LOOTING IN KINSHASA : THE END OF DEVELOPMENT ?

An anonymous anthropologist

Many cities of Zaire have been the scene of wide-ranging looting and destruction of public and private goods. An anthropologist (who prefers to remain anonymous at this juncture, considering the political climate in Kinshasa) interprets these events as the brutal end of an illusion : that of progress, westernization and development.

In the seventies, Zaire's capital was reknown for its brilliant nightlife : bars were filled by "sapeurs" ("Société des ambianceurs et des personnes élégantes" or SAPE, is the origin of this Zairian neologism), Zairian dandies and their mistresses displaying jewels and expensive dresses. This modern-day "potlach" of ostentatious spending was seen by most people as the reassuring sign that wealth and progress, meaning westernization, was close at hand for everybody. The dandies and their flashy dresses were the harbingers of the general happiness to come. The pubs and discotheques were the centres of social life for many men in the eighties. By 1990 however, beer consumption dropped by 30%. The economic and political crisis hurts badly, the state apparatus is in total decay, all but a minute upper fringe of the population can afford the lifestyle of display and noisy celebrations for which Kinshasa was so reknown. Bars are increasingly turned into chapels as independent charismatic churches develop throughout the country.

In September 1991 and again in January 1993, wide-spreading looting turns city centres into wrecks. Cars and lorries are set aflame, schools and hospitals totally stripped from their equipment and furniture, shops emptied by huge crowds of youngsters and elderly people alike. "In a few days, the myth of modernity was destroyed" explains the anthropologist. Some of the stolen objects have no merchant value. They are however symbols of a future which one had believed in and hoped for : westernization. It is as if people rebel against decades of false promises and illusions. The "informal" subsistence economy combined with theft becomes a substitute for the frustrating universalism of State and Development. Social entropy seems to creep in, based on anomy and fatalism, fear, depression, drugs and self-deprecation. People become convinced that the country is bewitched and have a sense that Zaire is bedevilled by some evil force.

Whereas men resort to violent aggression and theft in many of the thoroughfares of the city centre, women carry on the productive activity which they never had given up : hard work, thrift, courage and social responsibility had been their share in the "golden days" when men enjoyed their fancy nightlife. Women seem therefore less affected by the depression and subsequent lawlessness affecting their male companions. On the contrary, they are able to resist male thieves in the market-place. The market is the place where women exercise their activities and ... their own social power. It is a haven of peace : "On n'attaque pas les mamans" ("mothers are not to be attacked") is the saying. Whereas the thorough-fare is the locus of male theft and violence, the market-place is the locus of female-controlled peaceful social and economic life.

In fact, groups of women forcibly imposed their logic on men who dared turn onto them. Women appear as the actors of a new social link and of renewed social responsibility. Kinshasa and other cities are now characterized by the "villagization" of the city. Women grow vegetables and cassava wherever there is room. Village-type solidarity links tend to produce the social order which nation-hood and State have unsuccessfully tried to instil.

Looting meant the end of the male-oriented "modern", westernizing capitalist economy. Villagization is promoting a new ethic under the authority of women. Is "villagization" also the matrix of a viable, sustainable alternative ? This remains a huge question. But it is also a little light at the end of a terribly dark tunnel of anguish, hunger, violence and despair.