The shattered mirror : the "villagisation" of Kinshasa
1994
Devisch, R. (Katholieke Univ. Leuven (Belgium). Dept voor Sociale en Culturele Antropologie)
The massive lootings of September 1991 in Zaire have led people to seek refuge and help within their neighbourhoods : one speaks of the villagisation of town. Life for the slum dweller is becoming but an art of survival. The withering of the public ethic reflects the deterioration of the life milieu, the absence for a large number of city dwellers of a permanent or stable home, disintegration of public services, devaluation of academic qualifications, as well as the concentration of threat, violence, outrage in certain transitional or peripheral areas of town. The misery and incoherence of life in the township today, the collapse of state institutions, public transport, school education, and public health services have shattered both the autochtonous and allochtonous models and mirrors of identity. An increasing number of city dwellers live as displaced and transient persons, participating in urban life characterized by dislocation and fatality, in an uncertain and parasitic way. Misled by the complete disregard for legality in public life and by the daily struggle for survival, they find themselves disenchanted and dissolute. Confronted with an agonizing predatory state and growing anomy, some of these disenchanted individuals increasingly turn to violence in a perverse and imaginary attempt to counteract the exogenous forces that may have caused the loss of their vitality and power. Other people may seek help in the healing churches, which not only offer new relations of trust through brother- and sisterhood in the holy spirit, yet provide the aetiological analyses of those relations and institutions that instigate violence, support or obstruct personal interaction, and stimulate or discourage social solidarity.
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