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The drama(s) of Independence Day: reflections on

political affects and aesthetics in Kinshasa (2010)
Katrien Pype

Institute of Anthropological Research in Africa, Faculty of Social SciencesUniversity of

Leuven Parkstraat 45 Bus 3615, 3000 Leuven, Belgium Katrien.Pype@soc.kuleuven.be
Published online: 17 Sep 2014.

To cite this article: Katrien Pype (2013) The drama(s) of Independence Day: reflections on political affects and aesthetics
in Kinshasa (2010), Anthropology Southern Africa, 36:1-2, 58-67, DOI: 10.1080/02580144.2013.10887024
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02580144.2013.10887024

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Anthropology Southern Africa, 2013, 36(1&2)

58

The drama(s) of Independence Day:

reflections on political affects and aesthetics
in Kinshasa (2010)
Katrien Pype

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Institute of Anthropological Research in Africa, Faculty of Social Sciences University of Leuven

Parkstraat 45 Bus 3615, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
Katrien.Pype@soc.kuleuven.be

On June 30 2010, in Kinshasa, a drama unfolded as the military march was abruptly interrupted by street children
intermingling and enacting ndombolo-inspired dances in front of the president. Police and soldiers started beating up people;
the state radio and television channels aborted the live broadcasts; and people were urged to return home. The order and
discipline that the military march had expressed, had in a few seconds given way to chaos.
I take this drama as a case to study political sensibilities in contemporary Kinshasa. The main premise is that performances
are not merely representations, but are also crucial events within the circulation of feelings and affects. Therefore, both
political aesthetics and affects involved in this drama of Independence Day will be studied. I first juxtapose the various
aesthetics at play in the independence festivities, both performed in the dfil (military-inspired aesthetics) and afterwards
(the popular, sexually explicit dances); and then analyse the ways in which these performances and reactions express different
senses of nationhood and different relations to the state.
Keywords: DR Congo; youth; dance; media; resistance; propaganda; public ritual
Commemorations of political independence are performative
moments in which ideas about the nation, the state and citizenship are represented and produced while combining rhetoric, display and affect. The participants in these events
speakers, dance groups, marching people and the audience
embody in that moment moralizing, introspective and
cathartic possibilities (Mookherjee 2011: 51). Furthermore,
narratives about independence and the reasons for celebration, as well as the various spectacles that are produced during the celebrations, open up affective domains in which the
nation emerges, is glorified and, at times, also contested. The
independence commemorations are also crucial moments for
the governing elite to confirm and maintain their power (Roy
2006: 210-211). This article will explore the various political
affects that were mobilized in Kinshasa in 2010, the year of
the 50th anniversary of political independence, and analyses
both propaganda performances and colloquial performative
replies to these as sites in which various forms of attachment
to the Congolese nation are being presented and embodied.
It will become clear that, while belonging to the Congolese
nation is never contested, the role of the president, as a unifying principle within this formation, is complicated to the
extent that in and with the popular performances, the presidents involvement in the Congolese nation is debunked.
Weeks before June 30, the actual anniversary of political
independence on which a whole range of celebration and
ceremonies was scheduled, a particular buzz was palpable in
Kinshasa, Congos capital city. Kinois (Kinshasas inhabitants)
were asking several questions: Will the Belgian king accept
President Kabilas invitation and be present during this feast?
Will the population be part of the festivities? The most important question, however, was: is there something to celebrate?
During the run-up to the festivities, local media were
flooded with invitations to the public to offer their own ideas

about how the 50th anniversary of Independence should be

commemorated. The political elite, headed by President
Kabila, attempted to create a celebratory ambiance in the
capital city. The question whether there was actually something to celebrate seemed even more strange considering the
fact that everybody inscribed themselves within the national
feast as various commercial activities of bars newly erected
for the occasion, shops and international enterprises showed.
In their marketing strategies, they all referenced le cinquantenaire (the Jubilee). Around town, companies such as telephone network operators, airline companies, and breweries
erected billboards on which they congratulated the Congolese on the political anniversary; and on television, local musicians appeared in music video clips that celebrated the 50
years of political independence. At the same time, however,
the killing of a local human rights activist (Floribert Chebeya)
stirred up many public contestations of the actual democratic
nature of the government. There was a wide range of competing discourses about the past, accompanied by, at times,
opposed political affects. These affects either produced a
feeling of belonging, pride and attachment with other Congolese citizens from which the political elite could borrow support and obedience, or expressed perceptions of disappointment, distrust and alienation. Usually, the latter negative affects were not directed towards fellow Congolese, but
towards the political elite and the state. The various narratives that were told, produced different interpretations of
independence (lipanda), the past, the present and the future,
each serving a particular purpose.
Despite the buzz, many Kinois shared the experience of
exclusion from the larger festivities, and also a feeling that
there was actually nothing to celebrate.
When Kinois reflected about the meaning of the Independence festivities, various sentiments were evoked, rang-

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Anthropology Southern Africa, 2013, 36(1&2)

ing from anger, frustration over disappointment, to apathy.
Many were discontented with Kabilas political programme,
and signaled lack of electricity, running water and adequate
health treatment as major symptoms of the presidents failing
leadership. In addition, people felt excluded from the festivities as they held that the major events were organized for the
international community and for the ruling elite. The few
commercial initiatives that were undertaken on June 30, like
breweries giving significant reductions for certain beers, were
also not acclaimed by the Kinois, of whom many felt that the
state should rather give each of them some cash.
The main event, the festivities on June 30, however,
ended in chaos: The military parade was abruptly interrupted, and the parading space became invaded with street
children and people looting the chairs, umbrellas and other
objects they could lay their hands on. This article will extensively deal with the failure of the parade.
The main question addressed in this article is: What are
the political affects, desires and motivations that are involved
in the Independence festivities as they unfolded in Kinshasa
during the festive year of 2010? I thus seek to explore the
relationships between power, nationalism and public culture
through an analysis of several state-led ceremonies. Performance, affect and aesthetics are the key analytical terms
through which I analyze how the Congolese nation
emerged, and eventually broke down, both in its state-led
display in popular contestations.
The data are based on seven months of extensive fieldwork in Kinshasa. I worked with officials participating in the
commemorating events and local media producers that were
engaged to cover events related to the Independence festivities. Fieldwork, which focused on media, memory and politics, included participant observation as a journalist with four
local TV stations (pro-Kabila), participation in the festivities
for Independence, and formal and informal interviews with
officials and participants.
The analysis is therefore limited to the production of
commemorative events in Kinshasa, the capital city. In other
parts of the country, provincial governors organized their
own parades, and various towns held their own celebrations.
In most cities, however, there were no special events. Also,
many of the events that had been scheduled by the Comit du
50enaire to travel around the country, in the end never did
happen. As I will explain below, Kinshasa occupies a special
position within Congolese political society, so the analysis
about political affect in Kabilas Kinshasa cannot be transposed to other areas in the country.
The article is organized as follows: I will first lay out the
main theoretical strands performance, affect and nationbuilding that have informed my analysis. This is followed by
a (too) short historical overview of how Congolese postcolonial leaders like Mobutu and Joseph Kabila invest(ed), or did
not, in cultural performances in order to tie the citizens to
them. The second part brings an analysis of the ethnographic
material: in particular I will discuss tours by a General who
travelled around Kinshasa and held meetings in which he presented his narrative on the meaning of Independence, media
propaganda, and the military parade on June 30 2010. The
focus in the analysis is on the performance of the nation, as
carefully orchestrated by the political elite, also on the vari-

59
ous kinds of affect that have been mobilized or that were
intended to be awakened by the state propaganda.

Performance, affect and the nation

For various reasons performance is a very useful analytical
category to start my analysis of Kinshasas independence festivities. First, in the notion of performance, temporality and
impermanence are evoked. A performance has a beginning
and a definite ending. The performance only exists in the
staging moment. Recent anthropological reflections about the
nation emphasize the fleeting and the momentary character
of the construction of the nation. Just like a performance,
affects of belonging to nations need to be re-enacted and thus
confirmed through various stagings, again and again. It is in
the enactment of state-related practices and the mobilization
of patriotic sentiment that the nation appears. Public rituals
are, furthermore, negotiations between state actors and nonstate actors (Roy 2006: 210-211). Following Derrida (1998),
Mookherjee (2011) and Pinney (2011) point at the iterativity
and repetition necessary for the production of the nation.
They also indicate the possibility of slippage, the possibility of
deformation that is always inherent in any new performance,
thus providing space for rupture and unsettlement in the production of nationhood.
Second, performance combines the emphases on affect
and aesthetics. The idea of the nation as an imagined community (Anderson 1991) has for a long time dominated
anthropological understandings of how belonging within a
national unity was imagined and produced. Lately, Andersons
approach has been critiqued by Meyer (2009: 7), who argues
that we need to move beyond understanding community as
a fixed, bounded social group. Meyer proposes to think
about belonging in collectivities, such as the nation, in terms
of aesthetic formations, thus emphasizing both the investment of affect in the production of collectivities, and also
foregrounding the process part of collectivities. Collective
unities do not exist as such: they are continuously made and
remade through various practices that are based on desire,
expectations and emotional investment. Following Webers
statement that the nation is a community of sentiment manifest in a state (1994 [1948]: 25), Linke (2006: 219, my addition) contends that the entire sensorium of the body,
including the micro-politics of sense experience as well as the
polymorphous incitements to sensuation [the mobilisation of
the senses] are central in the production of political subjects
and national sentiments or the love of a nation. Scholars such
as Butler and Spivak (2004) have also called for attention to
the role of aesthetics in the production of citizens and
national communities. In their study of American nationalism,
Butler and Spivak point out how aesthetic articulations, such
as the singing of the national anthem, produce the sense of
belonging to a nation. Along the same lines, Mookherjee
(2011) emphasizes how the nation seeks to bind those who
belong to it but at the same time it also unbinds, releases,
expels, banishes through the performance of its aesthetic registers. Apart from pointing at the role of aesthetics in the
formation of national unities, Mookherjee convincingly argues
that inclusion and exclusion, or the boundaries between
those who belong and those who do not, are articulated
through aesthetics and performances.

60
Third, a performance approach allows us to think of
national communities as publics (Gaonkar 2002). The idea of
belonging to a nation draws on ties between citizens and also
between citizens and state authorities. National communities
are publics, who are at once audience and co-producers of
the staging of the spectacle of the nation. They are literally
publics, they read, hear and/or watch texts that are
addressed to them as citizens and fellow members of the
national communities. They also express their concerns in the
public sphere, where hegemonic and contesting opinions are
voiced, thus producing interactions between hegemonic publics and counter-publics. In addition, more and more scholars
are pointing at the fragmentation of publics (Barber 1997),
thus undermining the idea of one national public sharing
homogeneous ideas and sentiments (Arnaut 2013).

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This theoretical frame, that focuses on the performativity

of nationalism and the concomitant interplay of affect and
aesthetics, is inspired by Turners notion of social drama
(1957) and his anthropology of performance (1987).
My analysis furthermore combines two dominant strands
within contemporary Africanist anthropology that attempt to
come to terms with the intrinsic linkage between performance and power (Fabian 1990, 1998), and with the encapsulation of cultural performances in the purchase of political
affects. A first line of authors emphasizes the dramaturgy of
the African postcolonial state. Mbembe (1992, 2001), for
example, pays attention to the symbolic ways in which citizens protest against those in power (especially through the
use of obscene and vulgar language), both within state-led
spectacles and beyond, thus participating in the grotesque
character of the postcolonial state. His focus on the display,
the shared participation in ceremonies and the ceremonial
shows how the African postcolonial state is merely a hollow
sign, a simulacrum, in which citizens (oppressed) and rulers
contribute to the maintenance of a regime, which nevertheless keeps the former powerless. Speaking about Mobutu,
Yoka, a Congolese professor and observer of local politics,
says: Mobutu is the very sign of a sinister process of covering
up, of making over, of masking, of the cosmetics of power
(Yoka in White 2009: 227). Analyzing social and political life in
Kinshasa in the late Mobutu years, De Boeck (1996: 92, my
translation) argues that in local statecraft the faire croire
[make believe] and the faire semblant [acting as if] have taken
over from reality.
A second line of research takes popular culture as its main
focus and points at the interactions between cultural performances (theatre, music, dance) and nationalism and power
(among others Abu-Lughod 2005, Argenti 2007, Askew
2002, Edmondson 2007). Askew (2002) draws attention to
the poetics of nationhood by analyzing how dance and musical shows in Tanzania performed, transformed and reformed
the nation. Studying the primordial role of radio and television melodrama in postcolonial Egypt, Abu-Lughod shows
how these serials help to shape a national habitus, while she
also pays attention to the varying reactions of audiences
towards these serials, thus highlighting the fluid, contested
and negotiated character of the nation. In her insightful study
of theatre in Tanzania, Edmonson (2007) also examines the
cultural politics of the nation, yet, theatre actors and their
audiences are engaged in what she calls a collaborative

Anthropology Southern Africa, 2013, 36(1&2)

nationalism, thus by-passing the taken-for-granted strong
division between rulers and population, or between propagandists and opposition. Rather, the convivial nature of the
theatre players and political elite constitute the political
dynamics of Tanzanian popular drama. As Edmondson writes:
It becomes virtually impossible to distinguish between
moments of transgression and capitulation. (2007: 5). She
did not encounter instances of performances that openly criticized the state or the ruling political party (Ibid.).
Acknowledging the fact that her research subjects might
have been hampered by fear of not being paid or losing out
on future jobs, Edmondson follows Mbembe, who highlighted
(in his influential book On the Postcolony) the sharing of the
public space by both rulers and ordinary people, who guide,
deceive, and toy with power rather than confronting it
directly (Mbembe 2001: 128, Edmondson 2007: 6).
Dealing with youths masquerade dances in Cameroons
Grassfields, Argenti has recently argued that dance is the site
of a fierce struggle in the Grassfields: a struggle for remembering, for meaning, for representation, for commemoration,
for knowing, and for forgetting (2007: 254). National dance
competitions are organized to glorify national unity; while
dance is also used as a means to critique and participate in the
new, postcolonial power (Argenti 1998: 763). Dance opens
up new worlds, according to Argenti (1998: 775), and contemporary dance forms lie at the heart of attempts to deal
with an authoritarian state and experiences of violence, intimidation and terror. Dealing with an authoritarian state and
state violence through performances does not always mean
overt resistance or rebellion, rather cultural performances
and popular culture in general produce cathartic possibilities,
moments in which new possible futures are imagined and
reflected upon; these are very temporal states of contestation and freedom, moments of freedom, as Fabian (1998)
calls them.

Dramatization of the Congolese nation

To appreciate the stakes of performances such as festivals,
music and dance in the construction of the Congolese
national community, it is useful to briefly give a historical
insight into the interlocking of performance and power in the
Zairian/Congolese cultural space.
Mobutu famously used cultural performances in order to
confirm and enhance his status as father of the nation and to
enforce a collective experience of belonging to the Zairian
state. As part of the services of the General Secretariat for
Mobilization and Propaganda (MOPAP part of the Ministry
of Information), professional national troupes were created
that staged thtre danimation politique, a theater of political
cheerleading (Conteh-Morgan 2004:112, Botombele 1975).
Political slogans, marching-band music, traditional tunes and
carefully choreographed modern and traditional performances were the key aspects of these cultural performances
that not merely entertained the Zairians and their visitors,
but attempted to produce intense emotional identification of
the audience with the nationalist program (Conteh-Morgan
2004:112, Kerr 1995:205).
However, these festivals were not only moments in which
the leader was confirmed in his leadership; they also offered
moments for interaction between the leader and his citizens.

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Anthropology Southern Africa, 2013, 36(1&2)

At the same time, music was also a vehicle for communicating
serious social critique. As White (2009) shows, the metaphor
of love in many of the songs that were produced during
Mobutus time, attacked the social and economic hardship
the Congolese were experiencing during Mobutus reign.
Joseph Kabilas Kinshasa knows a totally different political
performance culture. The president, who came to power in
2002 after his father was assassinated, confirmed his leadership after he won the first democratically organized elections
in 2006 (although there are many rumours about fraud).
Since he came to power, political animation has almost been
reduced to mass mediated performances. While Kabila regularly orders songs from local musicians, he does not invest in
cultural performances where he is physically present and
where he might be cherished as the ruler of the nation. Many
Kinois regret Joseph Kabilas physical absence in Kinshasa,
even during the annual festivities for Independence Day. People complained that since his election in 2006 Kabila has not
celebrated the national Independence Day in Kinshasa, but
has done so in other cities (Mbandaka, Kisangani, Kananga
and Goma). The one exception, where Kabila attended the
celebration in Kinshasa, was the golden jubilee/fiftieth anniversary celebration of DR Congos independence, but which
many Kinois perceived as a mere charade for the benefit of
the international community.
These complaints point to the failure of the state. In postcolonial Africa, public ceremonies and festivities are a central
part of the production of postcolonial power. In his analysis of
the aesthetics of power, Mbembe (1992:7) suggests that, it
is the festivities and celebrations that are the vehicles, par
excellence, for giving expression to the commandement and
for staging its displays of magnificence and prodigality. Concentrating on Cameroon, Mbembe (1992:21) maintains that,
ceremonies have become the privileged language through
which power speaks, acts, coerces. Abundant gift distributions (most often food) characterize these meetings. Significantly, such ceremonies also set the stage for communicative
interaction between rulers and subjects (Karlstrm
2003:63). There is a vaguely defined generalized obligation
to respond to the needs of the local community (ibid.:67), at
least in the margins of these events. The opportunity for dialogical interactions with state representatives is, according to
Karlstrm, the main reason why locals participate in such
events.
This article, however, deals uniquely with the performance of the nation and perceptions about the state in Kinshasa, the countrys capital city. Kinshasa occupies a particular
place in Congolese political society. Kinois do not feel at ease
with Joseph Kabila, because they regard him as an outsider:
he does not speak Lingala, the main lingua franca in Kinshasa
(or does not speak it well enough). According to some, he is
not born on Congolese soil, but has Rwandese or Tanzanian
roots; for others, the fact that he is from the east is too distant from Kinois society. Many also regret that he hardly
addresses the Kinois. As mentioned above, Kinois object to
the impossibility of communicating with their president. The
complaints constantly point to the lack of ties with the President.
Since Joseph Kabila was sworn in as a democratically
elected president in 2006, efforts have gradually been made

61
to reconnect Kinois to their leader: to open up communication between Kinois and the president, and thus to convert
Kinshasas community of resentment into one of sentiment,
shared ideas about public goods and necessary political
action. To that end, Joseph Kabila and his entourage have
invested in a strong media campaign (Pype 2012). In addition,
for the sake of the fiftieth anniversary of independence,
Kabila created a structure called the Comit du 50enaire, that
would organize events nation-wide to celebrate the occasion.
State officials performed the mediating role between an
absent president and the population.
The committee, headed by General Kalume, a former
Minister during the regimes of Mobutu and his two successors (Laurent and Joseph Kabila), and only lasted for 2010,
consisted of a general coordinating group, a scientific subgroup and a technical group. The committee organised various activities, such as the selection of best poem of the
cinquantenaire, the choice of a logo, the installation of a book
fair, the planting of new monuments, the selection and decoration of pioneers of independence, the commissioning of
songs and music video clips that glorified the nation, and the
installation of billboards around town. The main goal was to
mobilize the Congolese towards reconstruction, unity, solidarity and cohesion, as the General told me during an interview.

Unhappiness and guilt

One of the main activities of the Comit du 50enaire was the
touring of a caravane that travelled throughout the 24 districts of the city. The caravane was a party of about 35 people:
General Kalume, his staff, media producers, and soldiers. A
truck and a brass band accompanied the arrival of the Committees headman. The truck was covered with a white cloth
on which the three questions, do venons nous? O sommes
nous? O allons nous? (Where do we come from? Where are
we? And where are we headed to?), were painted. During
the months of February, March and April, the caravan visited
all districts in the city. In bars, church compounds and school
halls, General Kalume spoke each time to a group of about
100 people, who had been invited by the mayor of the district. They were mainly composed of the chefs de quartier
(individuals who act as intermediaries between the residents
in a particular neighborhood and the government of the city),
the leaders of local voluntary associations, schoolteachers,
and people working at the town hall. Participants were
expected to pass on the message to their pupils, people living
in their area, members of their associations, and the people
who asked for information at the town hall.
Each day, General Kalume and representatives of his committee visited three districts in a row. The final speech was
also broadcast live on national television. The goal was to
include as many Congolese in this project as possible. In each
district, General Kalume gave two hour-long speeches,
addressing the three core questions: Where do we come
from? Where are we now? And where are we headed?
Kalumes addresses started with the strongly contested
assertion that Congolese had longed for independence. Time
and again, the audience disapproved of this statement, yelling
no!. Nevertheless, Kalume continued, stating that independence meant autonomy on all levels: economic, political, scien-

Anthropology Southern Africa, 2013, 36(1&2)

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62
tific, and social. Kalume argued that the consequences of
independence had been youth criminality, bad health infrastructure, HIV, and poverty even in the domain of the state.
He thus suggested that after independence things went
wrong until Laurent Kabila came. During each meeting,
Kalume asked people to calculate how many hospitals were
needed in each district to meet the needs of the ever-growing population. He then replied: Conclusion: une exprience
malheureuse. Plus jamais a! (Conclusion: an unhappy experience. Never again!).
There are three significant aspects of this official reconstruction of the political past. First, there is a strong emphasis
on emotions the unhappy experience. This is fully in line
with the general propaganda politics of Joseph Kabila, which
relies heavily on the manipulation of affect (Pype 2012). Second, in this discourse there was a deliberate silencing of the
past colonial and postcolonial. The whole political history
seemed to have become a disposable past, of which hardly
any events or political characters could become building
blocks for the future. The only reference point was independence itself. The past seemed to be divided into a period
before independence, one after independence and a now.
Yet, two main events of the past were singled out: Zairanisation (the political decision taken during the Mobutu regime
1974 which nationalized all enterprises) and the lootings
which occurred in 1991 and 1993 and which signaled the
despair of the Zairian population and their malcontent with
Mobutus leadership. Kalume lingered especially on the latter
event. Third, Kalume pointed at the Kinois themselves who
had been the cause of the economic crisis that was hitting
them hard since the early 1990s. Who enacted these pillages? he asked. People replied: We did! This spontaneous
reply confirms the statement made by Jewsiewicki et al. that
the lootings in 1991 were a popular feast, a kind of carnavalesque explosion (1995:211, authors translation), and that
was recognized by many as a major resistance against the
oppressive regime. Kalume identified the lootings as an
important catalyst for the current crisis:
Indeed, you looted the shops, the factories, and you
thus chased away all the investors. The
consequences were loss of jobs, sudden decline of
industrial production, devaluation of the national
currency, increasing unemployment, lack of money
to pay for school fees for children, children
spending their lives on the streets, who then
become either street children or criminals; and so
on and so on. Conclusion: unhappy experience!
The meetings thus led to a relocation of responsibility with
the audience in order to mobilize their participation for the
progress of the country. The articulation and production of
guilt is significant. Guilt arises as a result of an act of omission
of a sort that typically elicits ... anger, resentment, or indignation in others (Williams 1993:89) and is associated with reparation. It looks outwards, at what has happened to others,
and does not direct one to think about ones self (Williams
1993:91). In this way, the Congolese state deflected all
responsibility for blame.
During these meetings, the state seemed to be successful

in imposing guilt. The audience cheered and clapped in agreement with the accusations expressed. This is in sharp contrast
to the quotidian narratives of victimhood, caused by a malfunctioning contemporary state and corrupt previous leaders.
As Kalume wrapped up his speech, he invited people to
share their most unhappy memories, and also their happiest
ones, with the audience (and with the viewers when it was
broadcast on television). During these moments in which
individual experiences of hardship were publicly expressed,
many people in the audience identified with the interlocutors
pain. A community of suffering (Werbner 1991:19) was thus
created. General Kalume, and the Congolese state were thus
binding people through common unhappy experiences
(though selecting certain moments of rupture) and by immediately promising happiness.

Pride
The subgroup of marketing for the Comit du 50enaire did not
so much focus on guilt as on promises and pride. These sentiments were evoked in the posters and billboards that were
planted around the city, on leaflets that were distributed during political events and on clips that were broadcast on television. A few days before the actual Independence Festivities, a
new TV channel, Tldu50enaire, was even created, mainly
broadcasting propaganda for the president in power.
The strong engagement with media was not new for the
Kinois; rather, Mobutu had already used the national radio
and television broadcasting systems early on to produce
national citizens and enhance the idea of collective unity.
Billboards around town showed animals and other natural
sceneries (waterfalls, jungle) with subscriptions such as le
rveil du gant (the waking up of the giant), Un pays plus
beau quavant (a country more beautiful than before),
Rsolument tourn vers lavenir (Strongly turned towards
the future), and, specifically addressing the viewers, Agissons pour lavenir (lets act for the future).
During interviews with the media producers, it became
clear that they tried to mobilize affective experiences among
the audience, in order to promote trust in the current regime
and to activate patriotism through the awakening of dreams
and the creation of expectations. This affective practice,
which aims at expressing and strengthening attachments to
the Congolese nation, is a central point in Kabilas propaganda
campaign (Pype 2012).
The repetitive display of posters in the urban sphere, and
the broadcast of TV clips on television, shows that the state
counts on a communal experience of spectatorship in order
to produce nationalism. By looking at the same posters,
which stage pride in the nation, a particular, though unfulfilled, view of the nation is being projected. The whole idea
behind it is about the potentiality of the nation, claiming: We
collectively possess these resources, but they are not yet
actualized. We need to work together to achieve a nation, a
nation with a new beginning and a new future.
The bonding that is aimed for through these posters and
TV clips is one that is not-yet-real, though it is imaged and
imagined as achievable. Congolese citizenship, as it is evoked
here, is portrayed as an invitation to produce a nation that is
yet to come.
Congolese engagements with these posters and TV clips,

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Anthropology Southern Africa, 2013, 36(1&2)

though, are paradoxical. On the one hand they recognize the
states belief in the potential being realized, especially the
creation of a national community. But on the other hand
these images also point to the limits of the aesthetic endeavors of the state, in particular because people do not believe
the promises that are proffered. Informants held that these
images were produced for the international community that
were to visit the city on June 30.
The grid of social bonding that the Comit du 50enaire
thus tried to establish among the Congolese community was
constituted on two different axes: one of guilt and one of
pride. The Congolese embraced the axe of guilt, while the
narrative of pride and its promises did not lure them. A possible explanation is that the axe of guilt allocates responsibility
to the citizens, and arms them with the idea that they have
their own destiny in hands. The posters and clips mobilizing
pride among the Kinois probably failed because taking on a
collective sense of guilt means allocating responsibility to
themselves, thereby implying an ability to change the direction of their and their fellows route to the future. Kinois
were aware of the necessary activity of the state in the realization of the promises for a better future. While the Kinois
do express faith in the state and the nation, as abstract entities, they also manifest a disappointment and a lack of trust in
the competence and willingness of their current rulers.

Shame
In the weeks preceding the festivities of June 30, a local activist for human rights was found dead in his car on the outskirts
of Kinshasa. It caused rage among Kinois, who suspected that
the government had commissioned the killing because of the
activists condemnations of the current rulers. A protest
march was organized a few days before June 30, and everywhere in the media activists discussed whether the Independence festivities could still go ahead.
Despite local contestations regarding the independence
festivities, the Comit du 50enaire and the government carried
on with the scheduled ceremonies and hosted international
guests such as the Belgian royal couple, presidents of neighboring countries (including president Kagame, president of
Rwanda, a neighbor country with whom RDC shares a history of conflict over resources in the eastern part of the
country) and various diplomats. Ballet groups, performing
traditional and ethnic-related dances, had been hired to
entertain the crowd, both at the parade venue and in other
public spaces, and to give a traditional touch to the event.
Among the onlookers, there was much spontaneous animation: some dressed up as deceased political leaders (KasaVubu and Lumumba), while SAPEUR lovers, dressed in
designer clothes and using public space as a catwalk, strolled
around the streets in their finest clothing.
People could attend the celebration ceremonies or watch
them live on the state television channel. However, they
were not allowed near the platform that was reserved for the
invited guests. Even the press had to undergo strict clearance
control before they were allowed access to the central space
of the event, about 500 meters from the Parliament on a
newly constructed road.
On the morning of June 30, compared to the alleged 9
million inhabitants of the city, a rather small group of people

63
gathered to watch the event, which only began four hours
later than scheduled because the President arrived too late.
He was driven around in a military Jeep, in which he stood
upright with a stern look on his face. Protocol asked for
silence for the President, which was communicated via megaphones. Military salutes were exchanged between the President and a group of high-ranking soldiers before he held a
speech. In it he rehearsed a narrative that was already familiar
to the Kinois: For 40 years the country has not been ruled
adequately, and the future will be better. Various deceased
political leaders were heralded as pioneers of nationalism or
national heroes, and the speech ended with a promise that
the Congo is about to wake up. Immediately after the
speech, a military parade was held. Groups of the various
army divisions with their tanks and other fighting equipment,
police departments with their new motorcycles, and staff
from ministry departments paraded in front of the platform
with the high-ranking guests.
The parade was intended to show off the strength of
state, invoking pride in the nation. This image of a strong
Congolese army (and, by extension, the state) was merely a
simulacrum, however, given that the country is unable to adequately defend its borders and that state services hardly function in a proper way. Nor did it stir any emotion of pride
among the onlookers.
Around noon, ordinary people took over by suddenly
interrupting the military parade. The march of the various
scheduled groups was broken into when the ruling political
party (PPRD), which was scheduled to march past next,
allowed the intrusion of onlookers. Just like many other associations, the PPRD had been invited by the Comite du
50enaire to participate in the parade. Accounts collected in
the aftermath of the parade indicate that PPRD members had
entered the parade venue hesitantly and in a disorganized
way, and onlookers used this opportunity to enter the ceremonial space. While most people merely followed the trajectory of the other marching groups, a handful of street
children (shgue) began performing ndombolo-inspired
dances, such as Lopele an,d Kisanola, in front of the president,
accompanying their movements with protest chants. The
state instantly reacted to this. Military men and soldiers
quickly and forcibly removed the boys, prompting the image
director of the state television channel that was broadcasting
the event live to interrupt the filming. The president, his relatives and all guests were swiftly led to the Parliament, far
away from the crowd that had begun to sing anti-Kabila songs
and loot the parade space.
Allowable and undesired affective elements, pride and
shame, were voiced in debates about the interruption of the
parade. Most people argued that by performing the ndombolo-inspired dances, these boys had shamed the state and
the nation, though at the same time they laughed about it.
The ruling leaders tried to temper this shame and denied the
public humiliation. The organizers of the festivities and the
spokespeople of the government (the press included) literally
tried to hide the inefficiency of the state as the main organizer of the parade not only by interrupting the live broadcasts on the state channels and but also by banning the topic
in newspaper articles.
The disruption, apart from confirming that during such

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64
ceremonies various forms of aesthetics intermingle and that
some of these might escape the control of the state, also illustrates that many symbolic meanings concerning the nature of
the Congolese nation and peoples interactions with their rulers are at play.
First, the vulgarity of the ndombolo dance and the boys
chants are expressions of the way in which ordinary peoples
voices have been officially curtailed in the African postcolonial
state. In an embodied way, anger, disdain and dismissal were
communicated to the ruling elite. I interpret the vulgarity as a
cynical performance, which is a political act (Mbembe
1992:16). The effects that the ndombolo dance generated,
indicate that embodied forms of expressing citizenship and
political opinions are at least as powerful as words. As an
embodied practice dance is first and foremost the most apt
medium for people who are not allowed to express their
thoughts and opinions in a discursive way. Kabilas regime is
oppressive towards any strong critique. Although there are
opposing voices that are heard in the media and on the
streets, the government regularly reacts by closing down TV
stations, and by threatening and/or even killing the most vocal
opponents. Apart from activists and politicians from the
opposition, people cannot really express their discontent
with the state. Performances such as dances and songs seem
to be less controllable than media shows and newspapers.
Through the boys bodies, a dialogic space was opened
between the ruling elite, the international community and the
general Kinois public. In this space, however, the orientation
of the communication had altered significantly: no longer
were the invited guests and the whole imagined nation an
audience addressed by the President (as had happened
merely an hour before when President Kabila gave his
speech); rather, the President himself was forced into the
position of the listener, the onlooker. In a very popular form
the dancers decentralized the authority of the state and challenged the ideal of the state as a centralizing force in representing citizens and aestheticizing them or orienting their
perceptions through feelings.
Second, with the disruption enacted by boys performing
the ndombolo dances in the space of the parade the space in
which the Congolese state was emerging in its glory we
encounter the slippage and the deformation of the stability of
the sign of the Congolese nation. The state apparatus, with its
extensive security system, had shown awareness of possible
slippage, transgression and re-writing by setting limits as to
who could participate in the parade. But PPRD members
themselves had opened up a space for deformation. The
desired stability of the state collapsed at the very moment of
its staging.
Third, this ethnographic material also brings into relief the
idea of the nation as a homogeneous public, and the fragile
character of nations as publics. Insofar as nations are collectivities of homogeneous groups of individuals who are
addressed, in and through performances as citizens belonging
to the same nation, this case also indicates how audiences
actively co-constitute the formation of the nation-as-a-public.
Barber (1997:355) points out that, although audiences,
themselves, by choosing to participate, constitute themselves
as members of a collectivity, publics can be divided in
sharply demarcated constituencies (1997:357). That is to

Anthropology Southern Africa, 2013, 36(1&2)

say, differences of opinion can fragment the public. The collectivity garnered in the parade space did not unambiguously
constitute a homogeneous group of individuals sharing the
same opinions and interests. While all those present manifested an interest in partaking physically in the event that glorified the Congolese nation, the sudden appearance of the
ndombolo performers brought into the open the cleavages
between groups of people applauding the Congolese state
and those contesting, provoking and critiquing it. There was a
shared sentiment of belonging; yet, the ways in which various
parts of the public interacted with the president were different. While most people refrained from being more than mere
spectators (and thus complying with the majority of the audience as disciplined members of the national public), the boys
contested those in power who had staged the whole event.
Fourth, the performed dance style, ndombolo, has a public
and thus political meaning, since this dance form occupies a
particular position within Kinshasas dance world and spawns
a lot of discussion with regard to morality, the social and the
future of the nation. From the whole range of dance forms
that are performed in Congo (among others, traditional
i.e. ethnic related dances, and also religious and rumba
dances), ndombolo and the various dance movements that are
inspired by it are the most controversial. This dance style was
invented in Kinshasa in the late 1990s, and spread rapidly to
other African countries and sometimes even met with state
resistance. In Cameroon and various other African countries,
the ndombolo was banned for being too erotic or even
obscene. In Kinshasa, ndombolo has also acquired particular
political meanings. According to some informants, the dance
imitates President Laurent Kabila, who limped as he entered
in Kinshasa in 1997 to overthrow Mobutu. For other Kinois,
the dance refers to the way a monkey walks. Still others say
ndombolo is a Hindubill (slang) word for herbal drugs that
make ones body control rather difficult. The references to
sexuality and drugs render the dance suspect, especially
amongst fundamentalist Christians (see Pype 2006).
These ndombolo dances are very popular, but they should
only be enacted in bars or at parties, preferably not in front of
elders or authority figures (parents, guardians, teachers, politicians, etc.). They should not be performed in other social
contexts, precisely because they are sexually suggestive and
thus unacceptable if performed in a social context where
there is a difference in authority and power, since that would
imply a transgression of accepted norms of respect. Thus we
understand how these young ndombolo dancers generated
shame during the parade. This embarrassment sharply contradicted the pride that the state was trying to mobilize.
The dance choreography, and the transgression of a social
space in which the dance should not be performed, were not
the only aspects with political meaning. The feeling of shame
that was mobilized through the dances, with the intention of
creating such feelings on the part of the government, also
conveys a strong political message. According to Williams
(1993), at the root of shame is a loss of power. Shame is a
reaction in realization of this loss. It was exactly what these
children tried to do during these dances: they tried to embarrass, to shame the state, thus showing that the state has no
power over them and the other citizens.
Interestingly, many Kinois felt ashamed about the behavior

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of the children in front of the seated president. According to

many, one still needs to show respect for the leader, even if
one does not support his leadership. Yet, as mentioned earlier, at the same time there was also much laughter when
talking about this event. Such mirth seemed to convey a kind
of suppressed approval of the boys acts. They had done
something no other social group would dare to. So many
Kinois wanted to distance themselves, on the one hand, from
the street children who behaved inappropriately, but also
from the state representatives, because, as was argued, they
are not properly fed by them. One would repeatedly hear
tozolia te, tozoyoka nzala (we are not eating, we are hungry), employing the powerful food idiom which underpins
appropriate leadership in African societies (Schatzberg 2001).
The performance of the ndombolo-inspired dances was thus
first and foremost a moral reversal, which expressed a fundamental critique on those in power.
It is not surprising that street children performed these
bad dances. Street children constitute the most marginalized
social group of the city. People do not like such children, who
are known to be violent, to steal and to commit other crimes.
They can be equated with social dirt or matter out of place
(see De Boeck and Honwana 2005:9, Geenen 2009). In addition, in recent years the shgue have become the states
other. Especially in the run-up to 30 June 2010, the citys
authorities organized hunts, at irregular times, for the street
children. Policemen and soldiers arrived at places where
shgue were known to gather, and imprisoned them for a few
weeks in Kinshasa before sending them to the interior, where
they were either detained in re-education centers or released
but left to fend for themselves. The urban government had
made this one of their key actions in the cleansing of the city
before the international community was to arrive in Kinshasa
for the Independence Festivities. The arbitrariness of the
arrests and the violent treatment by the soldiers and policemen obviously produced anger among the remaining or
escaped street children. One could say that, on June 30, the
shgue took revenge for the arrests of their fellows and
friends. Yet, the message the boys behavior conveyed also
bore a collectively shared meaning. As mentioned earlier, Kinshasa is known to be hostile to Joseph Kabila, who is accused
of not being a Congolese national, of not speaking their language (Lingala), and of not being a good leader. These street
children were speaking the voice of a large part of the Kinois
community.
It is exactly the social liminality the street children occupy
which allowed them to critique society in most powerful
ways, using counter-violence and their bodies i.e. not using
intellectual or political rhetoric. Although they also face heavy
repression from the state, they seem to be able to express
the desire for a better functioning government, even when
their actions stir anxiety and fear among the urbanites. For
example in July 2006 shgue attacked the premises of Pasteur
Kutinho and Werrason, two leading figures of, respectively,
Kinshasas religious and music world, thus (violently) expressing their discontent with these individuals overt alignment
with the president. Those children have nothing to lose and
can react in ways that ordinary people cannot. Their social
marginalization makes them strong against the state.

65

To conclude: disrupted ties between the citizens

and the state
The decentralization of the authority of the Congolese state
also became apparent in the evening of the Independence
Festivities. The Comit du 50enaire had arranged two popular
concerts: The music band of Werrason was scheduled to perform in front of the Parliament, while JB Mpiana, another
leading figure of the Congolese music scene, had been commissioned to hold a concert in Ndjili, one of Kinshasas most
dense communities. This must be read against the long history of Congolese states involvement with the politics of
sentiment and arts. As mentioned above, since Mobutus
time, music bands have been charged with praise singing for
the leader. Both Laurent and Joseph Kabila have continued
this intimate connection with local musicians. Drawing on the
musicians popularity among the larger audience, rulers purchased affective and emotional investment from their subjects through the commissioning of songs that would circulate
all over the country.
Yet, both concerts were cancelled on June 30, the national
day itself. According to rumours, a disagreement on payment
for the musicians, who are usually not on speaking terms, was
the reason for both of them not to show up. The reaction of
many Kinois was one of disappointment, but they all took the
side of the musicians, arguing that the state authorities should
spend more money on popular events that include Kinois,
instead of paying for corruption or for window dressing.
The no-show on the evening of June 30 is a significant
token signaling that the current Congolese government
invests insufficiently in national binding and bonding. In particular, the longstanding privileged mediators of national unity
the Congolese musicians have not been convinced to participate in the production of the nation. If these mediators are
not included, then there is no performance, and there is no
public. The non-event of these popular concerts was significant since, again, the Kinois were excluded from actively
being engaged in the Independence festivities. While the celebration ceremonies on the morning of June 30 were understood to have been aimed at the international community, the
two concerts were the only events scheduled that day which
explicitly had a Kinois public in mind.
The material presented above has made explicit the particular role of aesthetic performances in the making and reimagining of the Congolese nation. Affective audiences were
envisioned by the state, but, during the event, positions
between producer and audience shifted as moments of
nation binding were interrupted by chaos or were even cancelled. This manifests a serious failure in the binding of the
state with the ordinary people. While more thorough investigations of national Congolese publics need to be carried out,
this article hints at a few dimensions of the constitution and
the imagination of the Congolese national collectivity. First,
while the state envisages one homogeneous public that
shares in the same feelings of pride for the nation, this has
obviously not been brought about. Rather, the national public is constantly questioned, and constituted along different
lines of interest and opinion about the leader. As mentioned,
most of the Kinois did not show up at the parade space on
June 30; in addition, most people do not share the sentiments
of pride that the posters and billboards should evoke. Sec-

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66
ond, the material also brings to the fore the fragmentation of
the public present during performances that should glorify
the nation. While it has been argued before that performances co-constitute their audiences, the data on the ndombolo
performances support the idea that public rituals in contemporary, complex societies cannot be approached in a Durkheimian manner, but, rather, that the analysis should also have
room for negativity, contestation and conflict (see Arnaut
2013).
That is not to say that there are no nationalist sentiments
among Kinois. As a matter of fact, there are. What is crucial is
that the Kinois do not agree with the spectacles of the nation
as performed via state-led organizations. This does not deny
the love for the nation, rather it signals the incapacity of the
current state to produce apt venues for nationhood. Congolese sense of national belonging, as many have claimed, is a
heritage of Mobutus regime, who invested much in the
mobilization of patriotism, in particular through the staging of
cultural spectacles.
While a particular image of the nation might be projected,
the whole community does not always share the sentiments
or the attachments to the nation. Onlookers can disconnect
from the festivities, although they do contemplate them.
Emotions that are intended to be transmitted to the audience
through particular performances do not always attain their
goal. Rather, the ties between the audience and the producers constitute the basis of spectatorship and allow, facilitate
or hamper and, at worst, block the transmission of affects.
While the Kinois shared a national sentiment among themselves, as was expressed in concerns about the right representation of their country towards the international
community and also in dreams about their future, the political
elite obviously did not belong to the national community in
the way in which Kinois imagined and experienced it. This
could be the most fundamental drama of the contemporary
postcolonial Kinois society.

Acknowledgements
Fieldwork for this article was carried out in 2009 and 2010, in
the context of a Newton International Fellowship (20092011), funded by the British Academy, and carried out at the
Centre of West African Studies (University of Birmingham,
United Kingdom). I am indebted to the journalists of the public and private TV stations in Kinshasa, with whom I worked
for more than 7 months. I also thank the different sections of
the Comite du 50enaire for their hospitality during fieldwork,
in particular Prof. E Ziem Ndaywel and Prof. D. Sabakinu. I
am extremely grateful to Vanessa Petzold, an MA student at
the University of Mainz, who was carrying out fieldwork in
the Comite du 50enaire in 2010, and with whom I have conducted interviews, shared fieldnotes, and exchanged data,
impressions, and preliminary analysis. Pedro Monaville and
Peter Lambertz were wonderful colleagues during that
period of fieldwork, and were actually in the audience on
June 30. Their narratives in the aftermath of the event have
also shaped my analysis. The paper was presented at the
Point Sud workshop (Bamako, January 2012), organized by
Carola Lentz and Anne-Marie Brandstetter (University of
Mainz), and at the departmental seminar of Anthropology and
Sociology at the University of the Western Cape (March

2012, invited by Heike Becker). I wish to thank the colleagues

of the Centre of West African Studies, the participants in the
Bamako workshop and the University of the Western Cape
seminar, Pedro Monaville, Carola Lentz and the anonymous
reviewers for carefully reading previous versions of this article and commenting on them.

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