Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T18:28:31.887Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Categorizing colonial patients: segregated medical care, space and decolonization in a Congolese city, 1931–62

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 March 2019

Kristien Geenen
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article deals with the Belgian colonial authorities’ obsession with classification and categorization, and explores how this obsession affected medical care in the city of Coquilhatville. Whereas the authorities aspired to medical care that was strictly segregated along ‘racial’ lines, providing separate hospitals for Europeans and Africans, in reality such rigorous segregation was unsustainable. I argue that it was the authorities’ inclination to categorize patients that eventually blurred the lines. Indeed, this article shows how the administrators became thoroughly enmeshed in their taxonomic zeal when members of the African upper class, the so-called évolués, demanded different treatment from other Congolese, to reflect their status. Furthermore, these upper-class patients insisted on being differentiated among themselves too. Responding to more and more claims to be discerned from yet another ‘lower’ évolué, and in an attempt to translate social space into physical space and thus provide the applicant with a more sophisticated hospital room, the authorities gradually ran out of options. As a consequence, they – albeit unwillingly – opened the doors to évolués of a hospital that was initially reserved exclusively for Europeans.

Résumé

Cet article traite de l'obsession des autorités coloniales belges pour la classification et la catégorisation, et explore comment cette obsession a affecté les soins médicaux dans la ville de Coquilhatville. Les autorités aspiraient à une ségrégation stricte des soins médicaux selon des critères « raciaux », en mettant en place des hôpitaux réservés aux Européens et d'autres aux Africains, alors qu'en réalité ce type de ségrégation stricte n’était pas viable. L'auteur soutient que l'inclination des autorités à classer les patients par catégories a elle-même conduit à un brouillage des lignes. En effet, cet article montre comment les administrateurs ont fini par s'embrouiller dans leur zèle taxinomique lorsque les Africains des classes supérieures, ainsi appelés « évolués », ont exigé de bénéficier d'un traitement médical différent de celui des autres Congolais, en relation avec leur statut. Ces patients des classes supérieures ont ensuite insisté pour qu'on les différencie eux-mêmes. Face aux demandes croissantes des « évolués » de se faire distinguer d'un autre évolué de statut « inférieur » et à leur quête d'offrir aux demandeurs une chambre d'hôpital plus raffinée pour tenter de traduire l'espace social en espace physique, les autorités se sont retrouvées à court d'options. En conséquence et bien qu’à contrecœur, elles ont fini par admettre des évolués dans un hôpital initialement exclusivement réservé aux Européens.

Type
Medicine, care and mediation
Information
Africa , Volume 89 , Issue 1 , February 2019 , pp. 100 - 124
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anderson, B. (1983) Imagined Communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London and New York NY: Verso.Google Scholar
André, J. and Burke, J. (1993) ‘Développement des services de santé’ in Janssens, P. G., Kivits, M. and Vuylsteke, J. (eds), Médecine et Hygiène en Afrique Centrale de 1885 à Nos Jours. Volume I. Brussels: Fondation Roi Baudouin.Google Scholar
Apter, A. (1992) ‘“Que faire?” Reconsidering inventions of Africa’, Critical Inquiry 19 (1): 87–104.Google Scholar
Bauche, M. (2016) ‘Doing research with colonial sources: deconstructing categories in German East Africa's medical reports’ in Castryck, G., Strickrodt, S. and Werthmann, K. (eds), Sources and Methods for African History and Culture: essays in honour of Adam Jones. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitatsverlag.Google Scholar
Beeckmans, L. (2016) ‘A toponymy of segregation: the “neutral zones” of Dakar, Dar es Salaam and Kinshasa’ in Bigon, L. (ed.), Place Names in Africa: colonial urban legacies, entangled histories. Cham: Springer.Google Scholar
Beeckmans, L. and Lagae, J. (2015) ‘Kinshasa's syndrome-planning in historical perspective: from Belgian colonial capital to self-constructed megalopolis’ in Nunes Silva, C. (ed.), Urban Planning in Sub-Saharan Africa: colonial and post-colonial planning cultures. New York NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P. (1999 [1993]) ‘Site effects’ in Bourdieu, P. et al. (eds), The Weight of the World: social suffering in contemporary society. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Centre Æquatoria (1990) Mbandaka: hier et aujourd'hui. Eléments d'historiographie locale. Études Æquatoria 10. Bamanya: Centre Æquatoria.Google Scholar
Claeys, S. (2009) ‘Mbandaka/Coquilhatstad, Democratische Republiek Congo. Beeldkroniek van een koloniale stad’. MA thesis, Ghent University.Google Scholar
Curtin, P. D. (1985) ‘Medical knowledge and urban planning in tropical Africa’, American Historical Review 90 (3): 594–613.Google Scholar
De Boeck, F. and Baloji, S. (2016) Suturing the City: living together in Congo's urban worlds. London: Autograph ABP.Google Scholar
Dembour, M.-B. (2000) Recalling the Belgian Congo: conversations and introspection. New York NY and Oxford: Berghahn.Google Scholar
de Thier, F. M. (1956) Le Centre Extra-coutumier de Coquilhatville. Brussels: Institut de Sociologie Solvay, Université Libre de Bruxelles.Google Scholar
Epervier (1959) ‘A l'hôpital des Congolais’, Cuvette Centrale, 15 June.Google Scholar
Fabian, J. (2002) ‘Virtual archives and ethnographic writing: commentary as a new genre?’, Current Anthropology 43 (5): 775–86.Google Scholar
Farge, A. (1997) ‘Histoire, événement, parole’, Socio-anthropologie 2 <http://socio-anthropologie.revues.org/29>, accessed 7 June 2017.,+accessed+7+June+2017.>Google Scholar
Gondola, C. D. (2016) Tropical Cowboys: westerns, violence, and masculinity in Kinshasa. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Graeber, D. (2012) ‘Dead zones of the imagination: on violence, bureaucracy, and interpretive labor’, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 2 (2): 105–28.Google Scholar
Hayes, P. (2015) ‘History and the “materials of life”: Namibian migrants and the Cape, 1946–57’. Paper presented at the seminar ‘New Historical Writing with Simmel on Image, Coagulation, and Form’, Institut d’Études Avancées de Paris, 28–29 May.Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T. (eds) (1983) The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hochschild, A. (1999) King Leopold's Ghost: a story of greed, terror, and heroism in colonial Africa. Boston MA and New York NY: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Horwitz, S. (2013) Baragwanath Hospital Soweto: a history of medical care 1941–1990. Johannesburg: Wits University Press.Google Scholar
Hughes, J. (1997) ‘Hospital-city’, Architectural History 40: 266–88.Google Scholar
Hunt, N. R. (1991) ‘Noise over camouflaged polygamy, colonial morality taxation, and a woman-naming crisis in Belgian Africa’, Journal of African History 32 (3): 471–94.Google Scholar
Hunt, N. R. (1999) A Colonial Lexicon: of birth ritual, medicalization, and mobility in the Congo. Durham NC and London: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Hunt, N. R. (2007) ‘Colonial medical anthropology and the making of the central African infertility belt’ in Tilley, H. and Gordon, R. J. (eds), Ordering Africa: anthropology, European imperialism, and the politics of knowledge. Manchester and New York NY: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Hunt, N. R. (2008) ‘An acoustic register, tenacious images, and Congolese scenes of rape and repetition’, Cultural Anthropology 23 (2): 220–53.Google Scholar
Hunt, N. R. (2016) A Nervous State: violence, remedies, and reverie in colonial Congo. Durham NC and London: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Jeurissen, L. (2002) ‘Les ambitions du colonialism belge pour la “race mulâtre” (1918–1940)’, Revue Belge d'Histoire Contemporaine 32 (3–4): 497–535.Google Scholar
Jewsiewicki, B. (1976) ‘La contestation sociale et la naissance du proletariat au Zaire au cours de la première moitié du XXe siècle’, Canadian Journal of African Studies 10 (1): 47–70.Google Scholar
Kadima-Tshimanga, B. (1982) ‘La société sous le vocabulaire: blancs, noirs et évolués dans l'ancien Congo belge (1955–1959)’, Mots 5: 25–49.Google Scholar
Kuper, A. (2005) The Reinvention of Primitive Society: transformations of a myth. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lagae, J., Boonen, S. and Liefooghe, M. (2013) ‘Fissures dans le “cordon sanitaire”: architecture hospitalière et ségrégation urbaine à Lubumbashi, 1920–1960’ in Amuri Mpala-Lutebele, M. (ed.), Lubumbashi: cent ans d'histoire. Paris: Comptes Rendus and L'Harmattan.Google Scholar
Lauro, A. (2005) Coloniaux, Ménagères et Prostituées au Congo Belge (1885–1930). Loverval: Éditions Labor.Google Scholar
Likaka, O. (2009) Naming Colonialism: history and collective memory in the Congo, 1870–1960. Madison WI: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Likinda, J. (1957) ‘Bosise wa litoi mpato efa l'olito’, Lokole Lokiso, 15 May.Google Scholar
Lufungula Lewono, S. (1992) ‘Ernest Itela: chef du CEC de Coquilhatville (1934–1953)’, Annales Æquatoria 13: 499–504.Google Scholar
Lufungula Lewono, S. (2002) ‘Patel Ismail Youssuf: un bâtisseur de Coquilhatville, 1934–1969’, Annales Æquatoria 23: 217–44.Google Scholar
Martens, G. (1999) ‘Congolese trade unionism: the colonial heritage’, Tijdschrift voor de Geschiedenis van Sociale Bewegingen 2: 129–49.Google Scholar
Monaville, P. (2013) ‘Decolonizing the university: postal politics, the student movement, and global 1968 in the Congo’. PhD thesis, University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Money, D. (2016) ‘“No matter how much or how little they've got, they can't settle down”: a social history of Europeans on the Zambian Copperbelt, 1926–1974’. PhD thesis, University of Oxford.Google Scholar
Mudimbe, V. Y. (1988) The Invention of Africa: gnosis, philosophy, and the order of knowledge. London: James Currey.Google Scholar
Mutamba Makombo, J.-M. (1998) Du Congo belge au Congo indépendant, 1940–1960: émergence des évolués et genèse du nationalisme. Kinshasa: Institut de Formation et d’Études Politiques.Google Scholar
Njoh, A. J. (2012) Urban Planning and Public Health in Africa: historical, theoretical and practical dimensions of a continent's water and sanitation problematic. Farnham: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Ranger, T. (1993) ‘The invention of tradition revisited: the case of colonial Africa’ in Ranger, T. and Vaughan, O. (eds), Legitimacy and the State in Twentieth-century Africa: essays in honour of A. H. M. Kirk-Greene. Basingstoke: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Sabakinu Kivilu, J. (2005) ‘Paul-Gabriel-Dieudonné Bolya: van medisch assistent tot politicus’ in Vellut, J.-L., Cornelis, S., de Lame, D., de Villers, G., Etambala, Z., Lagae, J. and Marchal, P. (eds), Het geheugen van Congo: de koloniale tijd. Tervuren: Africa Museum.Google Scholar
Stoler, A. L. (1989) ‘Rethinking colonial categories: European communities and the boundaries of rule’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 31 (1): 134–61.Google Scholar
Stoler, A. L. (2002) ‘Colonial archives and the arts of governance’, Archival Science 2: 87–109.Google Scholar
Vangroenweghe, D. (1985) Rood Rubber: Leopold II en zijn Kongo. Brussels: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Van Reybrouck, D. (2010) Congo: een geschiedenis. Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij.Google Scholar
Vellut, J.-L. (1982) ‘Matériaux pour une image du blanc dans la société coloniale du Congo Belge’ in Pirotte, J. (ed.), Stéréotypes nationaux et préjugés raciaux aux XIXe et XXe siècles. Leuven: Editions Nauwelaerts.Google Scholar
Vinck, H. (2001) ‘La Guerre de 1945–45 vécue à Coquilhatville (Mbandaka, RDC)’, Annales Æquatoria 22: 21–101.Google Scholar
Vinck, H. (2011) Conflits fonciers au Congo belge: opinions congolaises. Brussels: Academie Royale des Sciences d'Outre-Mer.Google Scholar
Vinck, H. and Delobbe, D. (1986) ‘Le Cercle Léopold II à Coquilhatville (Mbandaka)’, Annales Æquatoria 7: 337–44.Google Scholar
Yeoh, B. (2003) Contesting Space in Colonial Singapore: power relations and the urban built environment. Singapore: Singapore University Press.Google Scholar