No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Economic Origins of the Kwilu Rebellion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2009
Extract
Early in 1964, the recently independent Belgian Congo (now Zaire) experienced a wave of unrest sparked by a rebellion in its Kwilu province. Under the leadership of Pierre Mulele, the movement established control over an entire region for a period of nearly two years. The initial success of Mulelism encouraged a series of further uprisings which brought the central government to the brink of collapse. Although the Kwilu rebellion was ultimately reduced by a combination of military force and regional economic stagnation and thus failed in its objectives, it has attracted considerable scholarly attention because it aptly illustrates the processes whereby social movements in the postwar Third World originate and evolve.
- Type
- Agrarian Revolution
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1979
References
1 Fox, Renee C., de Craemer, Willy, and Ribeaucourt, Jean-Marie, “The Second Independence': A Case Study of the Kwilu Rebellion in the Congo,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, VIII (10 1965): 78–109. Research for the present paper was supported in part by a Regent's Junior Faculty Fellowship from the University of California, Santa Cruz.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 Paige, Jeffery M., Agrarian Revolution: Social Movements and Export Agriculture in the Underdeveloped World (New York, The Free Press, 1975). See above, p. 437, for a diagram of Paige's classification scheme.Google Scholar
3 Of five export systems in grapes which Paige coded, three were migratory labor estates and two small holdings. For coffee he found nine commercial haciendas, nine small holdings, seven migratory labor estates, and one plantation. The categorization of coffee enterprises is very much complicated by the fact that there are two distinct types, arabica and robusta, with different cultural requirements.
4 For a more detailed discussion of these strains, see below.
5 Nicolai, Henri, Le Kwilu: Etude géographique d'une région congolaise (Bruxelles, Edition CEMUBAC, 1963), p. 332. This excellent monograph by a former student of Pierre Gourou is an indispensable aid to anyone who would understand the economy and human geography of the Kwilu.Google Scholar
6 On its commercial applications, see Michiels, A. and Laude, N., Congo Beige el Ruanda-Vrundi: Géographie et notice historique (Bruxelles: Editions Universelles, S.A., 1938), pp. 120–24.Google Scholar
7 Fox, de Craemer, AND Ribeaucourt, , “Second Independence,” p. 92;Google ScholarLe Courrier d'Afrique (Kinshasa), 02 9, 1963;Google ScholarCentre de Recherche etd'Information Socio-Politiques (C.R.I.S.P.), Courrier Africain, No. 4 (April 13, 1963), 2, 8–9.Google Scholar For a mention of a previous strike at the H.C.B.'s Leverville facility, see Lemarchand, René, Political Awakening in the Belgian Congo (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1964), p. 47.Google Scholar
8 Nicolai, , Le Kwilu, pp. 357–59.Google Scholar
9 Young, examining characteristic orientations to the issue of independence in the Congo at large, has contrasted these two groups in terms that fit the. analysis of the preceding section. See Young, Crawford, Politics in the Congo: Decolonization and Independence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), pp. 150–51. It is worth pointing out that in the Kwilu even corporations benefited from extra-economic advantages which qualified the strict economic rationality of their operations. The H.C.B., for example, received from the colonial government, in 1911, some 750,000 ha. of land, one-fourth the surface area of Belgium itself. While the practice of offering outright grants of land was suspended soon thereafter, the goverment continued to assign purchase monopolies as an inducement to the construction of processing facilities. Many commercial enterprises exercise paragovernmental powers within their sphere of influence.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10 Nicolai, , Le Kwilu, pp. 289, map, pp. 316–17.Google Scholar
11 Banningville territory, home of the Bayanzi tribe, was the focal point of the breakaway Abazi Party, the only challenge to the hegemony of the pan-ethnic Parti Solidaire Africain in the Kwilu. See Weiss, Herbert F., Political Protest in the Congo: the Parti Solidaire Africain During the Independence Struggle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), pp. 172–73.Google Scholar
12 Nicolai, , Le Kwilu, p. 338.Google Scholar
13 The concept of event, as employed in this paper, is a device for locating in time and space the component parts of a larger social movement. An event refers to a temporally and geographically continuous, overt collective act directed against established institutions, or the targets associated with them, by members of a solidary group. In operational terms, the occurrence of an event is indicated by published accounts of participants' numbers, composition, targets, ideology, motivation, tactics, and so on.
14 Sources included the Kinshasa daily newspaper, Le Courrier d'Afrique; periodicals such as Etudes Congolaises and Courrier Africain; and secondary accounts like those of Verhaegen, Benoit, ed., Rebellions au Congo (Brussels: Les Etudes du C.R.I.S.P., 1966 and 1969);Google Scholar Lemarchand, Political Awakening; and Fox, de Craemer, and Ribeaucourt, “The Second Independence,” For a key to events and sources see Traugott, Mark, Rebellion in the Kwilu: Case Study in the Analysis of Agrarian Social Movements, Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, 1976.Google Scholar
15 Only those that occurred within the Kwilu are displayed in Table 3. It is worth noting that nine additional events were localized in territories outside the Kwilu, seven of them in Feshi territory where Pende tribesmen occupy an area along the border with Gungu territory.
16 Fox, de Craemer, AND Ribeaucourt, , “The Second Independence,” p. 92.Google Scholar
17 Seven of these, aimed at strategic objectives like crossroads, bridges, and airports, are not discussed because they reveal little about participants' motives or intentions. For similar reasons confrontations with the forces of social control were not considered classifiable as to target unless the objectives of insurgents were clearly spelled out.
18 Fox, de Craemer, AND Ribeaucourt, , “The Second Independence,” pp. 95–98. The authors underscore the disappointment of the expectations generated during the drive to independence as a precondition of the unrest in the Kwilu.Google Scholar
19 Tribal origin is an excellent predictor of the stance adopted by the Kwilu's most visible political figures toward the rebellion. The principal exception cited by Fox et al. and other analysts was Norbert Leta, a Pende who was aligned with the moderate PS. A faction led by Kamitatu. He succeeded the latter as head of the provincial party and held that position at the outbreak of the rebellion. Willame, however, reports that Leta later switched his loyalties to the opposition camp, that is, in line with tribal cleavages. See Willame, Jean-Claude, Patrimonialism and Political Change in the Congo (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972), p. 53.Google Scholar
20 Though it lies beyond the scope of the present discussion, it is interesting to speculate that the “cultural” association of these two tribes, on which certain observers have commented, may have been cemented by their common economic experience. Their connection is of relatively recent date—the second half of the nineteenth century—originally arising from a military alliance contracted to stop a Tshok invasion. While these two tribes share many traditions, they belong to different linguistic families: the Pende to the kikongo group, indicating southern origin; the Mbunda to the dzing or “semi-bantu” group, most members of which seem to have come from the northwest. It has been suggested that the anomalous case of the Mbunda (southern traditions combined with northern language) can be expalined through their contact with the Pende. If one sees culture as a socially transmitted fund of common experience, it would not be surprising to find that it is in part of economic origin. See Nicolai, , Le Kwilu, pp. 121–22 and 145.Google Scholar For a contrary, probably erroneous view, see Willame, J. C. and Verhaegen, B., “Les Provinces du Congo: Structure et Fonctionnement,” Cahiers Economiques et Sociaux, Collection d'Etudes Politiques, I (05 1964), 21.Google Scholar
21 It should also be remembered that Gizenga and Mulele were themselves products of this common background. It is as difficult to disentangle the effects of tribal and economic determinants as it is to say whether these leaders launched a movement for which they were able to recruit followers on the basis of tribal loyalities, or whether it was their tribal origins that led them to devise a movement appropriate to the needs of their eventual adherents.
22 Verhaegen, , Rebellions, Vol. I, p. 47.Google Scholar
23 Wilson, Charles, The History of Unilever: A Study in Economic Growth and Social Change (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1968).Google Scholar
24 Young, , Politics in the Congo, pp. 281–84.Google Scholar
25 Fox, de Craemer, AND Ribeaucourt, , “The Second Independence,” p. 85.Google Scholar
26 Total tax revenues for the Kwango district of Congo-Kasai province, which then included the Kwilu region, held steady or increased between 1927 and the middle of 1931, despite the economic disaster. See Belgium, , Chambre des Représentants, Rapport annuel sur I'activité de la colonie due Congo Beige pendant l'année…, especially reports of 1928, p. 68; 1930, p. 76; 1931, p. 105; and 1932, p. 107.Google ScholarThe report of the Commission de la main-d'oeuvre indigène, 1930–1931 (pp. 34–35),Google Scholar noted that while levels of employment decreased in all neighboring zones in 1930, the complements of zone IV, the Kwilu, significantly increased. The testimony of representative Vandenvelde at the hearings on the Pende revolt makes it clear that the maintenance of the labor force was achieved only by means of widespread coercion. See Belgium, , Corps Législatif, Annales parlémentaires, séance du 14 juin, 1932, p. 2065.Google Scholar
27 In May the monthly low price fell to between eight and nine pounds per long ton on the London market. As recently as the fall of 1929 it had been above eighteen. See International Institute of Agriculture, International Yearbook of Agricultural Statistics, 1931–1932 (Rome: Treves, Treccani, Tumminelli, S.A., 1932), p. 611;Google Scholar and ibid., 1932–1933 (Rome: Villa Umberto, 1933), p. 623.
28 Kimbanguism (also known as Ngunzism) was a syncretic millennialist movement of Bakongo origin begun in 1921. See Lanternari, Vittorio, The Religions of the Oppressed: A Study of Modern Messianic Cults (New York: New American Library, 1965), pp. 25ff.Google Scholar
29 Belgium, , Chambre des Représentants, Rapport Annuel, 1932, p. 105 and 1933, p. 129.Google Scholar
30 While it is not feasible to embark upon a proper justification of this assumption in the present context, the case of the Kwilu as described by Fox et al. (especially pp. 86–87) provides some indirect support for it. Most obvious perhaps is the close correspondence in the patterns of diffusion of the Nzambi-Malembe and Mulelist movements. The authors also discuss Kimbanguism and the Dieudonné sect and conclude that the entire series of messianic movements in the Kwilu “had a particularly important impact in the territory of Idiofa and on members of the BaPende tribe.”
31 Hobsbawm, Eric J., Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries (New York: W. W. Norton 1965).Google Scholar
32 Worsley, Peter, The Trumpet Shall Sound: A Study of “Cargo” Cults in Melanesia (New York: Schocken Books, 1968).Google Scholar
33 Verhaegen, , Rébellions, Vol. I, p. 134.Google Scholar
34 Willame, , Patrimonialism, p. 120.Google Scholar