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A View from Zaire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Patrick M. Boyle
Patrick M. Boyle
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Abstract

This review of recent books on Zaire examines how the changing salience of the issues of ethnicity, class, and the state exhibit shifts in academic perspectives and especially in perceptions of how best to account for and articulate the characteristics of political life in contemporary Zaire. The authors' views on the dynamics of class formation within a situation of increasing socioeconomic inequality and state decline raise questions about how or to what degree the Mobutu regime has managed to institutionalize a kind of “authority” and “political order” over the past twenty years. The case of Zaire challenges the meaning of “institutionalization” because the most clearly identifiable practices in Zaire have centered on finding efficient means for appropriating whatever political and economic resources are at hand.

Type
Review Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , January 1988 , pp. 269 - 287
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1988

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References

1 , Zolberg, “A View from the Congo,” World Politics 19 (October 1966), 137–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 140, 144.

2 Ibid., 137.

3 For two schematic but helpful outlines of the changes in approaches to Zairian politics, see MacGaffey, Wyatt, “The Policy of National Integration in Zaire,” Journal of Modern African Studies 20 (March 1982), 87–105, at 88–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vellut, Jean-Luc, “Développement et sous-dé-veloppement au Zaïre,” [Development and underdevelopment in Zaire], Genève-Afrique 17 (No. 1, 1979), 133–140Google Scholar, at 135.

4 Leys, Colin, “African Economic Development in Theory and Practice,” Daedalus 111 (Spring 1982), 99–124Google Scholar, at 120.

5 Zolberg (fn. 1), 144. Zolberg borrows this view of regimes from Easton, David, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York: Wiley, 1965), 191Google Scholar.

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7 Zolberg (fn. 1), 144, 145, 141.

8 Bienen, Henry, “What Does Political Development Mean in Africa?” World Politics 20 (October 1967), 128–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 134.

9 By contrast, Jean-Claude Willame's description of the patrimonial politics of an emerging political class in the mid-1960s has a decidedly political emphasis. Willame focuses on the emergence of a political class of petty bureaucrats who, however unsuccessful in channeling resources because “decolonization left foreign resources unaccountable,” did manage to concentrate the political resources available to them through the appropriation of offices according to a system of patrimonial links—starting with the highest posts. Willame, See, Patrimo-nialism and Political Change in the Congo (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1972), 86Google Scholar.

10 Nzongola(-Ntalaja), Georges N., “Bourgeoisie and Revolution in the Congo,” Journal of Modern African Studies 8 (No. 4, 1970), 511–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 511, 521. Nzongola-Ntalaja was among the first to develop a conceptual framework for class analysis in Zaire. Earlier classifications of social groups in Zaire include Coméliau, Christian, Fonctions économiques et pouvoir politique [Economic functions and political power] (Kinshasa: Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales, 1965)Google Scholar, and Lacroix, Jean, L'industrialisation au Congo [Industrialization in the Congo] (Paris: Mouton, 1966)Google Scholar.

11 For a different view on the question of classes in Africa, see Cohen, Dennis L., “Class and the Analysis of African Politics: Problems and Prospects,” in Cohen, Dennis L. and Daniel, John, eds., Political Economy of Africa (London: Longmans, 1981), 85–111Google Scholar.

12 For a fuller review of positions on the role and meaning of class analysis in Africa, see Review of African Political Economy 19 (September-December 1980)Google Scholar, special issue on Consciousness and Class.

13 For a discussion of the varying roles of ethnicity in politics, with specific reference to the Zairian situation, see Young, Crawford, The Politics of Cultural Pluralism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1976), 163–215Google Scholar.

14 Nelson Kasfir offers an interesting treatment of the political uses of ethnic identity in The Shrinking Political Arena (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975)Google Scholar.

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16 MacGaffey (fn. 3), 104.

17 Lemarchand, René, Political Awakening in the Belgian Congo (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964), 1Google Scholar.

18 See Gould, David J., Bureaucratic Corruption and Underdevelopment in the Third World: The Case of Zaire (New York: Pergamon Press, 1980)Google Scholar.

19 Callaghy, Thomas, “External Actors and the Relative Autonomy of the Political Aristocracy,” Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics 21 (November 1983), 61–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 62.

20 Ibid., 74, 73.

21 Gould offers impressive statistics to document his thesis of corruption. See, for example, his allegation that in 1979 over half of the employees on the state's civil service payroll were fictitious (fn. 18), 71–72.

22 , Nzongola-Ntalaja, Class Struggles and National Liberation (Roxbury, MA: Omenana, 1982), 41Google Scholar, 71.

23 Callaghy (fn. 19), 79.

24 , Verhaegen, “Les mouvements de liberation en Afrique: Le cas du Zaïre en 1978” [Liberation movements in Africa: The case of Zaire in 1978], Genève-Afrique 17 (No. 1, 1979), 173–81Google Scholar, at 176.

25 Ibid., 177. Jean-Claude Willame and others describe Zairian social stratification in similar terms. According to Willame, Mobutu is at the top of a patrimonial state governed by his “presidential clan.” At the next level, there are the businessmen, bureaucrats, and courtesans who owe their privilege to their ethnicity, region, or directly to Mobutu. Just above the masses at the bottom of the pyramid is a large number of elites who are both applauded and abused. See , Willame, “Zaïre: Système de survie et fiction d'Etat” [Zaire: survival system and fiction of state], Canadian Journal of African Studies 18 (No. 1, 1984), 83–89Google Scholar.

26 Verhaegen (fn. 24), 180. All translations are by the present author.

27 Willame (fn. 25), 84.

28 Gould (fn. 18), xiii.

29 Young, Crawford, “Zaire: Is There a State?” Canadian Journal of African Studies 18 (No. 1, 1984), 80–83Google Scholar, at 80.

30 Ibid., 81.

31 The brutality of the colonial administration's relations with the Congolese earned for it the African nickname, Buli Matari, “one who crushes rocks.”

32 Young (fn. 29), 81.

33 Willame (fn. 25), 83, 87, 88.

34 Young (fn. 29), 82.

35 Zolberg, Aristide, “The Structure of Political Conflict in the New States of Africa,” American Political Science Review 62 (March 1968), 70–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 70.