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

ABSTRACT

This article discusses the significance of work and leisure in (post)colonial Lubumbashi as it emerges from the narratives of ex-workers of the Union Minière du Haut-Katanga (UMHK) and its successor, Gécamines. In the ex-mineworkers’ narratives, kazi (work) refers to a period when employment stood for prosperity, reflected in material benefits such as housing, food, wages, healthcare provision, education, prestige and, not least, leisure activities. The ex-mineworkers in question are members of the Collectif des ex-agents de la Gécamines, who all lost their jobs in 2003 in a deal with the World Bank to save the run-down company. Following a severe and sustained economic decline in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which began before the workers lost their jobs and continued for a long time after, the ex-mineworkers speak of this work life and of the attendant leisure activities with an immense nostalgia for an ‘object of loss’. This article examines the narratives of loss of income and the subsequent radical redefinition of leisure – which is also seen as a loss – paying particular attention to the ways in which the ex-mineworkers link these matters to notions of masculinity.

KEYWORDS:

• Union Minière du Haut-Katanga
• Katanga
• leisure
• nostalgia
• masculinity
• mineworkers

Introduction

In 1964, the Union Minière du Haut-Katanga’s (UMHK) company journal, Mwana Shaba published – as in most of its issues – news regarding the football results in its sports section, reporting on the different teams composed of company staff (Mwana Shaba, 1964, No. 12, 11). A photograph of a football team that visited the town of Kipushi for a game appears at the bottom of the page on the right. As the caption reveals, the team of mineurs (mineworkers), as the players were described, visited the mining facilities in Kipushi before the game took place. The photograph was taken because they arrived as a football team, and the teams that were playing were usually shown on that page in Mwana Shaba. However, they are shown wearing protective clothes and white helmets for the visit to the mining site. The photograph is therefore not that different from the one on the following page, where a photograph illustrates a report on a company delegation during an underground visit at a mining site in Jadotville. They are also wearing protective clothes and white helmets, the same outfit as the members of the football team. Mwana Shaba thus depicted workers during working hours and workers who were members of a football team in their leisure time in the same manner.

Leisure activities did not exist as an activity per se, but only as part of the work-life concept in line with the Belgian colonial state’s welfare activities.¹ As has been widely discussed, leisure cannot be conceptualised without reference to work (Akyeampong & Ambler 2002; Atieno Odhiambo 2001; Thomas 1964; Thompson 1967). The starting point for this article is that the company, which took care of all aspects of life from birth to death, also defined leisure activities. I use the entanglement of work and leisure as one lens to look at company paternalism without the aim to discuss company paternalism in all its complexity.

Leisure activities were provided in an allocated area due to the residential segregation in a city that existed solely because of the mining activities. Donatien Dibwe dia Mwembu (2007, 138) recounts, that the city and work were inseparable. Lubumbashi was no different to many colonial cities; you needed a job contract in order to be able to stay there. The unemployed had no place and the formal sector reigned supreme. To ensure a stable workforce, the company kept an eye on workers’ efficiency during work, but they also tried to make sure that workers used their time off for healthy leisure activities. As Phyllis Martin (1996, 7) points out, leisure as an abstract issue ‘is most powerful in the minds of those who seek to impose certain activities or to structure time and space’. Hence, the UMHK structured work and leisure both temporally and spatially. In terms of the former, the most obvious and frequently recounted evidence by the interviewees was the stroke of the gong that could be heard throughout the Cité Gécamines, announcing working hours and the change of shift. As for the latter, the company structured work and leisure in a spatial sense, as the company provided jobs, housing and leisure activities on company-owned land; each activity had its defined area under the company’s sphere of control.

The introduction of the work and time off rhythm therefore profoundly affected the urban mentality of Lubumbashi. The following quote illustrates the close link between the history of the UMHK and the city:

[T]he town lived according to the rhythm of the Union Minière/Gecamines which regulated the lives of its personnel from birth to death: the company housed and fed them, sent missions to the country side to seek spouses for the worker, educated their children, planned their leisure and so on […] A proverb stated that ‘the Union Minière [or alternatively: salaried work] is the father and the mother’ (Petit & Mulumbwa 2005, 470).

This article focuses on the perception of kazi (work) and leisure by workers and by the mining company. The notions of these two closely intertwined concepts reveal the norms and values that workers associate with them.

The ex-mineworkers who are the focus of my research project lost their jobs in 2003 in a deal with the World Bank to save the run-down company. They were all born between the 1930s and 1950s, began their careers in the late 1950s to early 1970s and experienced a worker’s life that was characterised by the control exerted by the mining company over all aspects of life. As a result, the colonial state and the company also defined leisure activities, which served primarily as a means of surveillance. However, after the severe and sustained economic decline in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that began before they lost their jobs and continued for a long time after, the ex-mineworkers speak of this work life and of the attendant leisure activities with an immense nostalgia for an ‘object of loss’ (Worby & Ally 2013, 468).

However, one of the workers’ main concerns is often only mentioned implicitly: their current lack of ability to fulfil male norms and behavioural patterns. I will therefore link their perception of work and leisure to their understanding of masculinity. The benefits and privileges granted to the workers and their wives were shaped by assumptions regarding their respective gender roles. ‘Several generations of Katangese boys grew up with the idea that, in order to be recognized and treated as real men, it was absolutely essential for them to get access to paid work, or kazi. They were taught that men’s dignity and respectability depended to a very large extent on their ability to secure the livelihoods of their household members’ (Cuvelier 2014, 8).

When I refer to the term masculinity, I do not intend to open up a discussion on gender in general, but am referring to ‘cluster(s) of norms, values and behavioural patterns expressing explicit and implicit expectations of how men should act and represent themselves to others’ (Lindsay & Miescher 2003, 4). However, I will limit this aspect to the interviewees’ subjectivities and thus to the discourse on norms, values and behavioural patterns as expressed by them.

I base my arguments on two types of data: firstly, on the interviews and group discussions I conducted during research stays in Lubumbashi in 2017, 2018 and 2019, and secondly, on archival material from the UMHK/Gécamines/Umicore located in the State Archives of Belgium in Brussels. In the archives I focused on the annual reports as well as Mwana Shaba because my interest was on the company’s agents’ voices that shaped the discussions about all domains linked to workers.

After my interviews in 2017 and 2018, I felt a need to discuss my preliminary results of the research in the archives as well as my reading of the interviews with those involved – the ex-mineworkers. I wanted to share concepts and their modifications, as reflected in interviews and archival sources with the interview partners. Secondly, I aimed at a collaborative analysis of the changing conceptualizations of the topics addressed in the discourse. I thus followed the approach of shared authority.²

From my position as a researcher from the outside, writing from a privileged vantage point I will not presume to have done my research with the naïve aim to think that members of the Collectif des ex-agents de la Gécamines (described further below) need me to raise their voices to successfully get the compensations. But thinking about their lacking power to transform history into justice raised my awareness for the research approach and process.

Only after I had been working on my research topic for several months and following my initial stays in Lubumbashi did it suddenly occur to me that the UMHK not only organised work-related matters, but also other aspects of the workers’ lives, and that experiences from that time had influenced the workers’ perceptions of work and leisure today. Articles from Mwana Shaba revealed the company’s various strategies for shaping their workforce, and sometimes even – through the words of the editors – the voices of workers in the letters to the editors.

The article begins by providing a short description of the Collectif des ex-agents de la Gécamines, the group that is the focus of this research, and their nostalgia for the good old times. This is linked to a glorification of the mining company, due to the fact that since losing their jobs, their economic situation has remained precarious. The subsequent part focuses on the conceptualisation of work by the mining company and by the workers, and the final part discusses leisure as a corollary of work and the interviewees’ accounts of the good aspects of life, such as enjoying a beer, film screenings or sporting events, and sufficient means to keep a deuxième bureau.³

The Collectif des ex-agents de la Gécamines

This article focuses on the members of the Collectif des ex-agents de la Gécamines. This association was founded with the primary aim of fighting the World Bank. In the early 2000s, Gécamines was only ‘a shadow of the former mining and industrial empire of the Union Minière du Haut-Katanga’ (Rubbers 2017, 190). In the 1990s, the mining industry began to decline rapidly. In 2001, Joseph Kabila came to power, and two pressing issues led the DRC and the World Bank to cooperate again. Firstly, to support the peace process, and secondly, the urgent need for the DRC to re-establish the national economy. Within this context, the liberalisation of the mining sector was crucial to the World Bank. The company therefore had to attract private foreign investors in order to save the industry in Katanga (Rubbers 2010, 330; Rubbers 2017, 190). The World Bank launched a reform programme with the aim of allowing the company a new start, and the Operation Départ Volontaire (ODV) was created. This scheme sought to cut the number of employees from roughly 24 000 to 14 000, whereby:

voluntary redundancy would be available to all employees with more than 25 years’ service on 31 December 2002. In return for accepting the termination of their contract of employment by “mutual agreement”, all those who took redundancy would receive “in full settlement” a lump sum lower than the legal minimum. (Rubbers 2010, 331)

As the workers had not been paid since October 2001, they were financially depleted and 10 655 workers agreed to ‘leave voluntarily’. Workers received between US$ 2 000 and US$ 4 000. In the context of this scheme, former employees established the Collectif des ex-agents de la Gécamines with the aim of demanding the full payment of all wage arrears and other benefits in kind. The association worked with two trade unions and they organised several protest actions in Kinshasa. However, in 2011, ‘when the World Bank published its final answer, it became clear that ex-Gécamines workers would not receive full payment of all wage arrears and other benefits in kind’ (Rubbers 2017, 192).

I conducted qualitative interviews and group discussions with members of the subgroup of the Collectif in the Cité Gécamines in Lubumbashi. In most cases, their parents (mainly their fathers) already worked for the UMHK. Most of the interviewees therefore grew up in the housing compounds provided by the company. Approximately three-quarters of them live in the Cité Gécamines, as they are former blue-collar workers or were the wives of workers, while the others, members of the senior staff, live in the neighbourhood of Makomeno.⁴

Within the scope of an umbrella project, my aim was to analyse the housing tied to employment that was provided by the UMHK and Gécamines for its workers, roughly covering the period from the 1940s to the 1970s, as housing provided by the most important employer in the region was at the centre of the mining company’s measures to control the workers. The material found in the company archives revealed that work and housing were closely linked to other aspects of the life of a worker, leisure being one of them. After reading the UMHK’s annual reports, I was convinced that the company’s attempts to shape and control the mindset of the workers – during the colonial and postcolonial period – must have left traces. Hence, it would have been understandable if workers had developed a sense of hatred for the company. My understanding, as James Ferguson (2006, 172) puts it in discussing an article by an anonymous Zambian journalist, that:

[o]ne places the blame for African poverty and suffering squarely on the neocolonial exploiter; the other praises “Europe” and appeals pathetically for paternalistic neocolonial benevolence. One rouses us in our accustomed anthropological anti-imperialism; the other makes us squirm.

After I began the interviews, I realised that the participants talked of their experiences in the past with an immense nostalgia. ‘C’était bien à l’époque! (It was good at that time!)’ was the most common phrase when talking about former times, referring to the years prior to 2003.⁵ Nostalgic remembering stood out in every interview and group discussion. The UMHK was the parental figure. The loss of work was ‘was experienced as a form of betrayal since the company had reneged on its implicit colonial social contract to be “baba,” “father,” and “mama,” “mother,” to its workers’ (Makori 2019, 120).

In his book Native Nostalgia, Jacob Dlamini (2010) explains that the feeling of nostalgia confirms that people’s lives have changed in comparison to the time to which they are referring – though not in the way that is often imagined. The author assumes that nostalgia is ‘a sentiment of loss and displacement’ and ‘it is about present anxieties refracted through the prism of the past’ (Dlamini 2010, 16). This sentiment usually emerges in moments when people feel they are drifting in a world that appears to be out of their control. This is certainly the case for the ex-workers who are the focus of this study, as they painfully refer to the good life of the past. Therefore, I see the narrative of the glorious past from the members of the ODV as a way of evoking their ‘object of loss’ (Worby & Ally 2013, 468). These narratives should be associated less with life in general and more with the different aspects and facets that constituted a worker’s life. I thus consider ‘C’était bien à l’époque!’ as a concomitant feature and a starting point for analysing how the world was interpreted and shaped on the basis of different facets expressed in specific texts that represent the knowledge and thinking of certain times.

The interviewees expressed their feeling of being powerless and seeing themselves as waiting since 2003. They were fighting for compensation from the World Bank and felt they were in a rather passive role due to the lack of opportunity to act. The crucial point to which the ex-workers referred was the loss of their jobs, although the months prior to this had already been difficult, as their wages were no longer being paid. The feeling of being well taken care of was of the utmost importance. The nostalgic narrative of the past is based on the general perception de ne pas être abandonné (of not being abandoned). Very similar to the mining companies in Katanga Ferguson (1999; 2006, 36) describes the mining industry in the Zambian Copperbelt. He argues that the mining companies had to provide housing, medical care, schools etc. Thus, the mining business was more than just the extraction, it was a large and long-term social project that he describes as ‘socially thick’. Hence, the lack of the provision of this infrastructure is offering only a ‘socially thin’ situation. A situation that describes the life of the ex-mineworkers in Lubumbashi (but also of the workers still employed in an industry that demands less manual work due to technical evolution). For the ODVs, the loss of work did not generate the same life or leisure. The change in living conditions for the general population was not only a topic of conversation among the ex-mineworkers who experienced these events, but also among verbal artists in Lubumbashi. Sando Marteau is a performing artist living in Lubumbashi and:

one of the very few Congolese poets who consistently employ Swahili for their compositions. Full of melancholy tones, Sando Marteau’s beautiful, deep songs speak out the pain and malaise of contemporary Congolese society (Rettová 2018, 333).

Alena Rettová (2013, 90) provides us with the Swahili lyrics of Marteau’s song Union Minière du Haut Katanga. In English, the first stanza rings as follows:

She was the mother of all Congolese, the mother of the children of Katanga, a companion for the whole world, everyone found his place in it.

The ‘mother’ reference is used synonymously with the mining company that offered a place to everyone and took care of her ‘children’. The reference to ‘not being abandoned’ therefore appears in this contemporary song, just as it is present in the workers’ narratives. The second stanza describes how ‘the Congo is in tears’, followed by the reference to exploitation with the question ‘for whose benefit?’ in the third stanza. In the stanza that follows, criticism of today’s mining companies is conveyed through ‘stranger ate what was on the table […] while the Congolese picked up the crumbs on the ground’, and the fifth stanza describes how the ‘companies exhumed all the riches’ while the people are now ‘left the excavations without fish’. The nature of the problem described corresponds to the perceptions of the ex-workers I interviewed. They explained how, nowadays, the wealth is taken by the company, which is in foreign hands, while there are no benefits left for them. In the sixth stanza of the song, Marteau asks about the whereabouts of absent leaders:

Our elected representatives, our parliamentarians, where are you?

Leaders who lead us, where are you?

With us, it’s as if we did not have a home;

with us, it’s like being perched on top of a tree.

Our riches are as if they were not ours,

our riches are as if they belonged to someone else.

We do not find ourselves in them,

we do not end up in mining companies,

we do not find ourselves in them.

A similar perception of a lack of leadership was evident in the interviews, where statements were often made that ‘we need a leader’ (or, literally, a driver). In Marteau’s song, as well as among the members of the Collectif des ex-agents de la Gécamines, the UMHK (the former mining company) was glorified, while criticism was aimed at the state enterprise, Gécamines, which succeeded the UMHK. The politicians and leaders of the day were also criticised, as they were held responsible for the economic decline.

Sando Marteau published another version of the same song: Mama wa Wacongomani (Mother of the Congolese). In this version, ‘mother’ also serves as a synonym for the UMHK. Many of the verses are similar, with the second version including a verse that praises the mother for providing infrastructure and a good life in general (Rettová 2013, 88-89). The provision of infrastructure, decent wages and good conditions for the Congolese and foreigners alike corresponds to the sentiment of ‘C’était bien à l’époque!’ expressed by members of the ODV. The commonly used proverb Union Minière [kaji] njo baba, njo mama (the Union Minière [or alternatively: salaried work] is the father and the mother) (Petit & Mulumbwa 2005, 470) thus reads like the abstract of this song, reflecting the population’s narrative of the situation in a very concise way: the company was – and still serves – as a parental figure. Sammy Baloji’s art works take a prominent place in Bogumil Jewsiewicki’s reflections of local collective memory and popular culture. Baloji works with a heritage that does not belong to him ‘because it was written from the gaze of elsewhere and refers to the generations of their fathers and grandfathers’ (Jewsiewicki 2006, 6). With these ‘ruins’ that Baloji processes in his work, he focuses on replacing old metaphors by new ones with the purpose to reconstruct what is missing today (Jewsiewicki 2006, 7). This artist’s work displays, as Marteau’s songs, the nostalgia that permeates today’s society.

The nostalgia for experiences in the past and the shared sense of today’s suffering creates the feeling of a common bond between members of the ODV. All interviewees eventually referred to themselves as je suis un/une départ volontaire or on est Gécaminois. The first phrase describes a person affected by the World Bank scheme, conveying the cynical attitude that no one left the company voluntarily, but rather signed the contract because they had no other choice as they waited for unpaid wages.⁶ They use the term introduced by the World Bank for the scheme that was launched in the early 2000s. Être Gécaminois is a concise way of expressing the life workers lost and the memories they share. In this context, they explained the difference between a départ volontaire and a Gécaminois: hakuna heshima (there is no [more] respect). In reference to the future, they stated that they would be anciens combattants (veterans) and made no reference to another group.

Work, or rather the loss of the job, was thus decisive for the self-perception of today’s ex-miners. Therefore, I will briefly outline the concept of kazi (work) because work is not only the precondition for leisure but also the basis for the workers’ identity and notion of respect.

Kazi (work)

Kazi, the Swahili term for ‘work’, links an employee with the employer, while kuwa mfanyakazi describes ‘being a worker’. The workers’ nostalgia for the good times linked to kazi is discussed below. Their painful longing for the old days refers to their former employment. Kazi includes more than what we might think of as work, that is, mental or physical activity as a means of earning income; likewise ‘worker’ encompasses more than being ‘just’ an employee, especially one that carries out manual or non-executive work. Work and being a worker meant being taken care of by the employer, as the interviewees explained.

Johannes Fabian (1973) discusses major components of the semantic field of the Swahili term kazi (labour) and links work not only to an activity itself, but also to a relationship between an employee and an employer. The term kazi also made its way into Swahili terminology for the weekdays (Dibwe dia Mwembu 2017, 162). For instance, the UMHK distributed the weekly food rations (mposho) to the workers on Saturdays, so Saturday came to be known as siku ya mposho.

Dibwe dia Mwembu (2017, 163) argues that at the very beginning, kazi was on a level with slavery because the living conditions were harsh, accidents were numerous and the morbidity and mortality rates were high. The first subterranean mine in Kipushi was regarded as a tomb. Dibwe dia Mwembu (2017, 164) further argues that during the Second World War, the population and number of workers increased, but so did the morbidity rate due to accidents, probably also because the legally specified minimum days off were not respected. A noticeable improvement in working conditions characterised the years following World War II and especially the 1950s, mainly due to the technological evolution that reduced manual work.

Not only did the working conditions improve, but also the housing situation and daily living conditions. Their wages allowed workers to buy goods that represented what was held up by the colony as worth striving for. Dibwe dia Mwembu (2008, 115; 2017, 165), for instance, talks about the fact that workers sent photographs of their new lives to their home villages. Popular image motifs showed men sitting around a table, chatting or eating or with a beer in their hand to show them relaxing after their hard work, and women were shown in fashionable dresses. The families were depicted next to items bought with their newly accumulated wealth, such as bikes, phonographs or sewing machines.

Around that time, people began using the saying Kazi ndjo baba, ndjo mama (work is my father, work is my mother) (Dibwe 2017, 165). The noun kazi was often replaced by the name of the company and my interview partners referred to this metaphor frequently.

The economic prosperity of the company enabled workers to satisfy all the needs of a family, hence workers gained respect not only from the company and their co-workers, but especially from their wives and family members. Kazi was therefore a social promotion and offered a certain identity in an industrial world (Dibwe dia Mwembu 2017, 166).

The UMHK/Gécamines provided leisure activities for the workers, as will be discussed further below. Leisure was therefore a social activity that depended on employment.

In 1967, economic changes led to a crisis in the Congo, and especially for Gécamines. Nevertheless, as Dibwe dia Mwembu (2008, 120) points out, Gécamines paid wages on a regular basis. However, these wages were insufficient as, for instance, canteens no longer offered food at preferential prices, although the company did still provide healthcare. When the UMHK was nationalised in 1967 (becoming Gécamines), the company experienced several prosperous years until 1975. The economy then declined and was the victim of misappropriations by the Mobutu regime (Dibwe dia Mwembu 2008, 121ff; Rubbers 2015, 213). The Gécamines empire began to collapse in the turmoil of the early 1990s and was not able to meet its financial obligations. Workers were no longer paid regularly. It was at this point that the former meaning of kazi began to fade away.

The nostalgia of workers for kazi thus refers to a period when employment equalled prosperity, reflected in material and physical items such as housing, food, wages, healthcare provision, education, leisure activities and, above all, prestige.

The following section focuses on leisure activities. I will discuss extracts of the mining company’s annual reports, as well as excerpts from Mwana Shaba, the company’s forum for expressing its opinion on various topics, in order to highlight the company’s perspective of leisure as a corollary of work in the years when business was prosperous. These extracts will illustrate the conditions familiar to interview partners from the beginning of their working careers until the economic decline. Since then, nostalgia has overpowered them and serves as an essential survival strategy.

Beer, cinema, sport and deuxième bureau

In the 1951 annual report, UMHK stated that to celebrate the company’s 50th birthday, it had decided to create social foyers. As well as providing an area in which to educate women, the foyers also served as a space for leisure activities.⁷ Therefore, as mentioned in this annual report, the foyers also had to include a room for shows, one for meetings, a library, a stadium and a swimming pool. Furthermore, the report mentions the cercles sportifs, which had already been created. In his comparative study, Hikabwa Chipande (2021) portrays the importance of football on the Zambian and Katangese copper belts from the 1930s to the present and highlights that football was identified as a leading leisure activity by the companies. He stresses the belief of the UMHK in the importance of workers health that ‘was captured by the UMHK motto, good health, good spirit and high productivity’ (Chipande 2021, 104). Even though the annual reports show that the company promoted football, the UMHK kept a critical eye on football. Annual reports show that football was very popular among workers, but not necessarily the preferred way of controlling workers’ leisure time. The following extract, translated into English, illustrates that the company was not always happy with the lack of educational aspects in certain sporting activities, such as football (UMHK 1951, 24):

The sport almost uniquely practised is football. It is undeniably very successful, but its educational action is dubious to say the least. It allows a few stars to put on a show and has often led to some very significant incidents: exaggerated chauvinism develops, sometimes tinged with superstition and influenced by some regrettable examples given by European teams.

In this annual report, the company criticised the fact that workers could get injured due to certain players showing a chauvinistic side or a tendency to be superstitious, two characteristics the company did not approve of as it required disciplined workers. The behaviour of some players is also mentioned in the 1957 annual report (UMHK 1957, 36). Hence, the educational aspect of sporting activities was important to the company as Chipande (2021, 102, 104) equally reports for Zambia and Katanga. For example, the UMHK organised athletics competitions, but also championships for team sports, such as football or basketball. Chipande (2021, 107) points out that:

the growing popularity of football among Africans in the Katangese mining towns led the President of UMHK, M. Gillet, to introduce a football competition in 1956 for what came to be known as the Gillet Cup.

The UMHK encouraged sporting activities because a healthy workforce was the foundation of the efficient workforce that the company needed.

In the 1951 annual report, other leisure activities are also listed, such as libraries, games, bars, dance, theatre, arts and cinema (UMHK 1951, 24). In this annual report, the company criticised the workers, as of all the leisure activities provided, they allegedly showed the most interest in the bar serving beer (UMHK 1951, 26): ‘It seems that, at least now, interest focuses primarily on the existence of the bar where European beer will be served’.

From the beginning, the UMHK kept an eye on beer consumption and gambling activities. For example, two years earlier, the company blamed the workers for their lack of discipline in other areas of life on the fact that they loved beer and gambling too much (UMHK 1949, 23):

To explain this situation, we can only repeat the reasons we invoked in our 1948 report, that is, our refusal to sell [the furniture] on credit and the improvidence of the black who is unable to show thrifty discipline in economic questions. We are, however, tempted to add the influence of gambling and the abuse of drinks that are becoming more and more extensive.

In the evenings, most of the workers would drink beer in the cercle in the Cité, as this space was called, even though they could have gone to another area in town. However, the prices in the Cité were lower in comparison to the city, and that was how the company attempted to control the radius of movement of its workforce. This control of leisure time was also in force at events provided for staff, such as film screenings. Every annual report contains a subsection under leisure activities that reported the number of films collected so far. In the 1951 annual report, the types of film shown were discussed as follows (UMHK 1951, 25):

This footage consists largely of educational and documentary silent films, which were commented in Swahili on audio wire by the staff of the Department of native workforce, and a few sound films recently commissioned from father Cornil.

The UMHK’s primary aim was to educate the workers and their families who attended the film screenings. The choice to provide a commentary on the films in Swahili reflects the role Swahili played in that setting.⁸ Swahili, the lingua franca among workers, was also the language that connected the mining company with its workers.⁹ The company purchased films produced by the most successful film-maker, priest Father André Cornil, who, in 1950, was asked by the Services de l’Information du Congo Belge to go to the Belgian Congo and produce educational films for the Congolese (Botombele 1976; Bouchard 2010). Cornil’s film productions reflect the attempt to impose Christian values, such as monogamous relationships, on the audience. Film screenings for educational purpose was widespread also in other colonial settings. Tom Rice (2019) discusses the colonial film projects in the British Empire and points out that: ‘Film might provide the “connective social tissue,” a means to address, homogenize, and monitor disparate worker groups’. However, the UMHK admitted that moments of pure entertainment were also needed in order to keep the ‘natives’ in good spirits. The company noted that the following improvements were being considered (UMHK 1951, 25):

It would be desirable for the company to acquire a dozen short films, such as Mickey Mouse. This type of film, highly prized by the indigenous [DW] people, would serve to end each session on a note of general cheerfulness.

Each educational film session would therefore end on a lighter note with the screening of short, animated films. With its colonial and paternalistic approach, the company thus presented itself as a benefactor, providing the worker with entertainment at the times and in the areas it deemed appropriate.

In 1956, the UMHK produced En Cinquante Ans, a propaganda film celebrating its 50th anniversary that goes into great detail regarding the benefits of working for the company, including flying recruited workers in, the educational system, evening courses, health services and leisure activities, such as athletics competitions. The workers and their families were conditioned according to the Belgian ideal of middle-class life. This can be seen, for instance, in the description of a typical Sunday. Very similar to a Sunday in Europe, it was stated that workers and their families would normally go for a walk or meet friends.

John Higginson (1988, 201–202) cites an African clerk telling the director of the workers’ desire to live in decent conditions, including the option of enjoying recreational time, such as receiving or visiting friends, as had been introduced into the country:

Monsieur le Directeur: Many whites are astonished to hear our demands for better housing and better treatment. They feel that we are asking for too much - in short, that we desire to live as they do […] Permit me to draw attention to the fact that a small dwelling might have served our needs in the past since we spent most of our time in the open air or in the shade of a large tree or lean-to. But now, with new ways of doing things introduced into our country, we can no longer live as we did in the past. We are obliged to live in houses in which we can entertain our relatives, friends and other visitors (Beia 1934, 3).

The Sunday scene in this film ends with a depiction of several people sitting outside at a table in the garden. A tablecloth covers the table and glasses are perfectly laid out. The UMHK used the medium of film to promote not only the workplace, but also the very private life they offered to workers.

The role of the working man was not only defined by kazi and leisure activities, but equally by the role as breadwinner of the family, according to the concept of the nuclear family that reflected Belgian ideology. What Frederick Cooper (1996, 468) postulates for French and British Africa equally applies for the Belgian ideology: ‘women as the provided for’. The UMHK supported their workers to get married as one of the measures of the stabilisation policy:

Already at the time of their recruitment, labourers were encouraged to take their wife and children with them, if they had any. In case they did not yet have a wife, but had already started the “traditional” negotiations with the family-in-law, the recruiter did everything in his power to make the marriage happen (Cuvelier 2011, 78).

The company also monitored the private lives of its workers, for instance in their fight against bigamy (Dibwe dia Mwembu 2001; Rubbers 2015). In the annual reports of the Département M.O.I., a section on parasitism appeared each year. The company’s understanding was that extramarital relationships did not fit the concept of the nuclear family, with the company discussing the issues of – in their view – illegitimate relationships and illegitimate offspring under the label of parasitism. In 1948, the UMHK states that they will continue their fight against bigamy and that the women from these extramarital relationships should be ignored in all circumstances. The company describes this fight as difficult (UMHK 1948, 18):

It is only little by little, by a tireless educational propaganda that we can definitively eliminate these abnormal situations. It is also hoped that the Government will respond to the wish expressed by the Governing Council – Session 1948 – to progressively ban polygamy in extra-customary centres.

The UMHK uses the adjective ‘abnormal’ to describe bigamy, as relationships with more than one partner goes against the company’s policy of the nuclear family. Bigamy also represented a financial problem. Due to the fact that workers acknowledged the – in the eyes of Europeans – illegitimate children, they demanded the same rights in relation to housing, education and food rations for these children and their mothers, as they considered them official wives and children. In the 1947 annual report, the UMHK’s financial concerns were laid out explicitly and they emphasised the importance of the nuclear family (UMHK 1947, 21).

The efforts to ensure that workers and their families towed the line in terms of the nuclear family ideology can be seen on several levels. For example, the company tried to promote the figure of the ‘ideal housewife’ in order to prevent the wives of its workers from having extramarital affairs (Hunt 1990; Rubbers 2015, 217). The social foyer was the educational establishment for this ‘ideal housewife’.

The role of women, in particular, was a frequent topic in Mwana Shaba, especially in the section devoted to women, Votre page madame (Your page madam). Many articles referred to a woman’s responsibility as a wife and her duty of running the household, including recipes, beauty tips or advice on specific problems, such as the right way to clean a scarf (Mwana Shaba, 1964, No. 11, 17) or how to arrange flowers (Mwana Shaba, 1964, No. 13, 10). I thus read the company’s attempts to promote the ‘ideal wife’ as a means of ascribing an active role in ensuring monogamous marriages to the wives; if the woman was a ‘good wife’, the company deemed the risk of the husband being involved in extramarital relationships to be less likely. In the context of men’s actions, the art of flower arranging is an interesting one, not only because it very obviously connects to the house, where you should feel at home, but also because, as Peter Lambertz (2018) points out, flower arranging was a new concept for the Congolese. Flowers were associated with plants that were traditionally used as medicine and not as decorative objects. In an article on flower arranging, it is obvious that the flower bouquet was not only presented as a home decoration, but first and foremost as a tool for emphasising the woman’s duty of ensuring that her husband stayed at home after work: ‘Garnish your interior, make it welcoming, and in the evening your husband will be happy after his day at work to find his beautiful home, and stay there.’

Workers’ leisure time as a corollary of work in the years when they began their working careers, and throughout the prosperous years, was characterised by the provision of leisure activities, such as sporting events or cinema, but also by the time and financial means for a beer and maybe an extramarital affair. The fact that leisure activities must also be viewed in the context of workers’ understanding of masculine behavioural patterns came to the fore during interviews and discussions reflecting on the good times of the past. The ‘objects of loss’ discussed not only referred to being well looked after in terms of the many aspects of work and leisure, but also in the workers’ regrets at no longer being able to fulfil their roles as men and the lack of respect they felt.

In the following section, I will discuss scattered references to the overall topic of leisure during interviews and group discussions, paying particular attention to the ways in which the ex-mineworkers link them to notions of masculinity.

As stated above, Être Gécaminois not only referred to working for the mining company and having access to infrastructures such as housing, healthcare, schools, and so forth, but it was also important to workers in terms of their identity. They felt respected by others, a key sentiment of identity in a social group, and felt pride at being part of that ‘family’.

One interviewee, a senior member of staff who managed hospitals, explained to me that it was not just having a job that was important, he also stressed that he felt proud because through his position, he had managed to improve health services in many respects. The loss of his job had a severe effect on his sense of self. In addition, he had to move to the boyerie, the annex where his gardener and domestic servant used to live. By renting out his house to tenants, he is now able to make a small living, but, as he explained, he is unable to provide a decent place for his family where he can welcome visitors. He showed me around his boyerie during my second visit to his home, where I discovered dozens of cups carefully arranged in the only glass cabinet in the room. He told me that he was a quite successful sportsman, taking part in athletics competitions in his leisure time.

Whether the interviewees used to be senior members of staff or blue-collar workers, many of them talked of the importance of their favourite sport, basketball or football, athletics or swimming, as sportsmen or as spectators. Sporting activities served as a source of pride beyond the immediate domain of work.

Another place where workers could spend their time was the bar created by the company, where they could enjoy a beer at a better price than in the city centre. In this context, workers often talked of their easy-going lives in the good times, when they could take their wives to a film screening in the social foyer, as well as the obvious benefits they were able to provide as employees of a mining company: a regular salary, a house, healthcare, education, etc. Nowadays, however, as the interviewees explained, they not only lack those places provided by the company, but also the money to pay for them, even just for a beer, a material expression of a better life.

In July 2019, Baba Guillaume,¹⁰ who used to work as a teacher in the Cité Gécamines, handed me a neatly handwritten document before a group discussion started. He told me that he had noted down all the responsibilities of women ‘à l’époque’. He listed six points, and he interpreted the role of women as having to fulfil the domestic duties wives had to carry out for their husbands. The following three points from the list are relevant in the context of this article:

1. To be submissive to her husband and satisfy him in sexual need in order to fulfil the procreation that advocates genesis. 2. Always be ready for his meal before going to work and wake him up in case he took a drink too much the day before. 3. Prepare water for his bath after work and dinner every day.

In the French version, Baba Guillaume’s wording of the second part of the phrase referred to many biblical quotations in relation to ‘grow and multiply’ from the book of Genesis. In the Swahili translation for the women though, he removed this reference and simply translated it as ‘make children’. The French version was therefore solely aimed at me, with the reference to a biblical quote legitimising the mention of the sensitive subject of women being responsible for fulfilling men’s sexual needs, arguing that this corresponds to what the book of Genesis sets out. However, producing offspring was also in the interest of the mining company, as the idea was that the children of workers would form the basis of the workforce in the future.

With regards to preparing breakfast, he pointed out that it was the woman’s duty to wake her husband up, especially if he had had one too many beers the night before. Here, it is implicit that for men, the consumption of alcohol during leisure time was considered reasonable, whereas women were not supposed to partake in this activity. In the cercle, the recreational centres for workers in the Cité Gécamines, alcohol was provided in the bars at a much better price than bars in the city. Thus, workers were controlled by the company in terms of where they drank, while it was a wife’s duty to ensure that he would still be on time and be productive the next day. As point three illustrates, the wife was responsible for his transition from a working man to a man during leisure time through the preparation of the water for his bath. However, I read the perception of women’s duties by Baba Guillaume not primarily as an assessment by him in his role as a husband, but rather as a representation of the colonial education system for women that was characterised by its essentially practical and utilitarian orientation (Masandi 2004, 498). This utilitarian approach marginalised women, preventing them from entering the areas of administration and industry, and aiming to keep them in their roles of wives and mothers.

Baba Guillaume’s presentation of women’s responsibilities reflected the norms that women were expected to uphold within that community. Likewise, it showed that men were expected to take care of the family financially. The loss of income thus radically changed the relationship between men and women. Men could no longer fulfil their role as the breadwinner. One interviewee stated, in a resigned way, that many of them, himself included, had been left or even divorced by their wives, and that they would have no chance of finding another wife because they were no longer able to provide a good life as they had been able to at the beginning of their working careers.

The workers told me that their leisure time on work days was usually between 6 and 10.30pm. They described it not using the term ‘leisure’, but as le temps pour s’amuser (time to enjoy yourself), stating that they spent most of this time in the Cité Gécamines and less than 20 per cent of this time outside in other parts of the city. Considering that leisure activities were provided in the social foyer and the cercle, I was wondering what kind of activities they enjoyed outside. I did not get an answer until finally a woman in another group discussion started to complain that ‘in the good old times’ many men had relationships with other women outside. In that rather emotional discussion, it turned out that men did agree on that point and one interviewee stated: ‘to have two women was almost fashionable, because life was so easy’. ‘Easy’ in that context meant that they had the economic possibility of having relationships outside the boundaries of the life provided by the company. As described earlier in relation to the prosperous years, the company tried to halt relationships with women other than wives through their measures against parasitism, and by promoting the duties of wives, such as providing their husbands with a pleasant home that would prevent them from having extramarital sexual relations elsewhere. However, workers did have the financial means for extramarital relationships prior to 2003 and therefore many workers, as was repeatedly emphasised during interviews, did take advantage of the possibility of a deuxième bureau. As a female interviewee commented, the ‘other woman’ was the other side of the coin that the wives accepted, as the husbands provided them with a good life and a house. The men’s object of loss today is therefore not only the option of being able to afford a deuxième bureau, but also the threat to their notion of masculinity, because, as the interviewees explained, among men, relationships with other women were also a matter of prestige.

The members of the ODV stressed that they suffer from the loss of what they associate with masculinity: not being able to provide for their families, no longer competing in sports, not being able to have a beer with their male friends after work and the financial freedom to have extramarital affairs.

The loss of income affected other areas that the interviewees linked to their role as men. Many of them now depend financially on the income of their children, as stated by them. They presented themselves as powerless and stressed that they would be unable to fulfil what they consider to be their duties as fathers and as breadwinners, following a colonial role model established in the years of economic success (Rubbers 2010, 336).

The workers linked the notion of masculinity to a sense of pride. Above all, the job had offered them an identity as a member of the company, regardless of whether they were blue-collar workers or senior members of staff. While blue-collar workers usually pointed out the benefits of being a worker, such as the income, the ability to educate their children, access to food rations, etc., senior members of staff referred to work as a place where they were able to participate in the development of the company.

What I perceived as the control of workers by the company (such as the gong mentioned by nearly all my interviewees that marked working hours and time off, or medical examinations to conduct medical experiments, unannounced house inspections or the careful compilation of films screened to workers in the leisure cercles) was – to summarise it very generally – described as a feeling of ‘being taken care of’ and ‘not being neglected’. Workers linked what I saw as surveillance in all contexts to the company taking care of them. In a metaphorical manner, the company was humanised. The nostalgic sentiment of the lack of a general leading figure can be seen in comments by the workers in the group discussions, such as ‘which father will gather us now?’, ‘can we exist without father?’, ‘we need a leader’ (or literally, a driver) or ‘we are looking for a responsible father, a father that will guide us to our money being paid’. All of these statements refer to their current situation, where nobody is taking care of them anymore, expressing their feeling of helplessness. The term papa (father) has another layer to it that goes beyond the simple reference to a father figure. It is used to describe a boss, someone from whom they can demand support in exchange for their manpower. However, that working relationship no longer exists, so the call for a papa by the workers is also a yearning for employment. Unfortunately, those times are now gone.

It is important to note that there were some critical voices among the workers regarding their nostalgia. One worker mentioned that they should be more proactive and take control of their lives, using the metaphor of the father figure in his statement: ‘The time for [searching for] another father has passed’. One interviewee summarised our discussion as follows: ‘the future is dark’.

Conclusions

The ex-workers who form the Collectif des ex-agents de la Gécamines were socialised in a company structure that fostered the approach of providing the workers with everything they needed in life, while the workers in return devoted their lives to their employer. However, discussions of the dangers of the former paternalistic approach for today’s agency usually remained within the scope of the reference to the lack of a leading father figure and thus to the company as a parental figure.

The economic decline that resulted in the loss of income in 2003 radically changed gender and age relations, as the workers lost their central role as the breadwinner of the family (Petit & Mulumbwa 2005, 471). In addition, there was no longer any time or opportunities for leisure activities and the social roles attributed to social activities disappeared, such as winning cups for coming first in sporting events.

Leisure, which was enabled by kazi, has vanished. The interviewees’ self-esteem is shattered, not only due to the disappearance of work and leisure time, but also because their perception of what constitutes a valuable member of society remains unfulfilled. They are not respected workers in a hierarchy, they are not celebrated sportsmen, they are unable to provide for their families and they are no longer able to act out the pleasures that they associate with being a man. What they do share is a strong sense of being a départ volontaire and a nostalgia for earlier times.

Acknowledgements

This article was written within the scope of the Austrian Science Fund granted project ‘Employment-tied Housing in (post)colonial Africa’ (Project no. P29566-G28, Department of African Studies, University of Vienna). All translations are the author’s own.

Disclosure statement

No conflict of interest was declared by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Daniela Waldburger

Daniela Waldburger is a senior lecturer in the Department of African Studies at the University of Vienna. She holds a PhD (2012) in African Studies from the University of Vienna. Earlier she studied social anthropology, African linguistics and general linguistics at the University of Zurich. Since 2004 she has been teaching Swahili and linguistics (sociolinguistics, language and power, discourse analysis, visual grammar etc.) at the Department of African Studies. Beside her research interests in Swahili studies she has a strong research interest in the intertwining fields of language (mis)use and power (ab)use and she is working with a ‘shared authority approach’ in rethinking African studies.

Notes

1 The welfare policy was gradually introduced between 1890 and 1944 (Vanthemsche 2012, 47).

2 For a detailed discussion of this approach during this research see the work I did with Carl-Philipp Bodenstein (Bodenstein & Waldburger 2021) and also work I published in 2021 (Waldburger 2021).

3 In the context of the narratives as expressed by the interviewees, deuxième bureau is a term used by married men to describe an extra-marital affair.

4 Elisabethville was planned according to a drawing-board plan that would implement Belgian colonial apartheid: initially a ‘white town’ that was separated from the township for the Africans, which was called cité indigène, and a neutral zone (cordon sanitaire) separating the two areas of the city – a common practice in sub-Saharan colonial cities. For a discussion on this, see, for example, Piet Clement (2013); Johan Lagae, Sofie Boonen and Donatien Dibwe dia Mwembu (2016) and Johan Lagae and Sofie Boonen (2015).

5 Timothy Makori (2019, 111–116) who also writes about the ODV and their nostalgia, raises the question what configures the local experiences of time: ‘[g]iven the tumultuous history of the emergence of pensioners and creuseurs in Congo, what particular event can be designated as the rupture that fundamentally altered economic life in Katanga?’ Makori’s interest focuses on his interviewees’ experiences in ways that often confound strict periodicity such as ‘colonial’ and ‘post-colonial’ era, ‘industrial past’ and ‘liberalized present’, or the end of the Cold War.

6 On average, wages had not been paid for 21 months (Rubbers 2015, 214).

7 By creating these foyers, the UMHK acted in line with the Belgian welfare programme. The UMHK and its successor actively promoted the nuclear family and women’s roles and responsibilities. For a detailed discussion on the intertwining fields of health, hygiene, home and women’s roles in the same period, see Waldburger (2020). The social foyers were, as Nancy Hunt (1990, 449) writes, ‘a colonial project to revise and refashion gender roles, family life, and domestic space enacted by European nuns and social workers and African women within classrooms, households, and an African urban community’.

8 The films had to be commented on by a person responsible for the screening, as the films were produced by the Services de l’Information du Congo Belge for a country that had a wide variety of spoken languages. However, the commentary was not only seen as necessary because of the correct choice of language for the region, but also because the ‘information service leaders soon noticed that simply translating the subtitles was not enough. The images required a more elaborate commentary in order to avoid any misunderstanding of the educative message’ (Bouchard 2010, 95).

9 The UMHK believed it was vital to start teaching in Swahili so that it would become the general language throughout Haut Katanga. Hence, the schools provided for the workers’ children – envisaged as the company’s future workforce – prioritised Swahili from the moment of enrolment. However, knowledge of at least basic French was also promoted among the children of blue-collar workers. For the company’s future managers and senior workers, French was vital and was therefore taught and regarded as the language of prestige and power.

10 All interviewee names have been changed.