (bulopwe bwa Moba). To grasp the significance of the two terms, it is necessary to explain first what bulopwe means. Bulopwe refers to the concept of rule by a Luba Sacred

King, or mulopwe. Historians of the Congo basin have traced the origins of this concept to the around 1600 AD, when the Luba people established a vast political structure that spread bulopwe from the Kwango river in the west of the Congo basin to Lake Tanganyika in the east (Vansina 1966:70). Bulopwe was adopted in varying forms among the Bemba, Sanga,

Lamba and Lunda communities, a fact that also speaks to the history of interactions between peoples of the Central African savannah. As an expression of a concept of rule, it obtained its legitimacy and sacred qualities by linking through kinship, a living Luba leader to the

96 Oral histories of the Kongo (MacGaffey 1986), Kuba (Vansina 1978) and Lunda communities (Pritchett 2001; Macola 2002), the other three large-scale centralized societies that emerged in the Congo basin around 1200-1500AD, also emphasize how each of these communities used tribute, warfare, or trade to incorporate smaller neighboring communities. 197 mythical Luba ancestors (vidye), Nkongolo and Kalala Ilunga. Due to its strong connection to a cult of ancestors, Vansina (1966: 74) argues that this Luba ideology of kingship differed from that of other pre-colonial African polities for it gave a King not only the legitimacy to rule but also the divine means to do so (see also Petit 1996).

The mulopwe incorporated in his person the attributes of the vidye during the rituals of his investiture and installation. The rituals emphasized (among other things) the royal blood of his maternal heritage and its association with the dead kings of the past who were ancestor spirits (vidye) of the community and the source of its ritual power. Pierre Petit (1996:360–

361) argues that the association to the ancestors was symbolically established through rites involving the basket of relics, dikumbo containing the skulls of past kings. For the Luba and other communities in the Luba confederation, the mulopwe represented buvidye, the political- spiritual power flowing from the heroic period of the great vidye, Nkongolo and Kalala

Ilunga. Not only did this power make the mulopwe a sacred figure, but it also framed him as a “stranger” who was subject to a separate set of rules and taboos. For instance, he was never to be seen eating, his food was cooked from a special fire, he was not allowed to flee from his enemies nor could he get sick. The “strangeness” and “sacredness” of the mulopwe made him both the symbol and repository of communal health and vigor (Booth 1976:62).

As a people of dual Luba and Lunda heritage, the Basanga claim to have combined in their leader Pande both “Bulopwe bwanshi,” that is, authority over the country based on the power of the ancestors indigenous to their land (the presumed “owners” of the land) and, Bulopwe bwa Moba, the system of rule of the Lunda kingdom. The degree of borrowing from each

198 community is beyond the scope of this chapter; however, it is known that Lunda Kingship was structured a system of perpetual succession and positional kinship. As Vansina

(1966:27) explains, in perpetual succession the inheritor to a title assumed the name, title, and personal identity of the original occupant (founder) of the office. At the same time, the successor also adopted all kin relationships of the founder of the office as his own (positional kinship). In this manner, the personalized identity and kin ties of each founding official were perpetuated over time. As I discuss later in the chapter, the Sanga King, Pande, still respects these two principles of pre-colonial Lunda rule but is invested as King and, after his rule, will be buried in a manner resembling a Luba King, or mulopwe (see Petit 1996).

The title of the Sanga leader, “Pande,” also linguistically indexes Luba/ Lunda heritage since

Mpande in Luba language refers to “conch-shells,” which are insignia of authority associated with the Lunda King. It is most likely that the physical transfer of these shells, which are displayed in the royal regalia of Pande, was a sign of the existence of tributary relations between the Lunda King and his Sanga counterpart. Linguistically, Sanga elders affirmed that the name of “Mutombo Kora,” the wandering Lunda royal, indexes Lunda origins since

“Kora” or Koola refers to the ancestral home of the Lunda peoples. In addition, the formation of the Basanga through interaction with the Lunda is memorialized in the phrase, “Basanga, bana ba Kiluba na Be(i)ya.” This Sanga statement is a pun, of sorts, for it contains a double meaning depending on the tonality of the last word as Beya or Be-i-ya. It could mean, “The

Basanga are the children of Kiluba and Beya” – Beya (Behyah) being the sister of Kiluba.

Indexing Kiluba’s sister, as one elder explained it, was an attempt to reaffirm the salience of the founding mothers of the Basanga. However, when pronounced Beiya (Beh-i-yah) in

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Kisanga, the meaning of word changes for the root –iya, which translates as, “come,” when added to be- it refers to “those who are coming.” In this sense, the phrase indexes the fact that the Basanga origins are traced from the union of Kiluba with “those who are coming” – the Lunda people of Mwant Yav, or more precisely, Mutombo Kora (Pant).

To emphasize further the claim that the Basanga were a community formed by the coming together of two groups, in Kisanga97 the word “sanga” literally means, “to bring together, or, meet at a point.” The “point” in question was in fact the land enclosed by the confluence of two rivers: the Lufira and Mufuvya (see Figure 7). The important point here is that associating the Sanga King, Pande, with the regional Luba and Lunda powers may have been a way of ascribing prestige to his title but it also provides scholars with information of some historical value. For instance, it makes it possible to date, albeit approximately, the rise of the

Sanga King, Pande, to the migration of the western Lunda people eastwards towards the

Luapula river. Oral historians of the Lunda have dated the eastward movement of Lunda leaders as being motivated by a desire to secure access to the salt and copper resources in southern Katanga sometime prior to 1740AD98 (Macola 2002:72). So, not only did the migration of Lunda royals possibly contribute to the emergence of Sanga, Bemba and Lamba communities; it also linked these communities as tributaries to the Lunda King nearest to them, be it Mwata Yav in the west or Kazembe in the east (Macola 2002:44).

97 This is the language of the Basanga. Luba and Kunda languages of Katanga province bestow a heavy influence on this language in large part because of precolonial migrations in the area. 98 One of my key Sanga informants, Mulopwe Ya Mutoba Kyala Kalunkumia, dated the arrival of Mutombo Kora to around 1700-1745. This is consistent with Giacomo Macola’s approximation regarding the migration of the Western Lunda leaders eastwards towards the Luapula river region prior to 1740AD. 200

Figure 7: Congo Savannah region based on its major rivers99

Mufuvya

Figure 8: Ethnic communities in south Katanga in the early 20th century100

99 Map as shown in Macola (2002: 45). 100 Source: http://www.mbokamosika.com/article-l-inventaire-des-ethnies-de-la-rdc-72662343.html. Accessed August 73, 2018. The original source of this map is not given on the website nor are the numbers explained. 201

The pre-colonial presence of salt, copper and iron southern Katanga made the region a key trade center in the nineteenth century (see Figure 8). Having settled in a region rich in copper, the Basanga established themselves as the most impressive coppersmiths, which in the myth above is directly attributed to the discovery of copper by their ancestress, Kiluba.

Attributing the discovery of copper to Kiluba is made in spite archaeological evidence dating copper production near the town of Kipushi on the Zambia/Congo border to as early as the fourth century. Other sites in the Luba heartland of Katanga have been dated to between the eleventh and twelfth centuries (Bisson 1975:286; De Maret 1977:334; Herbert 1984:24). The discovery of copper in Luba heartland areas, where no deposits are known to exist, is said to point to the existence of a trade network linking the Luba heartland in the north to the

Copperbelt, which lay hundreds of kilometers to the south (De Maret 1977). While the antiquity of mining in the Copperbelt region has been archaeologically dated to the twelfth century, living memory only delves as far as the seventeenth century thus making the claim that Kiluba discovered copper-mining among the Basanga more of a political statement than a historical fact.

Basanga historical claims outlining the discovery of copper may be understood as a way of asserting “ownership” over their ancient mines101 and reinforcing their claim as “eaters of copper.” In my discussion with Sanga elders, references made with regard to mining in their oral traditions were mentioned in statements such as, “the secret to copper is in a pot.” What this meant was that for the Basanga, the skills learned from pottery were thought to have facilitated knowledge of copper production. In Kisanga, an elder explained that Sanga smiths

101 That is, the mines of Koni, Kambove, Kalabi and Kamatanda in southern Katanga. 202 would proclaim the earliest knowledge of copper through the utterance, "Basanga basangile nongo.” That is, "Basanga put together the nongo.” The nongo is the Sanga name for the fired-clay container that collects the molten copper ore during the smelting process but it is also the name for an earthen pot such as that used by Inamfumu Kiluba to cook over a fire that melted copper rocks. Other oral histories of peoples of the Congo savannah, explain that the nongo has other traditional uses such as storing water but more importantly, storing pemba, or white kaolin clay, used to invoke ancestral spirits (Mary Nooter Roberts 2013:75).

By claiming that they constituted the nongo, Sanga elders were also indexing their heritage as a riverine people who live in close proximity to soils suitable for pottery and this was elaborated in claims that their Kings were buried in secret beneath the rivers flowing in their territories. The “chief” of Kilobe would often explain to me that Basanga territory spans west to east, from the upper Lualaba river eastwards to the Lufira River, and north, to where the

Lufira River meets the Dikuluwe River (see figure 7). When coupled with oral histories, claims such as this appear to be deliberate attempts to spatially affix Sanga people to the riverine environment they recognize as “their territory.” Aside from using oral history, customary authorities formulated their claims of belonging to territories through totemic figures and honorific titles that were perpetuated over time ensuring the continuity of oral traditions and practices. It is to these figures and titles I now turn.

Spatializing claims of belonging

The Basanga are often referred to by their neighbours in the Lufira valley as the Bena Nzovu.

This means, “those of the elephant.” The name arises from a story explaining how the land in

203 the Lufira region was once distributed more or less equally between hunting communities and farming people, who subsequently settled in the area. Through a rite called kipupa kyalo

(see Wilmet 1963b:227), each community arriving in the Lufira valley was named by a hunter named Kiembe who was from the Lemba people. Kiembe lived on the upper banks of the Lufira River and, according to the story, was a member of one of the earliest groups to arrive in the region. It is said that one day Kiembe went to fetch water from a pond now known as kinwabalembe, or “the place where hunters drink.” The pond was near a village called Kisunka in the Lufira valley and, after the rains, the water in the pond dried up, allowing for the growth of lush green vegetation. This vegetation attracted a number of local herbivores and predators, but also people. While at the pond, Kiembe encountered people migrating into the valley of Lufira. He gave each of the arriving groups specific names (what would come to be clan names) based on the flora and fauna of the magical pond. So, for instance, among the three main groups in the valley of Lufira the Basanga of Pande came to be known as Bena Nzovu, the Balamba of Katanga were named Bena Bowa, “those of the mushroom,” and the Lemba people of Kiembe became Bena Bapumpi, “those of the wild dog.”

Kipupa kyalo was important to local communities because it established claims of belonging of particular groups based on a naming pattern linked to remarkable features that existed on the land. One can think of it as a rite that analogically re-enacts the early settlement of different types of people in the Lufira valley. As a consequence, communities like the Yeke, who migrated to the area in the nineteenth century, do not have totemic names. According to historians of Central Africa, the association of a local group to a totemic figure was

204 invariably an index of “ownership” of a particular place oftentimes by virtue of settlement

(Schoffeleers 1979:8; Gordon 2006:15–85). Pre-colonial “ownership” of land did not mean possession; rather, land was conceptualized as an inalienable and indestructible resource conferred upon a community which became the custodian of it (Wilmet 1963:228). Kipupa kyalo not only gave a name to the people of a place but it also signified the mutual relationship between the peoples in the Lufira valley from the perspective of the Lemba—the supposed first-comers.

While totemic figures indexed clan affiliation of a particular group of people in the Lufira-

Mufuvya region, each clan was composed of smaller groups of related and unrelated people living in particular villages headed by “bakabwa” or “chiefs of the land.” Jules Wilmet

(1963b:235) noted thirty-nine land chiefs under Pande of the Bena Nzovu, whereas in my interview with Shyamwange, a “land chief” near the town of Mulungwishi revealed that under Pande there were fifty-one area chiefs. Of these, are a certain category of nobles known as the bakabwa who maintain perpetual historical relations to their King, Pande. It is they who are responsible for administering the rights-to-land emanating from the kipupa kyalo rite. For instance, the land “chief” of the mine of Kilobe was known by the title, Kyala

Nkungulu Kalunkumia.102 This title was inherited from his deceased father who had likewise inherited it from his father, the son of the sixth King of the Basanga, Pande Kya Mulemba.

102 Kyala in Kisanga means “thumb,” “place where trash is thrown,” “iron,” and “place where dead are buried.” It was explained to me that the reference to a “thumb” may be a linked to the idea that his ancestry is “outside” of that of the Luba-ized people (of whom the Sanga are a part). “Nkungulu” which he told me meant "grand or big" in Kisanga. However, if you follow the myths of origin ciruclating in this area you will note that the word “Nkungulu” bears resounding similarity to nkongal/nkongolo, or, “rainbow,” which in Lunda linguistics connotes “dragon” or, “mythic serpent that digs rivers and eats people” (Reefe 1981:76). Kalunkumia, refers to a "place where executions are done.”

205

The “chief” explained to me that he lays claim to Kilobe mine and the lands adjacent to it, an area that spans more than twenty kilometers and included mines, farm land, forests and waterbodies –on the basis of his perpetual kinship to the sixth Pande of the Basanga. Thus, as the holder of the title, Kyala Nkungulu Kalunkumia, he was a perpetual son of Pande

Kyala Jean, the current Sanga King.

Similarly, another “land chief” in Sanga territory103 whom I had the opportunity to interview held the title Shyamwange. He explained to me that he was the perpetual “father” of Pande because, according to his version of the myth relating the presence of Kiluba in the Lufira valley, Mutombo Kora was the son of a bride Shyamwange had sent to the court of the Lunda

King, Mwata Yav. This said child returned as a prince and married a girl in the village of

Shyamwange known as Kiluba. Thereafter, Mutombo Kora waged war on his “father,”

Shyamwange, and deposed him establishing his authority among a collection of people comprising the people of Shyamwange (Bakunda) and Lunda migrants of Mwata Yav. In this version of the myth of origin of the Basanga, the ‘owners’ of the land were the Bakunda of

Shyamwange who, to this day, retain the territory between River Katepe and River Mufuvya.

As with the example of the title Kyala Nkungulu Kalunkumia, the title Shyamwange shows how kinship relations and past events were mobilized as tradition about the settlement of peoples in the Lufira valley (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983).

103 During my fieldwork with Sanga nobles I was informed of a few of the chefs de terres among the Sanga. Most of the individuals who carry the following titles govern, or are thought to govern fixed tracts of land. For instance: Kyala Kalunkumia, Kyala Lukonko, Mutekwa Musese, Mwepu, Mumba Kalulu, Matavu, Tshikala, Sangatile, Kapenga, Shyamwange, Kubitwe, Kanyanina, Kijiba, Saya and Kimungu 206

While areas of settlement in Sanga territory were placed in the hands of leaders with historical links to the Sanga leader, Pande, other sites on the land such as mines and hunting grounds were identified not through settlement but by virtue of the function that took place in that area. As an example, the place where the city of Likasi is now located was known as

Dikashi104 by the Basanga denoting, “place with the odour of antelopes.” The name suggests that the vast area in which the city lies may have been a hunting ground in pre-colonial times.

Another example is the village of Shyàmpenge, where Mutombo Kora moved with his new wife Kiluba, in the Sanga myth above. Shyàmpenge indexes Mutombo Kora because shyà or shàà in Luba/Sanga is a prefix meaning “father of.” Penge refers to Penge wa Lubunze, the first Pande to rule after the reign of Mutombo Kora. Thus, Shyàmpenge likely means the place of “the ‘father’ of Penge (wa Lubunze).” Here, “father” is loosely understood to mean the social pater of the community.

Myths, land rites, local titles and the place-names all demonstrate ways in which local communities in the Congo Copperbelt socialized their space and ascribed public authority to particular individuals or groups. These four elements appear as forms of political charters that advance claims linking specific individuals or groups to particular spaces and to other communities in perpetuity. It is to be expected that, with time and changing circumstances, the interpretations of myths, titles, land rites and place-names are likely to alter just as the role of customary authorities has shifted under successive regimes of government in the

Congo. What I have shown above is but one version of how the Basanga idealize their relationship to the spaces their ancestors occupied and, in some ways, what some of those

104 An antelope in Sanga/Luba is known as kasha. 207 spaces mean to them. This relationship is of course contested by their neighbours and its interpretations are ever-changing. To highlight some of these changes, I now consider how the contemporary role of customary authorities as custodians of the land has been influenced by the liberalization of the mining sector. My interest is to address how and why “chiefs” translate claims to “ownership” into rents and regulations governing artisanal mining on

“their” land.

Customary “ownership” and regulation in an artisanal mine

In Kilobe mine, fees levied every Friday typically went to the customary authorities. The fee comprised a levy of 10% on all the copper ore produced by creuseurs and another levy on ore bought by copper traders. While the collection of tax in artisanal mines is officially sanctioned in the 2002 mining code, customary authorities were not (by law) considered tax- collecting agents of the state. Their tendency to enforce such collection was as much an indication of the inadequacies of state regulatory capacity following decades of indirect rule in Congo as it was a sign of the ability of customary authorities to successfully enforce their claims of “ownership” over a mine (see Chapter 2). “Chiefs” who have been active in the arena of national politics have benefitted more than most by grafting the administrative powers of the state onto their customary authority.105 The effect of this fusion of state and customary authority in south Katanga today has enabled a select few “chiefs” with business acumen to negotiate lucrative agreements with commercial mining companies on their land.

105 Particularly in the postcolonial government of Pres. Mobutu but also during colonial times, the State often attempted to influence the choice of customary chiefs whenever possible turning the demise of a chief into protracted family conflicts. 208

Generally, the vast majority of customary authorities of the Basanga decry that commercial and artisanal mining has brought little or no benefit to them or their people. Many told me that the tribute they collect was too little to make a significant change in their lives or in the lives of community members (see also De Boeck and Baloji 2016:191–209). Furthermore, because all land in Congo is the “exclusive, inalienable and imprescriptible property of the state” (Article 53, Code Fonciere 1980), only the government has the legal right to designate land as a concession for private, commercial or communal use. This legal fact has greatly reduced the negotiating capacity of customary authorities with private mining companies.

It is widely accepted in Congo that the greatest beneficiaries of the new changes governing the mining sector have been well-placed state authorities and foreign entrepreneurs.106 In southern Katanga, stories abound of instances when customary authorities and entire communities are ignored when state officials are designating large tracks of land as mining concessions to commercial mining enterprises (Hönke 2010). De Boeck and Baloji

(2016:191-209) discuss as much when they note that customary authorities in Pungulume continue to decry the loss of their land and waterways to the Tenke Fungurume Mining company, arguably the most profitable mining company in the Congo today. During my fieldwork, local Likasi residents recounted stories of aggrieved and frustrated individuals having to resort to all manner of extralegal means and occult practices to prevent the annexation of their ancestral lands by the state and private investors. Inexplicable flooding, incomprehensible jamming of equipment, freak accidents in the mines, unusual attacks by

106 For instance, the former governor of Katanga, Moise Katumbi Chapwe, is one of the wealthiest mining magnates in all of Congo. For scandals involving the sale of mining concessions by elites in the state bureaucracy, see Burgis (2015:29–60) and Africa Progress Panel (2013). 209 insects and wild animals, strange sicknesses, and hallucinations by personnel are just a few of the strategies claimed to be the work of “spirits” thought to be under the control of the customary authorities. For this reason, many foreign investors placated customary authorities with monetary gifts in the thousands of dollars before beginning their work. According to some residents, part of the logic of compensating the “chief” was to obtain his blessings and goodwill. In southern Congo, as in many other parts of Africa, it is generally accepted that the most powerful sorcerer in a community is the “chief” for, as many say, his power emanates from the invisible agency of the ancestors (see also MacGaffey 1977:177–179;

Petit 1996; Mary Nooter Roberts 2013).

Fear of the powers of the dead led some of my creuseur informants to caution me against making eye contact when talking to a mulopwe, for they claimed if you locked your eyes with him, he could read your mind and intentions. One was also not to raise one’s voice to the mulopwe, for doing so may provoke his wrath which, apparently, was never physical but, rather, manifest itself through the effects of his voice. The balopwe I spoke to phrased their politico-religious influence by saying, “mulopwe ni sauti,” “the mulopwe is [his] voice” meaning, the mulopwe’s speech possessed illocutionary power. Thus, one had to be very careful in conversations with them. A marker of this illocutionary power is the gift one offers the mulopwe on a first visit which is locally referred to as “diputula kinwa” or, “the opening of the mouth.” Many other restrictions pertain to the conduct of the mulopwe—his eating habits, security, and family life—but that which most affects the wellness of his people is the taboo associated with death. As elders explained, local Sanga custom dictates that the mulopwe may never commit murder or even be in the presence of blood, death, or the dying.

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He also cannot permit any form of murder in the territories under his control for doing so was thought to disturb the ritual peace and harmony of the land. Unequivocal in the latter interdiction is the understanding that the sanctity of the people and the land are dependent on the moral actions of the mulopwe himself – a reference to his divine powers. Social injunctions placed on the moral character of the mulopwe are intended to establish him as the moral authority of the people.

If there was one thing that customary authorities policed more than their own behaviour it was local taboos and prohibitions governing people’s movement as well as mining practices in their territories. For instance, the village of Kilobe is named after the stream that acts as a physical barrier between the village area and the mines where copper ore is extracted; it is also the name of the spirits thought to control the supply of copper in the hills adjacent to the stream. It was taboo for women to cross the river and go towards the mountain where copper was mined, for it was said that the spirits of Kilobe, mizimu ya Kilobe, were jealous of women and capricious in nature. Therefore, they abhorred the presence of women and were likely to cause harm to them. One rumour I heard was that the spirit in the area was that of a woman who was violently killed walking home along the road leading to the village; another

I heard stated that Kilobe was a bride dressed in white who died on her wedding day. Both rumours emphasized that Kilobe was a woman whose existence was marked by her lack of social emplacement. She was neither a wife nor a woman in a home; rather, she was a woman caught in transition, in the liminal space of becoming. Though there was disagreement over the characteristics of the spirit Kilobe, nobody I encountered denied her existence or the existence of spirits more broadly.

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Discourse on the enchantment of the mines took various forms. The taboo against women moderated access to the mine, whereas other taboos related to the process of mineral exploration. Miners, many of whom were not ethnically related to customary authorities, were often warned against polluting the mountain by defecating or urinating in or around mining shafts, or entering underground without cleaning themselves after sex. Furthermore, because artisanal mines attracted young men from all parts of the country, customary authorities constantly worried about the use of sorcery (bulozi) to retrieve copper ore in the mines. To be sure, sorcery in an artisanal mine was said to be punishable by death. The penalty was thought to fit a crime whose perpetrator is very hard to trace. Everyone I spoke to explained that it was very difficult to know with certainty if and when a group of creuseurs were using charms (lawa) because of the subterranean nature of mining and since people could not see sorcery but only identified it by its effects. Some said that a fellow miner could not fully ascertain if an individual or group were using sorcery. Rather, as customary authorities explained, it was the spirits, or mizimu, in the mines who “knew” and it is they who punished one accordingly. Suspicion of the use of sorcery was also hard to ascertain for there were no oracles in the mines thus, the idioms of accusation often took the form of anything that was extraordinary or unexplainable. For instance, if a group of creuseurs struck ore after only one or two days on the job they were deemed suspect for it often took weeks or months to dig deep enough to reach the copper ore. If the scale of production and economic reward of a group of miners far outstripped that of others, they were also considered suspect. If one was never seen to work yet had an endless supply of ore and money, he was deemed to be in the possession of some form of sorcery. Because

212 suspicion often did not result in any sanction, it did not typically deter the use of sorcery.

This may explain why the threat of death was used as a deterrent and as evidence of sorcery.

But, even with this threat, it was common knowledge that in any artisanal mine in Katanga there were always young men using charms of sorcery.107 Of course, if you asked anyone if they had bought charms, they would swiftly deny it; only when disasters struck in the process of mining were suspicions of sorcery potentially verified (see preface).

In Kilobe, sorcery was said to be partly responsible for the landslides and even the deaths that had occurred in the mine. Though this claim is debatable given the rudimentary equipment and techniques used by miners to manually dig mineshafts, creuseurs, for one, often accused each other of sorcery. The mulopwe of Kilobe also advocated the view that sorcery was to blame for mineshaft collapses because, as the said moral authority over of cultural practices on the land, any intervention to redress an imbalance on the land required his full support. To obtain such support one had to meet his demands, which entailed paying money, or offering gifts so he will perform rites to purify the mine. In one incident dating back to 2011, Jules, one of my creuseur informants, told me that there was a mineshaft collapse that killed two creuseurs and led to the closure of the mine for five days (see preface). This incident was widely attributed to the miners’ use of sorcery. So that work could resume in the mine, the mulopwe demanded that the bodies of the entombed miners be recovered and the creuseurs’ association were blamed and forced to pay a hefty fine.

107 In the mines there was little distinction between charms – what some called "lawa" – and other forms of sorcery. Miners tended to refer to charms (lawa) and mysterious occurence (ma-mystique) as forms of sorcery (bulozi). The charms were said to be of various sorts; there were some to protect oneself while underground, others to help diggers find and extract the ore, and a third variety I heard of that could make ordinary rocks appear like copper or cobalt ore. The last variety was used as a frappe, to hit [someone] for some quick cash. 213

What is most intriguing about customary authorities’ actions in artisanal mines is the manner in which they stake their claim over the land and its natural resources. By employing fines, enforcing taboos, demanding tribute payments, and soliciting gifts for right of access, customary authorities have devised deliberate strategies to operationalize their claims of

“ownership” of the land. These strategies work in large part because of a pervasive discourse about the presence of spirits which, not only disciplined the actions of creuseurs during mining, but also served to establish an awareness, especially among newly arrived miners, that their actions were being policed by “invisible forces.” Discourse on spirits and sorcery was a technology of the mulopwe’s power that was thought to manifest in taboos. These taboos governing practices in the mine were designed to instil fear and caution in people’s behaviour, while at the same time, supporting customary claims over the land since they were premised upon a pre-colonial moral matrix that ostensibly conferred upon the “chief” power over the land as willed to him by the ancestral spirits. Whether or not the mulopwe had such powers was less relevant to local residents than the fact that he had access to them and could presumably call upon them to either punish or reward people. In my view, customary authorities could convince local residents working and living in Kilobe to pay tribute and respect taboos because a considerable number of these individuals already highly valued the social orders and moral matrices of the past. Successfully parlaying the pre-colonial moral matrices into a claim giving him historical “ownership” of the mine (that he reluctantly shared with the state), gave customary authorities a degree of economic security while minimally redressing some of the historical losses of territory and governance endured under colonial rule. However, as I will explain below, economically benefitting from the mine

214 compromised the custodial role of customary authorities because, like the state, they appeared to be profiting from the exploitation the most vulnerable working in the mine: the artisanal miners. As a consequence, the social figure of the mulopwe contained within him a moral struggle between accumulation for personal gain and redistribution for societal benefit.

Monetizing a mine

In 2012, the long-standing customary “chief” of the Kilobe area died and his son was invested as the new mulopwe. Mine taxes collected each Friday continued to be paid to customary authorities until, sometime after the installation of new mulopwe, the payments stopped. The reason for the stoppage of payments was a disagreement between the customary authorities and the Association of Artisanal Miners of Katanga (EMAK) officials over the arrival of a South African company called Luna Mining—the fourth commercial mining company to install itself in Kilobe mine.

The company created a mobile factory capable of partially processing copper ore just outside the village of Kilobe and, in an attempt to appease the local authorities and creuseurs, they hired all the EMAK officials along with a few creuseurs. To placate the mulopwe, the company promised him a gift of a General Motors Hummer vehicle and money totaling US

$38,000. Even prior to receiving a penny, the mulopwe acquiesced to the establishment of the factory and was informed that his car would be given to him in Lubumbashi a few weeks after granting his approval. Shortly after, Luna mining broke ground and started hiring mining staff whom they agreed to pay US $150 per month along with a sack of maize flour.

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Work rapidly got underway and the mulopwe went after his car in Lubumbashi, where it was supposed to be in the custody of EMAK officials. After months of back and forth the officials of the organization said that there was no Hummer for the mulopwe and that he would have to settle for a small second-hand Toyota pickup truck and US $300. Upon hearing this, the mulopwe was livid—the “gift” had been downgraded, which also suggested he may have been deceived since the entire arrangement was only verbally agreed. Aggrieved by what he thought was chicanery at EMAK, an organization whose personalities he knew very well, the mulopwe retaliated by going to the Provincial Ministry of Mines to protest against EMAK and Luna mining company.

A few days later, the mayor of Likasi and other state officials descended on Kilobe mine.

They raided the compound of Luna mining and shut down the company’s operations arguing that they lacked the requisite legal documents. Luna mining had only been in operation for two months when this happened and its closure once again exposed how companies were using EMAK to privatize activities in the mine. The fallout from the Luna mining debacle led to hostilities between the mulopwe and EMAK officials. Not only did the association suspend all tributary payments to the mulopwe; it also aggressively prevented his representatives from accessing the mine for many months.

In 2014, when I returned to the mine, the relationship between EMAK officials and the customary chief was at an all-time low. The association maintained that the mulopwe had reneged on the Luna mining agreement and therefore owed the association money accruing from liabilities they incurred as a result of its closure. For his part, the mulopwe decried that

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EMAK was a corrupt organization profiteering from the privatization of artisanal mines at the expense of customary authorities and the miners.

From the perspective of an artisanal miner risking his life by manually digging a thirty- meter-deep vertical shaft into the earth, neither the customary authorities nor the EMAK officials really cared about their interests. In the words of Stevo, a local resident of Kilobe and decade-long artisanal miner, “mulopwe, EMAK, na l’État bote banatesa shiye, bana kuria franca yetu na tuko na baki vide,” “the chief, EMAK, and the state are all torturing us

[making us suffer], they eat our money and leave us with nothing.” According to Stevo and other long-time miners, the problem is not that they are losing money to officials of all sorts, rather, it is that these individuals did not reciprocate the taxes miners paid. They did not help make mine work any safer nor were they able to offer any sort of training to help miners find other jobs. Baring the occasional rituals done to purify the mine, customary authorities mirrored the state in so far as they constantly demanded cash-for-access yet offered nothing tangible in return for the tribute from miners. Thus, it is not hard to imagine why the miners felt little sympathy for the mulopwe in his running battles against EMAK. Furthermore, the fact that the mulopwe benefitted from the setting up of businesses in territory said to be under his customary control angered hard-working miners because, to them, “he got paid for doing no work” and, sometimes, even at the expense of their welfare. If he felt the terms of his agreements with companies or creuseurs were not being met, he had the means to stop all work in the mine—an action that especially disenfranchised creuseurs.

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Conclusion

The post-industrial world of mining rests uneasily on a landscape overwrought with competing regimes of land ownership. On the one hand are long-standing pre-colonial frameworks of custody over the land premised on the authority of customary authorities presiding over ethnically delineated territories and, on the other hand, is the modern

Congolese state that purports to be sovereign over all the territory within its borders. The temporally contrasting claims and regimes of control over resource land have gained heightened significance in recent times due to the liberalization of the mining sector because private companies are willing to deal unscrupulously with any recognized local authority to gain access to resource land. It has long been assumed in the literature on state and society relations in Congo that the interests of customary authorities aligned predominantly with those of the state, or were co-extensive with them due to the legacy of indirect rule

(Mamdani 1996). What I have suggested in this chapter is that customary officials in southern Congo locate their claims to the land in the moral economy of the pre-colonial past, as the custodians and governors of the land, its resources and the people. The successful instrumentalization of the past is made especially visible in artisanal mines where the claims of “ownership” by customary authorities allow them to obtain financial benefits in the form of tribute payments from miners, traders and even companies interested in working in particular mines. While this adaptation of a discourse of traditional morality and autochthony has somewhat helped customary officials maintain relevance today and even gain economic resources, it has done nothing to alleviate the plight of artisanal miners. In fact, the added burden of paying customary officials along with the state can be considered as a double tax on the backs of most miners. This reveals that competition over resource land in the era of

218 liberalization has continued to deepen the plight and narrow the means for survival for customary authorities to the extent that they are driven to commodify their social role and traditions in light of the market so as to subsist as well as remain relevant. While policing the past to create a space for profiting in the present may momentarily maintain the existence of customary authorities, it is also likely to hasten their obsolescence, for it depoliticized their role and diminished their moral value in the eyes of their people. Those with the lowest opinion of customary authorities were, of course, creuseurs. It is to them I now turn.

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Chapter 5

Mobilizing the Past: Creuseurs, Precarity and the Colonizing Structure

It was 2pm. The intense sun that afternoon made the fifteen-minute wait at the city centre of Likasi in Katanga province of Congo all the more tedious for Papa Kabongo, my research assistant, and me. We were waiting for some informants for an interview and they had not appeared. Half an hour passed and we spotted two brand new Bajaj motorbikes whiz past us and abruptly turn around. The riders were both without helmets but they wore some fancy sunglasses. The blue bike came right up to me. The rider slowly lifted his glasses and with a cheeky grin said, “Timoté, ni je?” (Timoté, how is it?). It was Francis, my informant. I was perplexed, unsure of whether I should comment on his looks, that suspicious grin, or the flippant greeting. Francis knew and could see that I looked visibly surprised because only the day before, Papa Kabongo and I had stumbled into him in an artisanal mine near the city of Likasi where I was conducting my fieldwork. Then, he wore shorts soiled with mud, a tired T-shirt browned by dust and spoke to us about the Sunday meeting while standing knee-deep in brown murky water while overseeing his copper ore being washed. At one moment he would be speaking calmly to us and at the next, he would be flailing his arms and hollering at some teenage boys at the nearby stream to hurry up with the rinsing of his malachite rocks. Francis was a creuseur.

That Sunday afternoon when I met him one might have mistaken him for a sapeur.108 He had donned a Yankees Baseball cap, aviator sunglasses, blue jeans, a Chelsea Football Club soccer jersey, moccasins, and, just for effect, two replica Seiko watches – one on each wrist. Time obviously mattered to this guy, I mused. So, why was he late?

The momentary shock of seeing Francis sapé wore off. Jules, Francis’s friend and business partner, approached me. He laughed as he dismounted his bike in his black three-piece suit and greeted us in the respectful Katangese manner of bringing our heads to touch each other from side to side. I realized that their laughter and smiles were a response to what they must have perceived to be my exaggerated sense of surprise. I am sure they were wondering why it was so strange to me that they were a la mode, akin to the male dancers of the Congolese pop-music sensation Werrason.109 Of course, they did not say that, but they knew they had surprised me and from their smiles I gathered that it pleased them. With their arrival

108 To sapé in Congolese French refers to an ostentatious display of clothing. When taken to the extreme by sapeurs – those who sapé – it refers to what Gondola (1999) has described as a “dreamlike hedonism” expressed through particular forms of clothing that allow one to reconstruct both time and space and in doing so recreate one’s identity. 109 Werrason is a famous contemporary Congolese musician from Kwilu province. He is also known to be one of the Congolese musicians most sympathetic to the plight of street-children in Congo. 220 complete, Jules and Francis ferried Papa Kabongo and me to what they called a “quiet place,” where we could talk. It happened to be a bar.

***

This chapter is about young men like Francis and his friend Jules who work as creuseurs or, craft diggers. To me, the play and display of these young men reveals a few of the arresting paradoxes in the lives of creuseurs such as the display of plenty when otherwise lack is the norm, the disdain for formality unless it serves practical ends and the use of spectacle as a means of instruction. The delayed and unapologetic entrance of Francis and Jules, their sapé display (when otherwise they were tanned to their eyelashes in the reddish tinge of Katanga soil) along with the respectful manner of greeting indicative of how relative equals acknowledge each other, were all attempts to disabuse me of what I thought I knew about creuseurs. Francis and Jules, whom I repeatedly met in the mine of Kilobe in Katanga province, wanted me to view them as coevals. They wanted me to recognize them as being representative, and maybe even constitutive, of the here and now as it is experienced and expressed in the Congo. It is that emplacement, mutual recognition and historical experience

I discuss in this chapter.

To what do we owe the emergence of this social figure of the African miner in the

Copperbelt – a place once considered to be the bastion of modernity in Africa (see Epstein

1967; 1981; Ferguson 1999; Gluckman 1960:57; Powdermaker 1962)? Francis was just one of the approximately 50,000 - 250,000 young men engaged in artisanal mining in Katanga

Province alone.110 Like his friend Jules, Francis became a creuseur in the wake of the decline

110 A World Bank study (2008:56–57) estimates that 90% of all minerals production in Congo come from artisanal miners who are estimated to be between 500,000 and 2 million in number in the country. 221 of industrial mining, which took hold around 1990 when a collapse in global commodity prices coupled with the gross mismanagement of the country led to dwindling revenues from copper mining resulting in the serious indebtedness of the state-run mining company,

Gécamines. As mentioned in chapter 2, the remedy to the ailing Congolese economy came in

2002 when, with the insistence of the World Bank, the state liberalized the mining sector and commenced a process of retrenching more than half of the 24,000 workers of the company along with other public-sector staff (Rubbers 2010). The combined effects of forced retrenchment and the liberalization of the mining sector basically mortgaged the futures of the dependents of thousands of workers compelling them to swap the classroom for the carrières. Somewhat predictably, liberalization also coincided with a rise in global commodity prices that made the metal and mineral ores of the Copperbelt an attractive investment in the global market. The ensuing rush for mining concessions in Katanga has pitted artisanal miners (creuseurs) against the Congolese state and its partners: foreign mining companies.111

Beginning in 1995, conflicts between artisanal miners and large-scale mining companies have been documented and linked to reforms in the Mining Laws and Regulations of over thirty-six sub-Saharan African countries (Carstens & Hilson 2009: 306). In the majority of the cases,112 changes to the regulations governing mining were made with a view of increasing the participation of large-scale mining companies with little regard to the

111 A similar trend has been noted in Eastern Congo with the arrival of large multinational corporations such as Banro mining (see Geenen and Hönke 2014). 112 A case of conflict between artisanal miners and mining corporations is also discussed in Tanzania (Carstens and Hilson 2009), Ghana (Hilson and Yakovleva 2007), Mozambique (Dreschler 2002). Similar dynamics have also been noted in Papua New Guinea (Kirsch 1996) and Suriname (Heemskerk & van der Kooye 2003). 222 livelihood strategies of rural residents, small-scale farmers and other land dwellers. The

Congo Copperbelt is no exception to the global trend of disregarding local livelihoods when enacting policy reforms in the resource extraction sector. In fact, as I will show below, violent disregard for local experience is a recurring motif, particularly when one analyzes the longue durée of resource extraction in Congo. That said, the presentist focus of resource policy literature still offers useful insights, dispelling automatic links between the existence of natural resources and the incidences of violent conflict (for review see Cuvelier et.al 2014) while at the same time advocating for the recognition of artisanal mining in sub-Saharan

Africa as a viable poverty alleviation strategy (for review see Hilson & McQuilken 2014) and the inclusion of women in mining (Bashwira et.al 2014; Kuhn 2017; Werthmann 2009).

However, this literature often underplays the role and endurance of technologies of governance and domination arising from the pre-colonial and colonial eras particularly as these continue to inform the organization of resource extraction and labour relationships in artisanal mining in sub-Saharan Africa. As the pre-colonial history of mining in Africa makes clear (see chapter 1), in many communities on the continent metallurgy was about more than material needs because the significance of the process of extracting and refining metals into valuable items influenced social relations in the sphere of politics, gender, and religion (Cline 1937; Diop 1988; Herbert 1984, 1993). Therefore, an in-depth look at artisanal mining, which in Central Africa was a pre-colonial practice, also requires a reflexive analysis that grapples with the recursions and entanglements of the past as they manifest and are informed by the shifting demands of the present.

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For artisanal miners in Katanga, the present is defined by the ominous presence of the threat of dispossession. That which is sought by the state and private interests is the very source of their livelihood and cultural identity: their ancestral lands. Thus, resistance to dispossession attempts often take violent and deadly forms (see chapter 3). For the state and foreign investors, mining land is a lucrative commodity that can be prospected, traded or securitized in the present so as to generate future profits. To creuseurs, the hardening realities of the present reveal the future as conceivable only in so far as it is connected to the moral matrices of the past that link them as benefactors of the ancestors – the “true” owners of the land. The conflict in this context hinges largely on the perceived attempt by capital to define the future without any “space” for the past, that is, without areas where local residents can communally organize their labour as independent miners to exploit productive resources. Therefore, I argue, creuseurs have come to understand attempts to annex artisanal mines as corresponding to the evisceration of their pasts. In anticipation of the existential nature of this dispossession, I discuss in this chapter how both the organization and the character of artisanal mining have been adapted by miners to address the precarity they experience in the present. However, rather than transforming social relations among miners, these adaptations to the threat of dispossession unintentionally reproduce the very structures of violence of the colonial past they seek to overcome.

I begin by first providing a brief historical backdrop to mining in Katanga in order to highlight how artisanal mining re-emerges after industrial decline. I then move on to provide an ethnographic analysis of creusage to show how it is structured in ways that mirror and seemingly reproduce colonial relations of violence. I close with a reflection of what the

224 genealogy of artisanal mining reveals about the emplacement of African mineworkers in the neoliberal present.

On the emergence of the creuseur

To explain the “history of the present” informing the emergence of the creuseur as a social figure, it is necessary to situate a series of conjunctures that have shaped the form of mining in the larger history of economic exchanges in Central Africa. Beginning from 1600 to around 1800AD, oral historians explain that the crowding of strangers around centers of rare natural resources such as salt pans, copper outcrops and iron deposits in the Congo basin formed the early basis of political centralization among the peoples of southern Congo

(Vansina 1966). Increasing exchange and control of these items for prestige purposes facilitated the rise and spread of powerful centralized polities such as the Kongo, Kuba,

Lunda and Luba Kingdoms (Reefe 1981; Vansina 1978; Macola 2002). In spite of the importance of metals to the Kingdoms of the Congo basin, descriptions of the extractive process of pre-colonial mining are sparse in the historical record. One of the earliest descriptions of pre-colonial copper mining in Katanga is found in the work of the former apostolic vicar of the parish of Elizabethville (present day city of Lubumbashi), Monseigneur de Hemptinne (1926). He describes how a Yeke Chief named N'kuba organized and ran one of his copper mining campaigns having been trained and initiated into a guild of “copper eaters.” De Hemptinne (1926) claimed that the most famous coppersmiths were from the

Sanga community and that they developed their smelting and smithing techniques in the copper mining region of present day Katanga.

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Mining in the Congo Copperbelt would begin in the dry season, around mid-May, after the harvest of sorghum. It began with the “chief” pronouncing “Tuye Tukadie Mukuba,” “Let us go eat copper” (De Hemptinne 1926:381). It was the “chief” himself who launched the mining campaign and he summoned the ngang'a to invoke the assistance of the spirits of the ancestors, “Bakishi,” which were ancestral spirits of old chiefs. In De Hemptinne’s description, the ngang’a invoked “Chief Muyeye, the father of Chief Nkuba” by saying to the bakishi:

You who have gone before us It is you who have opened For your children the belly of the mountain Allow us to find the treasure.113

With these ritualized pronouncements, De Hemptinne suggests “Chief” N’kuba ordered the start of the campaign and it lasted until about the month of October (for four to five months) after which time smelting began. The entire village would relocate to the closest river or stream near the mine until the mining season was over. After each extraction campaign, members of the village offered a portion of their copper ore to the “chief” in recognition of his role in ritually maintaining the fertility of the land and its people. Even after paying those dues, those men digging and women cleaning the ore still obtained a substantial portion of the copper resource. It is estimated that from 1850 to 1910 the Basanga people produced approximately 700 tonnes of copper (De Hemptinne 1926:402). During the early parts of that period, Mushiri, a Sumba warrior from the Lake Nyasa region, arrived in southern Katanga and eventually befriended the Sanga leader, Pande Kyamulemba. Due to his prowess in

113 I translated this paragraph from French from De Hemptinne (1926:382). 226 warfare, he gained notoriety in Katanga and ultimately usurped power114 from Pande

Kyamulemba. With the help of Arab slave traders from whom he obtained guns and gunpowder, he gained control of the copper trade and built a fiefdom in the village of

Bunkeya (Vansina 1966:227–235). Mushiri’s influence on the copper, ivory, and slave trade along with his brutal exploits were narrated by early explorers115 ultimately providing some of the impetus for King Leopold II’s interest in the Congo. The death of Mushiri in 1891 at the hands of Captain Bodson, a member of an expedition group sent by King Leopold, and the subsequent failed revolt of the Basanga against Belgian rule ushered in the industrial era in Katanga. With the arrival of Europeans in Katanga in 1891, the power of Basanga,

Bayeke, and Balamba leaders was significantly diminished and they lost total control of their ancient mines. The Belgians confined the Basanga, Balamba and Kaonde peoples to their villages as they expropriated old Basanga mines such as Kamatanda, Likasi, Kampobe

(Kambove), Karabi and Kony, virtually ending all artisanal mining activity.

The arrival of the railway from southern Africa in 1910 facilitated the movement of copper ore but it also led to an increase in the number of Europeans arriving in Elizabethville to work for either Union Minière du Haut Katanga (UMHK), Katanga railways, or the Force

Publique116 (Fetter 1976: 34). In order to obtain cheap labour, Europeans imposed a head tax policy payable in cash and administered by local “chiefs” and village headmen, resulting in a

114 Mushiri established the Bayeke Chiefdom in Katanga around 1870 and demanded tribute from the earliest copper producing chiefs of Lamba and Sanga origin (such as Chief Muyeye, father of Chief N'kuba whom De Hemptinne [1926] observed). 115 Explorer accounts of Henry Morton Stanley and David Livingstone were particularly important in exciting European colonial imaginations. See Hochschild (1999:42–46). 116 The Force Publique was a para-military unit created by King Leopold II during the times of the Congo Free State (1898 – 1910). It was responsible for enforcing Belgian colonial policy and it played a significant part in meting out violence during the 'Red Rubber' campaigns in which millions of Congolese lost their lives. See Síocháin and O’Sullivan (2003) 227 forceful push of Africans into the cash economy and away from the countryside to urban centers, where they were conscripted to work in mines such as those in Elizabethville

(Lubumbashi). Stories of Africans being eaten alive by batumbula, terrifying creatures that ate the flesh and drank the blood of Africans in Katanga, circulated widely in Elizabethville and in Northern Rhodesia during the early 1920s and speak of some of the violence of the colonial experience (see White 2000: 270).

As stated in chapter 1, at the peak of industrialization in the 1960s, mining companies were the dominant social force in the African Copperbelt. In the city of Lubumbashi in Katanga province of Congo, the state-run mining company, Union Minière’s system of “welfare capitalism” controlled the work, leisure, lodging, healthcare, education, and even spiritual life of its employees. However, as the economy started to take a turn for the worse in the

1980s the paternalist image of the company came under threat. Cuts in welfare took many of the residents of Katanga by surprise for, unlike the rest of the Congolese, revenues from mining had for decades offered relative stability to the Katangese from much of the economic turmoil in post-independence Congo. A sure sign of industrial decline came in the form of the closure of Kamoto mine in 1990 (Rubbers 2009a:29). In spite of the fact that the collapse of mining was symptomatic of post-Cold War political realignments, wider state failure, and the volatility of international markets, it was not experienced or explained as such. Children apportioned blame to their fathers for taking all the benefits of industrialism and leaving them with nothing. “Fathers” became a social group widely held responsible for mishandling independence and permitting the ensuing corruption of President Mobutu117 and

117 President Mobutu Sese Seko became the President of Congo in 1965 after the assassination of the Prime Minister-elect Patrice Lumumba. He ruled Congo for 32 years. 228 his elites (Jewsiewicki 2010:10). Decades of a colonially produced institutional paternalism had eventually produced its own critique.

Dwindling American support for the kleptocratic regime of President Mobutu and rising social unrest in Congo set the stage for the 1997 coup that overthrew Mobutu from power.

The Congo by this time was a country with little control of its borders let alone its people, economy or resources. For the people of Katanga, the liberalization of the mining sector in

2002 was experienced as the loss of tens of thousands of industrial jobs and the evaporation of many of the welfare supports of the past (Rubbers 2010; 2013). It is in the wake of this economic restructuring and the hardening of the times that I analyze the “new” figure of the creuseur.

Precarity and the colonizing structure

One of the aspects of the past made clear in the aforementioned history is that the colonial encounter sought to reorganize and destroy pre-colonial modes of existence so as to define, henceforth, the form collective social life would take in Congo. Fortunately, this project was not successful. In fact, the return of artisanal mining in the destructive wake of a declining colonial industrialism reveals the uncanny nature of the past for while the practice largely retains its familiar pre-colonial form (consisting of the use of rudimentary tools to dig for minerals in mines whose access was guaranteed communally) it is nevertheless “strange.” Its strangeness is in large part a product of the timeliness of its return to a present in which mining is singularly structured based on the imperatives of the global market rather than the

229 stipulations of the pre-colonial peasant economy. To think of artisanal mining today demands that one consider and even juxtapose its doppelgänger: private concession mining. Both artisanal and concession mining are enshrined in the revised Code Minier of 2002 and, given the resurgence of commodity prices over the past decade, these two groups are often in competition for the same mining concessions. This collision course between foreign investors and creuseurs routinely results in the state sanctioned privatization of artisanal mines (see chapter 3 for an example).

While this seizure is akin to what David Harvey (2005) has called “accumulation by dispossession,” it is by no means unique to the Congo. Such forms of seizure are a common feature of contemporary imperialism whose manifestation, particularly in the West, is the physical, occupational, and existential precarity of modern life (Butler 2006; Standing 2011).

To be precise, while in the West the discourse of precarity refers to a politically induced condition that is the outcome of the systematic dismembering of social and economic networks of support by the imperatives of neoliberal governance at the turn of the 21st century, in Africa, a similar discourse on the effects of neoliberalism can be traced to the early 1980s. The moniker used to refer to precarity then (as now) in Africa is the idiom of

“uncertainty” (Callaghy and Ravenhill 1993; Cooper and Pratten 2015; Werbner 2002), and

“crisis” (Hoogvelt 2001; Mbembe and Roitman 1995; Petit and Mutambwa 2005; Walle

2001). As attractive as it may be to draw comparisons between precarity in the West and

Africa such comparisons run into problems when we move beyond the idiomatic expression of “precarity” and begin to tease out the historicity of such an experience.

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Particularly in the resource economies of central and southern Africa, it is apposite to reflect on Frederick Cooper’s (2017:10) claim that “if ‘precarity’ has any meaning it is as the reverse of “stabilization.” This is because the social welfare agenda of “stabilization” in the

Copperbelt was not aimed at building a society based on democratic values, equal opportunity and solidarity, as was the case in 20th century Europe (less so in the United

States) (Cooper 2017:10). “Stabilization,” in Congo especially, was a colonial project whose social welfare agenda was aimed at increasing the survival rates of men living in mining camps with the aim of creating a workforce that would be solely reliant on waged labour for its social reproduction. The fact that this process was never fully successful is perhaps the reason the industrial decline was not completely disastrous for Copperbelt mineworkers (see

Mususa 2010b). Thus, the particularities of Central African history impel me to analyze

“precarity” not only as a politically induced condition resulting from neoliberalism but, more fundamentally, as a social condition linked to the foundational violence of the “colonizing structure.”

As Mudimbe (1988:15) reminds us, the structure of colonialism in Africa entailed the domination of space, reformation of the natives’ minds and the restructuring of local economies. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the Copperbelt where, as early as 1971,

Bernard Magubane118 argued that scholars ought to view the modernization of the Copperbelt as an acute pathology of colonial experience. I want to suggest that Magubane’s (1971) admonition still rings true in the context of post-industrial decline in Congo. For instance, if we consider how rural life in colonial times was radically restructured to meet the demands

118 See the critique of the indices used by RLI scholars to study social change in the work of Magubane (1971:431). 231 of industrialization in southern Katanga (Jewsiewicki 1983), then the corporate social welfare regimes of Gécamines, which catered for a minority in urban centers, start to appear more an exception than the norm. Similarly, thinking of the precarity creuseurs face today, their dispossession, impermanence, impoverishment, social disenfranchisement, and inability to connect means and ends, suggests that precarity—from a historical perspective—has quite likely been the norm for a majority in rural and urban Congo for decades. Furthermore, the fact that many young men working as creuseurs are descendants of mineworkers who were once conscripted and then later seduced by employment-linked guarantees of industrial welfare, only to be discarded and rendered abject by the whims of global finance, speaks to the exceptionalism of the industrial moment as much as the tenacity of colonially-induced inequality. To me, the recursive and insidious nature of generational inequality emanating from the industrialization process in the Congo especially highlights the unfinished nature of the colonial encounter. As Anibal Quijano (2007) notes, the structures of power produced by colonialism and persisting in its wake to codify and hierarchically order global and domestic social relations are an index of the coloniality of experience. It is these same structures that I have in mind when I explore: to what extent is the precarity experienced by creuseurs an outcome of the colonial encounter?

The creuseurs of south Katanga

Liberalization of the Congolese mining industry in 2002 produced mixed results. While on the one hand it coincided with a rise of world metal prices—at a time when the economic opportunities for many families in Katanga were in steep decline—it only offered

232 employment to a small fraction of the more than 10,000 retrenched workers of Gécamines.

Furthermore, though changes in the mining code attracted foreign investment, few of the benefits of such investments landed in the hands of the vast number of children whose parents were retrenched by Gécamines. Life for these young men and women was far worse than anything their parents ever experienced. Unable to continue with school and with no means of support, these children and youth descended – in the thousands – to the copper, gold, and cobalt mines of Katanga to earn a living. A flourishing artisanal mining industry also attracted young people who came from the western provinces of Kasai, hundreds of kilometers away. Those from Kasai knew of a different state-run company, MIBA, Sociéte

Minière de Bakwanga, but similarly experienced an industrial decline beginning in the early

1980s that matched, if not rivaled, that of Gécamines (Walker 2014). Upon arriving in

Katanga, many of these migrants went to work in artisanal mines as creuseurs, mineral ore cleaners, transport providers, petty traders, and mineral traders, or, négociants. The result of this mass migration from different parts of Congo such as Kasai and Kivu provinces has been the sprouting of artisanal mines and mine villages in different parts of Katanga.

Typically, creuseurs are almost exclusively young men between the ages of 15 to 40. They earn a living by digging for copper, cobalt, and gold and work independently or in small groups of around four or five in what are often remote locations that the Congolese state has demarcated for small-scale artisanal mining. The majority of creuseurs are not contractually bound to person or place and tend to work when and, more or less, how they wish. In theory, a young man going into the artisanal mine needs a permit from one of the two unions

233 involved in artisanal mining in Katanga: EMAK,119 the Association for Artisanal Miners of

Katanga, or CMKK, Cooperative Madini kwa Kilimo. In practice, very few get one.120 Young men insert themselves as their circumstances demand. For usufruct rights, they are charged a tax by local authorities, which is often 10% of the ore they produce from deep shaft copper/gold/or cobalt mines.

Only men mine, a fact that can be traced back to a colonial division of labour in the early industrial era when urban life often forced men to serve as wage labourers (miners) and women as reproductive subjects (mothers). Over the years this gendered division of labour has come to attain various cultural justifications by artisanal miners. One view I often heard was that the presence of women in a mine angers the mine’s spirits and is said to make the ore disappear. These spirits, people say, are gendered and female spirits are thought to harbor jealousy towards women, thereby justifying the taboo against women in the mine (see also

Cuvelier 2011b:163-212). Enforcement of this taboo has turned artisanal mines into hyper- masculine spaces with anywhere between 200 to more than 10,000 people. To get a sense of how an individual ends up being a miner, let me return to Francis, one of my key informants in Kilobe mine where I carried out most of my fieldwork. When I first met him in 2011 he explained the circumstances leading to his life in the mine saying:

I was born in Likasi in August of 1986. My father worked for an industrial metal company called SOCRAL here in Likasi until he got sick in 1997. As the first born in my family I dropped out of school and started to hustle. Four years later, I ended up in the mines. I started off as a salizer, then I began carrying the ore from the mine to the river for cleaning. Afterwards I joined the “chain” and I was getting paid for

119 EMAK, Exploitants Minière Artisanaux du Katanga. 120 A study by PACT (2010) noted that of 267 interviewed miners only 16% identified as being members of either one of the two unions of artisanal miners (Tsurukawa et al. 2011:30). 234

removing the ore from the mining shaft. At last, they allowed me to start working on the “tableau.” Finally, I became a creuseur.

In French, salir means “to smear, or make dirty.” The usage above is slang and it refers to the teenage boys who get themselves dirty by sifting out the soil from the malachite in water to obtain a cleaner product. The “chain” is literally a chain of individuals who are situated on the walls of the mining shaft and work to haul out the ore as well as dug up soil as it is made available from deep in the mineshaft. Tableau is French and as it is used here refers to the subterranean surface from which ores are extracted.

The narrative pattern that Francis outlines above of his father's illness and, quite possibly, subsequent loss of employment, leading to the discontinuation of his studies was a recurring theme in the interviews and focus groups discussions I conducted with creuseurs. If there was sickness involved then the explanation often given for how they ended up in the mines was reduced to one word: “crise.” The “crise” was an implicit reference to the relationship between the macro-structural trajectory of industrial decline and its attendant effects in the domestic life of individuals. It was the impetus for “debrouillardise,” or the “fend-for- yourself” culture that scholars have identified as being a pervasive feature of contemporary

Congolese social life (Petit and Mutambwa 2005; Trefon 2004; Young and Turner 1985).

The particular manifestation of the need for improvisation so as to survive led Francis and others to the mines due, in large part, to a lack of means and a recent “renaissance” in mining in Katanga (Trefon 2016). Most of the mines young men descended upon in the early 2000s were ancient artisanal mines that had been taken over by Union Minière and later abandoned by the company as industrialism collapsed beginning in 1990. These mines were often in

235 peri-urban and rural areas, off the beaten track from urban centers. Venturing into what are often remote and abandoned mines to dig out minerals was more than a part-time vocation; it had become a career for individuals like Francis. As he explained, perpetual movement defined the improvisation in his life.

I’ve worked all over. I started in Shinko in 2001 mining cobalt. Then I went to Milele, Miringi, Kabunji, Kilobe, Mbola, Kansunga, Luisha, Kolwezi and now I am back at Kilobe. I have been a creuseur for more than 10 years and it only this that I have done.

Shinko refers to Shinkolobwe mine, one of the oldest Gécamines mines and arguably its most infamous for it was the source of the uranium used in the 1945 Hiroshima-Nagasaki atomic bomb. After the company abandoned the mine in the early 1990s, it was very poorly fenced off and by 2001, creuseurs like Francis had descended on it turning the isolated mine into a nest of booming activity. Radiation levels around Shinkolobwe are known to be so high that very little grows around the mine site. Reports of artisanal mining activity in

Shinkolobwe mine gained international attention in 2004 and the mine was once again shut down.121

Its worth noting that Francis starts his mining career at an abandoned Gécamines mine—an aspect that was common among many long-time creuseurs. Furthermore, though he does not mention it, the movement of creuseurs in the Congo Copperbelt was an involuntary outcome of a complex array of forces. Artisanal miners often left designated mines in which they worked purely based on rumors about booming mines elsewhere. Sometimes such rumors were true; most of the time they were not. If a miner fell for such a rumor and arrived at a

121 For a UN report on the issue, see: https://www.un.org/press/en/2004/afr1064.doc.htm). Accessed Sept 13, 2018. 236 site only to find out that a particular vein of minerals was exhausted or the mine was facing closure because it had been annexed by the state, he would typically move to a nearby mine and would most likely remain stranded at that remote location. Unable to pay his way back home, the option for a miner at that point was to lease his services as a “hired hand,” or

“mercenaire,” for a daily wage. This sort of arrangement plunges many into a cycle of poverty whereby they are forced to live on a very meager wage of around US $3-5 per day until and unless they obtain enough to leave the mines. In a city like Likasi it is not impossible to survive on such a wage, and many do, in fact, get by. However, given this amount in a remote mine where a person’s social networks are limited (if they exist) and, more importantly, basic social services are lacking and the provision of them is the source of steep profiteering, those working as hired hands find themselves in extremely precarious positions. Nearly all their daily earnings will be spent on lodging and food in what is often a remote encampment. This means that without a robust social network or access to one, young men may be shackled to a place by a cycle of poverty making them beholden to the whims of others or unending indebtedness. Francis’s movement in the various artisanal mines can be understood, on the one hand, as indexing the momentary notoriety of particular mining sites

(some of which are currently shut down by the state), while on the other hand, as reflecting his spatial history of indebtedness. Consider how he explains this in a conversation we had in

2011:

I married when I was 17 and we had four children in the carrières but we separated with my first wife. Her behaviors were hard [to stomach]. She stole from me and was ill mannered so I left her in 2009. I opened a mine in Kilobe and my luck changed. A

237

few days after we started working we found the “mother vein.” 122 I made over $2000 in one day. I was lucky. I made wonderful sums of money.

I’m lucky because I respect my parents and I care for them. When I have money I give them some, you see. Timoté, I am a businessman. I have bought 3 [small] houses and 6 motorbikes from this work and whenever I have money I use some of it to buy merchandise. My current wife is a négociante.

In this line of work, courage comes from your decisions and money is what motivates me. We suffer to find the ore. Once, my entire équipe ran way. They saw danger in the hole but I fixed the hole and it became operational. I have seen mining holes collapse many times. I have seen people die but I have never stopped creusage.

By 2011, Francis had worked in more than half of the artisanal mines in Katanga, moving as his new mines opened up and also as the various mining operations he was working in as a

“hired hand” ran out of money. When he eventually landed in Kilobe in 2010, his luck had changed and it is there that I first met him. At twenty-six years old, he was re-married, father of five, creuseur turned successful businessman. My early conversations with Francis entailed numerous remarks in which he exuded a deep desire to fashion his life and the choices informing it as a success story. Take, for instance, the manner in which he glosses over abandoning his ex-wife and their four children as if it were simply her fault: “she stole and was ill-mannered.” He also frames his decision to rid himself of her as being the main strategy that changed his “luck.” To be sure, he says he was vindicated when “a few days later” he struck it big. Purporting that his ex-wife was the cause of the blockages he was experiencing until then was possibly another way of implying that she may have been a witch. Claims such as these were rife in the mines in no small part because they helped individuals make sense of the misfortune they experienced as marginalized individuals in a

122 Deposits of copper are often found in veins within particular sections of the earth strata. The linearity of copper columns account for why the area in Central Africa where copper is found is named the “Copperbelt.” 238 world in which their social position denied them alternative perspectives to the complexities they faced. To counter such positioning, someone like Francis crafted a persona that reinforced his exceptionality, an image also in keeping with his social status as the elected

“President” of the creuseurs of Kilobe. Of course, a recent windfall contributed significantly to his election as a leader of a large group of young men with practically identical aspirations: to get rich quick. However, unlike many of his friends and peers such as Jules who aspired to own a truck and start a large-scale transport business, Francis was singularly focused on furthering his career in and through artisanal mining, for this was what he knew.

Sure enough, three years later I met him in the city of Likasi on my last research visit. He was still working as a creuseur but I could see his enthusiasm was waning. The

“renaissance” of industrial mining that had begun in 2003 and survived the 2008 financial crisis was finally tapering off in early 2014 along with China’s booming industrial growth.

Francis viewed the local slump as temporary but its impacts signaled quite the opposite. In the three years since I had last seen him, Francis had sold all his motorcycles, two of his houses, and was now very dependent on the income of his wife to launch any new artisanal mining explorations. In addition, his équipe (team) had once again deserted him, but he was still planning to go work in the next hot spot: Lupoto mine. To make some money so as to finance a mineshaft in Lupoto, Francis had come up with a plan to sell DVDs to the owners of television theatre halls in Kilobe. The plan was obviously one among many, and it became clear to me the plan was not working when a week later I met him in Kilobe wearing the same clothes I had last seen him in. Suspecting he was not going home to his wife, I asked his friends and I was informed that he was having problems with his wife and had been

239 spending the night in Kilobe mine. Francis the braggart was slowly giving way to Francis the choquer, a hustler keen to make a hit (un choc). All the signs were pointing to the end of the days of plenty and though this reversal of fortune was stark, it was also a predictable aspect of life as a creuseur.

Practically all of the young men who rush to the mines come from families of modest means to begin with and, of those in this group, a considerable number began mining at a young age, meaning they had rather limited education. Those forced to become creuseurs but who managed to switch jobs to become motorcycle chauffeurs or négociants often had relatively advanced educational backgrounds. That is, a number may have even started or completed university but found little means of providing for their families. Others like Benoit, who had started university in the mid 1990s—when the economy was in ruin—ended up dropping out and going to work in the artisanal mines. Unlike many of the young men in the mines, Benoit was educated and came from a relatively well-to-do family. His father was a director in a mining company and his mother a social worker. His family was fairly well connected and he had the wherewithal to gain the trust of both foreign and local investors. Over the years he had done all sorts of different jobs in the artisanal mining industry from working as a miner, being a manager of mines, to trading minerals as a négociant. He explained that these diverse experiences had given him a good grasp of the artisanal mining business and secured him a full-time job as the manager of a depot that traded minerals from artisanal miners.

Unlike Benoit, young men like Francis who persisted with creusage despite their experiences and best intentions did so because many of the income generating projects they initiated

240 failed. These failures were not only the result of their actions but also the outcome of an inability to sufficiently insulate their nascent businesses against the risks they faced on a daily basis. Accidents or the illness of a friend or family member was enough to bankrupt or heavily in-debt a creuseur turned motorcycle chauffeur. For someone like Francis, whose daily life was a series of risks and gambles that intermittently paid off, the loss of his motorcycles and houses over a period of three years was as much a reflection of the vicissitudes of the mining economy in Katanga as they were an effect of a cycle of poverty.

For creuseurs who had spent more than a decade in artisanal mines, self-employment was the only antidote to being utterly unemployable.

Artisanal mines in Katanga attract not only creuseurs but also a wide range of other types of labourers. A whole cottage industry of services in remote areas have spawned because productive mines are often awash with real (and speculative) money. The vibrancy of such spaces has attracted money transfer agents, sex workers, restauranteurs, “hoteliers”’ and

“doctors,”turning placid rural areas into bustling centers of commerce with tens of thousands of people.123 In these bush enclaves, housing, public amenities, businesses and state “offices” were made of sticks and sackcloth, materials that are cheap, portable, and recyclable. Small fuel generators power fridges and televisions, and practically all transport is by motorcycles.

Young men on Bajaj motorcycles, or “moto,” transport everything from mattresses to crates of beer. Creuseurs will tell you that if something cannot be carried by “moto” then it is probably not needed. Jules would often remind me that “Bintu apa il faut kuwa portable,”

“everything here must be portable.”

123 Examples of such an areas are Kimanyuki, Miringi, Luisha, Mbola, Kamatanda and Kansunga in Katanga. 241

Part of the logic of portability and transience reflected in the architecture of mine villages was a consequence of the imperatives of mine work. As I came to learn, the restlessness of creuseurs was informed by an awareness of fluctuating mineral prices in the three main ores mined by artisanal miners in south Katanga: gold, copper, and cobalt. If gold goes up, one shifted from mining copper or cobalt and went to the gold mines; the process reversed when gold prices fell relative to other minerals. It was especially when mineral prices were high that the traffic of people grew exponentially. Buyers of minerals, négociants, sponsored creuseurs to open mining shafts, thereby attracting an increasing number of youth and petty traders to the mines. The downside to a boom in mineral prices was that it also attracted the attention of investors, or private speculators, who had more money and the political influence to lease the very concessions that creuseurs worked in. Visibility invited the threat of expropriation of mining sites and local livelihoods – a threat that some creuseurs countered by admitting they were “ready to die” in defense of their mines.

Militarism and seizure in the mines

Talk of “dying for the mine” initially struck me as hyperbole, a locally accepted way of distinguishing a persona through exaggerated praise. In Kingwana, a Katanga dialect of

Swahili, they called it kutapa and creuseurs were masters of exaggeration. I did not think much of the claim that young men would sacrifice their lives until I started to unpack the organizational structure of relationships within an artisanal mine. The more I observed, the more they seemed to mimic those of formal militaries. Occupational names of certain key jobs in the mine—mercenaries (hired hands/mercenaries), négociants (price brokers/peace

242 makers), and dirigents (managers/commanders)—spoke of a division of labour that sought to mirror military battalions. A sub-set of creuseurs in Kilobe mine were adherents of

Rastafarianism and they imposed strict discipline among their members partly because they had to contend with local suspicions that they were social rebels and drug addicts. Discipline among rasta creuseurs was enforced through their organizational hierarchy that included generals, brigadiers, colonels, and officers (see also Cuvelier 2011b:224). The hyper- masculine character of the carrière, its remoteness, the demand for portability, productivity and hard labour in holes and trenches inspired some creuseurs to imagine themselves as soldiers.124 Donatien, a long-time miner in Kilobe explained to me:

Creuseur eko ça soldat; anapata bunduki barre de mine, mas, besh, na anatumika. Unapata bantu bakusaidia na habatauliza kama muntu ni ba Kisangani ama bapi. Mutatumika.

A creuseur is like a soldier. He gets his “gun,” his metallic mining bar, hammer, and shovel and he gets to work. He can get people to help and they will not care if he is from Kisangani or wherever. They will all just get to work.125

The sense that working in the mines was like soldiering for a cause was reinforced by the fact that one had to work in teams of four or five people. Miners often lived with their teams in small shacks around the mine shaft itself or in a mine village nearby. Every day, as one descended the mining shafts to work, one did so as a member in a unit. Given the perilous nature of artisanal mining, it would not be a stretch of the imagination to compare the camaraderie and support among members of a team of creuseurs to the esprit de corps in

124 In 2011 conducted a focus group discussion in the office for the Association of Artisanal Miners of Katanga (EMAK) with a group of over 40 creuseurs just prior to their 'deployment'to a private mine in Kifumpa in southwestern Katanga. I was invited to talk to them as they awaited instructions, counseling, and money before departing to the carrière. See also discussion on Mouvement de Rastafarisme au Congo by Cuvelier (2011: 216-287). 125 Translated by author. 243 organized state militaries. I want to suggest that the modeling of life in artisanal mines along militaristic lines is not a haphazard transplantation of war fantasies from elsewhere; it is in fact a manifestation of what Franz Fanon (1963:30–32) called the atmosphere of violence, that is, a general state of anxiety, nervousness, and insecurity that defines a colonial environment. Part of the unconscious logic underpinning the creuseurs' militaristic organization of work was the need to resist a state whose approach to resource extraction, from its very inception, was and is extremely violent. This rapacious mode of resource extraction has, by and large, remained unchanged from the colonial era for even to this day its imperatives are driven by foreign interests who profit at the expense of the Congolese.

Thus, I read the turn to militarism by creuseurs as a didactic response to an autocratic, masculine, hierarchical, and often arbitrary postcolonial state whose power appeals not to reason as a mode of public life, but to sensations, pleasure and pain of varying intensities

(Mbembe 2001). One might even go as far as to say that it is a contemporary manifestation of the internalization of the violent histories that created the Congolese state and continue to perpetuate its existence.

If the structure of the collective organization of creusage hints of an attempt to discipline and organize young men, that same desire is also reflected in how mining space is regulated (see chapter 3). The entire artisanal mine is a tightly controlled space littered with state and para- state agents, from the military intelligence, mining police, the provincial ministry of mines, the provincial administration, and the provincial association for small-scale miners (EMAK).

The overriding claim by these state actors in artisanal mines is that their presence ensures order and security in mining operations. This claim is rendered specious at best because, as

244 earlier mentioned, there is a very clear division of labour in an artisanal mine beginning with the extraction of the ores to their purchase. State agents did not make work in the mine more orderly; rather, they added to the atmosphere of violence in a mine. Mining police and intelligence agents are armed with rifles and pistols and like other state officials pay for their presence in the mine by extorting creuseurs and mineral buyers, négociants, based on the volume of extracted ore. Like other artisanal mines, Kilobe is highly securitized: mining police control entry and exit points to the mine, the customary “chief” organizes and regulates the partition and use of land for mining, commercial, and residential purposes, and various different officials tax miners and mineral traders. Local villagers along with the wives and girlfriends of creuseurs and négociants run the majority of village businesses surrounding the carrières, providing food, lodging, and other services. For as long as there is money to be made, the state through its officials or, indirectly through customary authorities, remains ever present and commands a fee. To many in the mine this confirmed the view that the presence of state agents in the mines was focused on using seizure to satisfy their material desires (see chapter 2).

The onerous presence of the state was as much a source of anger as it was of satire. It was a running joke in Katanga when one asked you:

Question: Unayua maana ya L’etat? [Do you know the meaning of the state?] Response: [after a guess] Apana [No] Punch Line: [snatching whatever the other held in his hands] Leta! [Bring it!]

245

“To bring” in Swahili literally translates as “kuleta.” However, when used in its command form the prefix ku- is dropped leaving leta, which is pronounced “leh-tah,” phonetically similar to L’état (“the state”) in French.

The presence of state functionaries did not in any meaningful way provide security or support to people in the mines. It took only a moment to bring the forces of the state down on an area, seizing it and expelling all within it. For creuseurs, the army and police in Katanga exist especially for this purpose for they were regularly co-opted by private interests, or bazungu (foreigners) as they say, making them the face of the violence of privatization to creuseurs. As a consequence, the sight of a muzungu in the carrières was explained to me as the death of the mine for it was perceived that this racial Other had dominating intentions. A muzungu was enough to get everyone to stop working in preparation for a fight. To be sure, the disruptive nature of the encounters with bazungu carry with them echoes of other violent encounters between Africans and Europeans in the region. One of the deadliest was that between Émile Storms of the International African Association of the Belgian King, Leopold

II, and Lusinga lwa Ng’ombe, a Tabwa chief who was beheaded for resisting colonial rule

(Roberts 2013). Creuseurs’ anxieties over the intentions of foreign interests on communal land and threats of violence are no doubt reprises of the harrowing violence of the colonial past.

Possessing pasts and dispossessing presents

Two main fears were pervasive in artisanal mines: the first was an internal fear of what lay within the mine, and the second was the fear of outsiders, that is, “foreignors” who were

246 imagined to be interested in expropriating the mines. To get a sense of the internal fears pervasive in mines, let me turn to the experience of Yumba, a young man about 22 years old whom I met in my neighborhood in Likasi.

*** Yumba was the son of of Joseph, a long-time domestic worker of my host family. In 1998, Joseph retired and decided to return to his home village. A few years later, my host mother received news of Joseph’s passing from Yumba’s mother, who now had to provide for four children in the city of Likasi on her own. Out of a desire to help the family of her old friend Joseph, my host mother hired his wife as a part-time domestic worker.

In 2011, my host mother decided to plan for her retirement by starting a petit magasin selling mobile phone recharge units, fizzy drinks, and sandwiches to the residents of her neighbourhood. Just before opening the shop, she asked Yumba’s mother to find someone trustworthy enough to work as her shopkeeper. After months of pleading with her son, Yumba finally accepted the job, which to his mother mother was a simple way of repaying the favor shown to them by my host family.

I met Yumba on in the first few months of my stay in Likasi and after a few encounters I found out he had recently returned from the artisanal mines. Curious as to why he transitioned away from the mines, I talked to him about his time in the mines.

Yumba was forced to drop out of high school after his father’s death due to lack of funds. So, he and a friend opted to try their luck in Lwisha mine, 40 km from Likasi. They started off as “mercenaries,” hired artisanal miners, and after some months managed to open a mine of their own producing cobalt.

It all seemed to be going brilliantly well for Yumba for on the first attempt he had already found cobalt. Working with his friend, they were able to produce 20 tonnes of cobalt after just 3 weeks of opening their mine. Fellow creuseurs estimated that the quality of their cobalt ore was about 6% pure and, if they were lucky, were looking at $50/tonne, or $1000 for the entire haul of the ore.

Ecstatic about their potential windfall, they rented a truck from a local businessman to deliver their cobalt from Lwisha to the trading houses in Likasi. After arriving in Likasi and unloading the cobalt, the trading house measured the quality of the cobalt and found it to be around 1.6% to 1.8% pure, effectively condemning all of it as worthless rocks.

Faced with a $200 transportation bill for moving worthless rocks, Yumba and his friend fled. They ran away from the trading house for they could not explain to the local businessman how the value of the rocks had just plummeted on arriving in Likasi. Had their fellow miners

247 deceived them or was it the trading house? Yumba would never know. He reduced it all to bulozi ya carrière, or the “sorcery of the mines.”

Discouraged but not defeated, Yumba and some more friends made a second trip to the mines of Kipesi to mine for gold. This was his most recent trip before returning to Likasi to work as a shopkeeper. He had been working in Kipesi since 2010, a time when gold prices were trading very high. To Yumba, Kipesi mine was cursed because, in 2001, hundreds of people were buried alive in one of the largest landslides in Congolese history.

According to Yumba, the the spirits in Kipesi mine were known as Sara Kipesi and Sara Mwamba. These spirits “allowed” the mine collapse to happen because they were angry with local villagers. Only after the customary “chief” had done several rituals, could miners return to the mountain some many years later. Yumba confessed that many of his friends working there walibamba lawa, or “used charms” to protect themselves and get rich.

When Yumba and his team of miners started excavating in Kipesi, they found corpses seated on plastic chairs, strewn body parts of people, and all manner of personal effects buried deep in the mountain. Adding to the mystical aura in Kipesi was the mwulumwitu, or half dog half human. Yumba claimed to have seen it once when it walked into a small makeshift church in the mine village and chased the preacher out, causing everyone to scamper for safety.

As he narrated these extraordinary experiences in the mines, Yumba looked visibly shaken. At one point I asked him if he desired a return to the creuseur lifestyle and he flatly said he was done with mayibwe, or “rocks.”

Two days after receiving his US $55 shopkeeper wage for the month of June, Yumba disappeared. My host mother saw him after six weeks and informed me he had arrived at her kitchen door covered in dirt from head to toe. He wanted some cold water and his old job back.

*** Yumba’s experiences display a paradox about the mines: in as much as they are a source of fear and loathing among miners, they still maintain an inexplicable allure. Part of the attraction of the mines is of course based on the demand to meet basic needs but this alone does not explain why a young man like Yumba, who is well aware of the low reward, high risk challenge that life in the mines poses, returns to that same space at every opportunity. It is possible that the promise of untold riches and the possibilities that such riches bring out- weigh many of the risks faced by young men like Yumba. This sort of frontier mentality

248 when coupled with a scarcity of means and a spirit of adventure and rebellion appear to encourage young men to keep returning to the mines. The occult occurences in the mines did not necessarily seem to discourage miners from venturing deep into the earth because, as

Yumba mentions, many bought charms to protect themselves and get rich, even though customary authorities discouraged young men from doing so.

To Chef Mfuko, a customary official in Kilobe mine, fear of the mine spirits among creuseurs was a consequence of a lack of belief in the powers of customary authorities, who to him were the “owners” of the land. To Chef Mfuko:

Ukiona produit inapotea il faut kuyua mizimu inakasirika. Inakashirika je? Fasi yote mu-Afrique iko na mizimu yake. Ata fasi il n’a pas de resource iko na muzimu. Apa ku kirima ya Kilobe mizimu ni ya mwanamuke na haipendi mwanamuke mungine. Jeune fille kwa kirima inakatazwa kwa sababu mwanamuke ni kijila. Akiingia mu kirima produit napotea. Kama kirima inaproduir ni mizimu ya mwanamuke. Na hii mirima yote ya Basanga ina majina. Chef de terre anaweza ku-evoké mizimu na pemba. Kama nshimo hai-produir unakuya kumwona Chef na anaweza kusaidiya, kufanya ceremonie na nshimo ita- produire. Probleme ya ba mingi ni manque de croyance. Ba mingi banawaza ni bulozi, haina bulozi. Shiye njo benye muji.

If you see the ore disappearing you should know that the spirits are displeased. How do they get displeased? Everywhere in Africa, there are spirits. Even places that have no resources. Here in Kilobe, the spirit is a woman and she does not like other women. A young [unmarried] woman is a taboo [in the mountain]. If she enters the mountain the ore disappears. If a mountain is producing then its spirit is that of a woman. All the mountains of the Basanga have their names. The land “chief” can evoke the spirits of the mountain with white kaolin so, say a hole has no ore, you [the miner] can come and see the chef and he can help by doing a ritual ceremony and the hole will start to produce ore. The problem is that many lack belief; many think this is sorcery, but it is not. We are the “owners” of the land.

Chef Mfuko was the land “chief” of Kilobe mine and as a custodian of the land, he viewed himself as a moderator of the relationship between the living and the ancestoral spirits, who were thought to reside in the land, as evidenced by its fertility and vitality. His claim over

249 the gendered nature of mine spirits is in large part linked to the pervasive idea in Central

African cosmologies that land where food or resources are produced is imagined to be controlled by invisible agents (spirits) of a feminine nature. David Gordon (2012:9), a historian of Central Africa, makes clear that in most of the region “land is an unproductive resource without the spirit power to make it fertile.” Similarly, Wyatt Macgaffey (2000: 78) extends this claim about spirits with reference to the “personhood” of a certain category of objects known to the people of Bakongo as minkisi, or “spirit things.” The minkisi are small clay or wooden figurines or statuettes with anthropomorphic or zoomorphic features that are accentuated with the addition of nails, rags, various types of amulets, beads, blood, pieces of cloth and other unspecified substances. Like many other groups in the Congo basin, the

Bakongo people claim that power comes from the land of the dead and it is available to the living in two main forms: in minkisi and chiefs, who were also a kind of minkisi126. In the realm of pre-colonial governance, “chiefs” stood for power wielded in public interest whereas minkisi figures were designed to cater to an individual's particular wishes. The

Bakongo view every human being as a vessel for an empowering soul or spirit and, a given spirit can be replaced or transferred to a different container. Once the animating factor is moved from the container or human vessel, it was said to be dead, or “empty.” Minkisi are constituted in the same way; however, the containers tend to be clay pots, bundles of substances, or little figurines. The empowering spirits of minkisi are thought to come from the land of the dead where there exist different categories of beings ranging from ancestors, local spirits, ghosts, and spirits— all of which can be incorporated as minkisi (MacGaffey

126 Power was also thought of as a sort of spiritual affliction visited upon certain persons in the form of disease that had to be diagnosed by a diviner, or ng'anga. This was the case for the Kongo as well as Luba peoples and many other groups in central Africa. 250

2000: 78-79). As the figure who represented the power from the land of the dead, the “chief” was a minkisi in so far as he was the human vessel afflicted with the powers of the dead

(ancestors) and placed in the role of mediating between the worlds of the living and of the dead.

In the Congo savanna, the mulopwe, or “divine” King, was thought to be the human expression of the spirit and power of the ancestors (see chapter 4). Mary Nooter Roberts

(2013: 68-69) notes that it was especially at the investiture of a Luba King that the ritual significance of the ancestors gained full expression for the King was reminded that “he was not king for himself but rather for all the people, including those who came before him.”

Furthermore, because the role of the Luba King was to protect his people, ensure that human life flourishes under his rule and ultimately, serve the spirits, he was both literally and symbolically the community’s life-force. And, since women give life, Kingship or bulopwe, as an institution was conceptually thought to be female. Symbols of the authority of the King were almost always female and, despite the Luba observing patrilineal descent, the successor of the King was always the son the of the sister of the King—highlighting vestiges of the matrilineal descent pattern observed among the Lunda, Bemba and Tabwa communities of the region. As I mention in chapter 4, this same logic of rule that granted certain individuals divine authority over the people and the land spread across the Central African region in the precolonial era. Its vestiges remain in people like Chef Mfuko, a local land “chief” in Kilobe.

Links between Kingship, spirits, feminine power gain specific emphasis in relation to mining among the Ngoyo people of the lower Congo basin. Zdenka Volavka (1998) describes how

251 smiths symbolically made kings by crafting the crown of the king, which weighed 11 kilograms and was 36cm in diameter. It was made of copper strips wound around thin circular copper rods with jutting crescents symbolizing leopard claws. The reddish color of the metal was viewed as being one of its most potent features for it symbolized blood (the source of life) and female forces such as childbirth. Furthermore, copper in Kongo language is called nsongo, which also means red, or red metal. The same word is a homonym for extreme suffering and the pain of childbirth (Volavka 1998: 17). When unearthed, copper ore is often found to be green in color due to oxidation yet in spite of its appearance, the Kongo people refer to it as ngúnda which is also the name of the red cap worn by the King during his investiture. Ngú in kiKongo is the root of the word designating “mother,” that is, mother as “inception” (Volavka 1998:16). Thus, in donning the cap, the Kongo King was tracing his authority to an assumed female founder. For the Kongo people, copper was thought of as being female in character and conceptually red in color.

What the Kongo and Luba notions of kingship highlight is the fluidity of gender particularly as it was tied to notions of authority, personhood and the role of spirits.127 In addition, because customary leaders in this region continue to be thought of as divine social figures who represent the ancestors, individuals like Chef Mfuko are able to say they can evoke the spirits of the mine to intecede on behalf of miners. To Chef Mfuko, young men do not fully grasp or appreciate the cosmological links between customary authorities and the ancestors

127 For more on Luba rulership see Reefe (1981); Roberts and Roberts (2007) and Nooter (1991). A discussion of rituals of transformation in African societies can be found in Herbert (1993). 252 hence, they tend to fear and misinterpret his abilities as sorcery when, to him, this was likely a ritualized mode of communicating with ancestoral spirits resident on the land.

Aside from internal fears arising from social orders configuring mining land, was the fear of outsiders. Concerns that the mines could be shut down or expropriated loomed large over creuseurs and others whose livelihoods were shaped and supported by artisanal mining. This fear was borne out of experiences of lost livelihoods and deaths that occurred in places such as Mbola, a mine village about fifty kilometers from Likasi city. Mbola mine was a booming cobalt mining site when in 2006, the State conspired with a private investor to lease land that was, at the time, highly productive for tens of thousands of creuseurs (Cuvelier 2011a).

Demonstrations and protests lasted weeks and not even the brutality of the army could convince creuseurs to abandon what they claimed was “their mountain.” Chants of “bulongo ni wa bankambo,” “the earth is our ancestors,” rallied all those disenfranchised by the privatization of the mine into a frenzy of violence. In Likasi, one informant mentioned that creuseurs from Mbola went on a rampage after the army arrived and upon reaching Likasi raided the office of the mayor and destroyed everything. They tried to capture the Mayor of

Likasi to strip him naked and shame him for colluding in the expropriation of their ancestors’ land.128

In a focus group in 2011 with around thirty creuseurs who eventually had to leave Mbola, miners’ predicament was described as follows:

128 In discussion about Mbola with a négociant, Mr. Kasongo, he told me that he lost his son in the violence of Mbola in 2006. Subsequent to that, his wife left him and told him to stop working in the mines. He blamed his woes on foreigners, bazungu, who come to Congo to “buy the country” leaving the locals with nothing. He was furious when it came to issues regarding bazungu involvement in artisanal mining. 253

Creuser njo anavumbula kirima, ni siye njo tunavumbula. Minasema creuser ni ça géologue anadépensé ya mingi mu kirima. Anaripa ceremonie, dépense ya nshimo chaque jour, mei muzungu anakuya anauza kirima ku prix anapenda. Muzungu na L’etat habaoni dépense. Situation iko je, ni ça, umeoa bibi mei après unakuya kuvumbula balishaoa bibi yako ku bwana mingine. Utaexpliqué je iyo situation?

The creuseur discovers ore in the mountain; it is we who discover the ore. By this I mean we are like geologists, we expend a lot [of money, energy, time, knowledge] on the mountain. We pay for ritual ceremonies; we spend money every day on developing the hole but the whites come and buy the mountain at the price that they like. The “white man” and the Government don’t see the expenditure [we have incurred]. The situation is something like this: You have just married your wife and then, sometime later, you come to discover that your wife was already married to another man. How would you explain that?

Creuseurs viewed land as an inalienable resource since it was tied to local histories and thus demanded unique skills to make it productive. All of this was local knowledge that was rendered obsolete and unwanted in the future-oriented optics of the market. As the young man explained, “the white man and the state do not see our expenditure.” This blindness, according to them, was a negation of history, labour, and collective identity which implied that creuseurs were out-of-place with the contemporary neoliberal order. The affective dimensions of this spatial displacement led creuseurs to compare the relationship between them and the mountain as being analogous to a marriage between a man and his “wife.”

Relationships between creuseurs and the spirits of the mountain underwent perpetual shifts but because of the risky nature of underground mining, everyone recognized that these were deeply personalized. Jeroun Cuvelier (2011b: 179-180) notes that in Kalabi mine near

Lwambo town in south Katanga, creuseurs were thought to displease the mine spirit of

Kalabi if they entered the lake nearby, had sex the night before going into the mine and did not clean off the smell of their female partner, ate or cooked with black pots in the mine, and urinated or defecated while underground. Collectively, miners knew there was a constant

254 need to appease the spirits, mizimu, of the mountain either through rituals or offerings given to the customary chief. In Kilobe, placating the spirits was thought to help prevent the absence of mineral ore and instances of injury or death due to collapsing mining shafts.

For creuseurs, then, discovering ore in a mountain was viewed as an act of spiritual benevolence by the spirits. This relationship to the land mirrors that of their forefathers, les mangeurs de cuivre, who viewed mining as an animated process of “eating copper” that was offered to them by their ancestors. Consequently, seizure of the mountain of Mbola by a muzungu – a foreigner – was not only perceived as an affront to miners’ livelihoods but also to their sense of self-worth129 and collective identity as the descendants of “living ancestors.”

In rhetorically asking me “How do you explain that?”' the group of creuseurs were appealing to me – as a man – not for a reason but an action. To them it was inexplicable why someone would seize the mine, completely disregarding those for whom it was a source of livelihood.

One had to fight. The tendency towards force and violence as a means of resistance against foreign capital among creuseurs has led polite society in Katanga to label creusage a job for hooligans, thereby depoliticizing it and minimizing its socio-historical complexity. Certainly, the work of creuseurs was a source of anxiety not only for the parents of miners but also for the traders who worked with them on a daily basis.

129 For lengthier discussions on masculinity as experienced among Katanga miners see Cuvelier (2011a). For an analysis on the association between diamond mining and hunting among the Aluund on the Congo-Angola border, see De Boeck (1998). 255

“Its work for the living dead”

Papa Felicien was a middle-aged man and father of four. He had grown up occasionally working in the diamond mining industry of Mbuji Mayi in Kasai province. However, his father insisted he go to school so he went to university, studied theology, and become a pastor, only for his church to collapse forcing him, thirty years later, to return reluctantly to the mines as a négociant. He bought copper ore from creuseurs and sold it to Chinese and

Lebanese buyers in the city of Likasi. When I met Papa Felicien, he lived in Kilobe with his second wife while their eldest children lived in Lusaka, Zambia.

Curious to find out how an ex-pastor ended up as a négociant in Kilobe, I asked Papa

Felicien why he preferred to work in Kilobe rather than elsewhere. He responded with,

“tunaikala apa juu ya liberte,” “we stay here because of freedom [we are free]”. As a Kasai trader, Papa Felicien disclosed to me that he had in the past been unjustly treated in other towns of Katanga such as Kolwezi, Fungurume, and Kambove. On several occasions he was summarily arrested detained, beaten, and robbed of his minerals. Lamenting over his tribulations, he added:

Nchi yetu ni desordre. Humu muAfrique ninazunguluka sana. Toka Zambie, Tanzanie, na Kenia (…) Hatuwezi kuprogresse kwa sababu ba-dirigent wako na roho mubaya, kutoka Kasavubu kwenda Mobutu na ata huyu wa sasa. Bote. Comment uta- expliqué weye dirigent unakuya na kunyanganya miye WC yangu na unachimbula apo? C’est quoi ça?

Our country is a mess. I have travelled widely in Africa from Zambia, Tanzania to Kenya (…) We [in Congo] cannot develop because our leaders have bad hearts starting from Kasavubu to Mobutu and even to the one today. All of them. How do

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you explain a leader coming [to my house] and taking away my “toilet” and thereafter establishing a mine where it used to be? What is that?

Papa Felicien spoke with a tone of frustration and I could sense his bitterness was mixed with anger. He had aspired for a vastly different life and at different points in time he mentioned that he was a successful businessman and pastor. To have ended up peddling malachite in

Kilobe after being the leader of a church and congregation in Mbuji Mayi and Kinshasa was a big step down for Papa Felicien. He made it known to me that his children did not like what he was doing and they had begged him repeatedly to quit working in the mines. However, he did not quit the mines because having grown up working near a mine, he viewed artisanal mining as an easy and convenient economic activity or, in his words, his “domain.” His family had worked in mines for generations so he knew how to mine, trade and evaluate the quality of various mineral ores. To have to return to artisanal mining as a middle-aged man filled Papa Felicien with disappointment that was hard to mask. It was no wonder that he metaphorically referred to the carrière as a “toilet”. For him, artisanal mining was a rather demeaning job to be doing given that he had sought to fashion his life to completely avoid going near a mine.

Like creuseurs Papa Felicien also harbored fears over the expropriation of land in the carrières by corrupt [government] officials or what he called “ba-dirigent.” His assessment that the problems of artisanal mining stem from poor governance, or the “bad hearts” of leaders echoed many of the opinions voiced by creuseurs and other people working in the

257 mines. Our conversation took a different turn when I asked the ex-pastor what he thought of creuseurs. His response was:

Creseur ni muntu ça muntu yote. Probleme ce que wakati moya manière na mentalité yake inamufananisha wa bazimu. Siwezi kuitika mtoto afanye hii kazi. Batoto bangu ni ba quatrevingt quartre na quartrevingt sept na habapendi kazi yangu. Beko mu Zambie banafanya muziek religieuse… Niko na trios parcelle en Lusaka na njo banaikala. Batoto ba ancien de Gécamines beko apa ba mingi. Njo ba masikini. Ba agent de Gécamines beko Bantu ba bure kabisa. Unona kama miye naanza kusema ni haki yangu.

[A] creseur is a person like any other. The problem is that at a certain point moment his manners and mentality can liken him to a hooligan. I would not permit my child to do that work. My children are of [19]84 and [19]87 and they do not like my work [as a negociant]. They are in Zambia working as religious musicians…I have three pieces of land in Zambia so that is where my children live. The children of former Gécamines workers are very many here [in the mines]. They are the most miserable ones. Former Gécamines workers are useless people. If I say this, it is [because it is] my right.

In comparing his children with those of Gécamines workers, Papa Felicien was making the point that the era of welfare guarantees had passed. He was also hinting that if one wants to secure any future for their children, then one must send one’s children out of the the Congo.

Such is the level of frustration and despondecy over daily life that parents like Papa Felicien were ready to do whatever it takes to make sure their children emigrate from Congo to secure a future. Like very many people in Katanga, Papa Felicien did not think artisanal mining had any social benefits. For him, creusage was “un jeu de fous,” “a game for the mad.”

Creusage hamuna advantage. Inatuma bantu baingie uchawi na uchawi unaua. Ukatuma mtoto bu-creusage unaua. Creusage yote iko mubaya, ina-rendre mtoto anakuwa impoli, s’abettissement. C’est un jeu de fou. Ni lufu! Haba batoto, il y a de licencier, manque de quoi? Shiye tulikomea mu-vie muzuri, batoto banakomea ça ba-vagabond!”

Creusage has no benefits. It sends people to enter into witchcraft and witchcraft kills. If you send a child to work as a creuseur, you are killing them. All creuseur activity

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is bad, it makes a child uncivil; dull of the mind. It’s a crazy game. It is death. Among these children, there are licensed university graduates; what is it they lack? When we grew up life was good but our children are growing up like vagabonds.

The parental fear of moral corruption in the carrière was very real, as Papa Felicien observes, and so too was colonial nostalgia, especially as a “structure of feeling” among an older generation of Congolese citizens (see chapter 2). The nostalgia for times past captured in the phrase, “when we grew up life was good,” weighed far less than the imperatives to make a daily wage. If we recall that many creuseurs were the “children” of former industrial workers, we must also acknowledge that creusage as a social practice is a contemporary sign of compounded generational disenfranchisement in the neoliberal present. To ask, “what is it they lack?” is to pose the question assuming that creuseurs have inherited something or benefitted from the gains of the past when in fact the evidence may be to the contrary.

Though creuseurs engaged with the market in meaningful ways as petty traders, consumers, tax-paying citizens, parents, husbands, and working youth, polite society in Katanga still views them as “bad, crazy, uncivil, and dull minded.” While these views reflect generational anxieties over the trajectories of youth, they also unfortunately play into the interests of global capital for they support the misguided view that creusage is a dispensable practice in the inevitable march of capitalism in Congo. As I see it, nothing could be further from the truth.

Conclusion

The aversion to risk, whether physical or material, was not a feature that marked life as a creuseur. Being a creuseur in Katanga meant living constantly on the edge—at risk of dying,

259 being completely disfigured by the collapsing earth, being financially ruined by the market, or having one’s mine abruptly expropriated by private interests. Though the dangers of life in the mines were known, people both young and old kept returning to the mines in spite of their better judgment and planning. Precarity was the constant feature of social life in contemporary Congo and neither education nor social status sufficiently insulated them from it. This marks the difference with industrial life in Katanga, a life predicated on “stability” and a salaried sedentary social order based on welfare guarantees. The collapse of this industrial model of welfare capitalism produced distrust about employment and a salaried life, just as it engendered desperation and a “fend-for-yourself” attitude on an unprecedented scale, especially among young men in Katanga (see chapter 2). Youth lived in the now and for themselves; they were keen to “take the waiting out of the wanting” (Comaroff and

Comaroff 2006:267–280). Their claims to subsisting off the land were couched in a language of inalienable rights: “the earth is our ancestors,” “bulongo ni ya bankambo.” This is a strategic response to the dispossession faced in the present dislocates the market-driven future horizon of capital authored by the state and foreign investors by laying claim to an anterior “sovereign”—the ancestors—whose existence predates colonialism. While the threat of dispossession draws on the pre-colonial era to secure a future for creuseurs, both the structure and character of creuseurs’ labour are defined by technologies of domination whose ambit is grounded in the colonial encounter. Herein lies the uncanny of the creuseur: a contemporary but precarious figure of the African miner whose formation and moral claim to the land draws social force from the pre-colonial era, but whose labour is structured and characterized by relations of domination emblematic of the colonial encounter.

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Conclusion

There was a time when the people of southern Katanga spent no more than five months mining, smelting and smithing copper so as to exchange the product of their labour for subsistence needs or prestige items. Subsistence farming, hunter-gathering, craft making and ceremonial activities all competed for attention in the lives of precolonial Copperbelt residents. With the establishment of the colonial state in Congo came a concerted attempt to dismember precolonial social orders, harness the labour and time of the Congolese peasantry for industrial profit. The postcolonial state inherited this exploitative system as well as the untamed elements of the past but it did little to alter the incorporation of the Congo into the global as a resource frontier. As a consequence, not only is economic life dictated by the vagaries of the prices of copper, gold and cobalt. So, too, are governance, labour and generational relations, domestic social arrangements, local cartography, migration, food production, memory and even spirituality. To be sure, even the very manner in which people account for the passage of time retains the imprint of the industrial past, for many still refer to days of the week as the colonizer prescribed: Monday is still kazi moja, workday one, and so forth until Saturday, siku ya mposho, or, the “day of rations,” and Sunday, siku ya Mungu, or, the “day of God.” In the aftermath of industrial decline, the legacies of colonial paternalism, which valorised waged work as a sign of “civility” and “progress” and associated leisure with “time for God,” persist. But, as I have shown, so, too, do the social figures and moral matrices of the precolonial past. How else can one account for contemporary salience of the figure of the creuseur, or the mulopwe (head customary authority), as key social actors in what was once the bastion of modernity in Africa? How

261 does one explain the state-driven commodification and enclosure of vast tracks of land for resource extraction despite pervasive local claims that resource rich land is the animate, inalienable right of the people and the generational gift of the “ancestors”? Unable to ignore these paradoxes implicating the past in the present I was led to ask: what insights about social change emerge when we apprehend the liberalized present as a temporal period comprised of a palimpsest of generational experiences, recursive elements and residual layers of the past?

This study argues that attention to the entanglement of different durées is aimed at addressing the politics of colonialism, which through indirect rule made it possible to produce what Owen Sichone (2001:373) refers to as “a working class that is not free and straddles town and country, industry, agriculture and formal work in order to reproduce itself.” To give due importance to the violence of the colonial encounter, an aspect often overlooked in anthropological inquiry into social change in Central Africa (see introduction), while also striving to respond to the concerns of historians of Africa some of whom lament the “foreshortening of the African past” as a result of the marginalization of precolonial history (Reid 2011; Vansina 1994), this study has sought to craft a “history of the present” for the mining world of the Congo Copperbelt. Admittedly, the present from which I am writing is one that is heavily defined by the concerns of marginalized miners, that is, creuseurs, retrenched industrial mineworkers and, to some extent, customary authorities and state agents. At stake in my attempt to write a history of the present is not the reconstruction of the past but, rather, the critical appraisal of the present itself as it is composed, entangled and layered with various pasts (see Scott 2004:40). To be precise, this means grappling with

262 the confounding nature of the liberalization of the mining sector in Congo as experienced by the aforementioned social groups but also as it has been experienced elsewhere (Fraser &

Larmer 2010; Gago 2017; Harvey 2005; Wacquant 2009).

In chapter one, I outlined the historicity of mining in the Congo Copperbelt almost as a story of cumulative generational disenfranchisement whose origins spring from the colonial encounter, the violence of industrialization and its aftermath, the steady grinding nature of postindustrial decline. As I show, it is in this aftermath of liberalization that artisanal mining returned initially out of necessity, but with time, its growth and expansion has made it a local symbol as well as a means for mobilizing the moral claims animating the precolonial past in response to the disenfranchisement experienced in the present. Particularly in chapter five, I demonstrate that while the moral claims and social formation of artisanal mining draw on the precolonial past, the organization and characteristics of labour in artisanal mines are defined by technologies of domination whose ambit is firmly grounded in the colonial encounter.

While creuseurs may mobilize the moral frameworks of the precolonial past for noble political causes such as thwarting attempts to dispossess them of territory, the adoption of militaristic discourse and the predisposition to the use of force as arbiter of change demonstrate a generational internalization of the violence that created the Congolese state and continues to perpetuate its existence. These contradictory approaches by creuseurs become more visible by attending to the composition, layering and overlap of periodicities informing how the labour of mineworkers has been structured and governed over the long- term. A theoretical and methodological implication of such a focus on multiple periodicities is that it moderates the determinism of colonialism. It allows us to understand contemporary

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African experience by widening the scope of temporal analysis to appreciate better the social depth and sheer array of strategies and moves mobilized by the Congolese to understand, respond to and address their realities. In my view, a focus on multiple periodicities also serves to mitigate the effect of the “colonial library” (Mudimbe 1988) so as to apprehend

African lived experience from a wider temporal scope and in its own terms.

In this study, I mobilized labour as a “creative act of mediation” that captures the multiplicity, discordance, and strain of social times in the Congo Copperbelt (cf Bear

2014a:21). I did so by focussing on historical generations of mineworkers—who have tended to serve as the source through which social transformation has been channelled, institutionalized and rendered effective in the Copperbelt. The concept of generation has a wider analytical value than just referring to the biological spacing of groups of among individuals or forms of structuring social succession (Fortes and Evans-Pritchard 1940;

Meillassoux 1981; Turner 1957). Borrowing from Karl Mannheim, generation can be marshalled to index the social positioning, emerging consciousness, and the contact or

“thrownness” of experience among a particular age group. In this way it offers a useful interpretive frame to look at the “work” time does to influence history and structural change in social relations in the Congolese context. Particularly in chapter 2, I explored how following industrial decline, the pensioners of Gécamines and their “children,” creuseurs, both dealt with the experience of “abjection” – what Ferguson (1999:236) views as the casting away of particular groups of people from a global imaginary. Among pensioners, abjection engendered a “structure of feeling” replete in colonial nostalgia, a sense of loss, but also self-reliance. For creuseurs, it produced presentism: a being in the here-and-now

264 characterized by tireless hustling, gritty enduring, and a hunt for more. So, although liberalization was generally devastating, it featured in the lives of different generations in distinctive ways and, in this sense, the work experiences of each cohort reflect that the generation of industrial mineworkers were not in the same present as the generation of creuseurs. The differences in each generation’s experience and expression of the present highlights the multiplicity of time or, as Mannheim (1972 in Pilcher 1994:486) terms it, the

“non-contemporaneity of the contemporaneous.” Temporality thus enters into this study as a means of understanding labour as a “creative act of mediation” and also as a mode of analysing how individuals in specific generations make meaning of the structures that order their social experience. More specifically, age—as a social institution of time—becomes a way of capturing the relationship between the subjectivity of individuals in specific generations and their experience of temporality.

In chapter four my aim was to show how customary authorities formulate their claim over resource land and, secondly, how they operationalize those claims in the context of a liberalized market. To explain why customary authorities claim “ownership” over specific territories, I outlined how the community who gained fame as the “eaters of copper” employ myths, land rites, local titles and place-names to socialize space and ascribe public authority in perpetuity. With liberalization of the economy, customary authorities have sought to remain relevant in the face of competition from the state and private interests by commodifying their generational claims of “ownership” over land as rents. In my view, converting territorial claims passed down through generations into a source of economic value depoliticized customary authorities and also alienated them in the eyes of the mining

265 public thereby potentially hastening their obsolescence in the liberalized present. When viewed from the lived experiences of customary authorities, creuseurs and pensioners, liberalization appears as an inchoate but progressively disenfranchising, state-authored system of change.

To grasp how the Congolese state is implicated in expropriation of the wealth of its people, I analysed the work of state agents working in artisanal mines in chapter three. My approach is informed by a scholarly shift away from ethnographies of neoliberalism that focus on the responses of individuals or social groups to the withdrawal of state influence in the areas of social welfare, governance and sovereignty (Ferguson 1999; Piot 2010; Roitman 2005;

Rubbers 2013; Trefon 2004), toward the study of state institutions and their agents—through whom economic reform is often channelled and effected. What I observed is that artisanal mines have been witness to a proliferation of state agents in the name of improving

“security,” however, this increase in authority figures only nominally extends the reach of the state without increasing its regulatory capacity in the mines. This is because state agents use their positions to seize and extract revenue from the mining public for personal gain.

Even prior to the liberalization of the economy, state authority in Congo was viewed as being systematically compromised by patrimonialism, prebendal practices and clientism. My fieldwork in Katanga, in the aftermath of liberalization of the mining sector, has led me to think these practices may have expanded in both scope and scale due to the entry of hundreds of cash-wielding multinational companies and hundreds of thousands of artisanal miners.

Seizure is a legacy of the colonial history of extraction in Congo which endures and has been revitalized by a liberalization process that has inequitably divided the management of mining

266 between the national and provincial governments to the benefit of the former. Especially at the higher echelons of government, claims abound that elites are using Gécamines as a conduit through which to accumulate wealth at the expense of the public (see Carter Center

2017). Analysing neoliberalism in Congo from “below” reveals that the recent reform of the mining sector has contributed to the progressive mobilization of state authority for private ends, both at the highest and lowest levels of governance of the mining sector.

Lenders to the Congolese government such as the World Bank have also severely weakened governance in the Congo by structuring the liberalization of the mining sector to be hugely advantageous to multinational mining companies at the expense of state regulation and the social needs of the Congolese people. If liberalization has been a tragedy for the Congolese people, it is not only because it has resulted in “accumulation by dispossession” (Harvey

2005), but also because it perpetuates the historical trend of incorporating this region solely as an extractive space. This continues through market structures but also through seemingly well-intentioned legislation. Implementation of the 2010 Dodd Frank Act-1502, a disclosure measure that requires companies trading on U.S. securities exchanges to determine through supply-chain due diligence whether or not their products contain conflict minerals from DRC or neighbouring countries, misdiagnosed artisanal mining trade as the root of the conflict in eastern Congo, rather than as a symptom. As a consequence, it financially penalized artisanal mining communities across the country while doing little to improve due diligence in companies, further impoverishing the Congolese and thus facilitating the mobilization of even more armed militias throughout the country (Dizolele 2017). If my data on artisanal

267 mining are to be pressed into service of a contemporary social concern, let it be as further evidence of the mendacious functioning of capital’s “good” intentions.

Finally, this thesis has shown not only that the liberalization of the Congo’s mining sector has significantly hardened the daily life of local residents, artisanal miners, retrenched mineworkers, customary authorities and even state agents in Katanga; it has also exacerbated inequalities by systematically eviscerating vestiges of industrial welfare. The decline of industrial welfare also led to the foreclosure of a certain imagined future that forced many to improvise and devise means for securing present needs by mobilizing the past in strategic and sometimes contradictory ways. Aside from its wonderful people, this ambivalent potency of the past is what has impressed me most about the Congo. A word to my Congolese brothers and sisters: may this work be an overture showing that if we trace, harness and hail the energy and ethics of the past, if we revive, redeploy and reassess the earth as a gift, we can liberate ourselves.

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