Benjamin Rubbers

Claiming workers' rights in the Democratic Republic of Congo: the case of the Collectif des ex-agents de la Gécamines

Within the context of its strategy for the reform of public companies in Africa, the World Bank became involved in redundancies of questionable legality. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, the Bank arranged and financed a voluntary severance programme in 2003, whereby 10,000 employees of the mining company Gécamines, some 45% of its workforce, left in return for an arbitrarily fixed lump-sum payment. Based on ethnographic research, this paper discusses the history of the protest movement which emerged from this mass redundancy programme, the arguments deployed by the movement and the resources available to it. On the basis of this case study, the paper goes on to offer some thoughts on the conditions for social criticism in a transitional regime, heir to an authoritarian tradition of long standing, and operating under the tutelage of foreign donors.

'We, the Congolese, we cannot trust each other'. Trust, norms and relations among traders in Katanga, Democratic Republic of Congo.

Congolese traders in Katanga claim that they cannot trust their peers, customers, and employees. Existing literature about social capital in Africa does not enhance our understanding, as it tends to consider trust as depending on the degree of social knowledge. In the Congo, social proximity does not exclude suspicion, nor does social distance necessarily prevent trust. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, this article aims at developing a more detailed framework. It studies how Congolese traders negotiate two key norms for the building of economic trust - property and reciprocity - with non-relatives, distant relatives, and close relatives.

Why do Congolese people go to court? A qualitative study of litigants' experiences in two Justice of the Peace courts in Lubumbashi

Although Justice of the Peace (JP) courts did not escape the general deterioration of Congolese administrative structures, Congolese people continue to use these courts to resolve their conflicts. Based on qualitative research carried out in Lubumbashi, this article attempts to understand why people bring their cases to the JP court. How do litigants make that decision in the first place? Once their cases are underway, how do they deal with the trial? The authors emphasise the fact that while litigants denounce the corruption that occurs within the legal system, they continue nevertheless to have confidence in justice itself and in the State. This faith reflects the importance of the law and the formal ideal of institutions that were inherited from the Belgian colonial period in various areas of the daily life of Congolese people. But it also suggests that, counter to the dominant paradigm in the study of the State in Africa, these institutional norms do not simply represent an illusion without basis in reality. Where circumstances allow, these norms do indeed play a structuring role in the functioning of bureaucracy in Congo.

The story of a tragedy: how people in Haut-Katanga interpret the post-colonial history of Congo

In order to give an account of the Congolese tragedy since independence, the inhabitants of Haut-Katanga often resort to four different narratives : the abandonment by Belgium; the biblical curse on Africans ; the conspiracy of Western capitalism ; or the alienation of life powers by Whites. Though these four stories offer different scenarios, they are all constructed with two types of actors – Whites and Congolese people. This article suggests that this racial/national frame finds its origins in colonial and national ideologies, which have left their mark on HautKatanga, and that it continues today to structure the narratives through which people remember their post-colonial history. Collective memory and racial/ national identity are reciprocally constituted in these stories, but in different terms. They offer, accordingly, different ways of influencing the present.

Beyond Corruption: The everyday life of a justice of the peace court in the Democratic Republic of Congo

This Analysis and Policy Brief presents the main ideas of an edited volume on real governance and practical norms that was published this year at Routledge. The book traces the concept of practical norms back to the social science literature and the network of ideas from which it emerged, it extends the field of its application to other regions and sectors in Sub-Saharan Africa and it reflects on the concept’s usefulness for researchers engaged in processes of improving public service delivery.This Analysis and Policy Brief presents the main ideas of an edited volume on real governance and practical norms that was published this year at Routledge. The book traces the concept of practical norms back to the social science literature and the network of ideas from which it emerged, it extends the field of its application to other regions and sectors in Sub-Saharan Africa and it reflects on the concept’s usefulness for researchers engaged in processes of improving public service delivery.

Towards a life of poverty and uncertainty? The livelihood strategies of Gécamines workers after retrenchment in the DRC

ABSTRACT In 2003, with the support of the World Bank, the Congolese state-owned enterprise Gécamines implemented a voluntary departure programme for 10,000 employees with more than 25 years of service. These employees were asked to regard their severance pay as a capital to be invested in new activities. Based on ethnographic research, this article explores how ex-Gécamines workers made a living in the phase of their ‘reintegration’. In doing so, it develops a sociological approach to popular economic practices that attempts to move beyond the phenomenology of uncertainty recently advocated by several Africanist scholars.

The University of Lubumbashi between the Local and the Global: Dynamics, Management, and Future of University Education in the Democratic Republic of Congo

ResumeJusqu’a present, la dynamique du champ universitaire en Afrique a surtout ete interpretee a partir du desengagement budgetaire de l’Etat et de la crise economique. Pour completer cette approche, cet article propose une etude de cas qui tente de cerner le sens dont est investi, au niveau local, la formation assuree par l’Universite de Lubumbashi, en Republique Democratique du Congo. Ce detour par le bas montre que le devenir de l’Universite en Afrique represente un enjeu important pour les differentes categories d’acteurs concernees, dont la nature avant tout symbolique est susceptible de contrecarrer les projets politiques, de couleur tantot liberale tantot tiers-mondiste, nourris a son egard dans les pays du Nord.