Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-mlc7c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T18:51:16.007Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Zaïre: the Shattered Illusion of the Integral State

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Crawford Young
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Zaïre, by the early 1990s, by some accounts had all but vanished. One senior American diplomat described it as nothing more than the presidential vessel ‘Kamanyola’ anchored safely offshore in the Zaïre River, an élite praetorian guard compensated in hard currency, the remote marble city of Gbadolite, a shrivelled state superstructure nourished by diamond smuggling. Its perennial President, Mobutu Sese Seko, was characterised contemptuously by a French official as ‘a walking bank account in a leopard-skin cap’. More than a decade ago, a former publicist for the central régime had relegated the once-powerful state to a zone of non-existence: ‘The state does not exist or no longer exists in Za’. The 1992 National Conference resolved to expunge Zaire from history by restoring its earlier colonial and post-colonial nomenclature of ‘Congo’.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , June 1994 , pp. 247 - 263
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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

1 Kabwe, Bwana, Citoyen Président, Lettre ouverte au Président Mobutu Sese Seko… et les autres (Paris, 1978), p. 23.Google Scholar

2 Mbembe, Achille, Afriques indociles: Christianisme, pouvoir et État en société postcoloniale (Paris, 1988), p. 248.Google Scholar

3 Mungonga, Manwana, Le Général Mobutu Sese Seko parle du nationalisme zaïrois authentique (Kinshasa, nd. 1972?), p. 116.Google Scholar

4 Coulon, Christian, Le Marabout et le prince (Islam et pouvoir au Sénégal) (Paris, 1981), 289–90.Google Scholar

5 Copans, Jean, Les Marabouts et l'arachide: la confrérie mouride et les paysans du Sénégal (Paris, 1980), p. 248.Google Scholar

6 Weber, Max, ‘Politics as a Vocation’, reprinted in Gerth, H. H. and Mills, C. Wright, From Max Weber: essays in sociology (New York, 1958), pp. 82–3.Google Scholar

7 Bayart, Jean-François, L'État au Cameroun (Paris, 1979), pp. 52 and 222.Google Scholar

8 Toulabor, Comi M., Le Togo sous Eyadéma (Paris, 1986).Google Scholar

9 See the valuable study by Buijtenhuijs, Robert, Le Frolinat et les révoltes populaires du Tchad, 1965–1976 (The Hague, 1978).Google Scholar

10 Zala, N'Kanza Lusibu, ‘The Social Origins of Political Underdevelopment in the Belgian Congo (Zaïre)’, Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 1976, pp. 232–4.Google Scholar

11 Ascherson, Neal, The King Incorporated: Leopold II in the age of trusts (London, 1963), p. 11.Google Scholar

12 Piron, Pierre and Devos, Jacques, Codes et lois du Congo belge (Brussels, 8th edn. 1960), Vol. II, p. 211. For an excellent institutional example of the tonality and style of this discourse of hegemony,Google Scholar see Magotte, J., Les Circonscriptions indigènes (La Louvière, n.d. 1952?).Google Scholar

13 de Belgique, Royaume, colonies, Ministère des, Recueil à l'usage des fonctionnaires et des agents du service territorial (Brussels, 5th edn. 1930), pp. 119–20 and 134–5. A lengthy list of other acts of lèsemajesté towards the integral state, which could expose the culprit to its wrath, included defacing symbols of the state, circulating rumours, refusing to provide information, or impeding state transport.Google Scholar

14 Ibid. p. 141.

15 Muvulya, Mulambu, ‘Le Régime des cultures obligatoires et le radicalisme rural au Zaïre (1917–1960)’, Ph.D. dissertation, Université libre de Bruxelles, 1974, p. 96.Google Scholar

16 Rapports Annuels sur l'Administration du Congo Belge, présentés au Chambres legislatifs, cited in Young, Crawford, Politics in the Congo (Princeton, 1968), p. 206.Google Scholar

17 Cited in Buell, Raymond Leslie, The Native Problem in Africa (New York, 1928), Vol. II, p. 506.Google Scholar

18 Foucault, Michel, ‘Le Pouvoir, comment s'exerce-t-il?’, in Dreyfus, H. L. and P., Rabinow (eds.), Michel Foucault, un parcours philosophique (Paris, 1984), pp. 313–14,Google Scholar cited in Bayart, Jean-François, ‘L’Hybridation du politique en Afrique noire: les églises chrétiennes et la gouvernmentalité du ventre’, Conference on Relationships between the State and Civil Society in Africa and Eastern Europe, Bellagio, Italy, February 1990s, p. 8.Google Scholar

19 Moutoulle, L., Politique sociale de l'Union miniére du Haut Katanga (Brussels, 1946), pp. 5–6.Google Scholar

20 Fetter, Bruce, ‘L'Union miniére du Haut-Katanga, 1920–1940: Ia naissance d'une sousculture totalitaire’, in Cahiers du CEDAF (Brussels), 6, 1973, p. 38.Google Scholar

21 Agayo, Bakonzi, ‘The Gold Mines of Kilo-Moto in Northeastern Zaïre, 1905–1960’, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1982.Google Scholar

22 Mgr. Roelens, cited in Franck, Louis, Le Congo belge (Brussels, 1930), Vol. II, pp. 208–9.Google Scholar

23 Ibid. p. 208. On the systematic colonial state effort to marginalise Islam, see also Abel, Armand, Les Musulmans noirs du Maniema (Brussels, 1959),Google Scholar and Young, Crawford, ‘The Congo’, in Kritzeck, James and Lewis, William A. (eds.), Islam in Africa (New York, 1969), pp. 250–69.Google Scholar

24 For details, see the excellent study by Yates, Barbara A., ‘The Missions and Educational Development in King Lépold's Congo’, Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, New York, 1967.Google Scholar

25 Franck, op. cit. Vol. I, p. 282.

26 Weiss, Herbert F., Political Protest in the Congo: the Parti Solidaire Africain during the independence struggle (Princeton, 1967).Google Scholar

27 Reprinted in Dettes de guerre (Elisabethville, 1945), pp. 128–9.Google Scholar

28 Lumumba, Patrice, Le Congo, terre d'avenir, est-il menace? (Brussels, 1961), p. 22.Google ScholarSome argue that this text should be entirely set aside, as composed under Circumstances of unabated colonial oppression, and constructed in such fashion as to make publication acceptable to Belgian official views. Doubtless Lumumba did trim his sails to the winds, yet the views expressed were still characteristic of évolué opinion of the period, and are, in my judgement, best understood as symptomatic of the rapid evolution of his perspectives once intellectual bridges were built to radical African nationalism more generally. This argument finds fascinating validation in-the recent publication of Lumumba's frequent contributions to the colonial press from 1948 to 1956;Google Scholar see Makongo, Jean-Marie Matamba, ‘Patrice Lumumba correspondant de presse (1948–1956)’, in Cahiers africains, 3, 1993, pp. 1–53.Google Scholar

29 Lumumba, op. cit. pp. 19–20.

30 van Lierde, Jean, La Pensée politique du Patrice Lumumba (Brussels, 1963), p. 192.Google Scholar

31 Ibid. p. 191.

32 For a carefully balanced and well-informed analysis of the impassioned Lumumba era, see Willame, Jean-Claude, Patrice Lumumba: la crise congolaise revisitée (Paris, 1990).Google Scholar

33 Seko, Mobutu Sese, Mobutu: discours, allocutions, et messages, 1965–1975 (Paris, 1975), Vol. 1, pp. 20–1.Google Scholar

34 Mpongo, Engulu Baanga, speech to the Makanda Kabobi Institute for party ideological instruction, N'sele, 1974.Google Scholar

35 Callaghy, Thomas M., The State-Society Struggle: Zaïre in comparative perspective (New York, 1984), passim.Google Scholar

36 Dungia, Emmanuel, Mobutu et l'argent du Zaïre (Paris, 1992), p. 15.Google Scholar

37 Vansina, Jan, ‘Mwasi's Trials’, in Daedalus (Cambridge, MA), III, Spring 1982, p. 69.Google Scholar

38 See, especially, in addition to Callaghy, op. cit., Young, Crawford and Turner, Thomas, The Rise and Decline of the Zaïrian State (Madison, 1985),Google ScholarSchatzberg, Michael G., The Dialectics of Oppression in Zaïre (Bloomington, 1988),Google ScholarNzongola-Ntalaja, (ed), The Crisis in Zaïre: myths and realities (Trenton, 1986), ‘Zaïre, années 90’,Google Scholar in Cahiers du CEDAF-ASDOC (Brussels), 5–6, 1991 and 1–2, 1992,Google Scholar and Braeckman, Colette, Le Dinosaur: le Zaïre de Mobutu (Paris, 1992).Google Scholar The best study of the most recent period is by Willame, Jean-Claude, L'Automne d'un despotisme: pouvoir, argent et obéissance dans le Zaïre des années quatre-vingt (Paris, 1992).Google Scholar

39 MacGaffey, Janet et al., The Real Economy of Zaïre: the contribution of smuggling and other unofficial activities to national wealth (London and Philadelphia, 1991).Google Scholar

40 Kabongo, Ilunga, ‘Baffling Africa or the Dying Gasps of a Discourse’, Conference on African Crisis Areas and United States Foreign Policy, Los Angeles, March 1993.Google Scholar

41 Ekeh, Peter, ‘Colonialism and the Two Publics in Africa: a theoretical statement’, in Comparative Studies in Society and History (Cambridge), 17, 1, 1975, pp. 91–112.Google Scholar

42 Davidson, Basil, The Black Man's Burden: Africa and the curse of the nation-state (London and New York, 1992).Google Scholar

43 Vansina, Jan, ‘A Past for the Future?’, in Dalhousie Review (Halifax), 68, 102, 1989, pp. 21–3.Google Scholar