NEWS AND POLITICAL CULTURE

The proximity account described above literally reads as a detailed accounting in which Kinois record a whole series of values, from the affective, social, economic and political to the moral spheres of life. Local television news production thus occupies a central position in Kinshasa's ‘political society’ (Chatterjee Reference Chatterjee1997), in that ‘zone of negotiations and mediations between state and population, wherein the main mediators are movements, political parties, informal networks, and many other channels through which the developmental state and the vast majority of the population interact’ (Hansen & Stepputat Reference Hansen and Stepputat2001: 28). Schatzberg (Reference Schatzberg2001: 4) has argued that in Zaïre, as in many other nation-states, news (sango) is essential to the flow of speech and power. Methodologically, news reports, as both action in society and reflection upon society, present rich material for ethnographic analysis of the ascription of meaning to political events and experience. Furthermore, news production is embedded in social fantasies about governmentality and statecraft. In Kinshasa, where several politicians now own television stations, radio channels or newspapers, politics and journalism interact in unprecedented ways, generating new media texts, like the proximity report, which could not have been generated prior to the democratic wave that swept over many African societies during the 1990s.

My analysis of the proximity report is informed by scholarship on African state–citizen interactions (Bayart Reference Bayart1989; Callaghy Reference Callaghy1984; Chabal Reference Chabal2009; De Boeck Reference De Boeck, Werbner and Ranger1996; Kaarsholm Reference Kaarsholm and Kaarsholm2006; Karlström Reference Karlström1996, Reference Karlström2003; Mbembe Reference Mbembe1992, Reference Mbembe2001; Trefon Reference Trefon2004), insights on communication studies in Africa (Frère Reference Frère2007; Nyamnjoh Reference Nyamnjoh2005) and the anthropology of texts (Barber Reference Barber2007). In his introduction to Violence, Political Culture & Development in Africa, Kaarsholm (Reference Kaarsholm and Kaarsholm2006: 13) argues that ‘studies are needed to map out and analyse the ways in which “public cultures” in a broader and more neutral sense function and are structured within different African contexts’. This involves ‘investigations of cultural genres and institutions which do not necessarily resemble the civic associations and types of organisation that are most commonly identified with civil society in a European or Western context’ (ibid.: 13–14). Kaarsholm proposes an analysis of political cultures that engages with the ways in which ‘“micro-political” debates and contestations are conducted’ in order to obtain new perspectives ‘on the dynamics and contradictions of political development in Africa’ (ibid.). As in Kinshasa's other spaces of self-representation, for example paintings (Biaya Reference Biaya1990; Jewsiewicki Reference Jewsiewicki2003), television soap operas (Pype Reference Pype2009) and popular music (White Reference White2008), television news broadcasts can be approached as ‘cultural texts’ that present a particular view of reality and offer occasions for reflections on unfolding political processes. In addition, as I show below, the proximity report offers space for ‘micro-political debates and contestations’, and occupies an important position in Kinshasa's complex political culture as it has taken shape at the dawn of Joseph Kabila's ‘democratic’ reign (from 2006). Following Barber (Reference Barber2007), I take into account the connectedness that texts (written, oral or mass-mediated) generate between authors/audiences/performers/other middlemen, and by which they are shaped. As Barber (ibid.: 28) reminds us, texts weave ideas, people and places; they bring together expectations, intentions and interpretations. It follows that signification is found at the crossroads of textual forms (materiality and composition), formal and institutional arrangements, and human intentions and strategies.

IMAGES OF SUFFERING

Proximity reports are produced to correct urban sociability and to reaffirm morality. Their producers also address political leaders directly, not least the president himself, who, for many Kinois, is imagined as viewer number one of the news broadcasts. This belief in particular induces Kinois to participate in the production of television news reports. Viewers and state representatives arrive in the Lingala Facile studio, either with taped images to be broadcast or with a story, inviting a journalist and/or camera man to accompany them quickly to the scene of the action. These practices do not occur in the newsrooms of the formal television news broadcasts. Moreover, journalists employed by the state channel or by DigitalCongo (a channel belonging to the president's relatives), for example, hand over particular news items to the JTLF if they consider these to be in need of immediate political intervention. This explains, for instance, why a female journalist working for the RTNC1 appeared in the JTLF news room and exhorted the journal's director to send reporters to her daughter's private school, to film the erosion around the school compound (August 2009). Although this was a public issue (erosion threatens many locations in Kinshasa), this journalist estimated that, unlike state channel broadcasts, a JTLF broadcast would stimulate an immediate reaction on the part of government authorities. A Tetela paramount chief who commissioned a JTLF report also considered JTLF to be the easiest way to communicate with the president (July 2009). For over four years he had been working on a political model for the nation but was never able to get an audience. Since it was taken for granted that the president, or at least the first lady, watched the JTLF broadcasts daily, the Tetela chief wanted to explain his main ideas via the journal. His beliefs were buttressed by the fact that JTLF regularly related the president's actions after one of its reports. For example, the coverage of a fire in Matete (one of Kinshasa's twenty-four districts), which destroyed the machines and textiles of a women's group, was soon followed by a generous gift by the first lady. JTLF journalists filmed the arrival of the new equipment and textiles which she donated (June 2009).

Gifts like those offered by Madame Kabila do not stand alone. Various proximity reports are followed by state responses, which are themselves filmed and then broadcast. For example, on the Congolese Independence Day holiday in 2009 (30 June), I walked with one of the JTLF journalists, John,Footnote ¹⁰ away from the Boulevard Triumphale where Kinshasa's provincial governor, André Kimbuta, was presiding over a parade of various Congolese army regiments, police groups, members of the government, and civil society associations such as members of the Scouts movement, Kimbanguists, and representatives of various NGOs. John had filmed the march for about half an hour and made arrangements with other television journalists to copy their images in case something spectacular happened in our absence. John had been called by his supervisor to film a road accident only half a kilometre away from the Boulevard. A truck had tried to merge into a bigger road, but the driver had lost control over the steering wheel, and the truck had crashed into the wall of a private compound. Just before arriving at the scene of the accident, where a huge crowd had already gathered, John told me, with a proud tone, that Avenue Kabinda used to be potholed and rutted, but this had changed because his television journal Lingala Facile had made a report about the bad road conditions, which had existed for as long as he could remember (John was born and still lived in that neighbourhood). After the JTLF broadcast, the government reacted immediately and within two weeks Avenue Kabinda was no longer potholed. Indeed, we were able to walk on a nice surface of red hard sand. During and after the repair process, JTLF journalists had been invited by the Ministry of Infrastructure to report on the work.

Proximity reports are popular in Kinshasa because, more than any other media genre, they offer Kinois a chance to speak about politics and everyday struggles, and to be heard. The coverage of individual urban suffering is a relatively recent phenomenon in the history of Kinshasa's news reporting, and relates to political changes in the media world. From the moment new television channels (such as AA and CanalKin) emerged in the early 1990s, Kinois contacted journalists and put forward their own topics. At first, such audience participation was minimal, but the increase in the numbers of television channels led the viewing community to a growing involvement in offering its own news items. Now, more than a decade later, audience participation has taken on multiple forms. People call journalists on their mobile phones, or, if an email address is known, send emails; they stop journalists in the street as they try to get into taxis, or when they are sitting at bar terraces; they sometimes leave messages at their homes or with relatives.

The increased availability of recording technologies to non-professionals has also influenced viewers' participation in the production of news. People not only offer stories to journalists, but film events on DV tapes, with mobile phones or digital photo cameras, and then hand the tapes or the mobile phones over to the journalists. Filming equipment is easily available in Kinshasa: in almost every neighbourhood one can rent a digital hand camera for a few hours, and up to several days. Many Kinois also obtain recording technologies from abroad. After money and mobile phones, digital cameras are among the goods sent most regularly to Kinshasa.

Once images arrive in the television studio, editing transforms them into politically charged documents. In the account describing the inefficiency of state services, with which I opened this article, the exposure of fear and hardship, accompanied by the unsettling tone of the voice-over, and, finally, the insertion of public cries and laments made this document, like most other proximity reports, extremely touching. The articulation of suffering occupies a pivotal role in the structure of the report; it is followed by silent images and a voice-over offering a moralising vision, often metaphorically expressed in the phrase Match eza mabe (literally, ‘this is a bad game’, meaning: this is bad, things should change). These proximity stories are ‘signs of rupture’ (Taussig Reference Taussig2006: 92; also Dayan & Katz Reference Dayan and Katz1992: 9), testimonial outcomes of transgressive, violent acts. ‘They come after the event’ (Taussig Reference Taussig2006: 94). Through a combination of images and words, proximity reports document a wrong, violence, lack of valid statecraft, and lack of urban normality, thus marking a disturbance. A rift between ‘what should be’ and ‘what is’ is produced and framed within a discourse that emphasises the abnormality of such a situation. In typical Hindubill style (street language) – that is, yelling – the voice-over calls the audience to attention, repeating at times: ‘Look at this – you will be amazed! Have you ever seen something like this? It is shocking! Kokamwa!’ The tragedy that this kokamwa style evokes is that this abnormality belongs to the normal life of Kinois. So, on a more abstract level, moving images are inserted as moral interpellation aimed at creating political and social normativity.

Apart from the acoustic production of difference, the editing style of the footage is also significant. Proximity stories usually begin with images of scenery, during which the reporter introduces the topic. Then, victims are given voice. Facing the camera, without the journalist visibly asking any questions, victims explain how the evildoer/unwanted situation is affecting their lives. Here, too, the style is highly emotional. Sometimes people are crying, at other times they are showing despair while throwing their hands in the air, or touching their heads with both hands, while lamenting Maman yee Maman Oh Nzambe (Oh God). This is a common gesture used to denote mourning. Invariably, the speaking victims address state actors (often the president himself) and call on them for action. Often, the same pressing appeal is echoed by the voice-over at the end of the story.

Through such complaints, formulated in the media, citizens can come out from the invisibility of the non-represented. They allow the filmed person to be fully present as a citizen. The logic is that the politician, to whom the complaint is being addressed, will be touched by the difficulties of the pleader and will take immediate action. As Das (Reference Das2003) has stressed, repositioning the genre of the testimony in the domain of politics is a powerful tool to engage with the meanings of distress and physical or symbolic violence.

The media performances staged by the proximity reports, which can be summarised as ways of claiming rights and imposing responsibility via the press, are the result of cultural changes initiated by Pentecostal Christianity and the work of NGOs.

First, the force of Pentecostalism in Kinshasa's public culture has impacted viewers' public articulation of their experiences of suffering in the political realm. In church settings and in the media, former witches and their victims confess to occult dealings, describe in detail the ways they were lured by the Devil, and how their actions impacted the lives of relatives and of others (Pype Reference Pype2011 forthcoming). Such public testimonies constantly blur the lines between public and private, and have shaped a public culture in which discourses about pain, ill-health and violence have become very common. But not only do the evildoers speak out. All persons in attendance are pressed to produce narratives about personal suffering, and bear witness about God's salvation, especially when becoming a born-again Christian. Such accounts, which were originally produced within the religious sphere, have shaped an atmosphere in which Kinois feel comfortable publicly expressing the frustrations and misery that derive from the lack of a strong and efficient state apparatus.

Second, contacting television journalists signals a new form of social action, ushered by shifts in activist and development strategies. Although Kinois have been suffering the effects of a malfunctioning state for over two decades, human rights agencies and international media broadcasts initially tied Kinshasa residents' desire for social justice to the use of visual media. Especially after 2000, when NGOs returned to DR Congo, various organisations made it their goal to teach people how to take their problems to the government, claim their rights, and thus prove that citizens can make a difference in creating justice and in the better functioning of the state. A leitmotiv driving the actions of civil society NGOs is that Congolese do not yet have the full capacity to represent themselves as rights-bearing citizens, and need to be taught how to think and act as modern citizens through pedagogical projects. In the run-up to the first democratically organised elections in 2006, many democratisation campaigns were explained in pedagogical terms: they aimed to show people what they could claim from their representatives and the government. This process of social mobilisation occurred simultaneously with political reform in DR Congo. Many governance and development functions, once assumed to fall under the responsibility of the state, shifted into the non-governmental sphere in the context of democratic socio-economic reorganisation: what some have called the ‘NGOisation of DR Congo’ (Giovannoni et al. Reference Giovannoni, Trefon, Kasongo Banga, Mwema and Trefon2004).Footnote ¹¹

A consequence of these NGO actions is that perception of the role of journalists has changed. They are no longer merely perceived as mediators of news events taking place en ville (in the city centre), but have become, first and foremost, brokers between citizens and politicians, as well as ‘fixers’, that is those considered capable of enabling the fixing of problems. Journalists now also have become ‘representatives of the people’. Mothers with sick babies, people with legal problems, tenants without money and victims of fraud all visit journalists either in the studio or at their homes, seeking various services from them.Footnote ¹² Some hope not only that their problems will be covered in a news item, but that the journalists themselves will follow up individual cases and bring them to a satisfactory close. The JTLF's legal assistant spends more time listening to people's complaints and directing them to state services than dealing with the legal problems the journalists themselves are facing. Importantly, the myth of the state remains alive, among the help-seekers as among the journalists. As a JTLF journalist (int.) told me,

This journalist, like most of his colleagues, acknowledges his power in bringing about political action and feels committed to act responsibly in a way that benefits urban and sometimes even national interests.Footnote ¹³

Taking into account the influence of NGO campaigns on news coverage, it is not at all surprising that the media testimonies are similar to human rights media in terms of visual style and intentionality. As McLagan (Reference McLagan2003) has indicated for human rights media, visual evidence functions by inducing feelings of guilt or shame. There is the belief that publicity can induce compliance with human rights norms on the part of states and other violators. The ‘mobilisation of shame’ rests on the notion that, by exposing the gap between self-professed norms and actual behaviour, activists can actually ‘shame’ states into action. Showing the Kinois and the leaders what is wrong pressures offenders to change.

KABILA, THE KINOIS AND THE MEDIA

In this final part, I extend the significance of the proximity item by turning back to my initial questions about political communication in post-colonial African regimes and local dialectics of power. Joseph Kabila was democratically elected president at the end of 2006, following two election rounds that same year; he thus found democratic means to extend and legitimate the power he had peacefully obtained immediately after the assassination of his father, Laurent Désiré Kabila, in 2001. During the five-year transition period that followed Laurent Kabila's death, Kinshasa's inhabitants disputed Joseph Kabila's leadership. This contestation occasionally took the form of violent riots, but was mostly expressed in private conversations and did not reach the public realm.

The 2006 election results, which indicated that Kinois had massively voted for Kabila's main opponent, Jean-Pierre Bemba, presented Kinshasa as an extremely complex political space. Still, Kinois refrained from overt contestations of Kabila's legitimate leadership. In more private conversations with Kinshasa's residents, however, frustrations about Kabila's leadership were frequently voiced. ‘We are hungry’ (Tozoyoka nzala), I would often hear when asking about evaluations of the current leader. The hunger Kinois experience is the embodied outcome of a malfunctioning government. In discourses about governmentality in Africa, the state ideally appears as a living body through which everyone is interconnected and political desires flow and are exchanged. As Chabal (Reference Chabal2009) reminds us, reciprocity is a constitutive norm in African political practices. The metaphors of food distribution, circulation and consumption (Bayart Reference Bayart1989; Schatzberg Reference Schatzberg2001) structure discourses about allocation and justification of power. ‘Food’ is a common denominator for material prosperity, and thus extends well beyond the physical domain. Good leaders nurture their subjects like fathers nurture their children.Footnote ¹⁴ In reflections about the current state, many Kinois like to refer to Mobutu's time, when ‘everybody could eat at least three times a day’. ‘Governed by a good father, one is never hungry.’ While Mobutu skilfully played with the trope of fatherhood, Joseph Kabila seemed to be unable to achieve any kind of moral authority among Kinois. The recurrent public articulation of hunger indicated that the flow of power, food and blood was interrupted. The saying ‘We are hungry’ appears, therefore, as a strong expression of political discontent.

The dissatisfaction Kinois utter derives not only from the lack of a well-functioning state, but first and foremost from the absence of a connection between Kinois and their leaders. In Kinshasa, there is a strong sense of fissure between residents and Joseph Kabila. Rumours remind Kinois time and again that Joseph Kabila is a foreigner. According to some, Kabila was born to a Tanzanian mother, while others hold that he has Rwandese roots (Jackson Reference Jackson2006). Given the increasing obsession with autochthony and indigeneity in central Africa (Geschiere Reference Geschiere2009), such rumours can have far-reaching consequences. Kabila's lack of proficiency in Lingala, Kinshasa's lingua franca, confirms him as an outsider as well. Furthermore, many Kinois complain about his absence from the city. They interpret this as a sign of his lack of interest in them. These arguments are buttressed by the observations that since his election in 2006, Kabila has celebrated the national Independence Day not in Kinshasa but in other cities (Mbandaka, Kisangani, Kananga and Goma). The exception was the fiftieth anniversary celebration of DR Congo's independence, which most Kinois perceived as a mere charade for the benefit of the international political community.

Such complaints about the president commemorating Independence Day outside the capital are more than mere expressions of the interpretation of lack of interest. They touch the very heart of the perceived failing body politic. As various scholars of African politics have argued (Bayart Reference Bayart, Rendall, Roitman and Derrick2005; Karlström Reference Karlström2003; Mbembe Reference Mbembe2001), state aesthetics in post-colonial Africa depend to a large extent on public ceremonies and festivities, which are usually marked by abundant gift exchanges, often of food. Such acts establish enduring relations of reciprocity. Interestingly, in a discussion of state ceremonialism in Uganda, Karlström (Reference Karlström2003: 67) demonstrates that such ceremonies also ‘set the stage for communicative interaction between rulers and subjects’. Local conflicts and concerns are informally brought to the attention of the visiting dignitary in the margins of the post-ceremonial feast (ibid.: 68). ‘In return for a properly hospitable local reception and exaltation the guest becomes bound, at least normatively, by a vaguely defined generalised obligation to respond to the needs of the local community’ (ibid.: 67). According to Karlström, the opportunity for dialogical interactions with state representatives is the main reason why locals participate in such events. Kinois object to the impossibility of communicating with their president. While many people have not forgotten how difficult it was to criticise the state during Mobutu's time, they recurrently tell stories about Mobutu (and also Laurent Kabila) appearing in public spaces and listening to Kinois’ grievances and complaints, which Kinois appreciated. Furthermore, radio-trottoir has it that Mobutu, in disguise, used public transport and visited bars where he queried Kinois about their opinions, and life in the city in general. During Mobutu's and Laurent Kabila's regimes, there was a general perception that dialogue was possible, but today many Kinois regret no longer having, with their Swahili-speaking president, an open line of communication with the state. Apart from the omnipresence of the president's portrait in the city's streets, and mass mediated reports about the president's activities, often outside the capital city, Kinois say that they hardly see the president. And, on the rare occasions when he visits certain areas in the city (often when inspecting the progress of the Cinq Chantiers Footnote ¹⁵ programme), he only speaks with journalists, abandons the scene quickly, and takes refuge in his black Jeep Cherokee.

The awareness of the rift between the president and the Kinois is also a concern for the political establishment, as was poignantly expressed during a political rally of the ruling political party (PPRD) in Bumbu, one of Kinshasa's districts known to be anti-Kabila (31 July 2009). On that occasion, Jean-Claude Mashala, a PPRD leader, promised the gathered group that bokoyoka Kabila (‘you will feel/hear Kabila’). The Lingala verb koyoka has multiple meanings. It can be translated as ‘to know’, but also as ‘to feel’, ‘to see’, ‘to hear’, all meanings denoting somatic perceptions as the basis for knowledge. Because of the strained relationship between President Kabila and Kinois, all translations are valid. Since Joseph Kabila was sworn in as a democratically elected president in 2006, efforts have gradually been made to reconnect Kinois to their leader, open up communication between Kinois and the state, and thus convert Kinshasa's ‘community of resentment’ into one of sentiment, sharing ideas about public goods and necessary political action.

To that extent, Joseph Kabila and his entourage have invested in a strong media campaign. Since 2009, state radio and television stations and also the written press have been flooded with images of the Visibility campaign, as Kabila's main propaganda programme is called. New print magazines were created, and billboards showing Joseph Kabila and the progress of infrastructure works have been planted all over the city (Pype Reference Pype and Vokes2012 forthcoming). Since 2003, a private television station that focuses on Joseph Kabila, called DigitalCongo, has been broadcasting nationwide (and now also via satellite). And, in mid June 2010, a new television station emerged, the Télé du 50enaire, headed by Jean-Marie Kassamba, coordinator of the Office for the Visibility of the Cinq Chantiers. While both television channels (DigitalCongo and Télé du 50enaire) are overtly integrated into the president's propaganda programme, other, more subtle, strategies in the media space are used to promote the president among Kinois (and the national public). The JTLF broadcast contributes in such a way to the propaganda of Joseph Kabila, with recurrent reports about visits by the first lady to hospitals, orphanages and various local community groups.Footnote ¹⁶ Karlström's discussion (1996) of the role of communication in how Ugandans imagined democracy in the early 1990s is key in helping understand why Kinois continue to contribute to the production of proximity reports in a programme like JTLF. Baganda people identified freedom of speech as one of the most important liberties under democracy. But, in contrast to a Western understanding of freedom of speech, where speech is directed towards a general audience of rulers, Karlström (ibid.: 486–7) observed another orientation in the Bagandan understanding of freedom of speech, one uttered by subjects and directed to their ruler. This was more than an assimilation of the concept of democracy to a local ideology of political order, since Karlström notes that in myths about pre-colonial kings legitimate authority in Uganda depended on the willingness of power holders to hear the voices of their subjects. It is exactly in the context of the need for similar open lines of communication, one-directional between subjects and rulers, that the popularity of the proximity account should be understood. Given the lack of any direct, face-to-face communication with the president, Kinshasa citizens use the proximity broadcast as a space in which to express demands and frustrations. Furthermore, by addressing the president in proximity reports, Kabila's otherness is elided. The president is staged as a conversation partner who literally speaks the same language. The acknowledged difference in these reports, then, is based not on linguistic or ethnic belonging, but merely on the hierarchy of power holders: the president is granted possession of the power and authority to change reality.

Kinshasa's society is often described as being in crisis (Trefon Reference Trefon2004). In the academic literature, Kinois are often represented as people suffering from the whims of incapable and uninterested leaders. While most research has attempted to foreground the ingenious ways in which Kinois try to make ends meet, this article has focused on the communicative interactions between Kinois and the president. The proximity reports show that Kinois journalists and spectators continue to maintain faith in the social contract between citizens and ruler. Lingala Facile journalists seek to speak to the specificity of a particular situation (Kinois hardship), within the larger context of African political democratisation and the mediation of these contexts through images and language. By juxtaposing images of Kinois suffering, and embedding pleas to the government, JTLF attempts to negatively define the ideal political order by indexing particular kinds of social relations. Using a familiar language (easy Lingala), and via the mobilisation of shame, these news items also serve as platforms to recreate urban conviviality, to reaffirm urban morality, and to demand that leaders redress their behaviour in a city where formal appeals are out of reach for many.

The proximity report is a cultural genre with strong political significance, where a malfunctioning state is exposed by citizens. Political contestation takes the form of testimony and complaint to the leader. In the proximity report, cultural styles stemming from Pentecostal Christianity and NGO work merge with local forms of communicating with leaders. That said, I do not wish to downplay the actual violence of the Congolese state. The war in the east of Congo lingers on, press freedom is incomplete, and judicial processes are far from transparent. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, local media are regulated by various censorship committees; media taboos exist; and certain media performances are punished. Yet, the proximity accounts occupy a particular space carved out by the so-called democratisation moment (since the mid 1990s), which has changed local public culture. While during Mobutu's era few complaints about the government could be expressed, this has now changed. Participation in media is one of the various strategies through which Kinois ‘make use’ of the state and its spaces of self-representation. Whether or not this change in media performance has actually transformed governance is a question difficult to answer. Easier to identify are changes in the relationship between Kinois and the president. The proximity accounts offer symbolic spaces in which suffering and complaints about a failing government can be expressed. Kinois spectators, moreover, watch political leaders’ (irregular) replies to fellow citizens’ complaints. This generates hope and incites Kinois to increase participation in a space that was carved out by the government.