In and out of the State: Working the Boundaries of Power in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Anthropological Theory

2015, Vol. 15(1) 22–46

! The Author(s) 2014

Reprints and permissions:

sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav

DOI: 10.1177/1463499614554149

ant.sagepub.com

Article

In and out of the state:Working the boundariesof power in theDemocratic Republicof Congo

Patience KabambaUniversity of Pennsylvania, USA

Abstract

Anthropology has often renewed itself by studying collective self-organization beyond

the reach of the state. The idea that power usually flows top-down from a state mon-

opoly is increasingly questioned in an era of networks fuelled by interactive decision-

making processes that include non-state actors. Power theoretically understood as

potentia – the elementary power through which human beings deploy their productive

capacities and creative possibilities – is ontologically prior to power expressed as an

obsession with order that is often repressive (potestas). Granting precedence to potentia

over potestas inevitably leads us to question the conceptual centrality of the state. The

Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which has long stood – and stands today – as a

symbol of the antithesis of social order, offers much material for reflection on this issue.

While this paper considers how people negotiate the boundaries between state and

non-state power in the contemporary DRC, its lasting contribution is to revive in a

distinctly new way a tradition of anthropology to use the study of stateless societies to

pose big critical questions about the institutions on which modern societies rest.

Keywords

Africa, Butembo, Democratic Republic of Congo, global governmentality, Nande,

NGO-oriented literature, potentia, potestas, power, Weberian model

Corresponding author:

Patience Kabamba, Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, 3260 South Street, Philadelphia,

PA, 19104–6398, USA.

Email: [email protected]

by guest on March 16, 2015ant.sagepub.comDownloaded from

http://ant.sagepub.com/

Introduction

This paper is an anthropological interrogation of the idea that power usually flowstop-down from a state monopoly. It contends that power could theoretically beunderstood as potentia – which Spinoza understands as the elementary powerthrough which human beings deploy their productive capacities and creative pos-sibilities. The study argues that ‘productive power’ is ontologically prior to powerexpressed as an obsession with order that is often repressive (potestas). Grantingprecedence to potentia over potestas inevitably leads us to question the conceptualcentrality of the state. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which has longstood – and stands today – as a symbol of the antithesis of social order, offers muchmaterial for reflection on this issue. While this paper considers how people nego-tiate the boundaries between state and non-state power in the contemporary DRC,its goal is to revive in a distinctly new way a tradition of anthropology to use thestudy of stateless societies to pose big critical questions about the institutions onwhich modern societies rest.

To reach its goal the paper first discusses the traditional ways state power hasbeen conceptualized in Africa. It analyzes a body of academic literature on the stateand its sovereign power that has generally been conceptualized as potestas. Second,in empirical support of this theoretical claim, it provides an ethnographic accountwhich calls for a re-conceptualization of the state and the notion of power incentral Africa. Finally, it discusses the implications of understanding power tobe not only repressive, but also productive. This new understanding of powermay help us better to grasp the dynamism of African state formation today.

The silence of the media

When asked to name the conflict that has claimed most lives in Africa during thelast decade, most of my American students cite Darfur or Somalia. They aresurprised when I show that the Congo conflict has accounted for four milliondeaths (IRC, 2008), while that in Darfur on a conservative estimate claimed atmost 400,000 deaths (United Nations, 2008). Students of contemporary Africa areoften surprised that the media have little to say about the Congo conflict.1

Mahmood Mamdani (2004) believes that the reason for the media’s near silenceon the DRC conflict is that two of the major protagonists there, namely, Rwandaand Uganda, are friends of the United States. It would be embarrassing for theWestern media, which makes of Rwanda’s post-genocide president Kagame a newMoses, to accuse him of murdering so many Congolese people. Indeed, all attemptsto make Kagame and Museveni accountable for the Congo conflict have met withresistance from the US and Britain in the United Nations.2 But this line doesn’treally work, given that a number of scholars have begun to criticize Kagame’srecent handling of power in Rwanda (Reyntjens, 2004; Pottier, 2002).

The real cause of the media’s relative silence about the main African conflicttoday, which has claimed the most victims of any conflict since the Second World

Kabamba 23



War, is that it goes far beyond the categories we usually use to define such conflicts(see Hollar, 2009). In the Congo there are no easily identifiable good guys and badguys, no regular armies fighting against non-uniformed belligerents. Our usualcategories do not work there. This partly explains why journalists, especially for-eign journalists, who are used to constructing conflicts according to a binary logic,can’t understand one which involves a government army, a dozen Congolese rebelmilitias, a dozen foreign rebel groups and UN peace-keepers. The complexities ofthe Congo war defeat the normal categories of our understanding.

New NGO-oriented literature

In recent decades interest in the Congo has emerged among young Western scho-lars whose characteristics are that they entered the Congo as NGO workers orconsultants and went on to do a PhD in political science on the Congo. As JamesFerguson (1990) puts it in the Anti-Politics Machine, NGOs are focused on findingthe solutions instead of formulating original problems (see also Mamdani, 2011;Zambakari, 2012). This model generally constructs the problem as being internaland the solution external. As Zambakari and Mandani pointed out, one cannotimport solutions. For a solution to be durable it must be home grown.

In her book, The Trouble with the Congo (2010), Autesserre makes a very import-ant remark:many of the conflicts have their roots in local competing legitimacies, andby neglecting these local levels of engagement in favor of national and regional agree-ments, the international community fails to adequately address the major causes ofthe conflicts. Autesserre comes to this conclusion after several years of observing andinterviewing diplomats, UN personnel, and non-governmental organizations in dif-ferent countries, including the Congo,3 Kosovo, Afghanistan, India and Nicaragua.The book is indeed the fruit of extensive field work in the DRC since 2001.

However, Autesserre’s The Trouble with the Congo is missing the narrative con-cerning Congolese efforts to address the conflict. The impression in the book is thatCongolese are powerless to solve this conflict at the local as well as the national level.Outside intervention seems absolutely needed. This may be the first flaw of this book:an uncritical belief that Congolese fate is in the hands of outside players. For theauthor, these outside players are critical in bringing sustainable peace and democ-racy. This is simplywrong. Congolese are indeed actors from the beginning to the endof these violent processes of primitive accumulation where their history is takingthem. Unless the outside world understands this and plays the role of an externalactor without emasculating the internal players, they will only unduly prolong theseprocesses, especially in their bloodiest African permutation phases which run deep.There is neither time nor space for the so-called international champions of peace-building and state-buildingwho try to impose a rationalizing outsider’s dictate on thisunruly continent. The author discusses demoralized Congolese who took pride inelections (2010: 233). Actually, many Congolese never took pride in the 2006 elec-tions, given the violence before and after the voting process. These elections and theiraftermath, characterized by pre-electoral conditions of violence, showed that

24 Anthropological Theory 15(1)



Congolese were the major actors. For them, the 2006 elections were designed tosatisfy the international community that needed to justify the billions spent in theCongo with an election. Major Congolese problems were not to be answered byelections but by a new social contract at the local as well as at the national level.This new deal would have eventually come about had they been left alone to entirelymanage their processes of primitive accumulation.

Finally, I would like now to engage with the goal Autesserre sets at the begin-ning of her book: ‘This book is the first scholarly attempt to understand why all ofthe intense international peacebuilding efforts, including the largest peacekeepingmission in the world, have failed to build a sustainable peace in the Congo’ (2010:5). This goal, and the whole enterprise of the book, contains a naivety and anidealism I would like to challenge. A sustainable peace in the Congo could only bebuilt and sustained by the Congolese themselves. It is naıve to think that peoplewho go from one social space to another across the globe without being subject inany sense to those same social spaces would be the key to building a sustainablepeace. It is naıve to think that it is an outside people’s burden, especially the UN’s,to solve in a sustainable way the situation in the Congo.

Before coming to Kinshasa, many of the UN agents4 had language training andtechnical training, but not historical courses or any reading list where one could findthe work ofMudimbe, Mbembe, Mbokolo, Mamdani, or AbdouMaliq Simone, etc.These critical discourses are not denied, but it is as if it was understood that suchdiscourses were suspended in the interests of groundwork-type basic rights andamenities-type projects at hand. What is troubling is that this sort of brutishcommon-sense logic is so ridden with problematic assumptions, in particular thetacit sense of the necessity to defer historical complexities by ignoring genealogies ofpower, complexities of local discourse or histories, or urban habitus, etc.

We enter into a security-state mentality that permeates the types of order anddiscipline that operate out of Kinshasa, and they bring with them what Povinellirefers to as the ‘calling cards of colonizing capital’, representations such as ‘freedom’,and so on. Those who imagine themselves as purveyors of those necessary goods ofmodernity, such as ‘freedom’ and ‘security’ (not disagreeable concepts intrinsically,of course), make the crucial move imagining themselves as capable of moving acrosssocial spaces without being subject – in any sense – to those same social spaces. Theyare then agroupof global actors engaged in the elaborationofwhatmayverywell be anew or incipient kind of global governmentality, for whomCongo andCongolese arepurely objects – and never properly historical subjects – upon which various formu-lations combining ‘compassion’ and international and military policing must be dir-ected in the presumably correct proportions in order to maintain or reinstitute lawand order. What is disturbing about this sort of discourse is that it contains specificpolitical content, but pretends to be only about reportage and universal ethics.

Scholars seem to present even the land issue as part of the local reasons whyconflict cannot be understood adequately from outside. Unless it is one hundredpercent commoditized, land remains in Africa at the level of intimacy and feelingthat an outsider could hardly understand. I am not saying that there is no role for

Kabamba 25



an outside actor at the local level. I am saying that the local arena is generally toocomplicated to understand unless one has spent an extensive period of time in theregion – a substantial presence with the intention of understanding without super-imposing any pre-formulated claim.5 Outside presence is indeed very important tothe self-understanding of any local area.

The role of the outside player would be to assist internal players by extendingtheir horizons. This could be done sometimes by remaining passive or by just beingthere, which is a very difficult request from international community members,‘purveyors of modernity’ and their so-called ‘culture’. General Africanists limittheir research with accurate descriptions and observations. The task for Africansis to incorporate these into a long-term transformative prospective. QuotingTrefon’s Congo Masquerade (2011), Autesserre States that the ‘Congolese Stateremains a predatory structure, as it has been during most of the Congo’s history’(2006/2010: 18). This remark satisfies the Africanist, but leaves the African towonder why the Congo has always been a predatory state. As an African,I want to know the root cause in order to transform this structure.

Even Raeymaekers (2007), whom I met while he was doing fieldwork in Butemboas a consultant of UNICEF/Italy and whom I befriended in the field because he doesimportant research in the region, sees the state as focused on order and potestas. Hecorrectly noticed the struggle by the Nande to keep order and exercise the de factopower of protection despite the absence of a state framework. For Raeymaekers,Nande traders are emerging powerbrokers of the new political order on the Congo–Uganda frontier. However, Raeymaekers couldn’t depart from the understandingof power as potestas, referenced as an ideal mode of organization.

no general code, no agreement on how to regulate society is possible unless it is backed

by the establishment of a monopoly over the legitimate use of force; that’s the state

(Raeymaekers 2007: 28 the emphasis is mine).

This is partly due to the discipline of political science for which the state is a givenand never a questionable constructed entity. Raeymaekers remains faithful to akind of crystallized notion of the state. He reserves sovereignty as an attribute ofthe state instead of viewing it as social relation for which the state is an objectivizedform at a certain point in time. Following Abrams’ (1988 [1977]: 80) maxim that‘the only plausible alternative . . . to taking the state for granted is to understand itas a historical construct’, and unlike Raeymaekers, I understand sovereignty to bethat which is inalienable in the human species. As we will see, this way of appre-hending sovereignty is much closer to the anthropological appreciation of power aspotentia. State power has indeed alienated the sovereign productive power ofhuman beings taken collectively. The above interpretation of sovereignty can beadapted to the Nande as a social formation assuming its destiny by deploying itsproductive economic and political imagination.

In this context of NGO-oriented literature that emasculates African knowledgeproduction, the response of African elites is to find a theoretically-sophisticated,




empirically-grounded, ethnographically and historically rich version of such anargument. We need to bring back the complexities and the deferred genealogiesof power in order to carve our own ‘postcolonial’ worlds. This, indeed, is the ‘blackman’s burden’ in these violent processes of primitive accumulation that countrieslike the DRC are going through.

Transnationalism

The anthropological literature on transnationalism focuses particularly on therelated mobility of labor and capital, on the globalization of both. Leslie Sklair(1995) recognizes that the central feature of the idea of globalization current in thesocial sciences is that many contemporary problems cannot be adequately studiedat the level of nation-states, in terms of national societies or international relations,but need to be theorized in terms of global (transnational) processes, beyond thelevel of the nation-state. Global system theory is based on the concept of trans-national practices that cross state borders but do not necessarily originate withstate agencies or actors.

The debate on transnationalism in anthropology has opposed those for whomthe state has lost its raison d’etre against those who think that the state is stillimportant. Implicit in the work on transnationalism is the question of whether lifeacross borders involves resistance to nation-states and allows previously margin-alized groups to challenge the social hierarchy (Lewitt, 2001). Is the state stillrelevant in the age of globalization?

Scholars of transnationalism have argued that the exclusionary and thedisciplinary power of states, far from fading, is actually growing, and the statemay in some places play an active role in the economic and political use of trans-national migrants’ organizations (Basch et al., 1994; Smith, 1998). De Genova’streatment of the ‘illegality’ of undocumented migrations makes sense only withinthe framework of the nation-state which produces laws that legalize or illegalizemigrations:

The character of illegality is produced by immigration laws, which are apprehensible

only through the theory of state. Undocumented migrations are . . . preeminently labor

migrations, originating in the uniquely restless creative capacity and productive

power. The undocumented character of such movements draws our scrutiny to

regimes of immigration laws and so demands an analytic account of the law as

such, which is itself apprehensible through a theory of the state. (2002: 423)

Even the ‘transnational production of Mexico in Chicago’, to which De Genovaalludes, is taking place in the framework of the US nation-state. Nevertheless, thesource of life of transnational trade networks is precisely their capacity to ‘circu-late’ across borders regulated by the state, taking advantage of economic differen-tials imposed by borders rather than being disabled by them. Indeed, the existenceof the state is often the key to the organization of migrants’ transnationalism.

Kabamba 27



In her study ofwhat she called ‘flexible positioning’ of Chinese diaspora subjects inthe age of political and capitalist empires, Aihwa Ong (1999) argues that ‘whereasinternational managers and professionals may be adept at strategies of economicaccumulation and maneuvering, they do not operate in free-flowing circumstancesbut in the environments that are controlled and shaped by nation-states and thecapital market’ (1999: 112). The existence of the state, which has to be circumvented,is often the key to the organizations of migrants’ transnational space, as with global-ization (Bauman, 1998). I think that transnationalism is more likely to stimulate atransformation of the nation-state as it is known rather than precipitate the dis-appearance of its function and existence. The Nande benefit from the borders ofthe DRC state to organize their cross-border trade. The success of this trade isattributed to the link of trust characterizing the networks.

The keenest disagreement between globalization theorists and their opponents,however, concerns the extent to which the nation-state is in decline. This entailsdisputes over the relevance of terms such as ‘informality’ and ‘illegality’ in the newcontext of transnationalism, given that in African countries, for example, peoplehave developed informal strategies of survival or even prosperity in the absence offormal structures associated with the developmental state. To call these actions‘illegal’ maintains the fantasy of the state in its real absence and ignores the pointthat ‘illegality’ is a constructed form of social relations which has limited historicalscope and holds sway only when the conditions of its objectification persist. Whyshould citizens of the Congo pay taxes when the state that collects them providesno return in terms of public infrastructure? A sort of ‘natural’ resistance has risenfrom the local level, not so much as a weapon of the weak (Scott, 2000), but asresistance emerging from the inner capacity of human beings to pursue their aspir-ations through the best social arrangements they can produce. The potestas of thegovernment does not exhaust our human creative capacity to organize power.

Contrary to howhe is often read,Weber did not define the state by itsmonopoly onlegitimate force but by its ability to back up its claim upon such a monopoly. ‘Acompulsory political organizationwith continuous operations’,Weberwrote, ‘will becalled a ‘‘state’’ insofar as its administrative staff successfully upholds the claim to themonopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in enforcement of its order’ (Weber,1978: 54). As Christopher Krupa (2010) puts it, this little shift of emphasis induces anew understanding of the state, because now we should see even the most brutallymaterial manifestations of state power – the means of force, taxes, bureaucracies,border patrols – not as examples of the state’s true power but as merely the evidence,or ‘symbolic capital’, upon which such claims aspire to legitimacy (Bourdieu, 1999).Philip Abrams (1988 [1977]: 77), echoing Weber, makes this point clearly: ‘Armiesand prisons are the back-up instruments of the burden of legitimacy’, he argues. ‘Thestate for its part never emerges except as a claim to domination.’ Different historicalconditions will necessarily determine the sorts of proof that must be marshaled tomake any such claim believable (and the consequences suffered if not): here an army,there a property regime, each a claim made in material form. The point, however, isthat the state-as-such cannot be found in any of the ‘things’ that appear to reify it, but




rather in the ever-dynamic synaptic relays of claim and recognition that insinuatestate power into the material relations of everyday life. It is by intervening into theserelations and substituting themselves in the location of ‘state’ that emergent powerblocs have beenmost able to justify their commandover local populations – this is thegroundwork of the production of another form of social formation.

The Weberian idea of the state as a monopoly of force is just one among others.It may or may not work for theWest, but it remains a colonial anomaly for countriesof theAfrican continent. People often donot primarily identifywith the state they livein; it is not for them the most significant ‘imagined community’, to use BenedictAnderson’s category. Identities derived from regional and local associations are usu-ally more significant in people’s daily experience, especially in a world where global-ization at one level and regional autonomy movements at the other challenges thenation-state’s raison d’etre. Globalization may be defined as a process whereby theconstraints of geography on social and cultural arrangements recede and peoplebecome increasingly aware that they are receding (Waters, 1995: 3). As Appaduraiputs it, ‘deterritorialization is one of the central forces of the modern world, since itbrings laboring populations into the lower class sectors and spaces of relativelywealthy societies, while sometimes creating an exaggerated and intensified sense ofcriticism attached to the politics of the home state’ (1996: 301). The social relationsemerging from these contemporary developments are not confinedwithin the bordersof nation-states. Thus, theymay be regarded as transnational, a termwhich indicatesa relation over and beyond, rather than between or inside nation-states.

As a search for more creative ways of organizing the social contract, trans-nationalism is more likely to stimulate a transformation of the nation-state as itis, rather than to make its functions and existence disappear. MacGaffey has shownthat Nande traders benefit from the borders of the DRC state when organizingtheir cross-border activities. Drawing inspiration from her, I spent more than ayear of ethnographic fieldwork in the Nande region of eastern DRC as a partici-pant observer of how Nande people seized on a marginal economic advantage inthe middle of chaos and built a relatively thriving micro-polity for themselves.

The Nande of North Kivu: An ethnographic account

I carried out ethnographic field research among Nande people for 14 months inButembo in the north Kivu territory of Beni-Lubero. Briefly, in the past decadeendemic conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo has precipitated the collapseof public authority and the brutal disintegration of the formal state. The facts arewell known: four million dead, entire zones of the country controlled by foreignarmies, and the withdrawal of the state from an effective presence in several regions(IRC, 2006; UN, 2008; Coleman, 2005; ICG, 1998–2007). In the midst of thischaos, however, certain ethnic groups have been able to take advantage of thestate’s absence to prosper and institute new forms of order and development.

In the next pages the paper will illustrate an empirical example of powerunderstood as potentia it describes a Group of Congolese traders who took the

Kabamba 29



destiny in their own hands in the midst if war. In the absence of effective statesovereignty and national government and in the presence of numerous armedcontenders for power, Nande traders have managed to build and protect a self-sustaining, prosperous transnational economic enterprise in eastern Congo. Butwhy them and what gave the Nande the capacity to extract their populationfrom despotic and predatory rule, from the exercise of power as potestas?

North Kivu is predominantly inhabited by the Nande in northern Beni andLubero, by the Banyarwanda (primarily Bahutu and some Tutsi) in Rutshuruand Masisi, and the Hunde in Walikale. There is no linguistic relation betweenthese groups. The name Nande is of relatively recent origin. Elderly people in theregion do not remember the term being used in their youth, and it is thought tohave been introduced by the Belgians, or possibly by Arab slave and ivory traderswho penetrated the northern Mitumba Mountains region at the end of the19th century. The term ‘Yira’ was used to speak of the Kinande-speaking peoplein general, but this term took on derogatory connotations during the colonialperiod, when it was used to refer to backward, uncivilized persons. Yira sometimesrefers to the lower social strata of the population (Bergmans, 1970: 8). Rather thanadopting a cultural definition, anthropologists such as Bergmans and Remotti(1993) see the term Yira as a reflection of a triple opposition. First against theHima pastoralist ruling class (this division is also present in other traditionalinterlacustrine kingdoms, such as Toro, Ankole, and Bunyoro); second, as agri-culturalists in opposition to the land-owning aristocracy (in Nande traditionalsociety); and finally as primitives in opposition to the civilized in the contextof colonial society. This socio-economic status was also traditionally linked tothe customary authorities’ tolerance of others engaging in private commerce.Such acceptance of private initiatives apparently stimulated a spirit of ‘constructivecompetition’, which allowed individuals to measure their success against thatof others (Sarata, 2002: 40). This was in sharp contrast to surrounding com-munities where the customary chiefs had the tendency to strangle merchantinitiatives. In the Hunde community from Bwiti and Bwisha in North Kivu, forexample, a vassal was not allowed to be richer than the local chief (Mwami)(Kasay, 1988).

Nande entrepreneurs in Butembo in 2005

When I arrived in Butembo6 in August 2005, there was a ‘strange’ atmosphere ofpeace and security on the Lubero-Beni axis, in which Butembo is centrally located.To the north of this axis is the Ituri Region with its well-documented troubles andmassacres.7 To the south are the remaining territories of the North Kivu province,including Masisi, Walikali and Rutsuru. These three territories are home to manyarmed groups. Dissident General Nkundabatware is based in Masisi with 2000armed militiamen; Rutsuru is dominated by the presence of the ForcesDemocratiques pour la Liberation du Rwanda (FDLR),8 and Walikali is stillmarred by ethnic tensions between Hunde and residents of Rwandan origin.




At the geographic center of the troubled North Kivu region and neighboring Ituri,Butembo was truly a safe haven.

The impression of generalized security was reinforced by the apparent securityof commodity trading. Butembo is a veritable warehouse where hundreds of tons ofmerchandise are stored. From interviews and observations, I concluded thatthrough persistent enterprise and occasional communication with other (non-Nande) traders, the Nande have slowly developed business alliances and friendlyrelations that sometimes resemble an enduring sense of ‘family’. Regardless ofpeace or war, Nande traders have the financial capital and trust to borrow con-tainers of goods from traders in Dubai, Hong Kong, or Taipei, sell them in theregion, and return the initial investment as hard currency to the owners.9 This isindeed paradoxical as a political economy on the edge of the edge. Nande showstability, creativity, and innovation within a broad context of ungovernance. Itunfolds in a way that is both transformative and reshapes the issues of politicalstruggle between the DRC state, the UN, and the local entrepreneurs and elites.This creates tension not only for the conventional narrative of African politicaleconomy, but also for the expectations that the international community has aboutthe state, its capacity, and what happens on the ground.

Nande traders are able to create such an extensive transnational environment oftrust and partnership partly because of their homogeneous ethnicity and kinship.The homogeneity of the population and especially the trading community is strik-ing in Butembo. Out of hundreds of small and big businessmen, I knew of only onewho was not a Nande. This ethno-linguistic homogeneity has helped to insulate theentire Nande group from the civil war in the surrounding country. This homogen-eity is demonstrated in a ‘vast network of tributes’ and a relationship which findsits contemporary expression in the Nande’s economic organization, as this studywill show. Ultimately, the economic activities taking place in the current informalsphere are to be understood foremost as particular expressions of the socialdynamic of the societies that develop them: economic agents mobilize and useresources for economic development as a function of their insertion into a pluralityof social networks, primarily of family and kin, but also friends, neighbors andother members of the community.

It is important to note that the Yira never seem to have organized themselvesinto a centralized government. On the one hand, their community remained his-torically divided between the Nande and the Kondjo, two branches of the Yiracommunity that live respectively in the DRC and Uganda today. On the otherhand, the Nande community is also divided between several clans or sub-clans: theNyisanza, Bashu, Baswagha, Batangi and Bamate. This political dispersionresulted in the maintenance of a certain degree of local autonomy, even thoughthey were integrated into a single kingdom.

For Bergmans (1970), the Nande political system contains in itself the seeds of afragmentation of power. The Nande political system also contained importantcentrifugal tendencies that were directed more towards expansion and conquestthan territorial consolidation (Raeymaekers, 2007). This illustrates how the claim

Kabamba 31



of ‘sovereignty’, rather than being an expression of a single ruler or actor, finds itsexpression in a system of codes and rules that govern a particular social domain.In the Nande community, ‘sovereignty’ was traditionally instituted in two figures:theMwami, the chief, and theMughula, a kind of anti-power figure who intervenedin crucial phases of the Mwami’s life. Indeed, this ‘sovereignty’ is expressed specif-ically in the ‘vast network of tributes’ that made it possible to individuate particularlinks between different clans and persons (Remotti, 1933: 45).

Through their transnational trading activities, Nande people today have pro-duced and organized themselves around a historically specific social arrangementbased on a reconfiguration and mobilization of kinship, as well as ethnic ideologiesand practices identified with ‘Nandeness’ (an ensemble of social relations in whichhuman productive powers and creative capacities are paramount). Indeed, Nandepeople have managed to insulate themselves from the chaotic conditions aroundthem and maintain a framework of public order centered on trading networks thatreflect the structures and values of indigenous Nande society as well as the historyof their incorporation into international networks and structures. The Nande’scapacity to exercise their potential today has its origins in the centrifugal tendenciesin their traditional social organization.

I will explore here the origins, reproduction and conditions of possibility for theemergence of a network of transnational traders in Butembo, who have graduallycaptured the social and economic surplus within the Nande society. This groupincludes at the top of the commercial hierarchy in Butembo and its hinterland adozen import-export traders who are millionaires. They import from East Africa,the Persian Gulf, Southeast Asia, and China containers of goods ranging frommotorbikes, automobiles, and spare parts to textiles, medicine, and many othercommodities. They export agricultural products including coffee, potatoes, beans,papaya, latex, and other vegetables, in addition to minerals such as gold, coltan,wolfram, and cassiterite. The group maintains a high level of internal cohesion andtrust between its members.

If you stand on any hilltop of Butembo, you can observe the growing wealth of thecity. New villas, constructed by traders, are rising up all over. In the central communeof Bulenghera (12 sq. km) these properties proliferate. A shopping center, ‘GalleryTsongo Kasereka’, reportedly cost around US$3 million to build. The total value ofnew real estate in Butembo is roughlyUS$20 to 35million. Prices have skyrocketed inrecent years. A friend of mine, the son of a prominent Butembo trader who holds abachelor’s degree from a school in Boston, is building a mansion that will costUS$400,000 when it is finished next year. All of the construction materials areimported from China. His swimming pool will be one of the biggest in the city.

Catholic University of Graben

This institution of higher education in Butembo was created 10 years ago by theRoman Catholic bishop of Butembo, Monsignor Kataliko, with the help of Nandetraders. The Catholic University of Graben (UCG) is among the best institutions of




higher education in the Congo. Despite the trouble which has characterized theCongo from 1996 to this day, UCG has continued to function with its four facultiesof law, civil engineering, medicine, and political science. Most of the auditoria werebuilt with the help of traders. To equip the university library, the bishop provided alist of 100 books to each trader to buy for the library. Each trader was proud toprovide the 100 books asked for by the bishop. Many of the books come from thecollaboration between UCG and the University of Grenoble in France. The uni-versity also contains a nutritional center and medical school student practice at theMatanda hospital run by the Catholic Church. Medicine for the nutritional centerand Matanda hospital is imported by Nande traders. To solve the problem ofpersonnel, the university flies in professors from all over the DRC, and manyNande professors who live in Europe come regularly back to Butembo to teachat UCG without compensation. The UCG has solved the problem of higher edu-cation in the region. Before the creation of the Catholic University, students had totravel to Kisangani in Oriental Province or to Kinshasa to pursue their highereducation. The rector of the UCG, Abbe Malu-Malu, was selected to organizethe 2006 general elections in the DRC, which has not had a democratic electionin 40 years. The university is involved in the development of the city’s electrifica-tion, and traders are employing engineers from the UCG to that end.

The first question is: Where does the money come from? How do they accumulateso much? Before I try to answer that, I would argue that the emerging propertymarket in Butembo comes from economic activity that is ‘embedded’ in the localcommunity. Unlike the capital flight we see from some DRC politicians who areanxious to establish a stake abroad, in Butembo houses are built at home and onlysome abroad, while profits are invested in the same environment where they arebeing made.

Butembo commercial traditions predate the current era of globalization.Vwakyanakazi (1982: 2) noted, already in the 1970s, that 75 to 80 percent ofhouseholds in Butembo were selling goods ranging from agricultural foodstuffsto small household necessities. Today, on every corner of Butembo, there aremini-shops, boutiques, and galleries offering cell phone cards at $1 or $5 a piece,high-quality computer equipment, motorbikes, etc. Market women usually sellfoodstuffs like onions, beans, tomatoes, or araque (an alcoholic maize drink).These small trades usually reflect domestic needs for petty cash to cover a family’simmediate concerns or school fees. The retail trade in cars, computers, textile, orelectric engines is no different from what is taking place in the globalized world,except for the level of bargaining involved. Everything in Butembo’s market, fromthe quality of the product to delivering the merchandise, is subject to endless bar-gaining between vendors and their clients.

The Nande trading association, a branch of the Federation of CongoleseEntrepreneurs known by its French acronym FEC, regulates how traders tend toeach 50 km of road they are in charge of. This involves running the tollgate andusing the revenue to mend the road. This is the only part of the country which hasgood roads beside the minerals region of Katanga. When one of the sections of

Kabamba 33



road is not functioning, the trader in charge has to answer to other users of theroad. Local social control can be quite effective.

In brief, Butembomaintains a sort of social cohesion thanks to an alliance betweentraders, who are in charge of economic production, the Catholic Church10 in chargeof the development sector, and the militia responsible for the exercise of coercivepower.Militias are in fact junior partners to traders,11 capitalists whoultimately havereal production as their base of accumulation, while the only economic resource themilitias have is the sheer piracy of their arms. Many of the militia are former choirmembers and altar boys, hence the strong respect they display towards the bishop andthe Catholic Church hierarchy. In fact there seems to be a very clear social andpolitical hegemony of the Nande ‘bourgeoisie’, legitimated through the Church offi-cialdom premised upon not one but several relatively mobile formations of violencethat supply the ultimate resources of coercion and thus social order.

When power as potestas is absent, we have been led (from Hobbes onwards) toassume that selfishness will reign; thus, a ‘failed state’ adversely affects the lives of allwho continue to believe in its aegis, and itsweakness ensures suffering for anyonewhodoes notmanage to circumvent the system. These circumventions are understood notonly as corruption but as criminal acts from which only a few will benefit. The econ-omy is inseparably linked to this model of the state. A strong state survives because itcan regulate production, trade and profit (through taxation, etc.), thus sustainingitself (and the society as a whole). Accordingly, when a state is politically and eco-nomically unstable, weak, or absent, it is commonly supposed that all will suffer.

The informal economy is particularly irksome because its works outside state(and taxation) structures. As a symptom of the state’s ‘weakness’, therefore, athriving informal economy is identified with the poor health of the society atlarge. Power as potestas is fetishized in our political theories and popular beliefs.The association of weak states with economic regression or poor economic per-formance is a recurrent theme in economic development literature. Besley andPersson recall the link between state capacity and weak states: ‘the absence ofstate capacities to raise revenue and to support markets is a key factor in explainingthe persistence of weak state’ (2009: 1). Students of political science and politicalanthropology see in non-state social networks a danger to the formation of aWeberian state (Bayart et al., 1999; Collier, 2007; Duffield, 2001; Keen, 2008;Reno, 2006; Roitman, 2004). For example:

Pioneers of modern Africa, fraudsters, diamond diggers, the currency exchangers and

immigrants, all find ways to escape from the law, boundaries and official

exchanges . . . It is through these social practices of fraud, illegal immigration, and the

drug trade that Africa is inserted in the international system. (Bayart et al., 1999: 260)

Non-state social networks, on this view, are characterized by a logic of poverty,predation and provincialism that block the real development of the country.

The Congolese state, as other African states, are top-down institutions createdby colonial powers who considered them as economic spaces (extractive spaces)




and never as political spaces where people have claims on their soil and below-ground resources. In other words, post-colonial states in Africa are essentiallycolonialist creations12 under new management, and they conform to a Weberianideal type.13 The Nande originality is to try to negotiate their way out at the marginof this predatory form of state.

Within the territories of Beni and Lubero, the state is surely very weak, evenabsent. Yet the Nande have thrived in this context. To call their actions ‘corrupt’ isto apply a one-dimensional view to a very complex picture with a complicatedhistory. The alleged paradox of this situation is that the Nande traders are rich,yet the entire area prospers; they amass fortunes and they feed them back into thecommunity. As a result, this is one of the few regions in the DRC with a flourishingeconomy, decent schools, and health care. They do not rely on the nation’s ports,but rather have strong ties that take them regularly to the Middle East and EastAsia. The potentia begins with trade and is carried on within the region by socialorganization outside the framework of the state. Transgression of frontiers throughthis transnational move is fueled by a creative capacity to free oneself from theterritorial impositions of despotic rulers, who exercise potestas.

A transnational network

Nande people do not identify primarily with the DRC state; it is not their mostsignificant ‘imagined community’. Their identity derives from belonging to net-works that are more significant in their daily experience. The transnational pro-duction of Nande community through ‘illegal’ or ‘informal’ cross-border tradingactivities shows that these are not only strategies for survival but also ‘spaces ofresistance against the violence generated by the failure of a postcolonial mode ofaccumulation, the state’s dictatorship and its episteme of leadership’ (Mbembe,1993: 3). Hence, even the concept of ‘illegality’ becomes questionable. Lawswhich make actions legal or illegal are indeed forms of social relations objectifiedor codified under certain conditions. If the conditions of the codification of the lawdisappear, the law loses its relevance. Legality and illegality are, in my view,‘dependent variables’ whose value depends on the continuing existence of the con-ditions which led to social relations being codified as law.

The present paper has mobilized ethnography to illuminate the potentia of theNande by showing what is remarkable, innovative, resilient, and creative abouttheir networks and their transnational production of ‘local’ community. However,we shouldn’t relinquish the critical vantage of this relative social success.

The Nande’s construction of a peaceful trading community in the midst of warshows how their particular form of transnationalism and ‘ethnic’ insularity colludeswith internecine (even genocidal) violence in its seemingly remote home on thedistant borders of a ‘collapsed’ state. Horrendous civil wars like the Congo’smay provide opportunities for a cynical restructuring of global capital accumula-tion where effective access to valuable resources is what matters to capital and the

Kabamba 35



lives and limbs of those who inhabit that particular corner of the planet are utterlyexpendable. Seen in this light, the Nande’s newly found desire to keep governmentat a distance while relying on governance through local leadership mechanismscould be said to articulate a kind of neoliberalism: one where a weak nationalstate serves as a hollow shell, providing minimal security and stability for unhin-dered capital accumulation, and the so-called free market is entirely unencum-bered; local communities and networks are free from the onerous regulations,interference, and impositions of a state that might otherwise, if only occasionally,be an impediment to plunder.

The Nande do not desire full autonomy or complete separation from the DRCstate nor anything resembling a Nande ‘national’ self-determination; rather, theywelcome attempts to stabilize the national state, but only in a relatively weak andunobtrusive form that would leave them uninvolved by intrusive state surveillanceand excessive taxation of their transnational and cross-border trade. In short, theyprefer an arrangement not very different from the situation that has persisted invarious forms throughout recent decades (even back into the Mobutu era). TheNande capitalist class welcomes the same sort of frail neoliberal national state thatappeals to the agenda of global corporations interested in the DRC’s resources. Atthe same time, a pernicious armed conflict in this region, the Kivus of East Congo,has claimed four million lives or more. The Nande case is ostensibly outside of orexempted from this horrific calamity, but it actually underlies and helps to explainits persistence.

What I have just said is true, but so too is the observation that, in all of theDRC’s troubles, Butembo offers a glimpse of a newly emerging African society. Inmore stable countries with prosperous cities like Dar es Salaam or Luanda, Accraor Dakar, a gradual transformation is taking place in the hands of an emergentruling class where money-making is linked to state contacts at home and abroad;but the economic and political spheres are not so starkly demarcated, given con-tinuities with a past from which there has been no violent break (Freund, 2009).This is an Africa that is slowly divesting itself of the neocolonial ties that domi-nated the years after independence. The Nande offer a sharper image of the direc-tion in which Africa is really moving. The horrors of war in the eastern Congo maynot just block what we wish to think of as ‘development’; they might also bespeeding along those processes. With the economic cosmopolitanism14 of theNande business class, I have demonstrated, the case of the Nande shows the onto-logical primacy of power as potentia – creativity and productivity – over power asrepression or potestas. Because a colonially-imposed state did not take root in theAfrican continent, many states, especially the DRC, have survived as predatorystates for the last 50 years. The existence of the Nande order is indeed dependent onthe surrounding conditions of chaos in the DRC. In that sense it is a symptom oflarger problems of the inadequacy of the state as a form of social organization inAfrica. However, by the same token, social and political order in the Nande regionshows us that in the midst of a dire situation it is always possible to create a sense of




order and prosperity. In this sense Nande political order is a solution to the largerconditions of predation and chaos.

There is an urgent need for new theorizations of power that can grasp a contextwhere the state is neither the necessary core nor the only unit of analysis. TheNande case shows that the state is never the only and exclusive form of socialrelations; social relations are, rather, ‘always un-predetermined, agonistic, andunresolved’. These ‘relations of struggle’ entail a ‘full panoply of contests overthe objectification and fetishization of human productive powers as alien forcesof domination’ for which ‘the state tends . . . to be the hegemonic manifestation’ (DeGenova, 2007: 442; see also Holloway, 1994). The Nande region is one of manyplaces where the state is continually experienced and undone through the illegibilityof its own practices, documents, and words. Unlike the rationalized world ofWeberian abstractions, the DRC state, as seen from its margins, is inscrutable,incoherent, unpredictable, and unreliable. But to characterize these features as a‘failure’ is merely to retain and recapitulate the illusion of inevitable statedominance.

I have tried in this paper to dissolve the state as a rigid category while seeking tounderstand the state as a social form, as a form of social relations (Holloway,1994). By defining the state as a social phenomenon, as relations between people,I hope to recognize the creativity, fluidity, unpredictability and instability of thiscategory. Indeed, these relations have been solidified as certain forms that haveacquired their own autonomy, their own dynamic. The semblance of rigidityaccorded the state in some classical conceptions and led to the appearance, thathe is a given and positive fact. The notion that African states have failed orcollapsed is part of the same drive to reify and fetishize the colonially-imposedmodel of statehood. The state in Africa is a colonial abnormality which needs to berethought in the light of the local creative and productive capacities of Africansthemselves in order to build de-centralized social arrangements from the bottom-upthat are more suited to the realities of struggles on the ground.

The central question is then what kinds of international regime, government,and economic organization will help Africans overcome centuries of being at thebottom of a racialized world order. It seems that harping on about what was oftenless than a century of colonial rule might take us nowhere. In other words, whatforms of public order are compatible with African economic development? This isrelated to the state, sovereignty, and the ultimate source of legitimacy – the people.As Jane Guyer has shown more effectively than anyone, especially in MarginalGains (2004), most academic discourse on this topic has been a dialogue of thedeaf between an exogenous economics, a political theory which ignores what actu-ally happens on the ground and a parochial ethnography that cannot see the woodfor the trees. Combining repeated fieldwork with a broad regional history, Guyerfound synthetic understanding that avoided both traps.15 This paper goes furtherby showing what we can learn from some of the relatively successful stories on theground – a lot of these owe very little to forms of national government.16

Kabamba 37



Understanding power as potentia

The potentia/potestas way of understanding power makes it evident that there waslife before the colonial state and its epigones came to monopolize all politicaldebate.17 The current situation in the Congo begs for the introduction of newcategories in order to understand its situation and to break the silence around itspredicament. In the absence of state sovereignty and the presence of numerouscontenders for coercive power, Nande traders have managed to protect their self-sustaining and prosperous transnational enterprises in eastern Congo. Perhapstheir example reflects the direction towards which 21st-century Africa is reallymoving. In order to understand this Africa, we need to abandon old theorizationsof power and sovereignty. The Nande case shows us that, before being an attributeof the state, sovereignty is an ontological and inalienable quality of the humanspecies. Power in this context is fundamentally an elementary aspect of humanpossibility and creative capacities. Resources are present to enhance the sovereigntyof a population by allowing the latter to deploy its potential. Reified and rigidnotions of state power and sovereignty confront and are contradicted by the flexi-bility of human relations and by the productive capacities inherent in humannature unleashed by a theorization of power as potentia.

Potentia might give us hope and new energy to find a way forward out of thecurrent political impasse in much of Africa where state power is monopolized by aclass whom Moeletse Mbeki (2009) described as ‘architects of poverty’, a corruptand parasitic elite who derive rent from mediating the predation of the region byforeign powers. On the face of it, the DRC is the most egregious example of thistendency.

But historical change is often rapid (as China’s 20th-century experience shows),and this study seeks to combine local knowledge with a new conceptual apparatusand more progressive vision of the possibilities there. Since the ability of theKinshasa government to rule eastern Congo is in shreds, Rwanda’s Tutsi generalsand Uganda’s Museveni, along with major powers such as the US, Britain, andSouth Africa, have handed over the regime’s wealth to be distributed betweentransnational corporations, local warlords, and, as we see in this case study,African merchant networks (United Nations, 2008, 2012). The focus of thispaper is on the character and the significance of one such commercial class. Themerchants act as a genuine bourgeoisie, providing for the welfare of a town,Butembo, under the supervision of a Catholic bishop, and with its own universityand relatively domesticated militias. The relatively prosperous outlook of the city issustained by long-distance trade, especially in precious metals, and possibly withmore compromising state support outside the DRC borders.

This empirical case study shows that in a chaotic situation or one of protracted,fragmented and proliferating violence, it is always possible to construct politicaland economic order, relying on agencies of governance other than the state.Indeed, new kinds of regulation and governance practice, which have emerged




from the retreat of state power, are shaping the ongoing formation of a genuinelypostcolonial state. In the 1980s and 1990s Janet MacGaffey (1991) showed a notice-able difference between the Nande entrepreneurial spirit and the parasitic state ofZaire. The field work I undertook in 2000 shows how the Nande adapted to incre-mental changes and to the implosion of the Zairian state and maintain to this daysocial order and relative prosperity. These are both examples of processes ofbottom-up development that combine the authority of individual leaders withthe more dispersed formations of trust-based social networks that control andmobilize vast sums of money. While these processes may involve the gradualascendency of a new ‘middle class’ or bourgeois class formation, they also sustainmuch wider forms of local and regional development that can potentially transformnational-scale politics and contribute to more peaceful and just societies. It is in thisrespect that the Nande as social formation differs from other more violent frag-ments of political formations that are fighting in the periphery of the Nande region(FDLR, ADF-NALU, etc.)

This is an Africa that is slowly divesting itself of the neocolonial links whichseemed dominant in the years after independence. The horrors of war in the easternCongo may block what we wish to think of as ‘development’, but they might alsobe speeding the process whereby power as ‘repression’ is giving way to power as‘production’. Efforts by some scholars, such as Zartman (1995), to restore the ‘pre-failed arrangement’ only guarantee the failure of their own policyrecommendations.

The current situation in the Congo can only be understood if the way we thinkof power refers back to individual creative and productive instincts. Since manyscholars cannot go beyond the Westphalian categories of power and sovereignty(potestas), they see the Congo as nothing more than a desperate ‘failed state’. If thisis so for many Western scholars, their journalists are running out of categories todefine the Congo conflict. It is a conflict that blows up the division between goodguys and bad guys (terrorists or enemy combatants) on which their traditionalconstruction of conflict is based. In the Congo case, the local militias, governmentsoldiers, Congolese rebels, Ugandan, Rwandan, or Burundian rebels, and the UNpeace (or war) keepers all share a social space where mineral extraction remains thecommon denominator and women’s bodies constitute the frontline of the conflict.Imprisoned in their binary logics, the Western media are rendered speechless by alinguistic repertoire wholly inadequate to address the complexity of the DRC’spredicament.

The use of Spinoza’s conceptual pair ‘potestas/potentia’ provides a thought-provoking way of asserting once more that what matters first is human life, anda better knowledge of its sources is essential if we are to discover how to make theworld a better place for us all to live in. The bottom line is that discussion of empir-ical questions has been driven by the political question: ‘Whither the African state?’This is linked inevitably to the issue of which political forms are best suited toAfricans’ search for a better life, a life they can see on television every day – inother words, for economic development.

Kabamba 39



As in the rest of the world, there are serious doubts about the adequacy ofexisting political forms to resolve a growing global crisis. But paradoxically,while North Atlantic societies and their offshoots like South Africa stagnate, theeconomies of many parts of Africa are expanding rapidly. The Nande case studyshows one way forward towards economic independence. Nande success can beseen as a ‘model’ whose features can be replicated or adapted elsewhere in Africa ingeneral, and in the DRC in particular. Nande social formations and networkscould play a decisive role in the business of peace and nation-building in the chaoticand sometimes genocidal situation of the DRC. In the Nande case this processseems to work through the power and prestige of Catholic bishops as well asthrough the Protestant work ethic with its comparatively egalitarian values andits support for entrepreneurship. This study departs from the ubiquitouslyexpanded and reified notion of the state as a greater or lesser monopoly of ‘legit-imate’ coercive power exercised spatially over a limited territory. Instead, it assertsthat the state is fundamentally a form of social relation codified at a certain point inhistory. It therefore begs for a reconceptualization of the state and its power –dissolving the state as a category and understanding it not as an entity in and ofitself but as a form of social relations where potentia has precedence over potestas.

Notes

1. The lack of Western media investigation into the roots and ongoing causes of the Congois striking. The coalition that overthrew Mobutu was one of the successful acts of US

foreign policy in recent decades. It included not only the Rwanda generals nurtured byMuseveni, but at one time also Zimbabwe, Namibia, Chad, Eritrea, Sudan and SouthAfrica. Beginning with the Rwandan genocide, it was a lasting defeat for French influencein the region and pushed them into bed with Belgians who consider the Congo to be their

own backyard.2. See the 1994 Gersony Report (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gersony_Report; http://

friendsofthecongo.org/pdf/gersony_report.pdf). Then, after the Congo invasion, we had

the Garreton Report documenting Tingi-Tingi (http://www.unhchr.ch/Huridocda/Huridoca.nsf/0/8e3dbacbae51ce60802567460034073d?OpenDocument; http://www.wa-shingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/congo/stories/071297.htm). This was followed

by the famous Mapping Report (http://friendsofthecongo.org/united-nations-report.html). And indeed the most recent report by UN experts (http://friendsofthecon-go.org/images/pdf/goe_report_nov_2012.pdf) accuses both Rwanda and Uganda ofhelping the M23 rebellion. There were attempts by the US at the UNSC to block it

under the pretext of giving Rwanda and Uganda the right to respond.3. Some observers have drawn the parallel between MONUSCO’s intervention and the role

the UN played in the 1960s as it got used by some countries as a legal tool to take out

Lumumba, soften the heavy-handed tactics used by Belgium, and bar the Soviet Unionfrom ‘taking a foothold’ in the heart of Africa.

4. For example, in Kisangani in June–July 2003, a UN member responsible for the financial

system revealed to me that he was taken from New York to run the finance of theMONUC in the Congo from Kisangani. He did not know much about the country,except, perhaps, the death of Lumumba. He was surprised that this was the case for many



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gersony_Report

http://friendsofthecongo.org/pdf/gersony_report.pdf

http://friendsofthecongo.org/pdf/gersony_report.pdf

http://www.unhchr.ch/Huridocda/Huridoca.nsf/0/8e3dbacbae51ce60802567460034073d?OpenDocument

http://www.unhchr.ch/Huridocda/Huridoca.nsf/0/8e3dbacbae51ce60802567460034073d?OpenDocument

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/congo/stories/071297.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/congo/stories/071297.htm

http://friendsofthecongo.org/united-nations-report.html

http://friendsofthecongo.org/united-nations-report.html

http://friendsofthecongo.org/images/pdf/goe_report_nov_2012.pdf

http://friendsofthecongo.org/images/pdf/goe_report_nov_2012.pdf


of his colleagues in MONUC Kisangani. I sold him all of the small library I carried with

me about the Congo.5. The fact that Autesserre has brought into her discourse Afghanistan or any other coun-

try is enough evidence of rushed claims that throughout history have shown a pathetic

understanding of the so-called ‘area studies’.6. The Nande are mainly agriculturalists and pastoralists, but since the 1980s and 1990s

they have been extremely dynamic in transnational trade. In 2005, more than 80 percentof the active population in Butembo was self-employed. The majority are agriculturalists

and traders. The latter could be small-scale traders or transnational businessmen.Transborder trading became very important in the 1990s (MacGaffey, 1996;Mirembe, 2004) and was most often family enterprises based on networks of social

relations that channel local and long-distance flows of information. According tofield observation, when one assimilates friendship to familial relations, one observesthat 80 percent of employees belong to the same extended family as their employer;

70 percent are hired on an oral contract while 30 percent have a written agreement; 60percent are male and 40 percent female; and 52 percent are single. The average wage is$20 per month, while an average family of three spends $50 a month. The hours of workare not fixed. There is lots of overtime due to the ambulatory character trade activities

have taken due to insecurity in the surrounding areas.7. See the Human Rights Watch Report 2005 and the MONUC Report 2005 on human

rights abuse in Ituri.

8. The FDLR is a political organization representing Rwandan Hutu refugees in easternCongo. It was created in 2000 in opposition to the Kagame regime and included manyRwandan refugees who had been present on Congolese territory since 1994. Propaganda

of the current Rwandan government wants people to believe that FDLR is formed by‘ex-FAR/Interahamwes’, suggesting that it is a criminal group of ‘genocidaires’(Auteserre, 2006). Actually, FDLR is an inclusive term, regardless of affiliation to

any armed groups, innocent as well as guilty, of the 1994 genocide.9. From an interview with the president of FEC/Butembo (Federation des Entrepreneurs

du Congo).10. There are numerous studies of Catholic and Protestant missionaries in the period of

colonial empire and after. The Pere Blancs have been researched (Basel mission, towhich one of Europe’s strongest African studies centers is linked historically). Thereis also a lot of work on Pentecostalists, Sufist and other bottom-up religious movements

with their own versions of making stateless connections to world society. But the role ofthe Catholic Church after independence has not had the attention it deserves.

11. This structure resembles, curiously, Henri Pirenne’s medieval cities, where militia, tra-

ders, and the church combined to generate the rebirth of urban civilization in Europe.The city was first fortified in a strong place with walls (bourg). Then markets tended todevelop outside the city walls (in order to avoid paying taxes), and these suburbs (fau-

burg) became the home of a new merchant class (bourgeoisie). In many cases, the cityauthority was a bishop. In England, the definition of a city until recently was a settle-ment with a cathedral and a bishop. The wider authority was split between the Pope inRome (religion) and the Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna (politics). My point is that

there are structural analogies and historical and cultural continuities in this case, espe-cially the absence of an effective centralized state or empire. A typical example of anindependent city run by a bishop into early modern times was Liege in Belgium.

Kabamba 41



12. There is a nuance needed here as far as our argument goes. If human potential is

ontologically prior, the dialect of potestas/potentia pre-exists the situation in theNande area today. It means that we can trace continuities and differences betweenthe colonial and postcolonial situations and it would no longer suffice to argue that

African states are simply a continuation of the colonial monolith. As a matter of fact,many African states before and immediately after independence embarked on ambitiousdevelopment programs which extended public services (education, transport infrastruc-ture, etc.) to the population at large on a scale unheard of under colonial regimes. So,

they did not opt to be only neocolonial stooges.13. Indeed, both in his essay on ‘The City’ in Economy and Society and his brilliant posthu-

mous work, General Economic History, Max Weber emphasized plural dimensions of

political and economic development. Rationalization for him was developed in tandembymarket andbureaucracy (Rhineland capitalists andPrussianmilitary organization).Hewas obsessed with the decline in moral and religious dimensions of political order (the

legitimation crisis). The point is that Weberian ideal types usually operate in pairs or setssince none of them alone can ever represent social reality as awhole. However, theWeber Iam indexing in my paper is the Weber of the ‘types of legitimate domination’, and bur-eaucracy where necessity of the state mechanism is taken for granted. With the case of the

Nande, one can also argue that from a crudeWeberian point of viewCatholicism does not‘fit’ with a capitalist orientation; there is the embeddedkinship aspect and also the presenceof militias (who are stereotypically interested in a quick economic fix, not in longer term

investment-return). One type of argument could be that it is in the interest of rapaciouselites to have ‘quiet’ venues through which to launder money – the late medieval guilds area case in point, or the current use of London by various global oligarchs, for example.

14. Richard Werbner (2008) has recently critiqued what he sees as the ‘cosmo-scepticism’ ofanthropologists working in Africa, by which he means the reluctance of anthropologiststo accept that there can exist a genuinely cosmopolitan orientation in Africa except as

some kind of mystification or delusion of the elites.15. In-depth ethnography alone can reveal the sources of local social solidarity that might

allow a people to connect effectively with the world at large. But what methods areappropriate to studying the latter in such a context? Are anthropologists up to the job,

or do we need to collaborate with other kinds of specialist?16. Max Weber may have had his vision on the road to Damascus when talking to a Baptist

businessman on a train to St Louis, but whatever insight he had then is surely past its

sell-by date now. The development questions raised by the awfulness in the Congo andindeed the world deserve more profound and informed intellectual frameworks than thetired hypotheses of Protestant ethics and the spirit of capitalism.

17. A classical debate among historians working on ‘precolonial’ Africa is around the fol-lowing question: were African states a cause or a consequence of long-distance tradenetworks connecting inland African societies with the Indian Ocean or the Atlantic

Ocean trade? Of course each case is singular. In some cases, they were a cause and inothers a consequence, but the lesson is that whether the state appears or not is notcrucial. African history shows plentifully that one doesn’t necessarily need a state toorganize a complex society with lots of political actors, some of whom are engaged in

long-distance trade networks. The Nande case shows that, even today, some Africansare used to big business and are able to insert themselves into the intercontinentalnetworks without any need of a centralized and territorially-based state.




References

Abrams P (1988) Notes on the difficulty of studying the state. Journal of Historical Sociology1(1): 56–89.

Appadurai A (1996) Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press.

Autesserre S (2006) Local violence, international indifference? Post-conflict ‘settlement’ in theEastern Congo, 2003–2005. Unpublished PhD thesis, New York University.

Autesserre S (2010) The Trouble with the Congo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Basch L, Glick Schiller N and Szanton-Blanc C (eds) (1994) Nations Unbound: Transnational

Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nations-States. London:

Routledge.Bauman Z (1998) Globalization: The Human Consequence. New York: Columbia University

Press.

Bayart JF, Ellis S and Hibou B (2000) The Criminalization of the State in Africa. Oxford/Bloomington: James Currey/Indiana University Press.

Bergmans L (1970) L’histoire des Bashu. Butembo: Editions ABB.Besley T and Persson T (2009) State capacity, conflict and development. NBER Working

Paper No. w/15088.Bourdieu P (1999) Rethinking the state: Genesis and structure of the bureaucratic field.

In: Steinmetz G (ed.) State/Culture: State-Formation after the Cultural Turn. Ithaca:

Cornell University Press.Collier P (2007) The Bottom Billion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Coleman S (2005) Congo’s conflict: Heart of darkness. Beliefnet, 2 June.

De Genova N (2002) Migrant illegality and deportability in everyday life. Annual Review ofAnthropology 31: 419–447.

De Genova N (2007) The production of culprits: From deportability to detainability in the

aftermath of ‘Homeland Security’. Citizenship Studies 11(5): 421–448.Duffield M (2001) Global Governance and New Wars: The Merging of Development and

Security. London: Zed.Ferguson J (1990) The Anti-Politics Machine. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Freund W (2009) The Congolese elite and fragmented city: The struggle for the emergence of adominant class in Kinshasa. Working Paper.

Guyer J (2004) Marginal Gains. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Hollar J (2009). Congo ignored, not forgotten. Available at: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page¼3777 (accessed 26 September 2011).

Holloway J (1994) Global capital and national state. Capital and Class 52: 25–30.

ICG (1998a) North Kivu: Into the Quagmire? An Overview of the Current Crisis in North Kivu.Africa Report 1.

ICG (1998b) Congo at War: A Briefing of the Internal and External Players in the CentralAfrican Conflict. Africa Report 2.

ICG (1999a) How Kabila Lost His Way: The Performance of Laurent Desire Kabila’sGovernment. Africa Report 3.

ICG (1999b) Africa’s Seven-Nation War. Africa Report 4.

ICG (1999c) Democratic Republic of Congo: An Analysis of the Agreement and Prospects forPeace. Africa Report 5.

ICG (2000) Scramble for the Congo: Anatomy of an Ugly War. Africa Report 26.

ICG (2001a) From Kabila to Kabila: Prospects for Peace in the Congo. Africa Report 27.

Kabamba 43


http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3777




ICG (2001b) Disarmament in the Congo: Investing in Conflict Prevention. Africa Briefing 4.

ICG (2001c) The Inter-Congolese Dialogue: Political Negotiation or Game of Bluff? AfricaReport 37.

ICG (2001d) Disarmament in the Congo: Jump-Starting DDRRR to Prevent Further War.

Africa Report 38.ICG (2002) Storm Clouds over Sun City: The Urgent Need to Recast the Congolese Peace

Process. Africa Report 44.ICG (2003a) The Kivus: The Forgotten Crucible of the Congo Conflict. Africa Report 56.

ICG (2003b) Rwandan Hutu Rebels in the Congo: a New Approach to Disarmament andReintegration. Africa Report 63.

ICG (2003c) Congo Crisis: Military Intervention in Ituri. Africa Report 64.

ICG (2004a) Pulling Back from the Brink in the Congo. Africa Briefing 18.ICG (2004b) Back to the Brink in the Congo. Africa Briefing 21.ICG (2005a) The Congo’s Transition Is Failing: Crisis in the Kivus. Africa Report 91.

ICG (2005b) The Congo: Solving the FDLR Problem Once and for All. Africa Briefing 25.ICG (2005c) A Congo Action Plan. Africa Briefing 34.ICG (2006a) Security Sector Reform in the Congo. Africa Report 104.ICG (2006b) Congo’s Elections: Making or Breaking the Peace. Africa Report 108.

ICG (2006c) Escaping the Conflict Trap: Promoting Good Governance in the Congo. AfricaReport 114.

ICG (2006d) Securing Congo’s Elections: Lessons from the Kinshasa Showdown. AfricaBriefing 42.

ICG (2007) Congo: Staying Engaged after the Elections. Africa Briefing 44.

International Rescue Committee (2008) Available at: www.theIRC.org.Kasay L (1988) Le pays Banande au Kivu Septentrional (Zaire): Dynamique des populations

et organisation de l’espace en milieu equatorial de l’altitude. Dissertation, Diplome

d’Etudes Superieures en Geographie, Faculte des Sciences, Universite de Lubumbashi,Congo.

Keen D (1998) The Economic Functions of Violence in Civil Wars (Adelphi Paper 320).

Oxford: Oxford University Press.Lewitt P (2001) The Transnational Villagers. Berkeley: University of California Press.MacGaffey J (1987) Entrepreneurs and Parasites: The Struggle for Indigenous Capitalism in

Zaire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

MacGaffey J (1994) State deterioration and capitalist development: The case of Zaire.In: Berman BJ and Leys C (eds) African Capitalists in African Development. Boulder:Lynne Rienner.

MacGaffey J, Muhokya V, et al. (1991) The Real Economy of Zaire: The Contribution ofSmuggling and Other Unofficial Activities to National Wealth. Philadelphia: University ofPennsylvania Press.

Mamdani M (2004) Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots ofTerror. New York: Pantheon.

Mandami M (2011) Commercialization is killing Makerere University. Pambazuka News,

Issue 495.Mbeki M (2009) Architects of Poverty. New York: Macmillan.Mbembe A (1993) Afrique indocile. Paris: Karthala.Mirembe OK (2005) Echange transnationaux, reseaux informels et development local. Une

etude au Noerd-est da la Republique Democratique du Congo. Unpublished PhD thesis,Universite Catholique de Louvain, Belgium.



www.theIRC.org


Ong A (1999) Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham: Duke

University Press.Pottier J (2002) Re-imagining Rwanda: Conflict, Survival and Disinformation in the Late

Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Raeymaekers T (2007) The power of protection. Governance and transborder trade on theCongo-Uganda frontier. Unpublished PhD thesis, Ghent University, Belgium.

Remotti F (1933) Etnografia Nande, Vol. 1: Societa, matrimony, potere. Torino: IlSegnalibro.

Reno W (2006) Congo: From state collapse to ‘absolutism’ to state failure. Third WorldQuarterly 27(1): 43–56.

Reyntjens F (2004) Rwanda, ten years on: From genocide to dictatorship. African Affairs

103(411): 177–220.Roitman J (2005) Fiscal Disobedience: An Anthropology of Economic Regulation in Central

Africa. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Salim AI (ed.) (1985) State Formation in Eastern Africa. New York: Saint Martin’s Press.Sarata PB (2002) L’industrialisation de la ville de Butembo: un dynamisme freine par les

guerres dites de liberation. Parcours et Initiatives 1(August): 36–53.Scott JC (1998) Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition

Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.Sklair L (1995) Sociology of the Global System. London: Prentice Hall.Smith AD (1996) Mapping the Nation. London: Verso.

Spinoza B (1996 [1883]) The Ethics. New York: Penguin Classics.Trefon T (2011) Congo Masquerade. New York: Zed Books.United Nations (2008) Final Report of the Group of Experts on Democratic Republic of

Congo. Available at: https://www.scribd.com/doc/8921493/UN-Final-Report-of-the-Group-of-Experts-on-the-DRC.

United Nations (2012) Final Report of the Group of Experts on DRC (submitted in accord-

ance with paragraph 5 of Security Council Resolution 2078, 2012). Available at: http://www.un.org/sc/committees/1533/egroup.shtml.

Vwakyanakazi M (1982) African traders in Butembo, Eastern Zaire (1960–1980): A casestudy of informal entrepreneurship in a cultural context of Central Africa. Unpublished

PhD thesis, University of Wisconsin-Madison.Weber M (1968) Economy and Society, eds Roth G and Wittich C. New York: Bedminster

Press.

Waters M (1995) Globalization. New York: Routledge.Werbner R (2008) Responding to rooted cosmopolitanism: Patriots, ethnics and the public

good in Botswana. In: Werbner P (ed.) Anthropology and the New Cosmopolitanism:

Rooted, Feminism and Vernacular Perspectives. New York: Berg.Zambakari C (2011) Africa and poverty in knowledge production. Pambazuka News Issue

556.

Zartman WI (1995) Collapsed States. The Disintegration and Restoration of Authority.Boulder: Lynne Rienner.

Patience Kabamba is a Congolese lecturer and author of Business of Civil War: NewForm of Life from the Debris of the Congolese State. He has degrees in philosophyfrom Paris and Leuven, in economic development from the University of Kwazulu-Natal in Durban, and in cultural anthropology from Columbia University. He has

Kabamba 45


https://www.scribd.com/doc/8921493/UN-Final-Report-of-the-Group-of-Experts-on-the-DRC

https://www.scribd.com/doc/8921493/UN-Final-Report-of-the-Group-of-Experts-on-the-DRC

http://www.un.org/sc/committees/1533/egroup.shtml

http://www.un.org/sc/committees/1533/egroup.shtml


taught at the University of Johannesburg and Marymount Manhattan College. Hewas a UNDP consultant in Kinshasa on issues of proliferation of small arms andlight weapons and worked as a counselor of prisoners and single mothers inCameroon, DRC, Chad, Burkina Faso, and France. He is now a visiting professorof anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania and a Research Associate in theDepartment of Anthropology and Development Studies at the University ofJohannesburg. He is also a consultant at the World Bank on issues of governanceand accountability. He has intensive ethnographic experience of emergent socialformations when states disintegrate in war-torn Africa: in DRC, Rwanda, Burundiand Uganda. His theoretical interests include the dynamics of conflict, new stateformations, transnational trade networks, ethnicity and global political andeconomic governance.




In and out of the State: Working the Boundaries of Power in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Documents

Transcript of In and out of the State: Working the Boundaries of Power in the Democratic Republic of the Congo