Men, mines and masculinities: the lives and practices of artisanal miners in Lwambo (Katanga province, DR Congo) (2024)

Work and Masculinity in Katanga's Artisanal Mines

Africa Spectrum, 2014

This article, based on 16 months of anthropological fieldwork between 2005 and 2012, examines the relationship between work and masculinity among artisanal miners, or creuseurs, in Katanga, the southeastern province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It argues that men's involvement in artisanal mining should be considered not only as an economic survival strategy but also as an attempt to experiment with new ways of being a man in a context of economic crisis and changing gender relations. Furthermore, the article criticizes the tendency to downplay or underestimate the complexity and diversity of processes of masculine identity construction in Africa's artisanal-mining areas. In order to do justice to the intricacy of these processes, the article proposes using concepts and insights from the field of masculinity studies and distinguishing between a levelling and a differentiating trend in artisanal miners’ masculinity practices.

Mobilizing the past: creuseurs, precarity and the colonizing structure in the Congo Copperbelt

It was 2pm. The intense sun that afternoon made the fifteen-minute wait at the city centre of Likasi in Haut-Katanga province of Congo all the more tedious for Papa Kabongo, my research assistant, and me. We were waiting for some informants for an interview and they had not appeared. Half an hour passed and we spotted two brand-new Bajaj motorbikes whiz past us and turn around rather abruptly. The riders were both without helmets but they wore some fancy sunglasses. The blue bike came right up to me. The rider slowly lifted his glasses and with a cheeky grin said, 'Timoté, ni je?' ('Timoté, how is it?'). It was Francis, my informant. I was perplexed, unsure of whether I should comment on his looks, that suspicious grin, or the flippant greeting. Francis knew and could see that I looked visibly surprised because, only the day before, Papa Kabongo and I had stumbled into him in an artisanal mine near the city of Likasi where I was conducting my fieldwork. Then, he wore shorts soiled with mud and a tired T-shirt browned by dust and spoke to us about the Sunday meeting while standing knee-deep in brown murky water while overseeing his copper ore being washed. At one moment, he would be speaking calmly to us and at the next he would be flailing his arms and hollering at some teenage boys at the nearby stream to hurry up with the rinsing of his malachite rocks. Francis was a creuseur. That Sunday afternoon when I met him one might have mistaken him for a sapeur. 1 He had donned a Yankees baseball cap, aviator sunglasses, blue jeans, a Chelsea Football Club jersey, moccasins, and, just for effect, two replica Seiko watches – one on each wrist. Time obviously mattered to this guy, I mused. So, why was he late? The momentary shock of seeing Francis sapé wore off. Jules, Francis's friend and business partner, approached me. He laughed as he came off his bike in his black three-piece suit and greeted us in the respectful Katangese manner of bringing our heads to touch each other from side to side. I realized that their laughter and smiles were a response to what they must have perceived to be my exaggerated sense of surprise. I am sure they were wondering why it was so strange to me that they were à la mode, akin to the male dancers of the Congolese pop-music sensation Werrason. 2 Of course, they did not say that but they knew they had surprised me, and, from their smiles, I gathered that this pleased them. With their arrival

Abject Pensioners and Entrapped Youth: narratives of decline and the multiplicity of times among generations in the Congo Copperbelt

This article looks at narratives of economic decline among two generations of mineworkers in Katanga province, DR Congo: the pensioners of the industrial mining giant, Gécamines, and creuseurs, young men working as artisanal diggers. The author analyzes the “structures of feeling” informing the lives of individuals in these two generations of mineworkers as each deals with the material and social effects of industrial decline and the subsequent liberalization of the mining sector in Congo. He shows that the shared thoughts and sentiments of contemporary decline reflect how individuals in each mineworker generation experience their social emplacement and “entanglement in time”. Based on his informants’ narratives of marginalization that come in the wake of the liberalization of mining sector, the author argues that social decline in Congo confounds the strict scholarly framings of periodicity that foreground rupture – rather than continuity – between the pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial eras.

Advice on pre-terms of reference for the Post Conflict Impact Assessment for the Reconstruction of the Mining Sector in Katanga- Democratic Republic of Congo

2010

The report relates to the assessment of the Katanga mining sector. The specific objective is to define the conditions and modalitiesin which the development of the mining sector in Katanga can contribute to poverty reduction and to political and civil stability. An importantadditional objective is to identify approaches that can be useful for the development of the mining sector in DRC as a whole. Primary focus of the assessment is on industrial mines of the base metals: copper, cobalt, zinc, while small scale mining will also get attention. The study is mainly geared towards assessing the development perspectives for the sector, the conditions for management of the sector so that it contributes to sustainable development, to improvement of environmental governance, to poverty reduction and to peace

Child labour, agency and family dynamics

Childhood, 2013

In the last three decades, the development of the artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) sector has been increasing in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), bringing more and more urban families into this flourishing business sector, and among them, children. This article aims to look at the often unconceivable, and as a result neglected, social agency of children even when they are involved in activities which are, in the international legislation on children’s rights, categorized as one of the worst forms of child labour. To do so, it relies on the results of a socio-anthropological collective research project on children’s mining activities which was carried out in a small locality called La Ruashi in the city of Lubumbashi (Province of Katanga). The article aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of these child mining-related activities by looking at different spheres of social relations within which children are embedded. Examining the set of social relations that child...

Qui n'a rien... Ne risque rien!

Topique, 2009

Natural Resource Governance, Boom and Bust: The Case of Kolwezi in the DRC

2009

This paper considers the effects of the successive booms and busts in the mining industry and the commodity markets on the management of natural resources in Kolwezi. It focus on the commodities boom that ran from 2004–2008, and the bust that began in 2008, which appears, at the time of writing, early 2009, to be far from its conclusion. Field research conducted in November 2008 revealed that the booms and busts of commodity markets and the mining industry have presented not only severe challenges for natural resource governance in Kolwezi, but opportunities for reform. Yet, as has been well documented, the modern Congolese state exhibits weak capacity to manage any aspects of the country’s mineral wealth. It remains dangerously ill-equipped to respond to either the opportunities or the challenges. A B O U T T H E A U T H O R Gregory Mthembu-Salter is a researcher, author and journalist on Africa’s political economy and has served on the United Nations Panel of Experts on the Democr...

‘C’était bien à l’Époque’: Work and Leisure among Retrenched Mineworkers in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

African Studies, 2023

2015, ‘When women support the patriarchal family. The dynamics of marriage in a Gécamines mining camp (Katanga province, DR Congo)’, Journal of historical sociology, 28 (2)

Based on ethnographic research among the ex-Gécamines workers of Panda (Likasi, DR Congo), this article studies the dynamics of the spousal relationship in a post-industrial context that has been long characterized by paternalism. The results of this research suggest that, though men and women living in this mining community talk about their spousal relationships by invoking the ideal of Christian marriage promoted during the colonial period, in practice such relationships faced important changes following Congolese independence in 1960. The nationalization and subsequent dramatic decline of Gécamines caused changes which directly affected three central dimensions of the colonial family model, namely monogamy, the ideal of domesticity, and male authority. If men and women continue to reference this model, it is because, in times of growing poverty, it allows spouses to remind one other of their respective duties as docile housewives and responsible husbands, and to command respect as virtuous Christian families in the local community.

Conversion to Conservation: Beliefs and practices of the conservation community in the Congo Basin (1960-present

PhD dissertation, 2016

Present day nature conservation in Central Africa is shaped by Western scientific concepts of the environment as well as individuals‘ values and ideas about nature. Anthropology has contributed to the understanding of current conflict and tension over land and resource use and the development and transformation of environmental discourses, frequently adopting applied and advocacy perspectives that highlight the unequal distribution of power among stakeholders. Most studies focus on the impact of conservation and other regulatory activities on local populations, providing limited insight into the culture of conservation and how this permeates every day practices, decisions, and attitudes. This study aims to fill some of these gaps in knowledge by focusing on conservationists working in Central Africa as a group that shares beliefs and practices related to nature and protected areas. It focuses on different moments in the lives of conservationists, from their early contact with nature, to events that confirmed their commitment. It explores fieldwork as a rite of passage that validates conservationists‘ membership in their professional community. It looks at how science is used to assert conservation‘s validity and authority, while conservation activities are not always built on scientific evidence but shaped according to values and perceived priorities. This study explores, through ethnographic and other qualitative methods, the different elements that make up the conservation community in Central Africa. In the tradition of applied Anthropology, it has as its intended audience not only anthropologists interested in conservation and environment, but conservationists themselves, hoping to provoke relevant discussions on the role of beliefs and values in present day conservation.