In the Democratic Republic of Congo the governing agencies (in the broadest sense) fail to provide some of the most elementary public services to the population, which is pushed to support itself. In an attempt to make ends meet, the city dwellers of the capital, Kinshasa, turn their seemingly desperate surroundings into promising ones through exploring what de Boeck (de Boeck and Plissart Reference de Boeck and Plissart2004: 225) defines as ‘the possibilities of the (im)possible’. They actively defy their precarious socio-economic conditions and they do so with an outstanding creativity (Trefon Reference Simone2004; Nlandu Reference Nlandu and Enwezor2002; Emizet Reference Emizet1998; Mwanza Reference Wa Mwanza1997; de Herdt and Marysse 1996). These creative outbursts are perceptible in the city's (physical) public space. Kinois driven by commercial ambitions and social practices of all kinds occupy every disposable inch of the capital. Mamans ya bilanga grow cassava on traffic islands (Mianda Reference Mianda1996) and pasteurs say their prayers in the open air (Kuyu Mwissa Reference Kuyu Mwissa1996: 19). In a gradual and individual way, inhabitants have literally invaded the urban margins, the grey area between buildings and streets. Stalls selling telephone cards and stationery, workshops and garages, bars and brothels all thrive on the sidewalks with minimal infrastructure, if any at all. A steadily increasing number of street children join this invasive movement. Teamed up in gangs, they comb the streets in search of a location to settle down (for a while) and convert it into their home. They eat, sleep, wash, work and play in the open, blurring the line between the public and the private. Street youth claim that ‘sleep occupies no space’Footnote ¹ and they are free to perch wherever they wish. However, this expression needs some explanation. Usually they can only settle ‘wherever they wish’ under certain conditions. As this essay outlines, fierce exchanges precede any settlement, since in reality every inch of town is negotiable. Actors involved in these negotiations prior to the installation of a business/dwelling on a particular spot originate from every possible section of society: deals are made between night guards (sentinelles), street vendors (bachayeur), homeless (sans-abri), tenants, civil servants, street children, police officers and so on. Everyone who feels entitled to use some space has to deal with whoever considers himself or herself to be the rightful owner of the place in question. In these dynamics every element mixes and no one is considered marginal, least of all street youth, who are inextricably bound up with Congolese society. The street is the site where this surreptitious cooperation between all these users of the public spaces surfaces. This contribution deals with these hybrid social activities and analyses them through a focus on space.

The aim of this essay is twofold: on the one hand, I analyse how street gangs manage to get a grip on certain territory. On the other hand, I show how bashege Footnote ² invest the territory they occupy with meaning and signification. To clarify these points, I proceed as follows: the first two sections are dedicated to the way structures of power are externalized in Kinshasa's public places and to how street gangs fit within this power game. I discuss the way Kinois (and members of street gangs in particular) invade Kinshasa's public space as well as the government's reaction to this ‘colonization from below’ (Appadurai Reference Appadurai2000).Footnote ³ I also explore the competition between the users of public places, eager to acquire a suitable location to settle (temporarily). The following three sections consider the ways street youth use these spaces, exercise their power in them, and imbue these sites with meaning and signification. I also examine how they manage to construct a home in the streets and make sense of their urban environment.

What I refer to as a street gang (bande, écurie, chaise, ceinture or clique) is a group of around thirty youngsters (aged approximately fourteen to thirty), both male and female, who hang around on the streets day in day out, as it is the place where they live and make a living (cook, wash, sleep, do odd jobs, deal in drugs, prostitute themselves, get involved in petty crime). Gang members often leave their homes as children, either because they want to or because they are forced to do so. From then on, they live alternately in the streets and in shelters for street children; from about the age of eighteen years, they start to scour the streets on a permanent basis. Occasionally, they construct a dwelling with recycled material to which they retire to sleep. Some members may rent a small shack. A gang is hierarchically structured with an authoritative leader at the top. Most of the adult members have contact with family and relatives, but prefer to continue sleeping in the rough. They might go and stay with their relatives occasionally to enjoy a good night's rest, or to wash and bathe. Girls who give birth usually stay with their relatives for a few weeks before rejoining the gang, leaving the baby at the family's place. Hard-core members live and sleep in the streets permanently and have no contact with relatives. The composition of the gang might change slightly as time goes by. In general, though, the members stick together for a few years at least. Love affairs blossom profusely between members of the gang, but occasionally a lover is found in other circles. Girls represent ‘capital’ and income for a street gang, as female prostitution often constitutes the main source of cash.

I collected the ethnographic data presented here during ten months of fieldwork in Kinshasa between 2004 and 2007. I lived among three street gangs: City Bagdad, Las Vegas and Cinq Étoiles. The respective leaders of these gangs are Ramani, Kanyinda and Shiro. At times, interviews were recorded on the spot with audio equipment, subsequently transcribed, translated and analysed. But most of the time I just hung around with the members enjoying informal conversations with them. The date on which each conversation took place appears between brackets after the interlocutor's name. All the interlocutors were asked permission to use their names, and all agreed. Additionally, local newspapers were screened for comments on events that involved street gangs and the city council.

SOFT AND UNSOFT CLASHES IN THE URBAN ENVIRONMENT

According to a Foucauldian interpretation, the concept of government refers to the conduct of conduct; it ‘designates not just the activities of the state and its institutions but more broadly any rational effort to influence or guide the conduct of human beings through acting upon their hopes, desires, circumstances, or environment’ (Foucault in Inda Reference Inda and Inda2005: 1). In other words, the conduct of conduct can be generated from the top, from below and from all that is situated in between. Public space serves as a stage where all the actors of the entire spectrum meet. Territoriality thus constitutes an important tool in this game of power. Whoever succeeds in taking up a particular territory shows his force. The quiet and seemingly non-organized character of citizens’ incursions (the minuscule stall, the unpretentious signboard, and the tiny squat made of junk, all those minimal interventions that slowly and seamlessly shade into the built environment) constitutes the strength of ‘the movement’, that is, the slow occupation of public spaces by the Kinois, a movement that is irreversible, hence very powerful. None of these claims is formulated out loud, which makes this ‘quiet encroachment’ (Bayat Reference Bayat1997: 57) extremely hard to uproot.Footnote ⁴ The current invasion of Kinshasa's public places by the inhabitants keeps a low profile – however striking to the eye it may be – and every participant acts in his or her own way, individually establishing ‘passive networks’ (Bayat Reference Bayat1997: 64). The latter consist of an ‘instantaneous communication among atomized individuals which is established by the tacit recognition of their common identity and is mediated through space’ (ibid., emphasis added). Indeed, all the users of Kinshasa's public spaces recognize each other as such just by occupying locations in close vicinity to each other; they are aware that they are all in the same boat. In Kinshasa, ‘space, in a way, belongs to whomever uses it, despite the halfhearted attempts of the city authorities to control the slow but unstoppable occupation and the progressive denser use of that space’ (de Boeck and Plissart Reference de Boeck and Plissart2004: 230). Closing deals is the main strategy here (kobeta coop, see also Nzeza Bilakila 2004). Grassroots responses to governmental interventions cause an endless intertwining performed in public places. It produces a somewhat awkward but fruitful complicity between the governing and the governed, each party simultaneously trying to enlarge its sphere of influence and power. So, in the end, who is governing whom? AbdouMaliq Simone (Reference Simone2005: 5) states that this web of tightly interwoven arrangements is part and parcel of today's urban Africa, and that ‘urban governance results from a wide range of transactions among varied interests, where functional compromises are negotiated and renegotiated’. In Kinshasa, as will be outlined below, new and constantly shifting bonds of solidarity emerge and these casual connections constitute a vital aspect of survival in the streets.

Street gangs form an important part of the silent flood of people that overruns Kinshasa's public places. In order to force back the bashege, the city authorities resort to interventions within the framework of spatial governmentality. This principle gathers ‘new mechanisms of social ordering based on spatial regulation’ (Engle Merry Reference Engle Merry2001: 16) that concentrate on space instead of individuals. These mechanisms (try to) regulate and adjust people's behaviour by (legally) prohibiting particular conduct in particular places.Footnote ⁵ In the same manner, Kinshasa's authorities try to deal with bashege by channelling their physical presence in public places. One possibility is to harass the youngsters on the territories (terrain, secteur or bagdad) they occupy, thereby obliging them to move on. Las Vegas regularly underwent these regulatory measures between 2004 and 2006. The targeted site which the youngsters of Las Vegas ‘colonized’ at that time was precious to them. They had fought fiercely ‘during two weeks and two days’ (Kanyinda, 7 August 2005) against another gang to get hold of this particular terrain. Its location is outstanding because it privileges intense social traffic, as a highly frequented fairground lies within a stone's throw as well as several crowded bars and one-hour hostels. Hence, the site offers various opportunities for any business to flourish, from shining shoes to picking pockets. It is also an excellent spot for the prostitutes of the gang to meet potential clients; the girls line up, scantily dressed, alongside the road to attract passers-by. Yet the lively character of the spot has its drawbacks. As it is adjacent to the main road (Boulevard Lumumba) that connects the international airport of Ndjili to the administrative and commercial centre Gombe, numerous foreign visitors pass by and are able to get a look at the bashege's creative entrances to livelihood. This is exactly what the city authorities want to avoid and that is why gang members were harassed. The authorities are eager to display a positive image of the capital to its visitors, and street youth do not fit into that picture. Whenever an important guest is about to drive by, the whole Boulevard Lumumba is temporarily cleared. On 19 March 2006, I witnessed this course of action when President Kabila accompanied the head of the Commission of the African Union, Konaré, to the airport. I was sitting with members of Las Vegas on their terrain some thirty minutes prior to the passage of the VIPs. Civil servants came and approached everyone along the sidewalks of the boulevard. The orders were clear: bashege were to stay out of sight, bartenders to close up and hawkers to withdraw their commodities from the roadside in order to provide the city with an image of cleanliness and controllability. Everyone did as they were told. However, just minutes after the cortège whizzed by, they had already reconquered their former positions. Finally weather conditions succeeded where police force had failed: in April 2006 the members of the gang Las Vegas were literally washed off their terrain by heavy rainfall that completely flooded their site. They moved to the veranda of a state building, as will be discussed in more detail below. This mode of action exemplifies the dialectical relation of giving and taking which exists between the government and the city dwellers. Government actions are seen as temporary and ephemeral measures, as the gang members reconquer their territory over and over again.

Sometimes, though, the clearance of public spaces may take a more drastic turn. It sometimes happens that the authorities completely devastate the terrains occupied by the gangs, burning down the shrubs that secure the members’ privacy and destroying the shacks built with sundry bits of flotsam. By aiming at their territory, the city council tries to render the ‘problem’ invisible, pretending it does not exist. The authorities usually ‘deploy risk discourse to legitimate interventions in public space which are motivated from another source’ (Watson Reference Watson2006: 170). Street gangs are supposed to be dangerous, a nuisance, a shame to the city and its citizens, so they should be dealt with in a radical way. Newspapers eagerly join in the slandering, portraying the juveniles as scoundrel or scum.Footnote ⁶ Numerous Kinois approve of these spatial operations, for they are afraid of bashege and agree with the authorities and the print media that they should be ‘prevented from doing harm’.Footnote ⁷Bashege are very much aware that the citizens are prejudiced against them and that their mere presence in public places arouses suspicion. As one leader put it, ‘to the Kinois, nothing more than our walking down the streets means trouble already’ (Ramani, 30 March 2005). The operations carried out by policemen to destroy bashege terrains bear names such as Kin Propre (A Clean Kinshasa) or Démolition des Constructions Anarchiques (Demolition of Anarchistic Constructions). These denominations fit the official purpose of the interventions, that is to clear the city out, but bashege suspect that the cleansing operations are part of a hidden agenda. As the leader of the Las Vegas gang explains, policemen regularly ruin his territory (Kanyinda, 1 September 2005). According to him, they supposedly come to clear the terrain of rubbish, but end up destroying it completely. Kanyinda believes the real target to be his gang as a whole, and his suspicion was confirmed by the city governor (Jean Kimbunda at that time), as quoted in a website news article: ‘We will no longer admit any anarchistic constructions in green areas, sullying the capital's image. … Through this action, we also fight against insanitary conditions and in addition we try to get rid of the hide-outs of bandits who create desolation among the citizens at night.’Footnote ⁸ Complete obliteration of territories is one way of managing and controlling street youth's presence in public spaces. Sometimes the clearance is effected in a more subtle way. On the eve of the elections due on 30 June 2005, concluding the period of political transition in DRC,Footnote ⁹ tensions were expected. As street youth are generally fond of noise and riots, it is tempting for political actors to manipulate them so as to destabilize the whole city. The city governor Jean Kimbunda ordered a soccer competition between the street gangs of Kinshasa. By doing so, he tried to keep the youth off the streets during these tense days. Football is a very popular sport among bashege, and they attended the games in great numbers, leaving the public places empty and the authorities at ease.

At times, the target is no longer approached through the time-consuming detour of the terrain, but aims directly at the physical presence: the authorities simply take bashege away from the streets and move them to a remote spot. These spatial interventions may be triggered by political motives as well. On 12 November 2006, at the crack of dawn, some 400 street youth were detained and subsequently transferred to Kanyama-Kasese in the province of Katanga, approximately 1,000 kilometres from Kinshasa. They ended up in a Centre Pilote du Service National, to be given training in the agricultural sector so as to enable them to secure a livelihood in future life.Footnote ¹⁰ Yet popular narrative has it that the real instigation of this move was political. The removal of the bashege in November 2006 coincided with the emergence of Joseph Kabila as the country's first democratically elected president in over forty years. His main adversary, Jean-Pierre Bemba, did not submit to the outcome of the elections, and was said to be planning to call in bashege to disturb public order and participate in manifestations in his favour. For bashege, attending demonstrations, applauding at political events, or enthusiastically welcoming politicians at the airport, are jobs just like any other. Like shining shoes or dealing in drugs, they are simply a way to make money.Footnote ¹¹ With a little financial encouragement, it is quite easy to convince street youth to show ‘genuine’ enthusiasm for a generous donor. The removal of hundreds of their peers was intended to warn bashege to stop intervening in the political sphere and also to ease down this wave of Bemba sympathy.

The authorities sometimes proceed in a radical manner, which may lead events to take a more violent turn. It usually makes street youths even more determined. On the evening of 22 April 2007, for example, the Police d'Intervention Rapide (PIR) shot members of Las Vegas while they were loitering around their terrain at the Inspection de Travail (Labour Inspectorate) compound.Footnote ¹² Although the shooting shocked the gang members, a few days later they stubbornly reoccupied the very same place.

The endless interactive play of giving and taking, chasing and colonizing, allows the participants to continuously scan each other's limits. For bashege, if their terrain is wiped out by policemen, it takes less than 24 hours to reconstruct a home elsewhere – or on the very same spot, for that matter. These are in fact powerful moves. The message is clear: we, bashege, are here to stay and to be reckoned with. Their determined motion (like that of Kinois in general) is forceful enough to renew public space. These inhabitants of Kinshasa softly shape it through daily use or pratiques quotidiennes (de Certeau 1990).Footnote ¹³ Whether the counteraction is generated by cleansing operations or brutal police actions, street youth insist on an interactive game, accordingly moulding the urban environment to their needs. This moulding is accompanied by an intensive mingling with other users of the same public space. Eileen Moyer (2004: 132), who studies street youth in Dar es Salaam, asserts that youth develop ‘spatial tactics that challenge government control’ to get a grip on the streets of the downtown business district. These tactics consist of bribing policemen in order to set up a commercial stall on the sidewalk or paying a night guard to sleep on the front steps of a building. In Kinshasa a similar hybridization of social actions takes place, involving both civilians and (representatives of) authorities in a dialogical relationship. But let us now discard the governing institutions and focus exclusively on the daily users of the public spaces themselves. This brings us to the next point: the importance of establishing various affiliations enabling one to secure a livelihood – and life for that matter – on the streets.

TERRITORIAL DYNAMICS AT GRASSROOTS LEVEL

Despite the bashege statement that ‘home is anywhere you can sleep’, they cannot simply bed down at random because ‘almost every one of these kinds of housing for the poor, including roofs, parapets, compound walls, and overhangs, is subject to socially negotiated arrangements’ (Appadurai Reference Appadurai2000: 637). As mentioned above, Kinshasa's public spaces appear to have been invaded by citizens in search of profitable spots to set up business, dwellings, or both. Even the dead seem to monopolize space in the urban realm (de Boeck 2005b, 2006). This ‘colonization from below’, as we have seen, softly clashes with the opposite pole of the societal spectrum, producing a dialogical relationship. However, if we scale down and focus on the grassroots level alone, interactive tensions similar to the cross-level ones can be discerned. They oppose, at one end, those who strive for the best place in the sun (in a manner of speaking) and, at the other, those who believe they own that sunny place. The physical proximity of the actors involved makes their cooperation both possible and necessary. The ‘seekers’ consist of the daily users of public places: the hucksters and hawkers, teachers and preachers, football and checkers players, homeless and street children – all those who share a lived experience in the streets. Their opponents are what I call ‘providers’, the ones who claim to have rights to the desired place. They live in the adjacent plot, profit from the light of a street lamp, or simply settled on the spot first. To arrive at a successful end to their search for a (temporary) place to install themselves, the seekers need to reach an understanding with the providers to ensure they will be ‘tolerated’ in their provisional surroundings. While a phone-card shop generates boisterous crowds, a food stall spreads rank smells, a drinking kiosk triggers public peeing and a rendezvous spot stages promiscuous scenes, a street gang comes with all of these nuisances at once. Thus, it is essential to close a deal with the self-proclaimed ‘owner’ of the place prior to the introduction of these provocative activities. The deal will often require some kind of compensation for the permission granted. A small amount of cash usually clears up the matter, but when street gangs are involved, the arrangement can turn out to be more complex.

So, typically, before spreading their cardboards on a piece of sidewalk, street youth need to negotiate with those who consider themselves to be the legitimate owners of that particular site. This can be quite tricky, as it often concerns a grey area between buildings and streets, an area that is neither in private nor in state hands. Bashege often complain: ‘People don't like it when we settle in front of their compound’ (‘Bato baboyi que enfants de la rue bafanda liboso ya lopango na bango, basepelaka te’, Le Pira, 15 April 2006). A street gang will only be accepted in the neighbourhood under certain conditions. Gang leaders are very much aware that ‘in order to be able to settle somewhere, you need to be loved’ (‘Po nakozwa place il faut bato balinga yo’) or ‘have a lot of fans’ (Kanyinda, 7 August 2005). To gain popularity, street youth proceed in various ways. Gangs are organized along strictly hierarchical lines, and leaders, who ‘don't like a fuss round here’ (‘Toboyi mubulu awa’, Ramani, 30 March 2005), will not hesitate to kick troublemakers out of the group. And theft repels, so a gang leader will do his best to spare his neighbours. Both parties will negotiate to find out whether an ambiance of trust and reliability can be created and a satisfactory outcome attained. The gang might need access to a water tap or a safe place to lock and stock some belongings. The ‘proprietors’ of the compound, sidewalk, wall or tree need to live in security, and they might want the immediate neighbourhood to be guarded at night. Here is where supply and demand meet. If mutual efforts bring forth the right match, the gang can put up their minimal dwelling and not be chased away. The ‘tolerant’ inhabitants will feel safe and guarded as street youth usually wake at night to prevent police harassment or to see to their nocturnal business of all sorts. The members of the gang can wash and bathe and put their valuables away in a safe place. Of course, a gang could just settle without prior arrangements with the surrounding neighbours, but this tends to lead to trouble or mawa plein, pure suffering (Kanyinda, 7 August 2005). The City Bagdad gang of quartier Binza Pompage apparently found continuous peace of mind by establishing an excellent and longstanding relationship with the proprietor of the plot where they lounged about. They all slept under a bridge nearby but hung around at his terrain and washed and bathed in the small rivulet that ran through it. It is a quiet and peaceful site with the advantage of a huge marketplace nearby. Gang members occasionally did jobs at the owner's construction site and he in turn bought them food once in a while. The members assumed their ‘colonization’ would be long-lasting, thanks to their excellent relationship with the proprietor, and that they would not be chased away from underneath the bridge by the authorities ‘because it already belongs to the state anyway and besides, it is impossible to construct things under this bridge, so they will not claim it’ (Ramani, 2 September 2005). During my last field trip in March–April 2007, however, City Bagdad's luck had turned. The members were chased away by neighbours and police harassment, and the gang had split up.Footnote ¹⁴ The proprietor stated that he could no longer defend the gang, as the entire neighbourhood accused him of encouraging their alleged criminal activities. Without the consent and the support of surrounding neighbours, it became impossible for City Bagdad to continue their former ‘colonization’.Footnote ¹⁵ Sometimes, there are particular reasons not to chase street youth away. Recent talk in KinshasaFootnote ¹⁶ has it that street youth are occasionally encouraged by inhabitants to hang around their compound. Fully aware of the growing concern of Western NGOs with these children, landlords try to get their financial share by profiling themselves as caretakers (encadreurs) of the gangs, whether or not any assistance other than tolerating the latter's presence is provided.

Additionally, during their search for an adequate location, ‘seekers’ compete amongst themselves. As illustrated by the Las Vegas gang's combat with another gang over two weeks and two days, negotiations between competitors can take a violent turn. Female prostitution constitutes the main income for a gang, so it is important to seize the most profitable spots to unfold these activities. ‘If we gangs fight, it's always over women’ (Kanyinda, 7 September 2005). In the end, though, these ‘turf wars, centred on territoriality and control over space, and, not infrequently, women’ (Abdullah Reference Abdullah, Honwana and Boeck2005: 177) are concluded by an agreement and the more powerful gang takes control over the site.

In short, territoriality in Kinshasa's public urban spaces is an extremely dynamic field. Whether between authorities and the grassroots, between seekers and providers at the grassroots level, or among the seekers themselves, Kinois’ social interaction seems inextricably entangled. It apparently generates an all-embracing intertwinement throughout the public realm. Each and everyone appears to be mutually dependent. However, the bonds established are tacit, volatile, and continuously shifting. Indeed, these relations subsist only as long as required for immediate or effective gain; whenever the short-term objective is attained or – in the case of failure – its usefulness questioned, the connection dissolves. The logic behind these relationships is quid pro quo, which is accurately phrased by the Congolese as le phénomène de retour (‘the return phenomenon’, Trefon 2004: 23). Their only raison d’être is the calculation that the donated assistance might one day boomerang its way to the donor. AbdouMaliq Simone states that the totality of human interactions makes up the infrastructure of a city (Johannesburg in his case), and he refers to ‘people as infrastructure’. He continues:

Accordingly, life at any marketplace in Kinshasa collapses when operations such as Kanga Vagabonds (Lock up the Vagrants) hit the city and muscle bashege out. Without their input, a marketplace doesn't function as efficiently as it should because bashege make up an essential part of the commercial transactions. Each time similar expulsions of street children occur, vendors deplore the lack of dishwashers, sweepers, wrap-up boys, and carriers without whom they cannot pursue their vending activities properly (Le Phare, 23 September 2006).¹⁷

In order to heighten the outcome of social interactions, Kinois successively assume different profiles, at each stage adjusted to the partner/opponent of that moment. The most profitable strategy to maximize the ongoing social traffic is to constantly change position. This adjustment realizes itself by going through a wide range of personal characteristics and eventually picking the most suitable one. Indeed, street youngsters continuously (re)adjust their profile, highlighting the one aspect that is suited to yield maximum profit. The very same shege might pose as a fearless leader one moment and as a child in need the next, depending on whether his adversary is a peer or a social worker. Some journalists comment on this aspect as follows: ‘Certains gens se transforment tantôt en chargeurs ou porteurs, tantôt en voleurs’ (‘Some people transform themselves sometimes into porters, sometimes into thieves’); and ‘Pour échapper de tomber dans le filet de la police, les shegués se sont déguisés en mettant des habits propres’ (‘To avoid being caught in the police net, bashege dressed up in clean clothes’).Footnote ¹⁸ Incidentally, the latter comment shows the prejudice against street youths as being untidy. In my experience, however, bashege (above the age of about twelve) are extremely concerned with their appearance. Whenever I went to their terrain, they would be either washing their clothes, manicuring each other or getting a new haircut. Clothes and accessories rotate as they are shared by all the members of a gang, and they cherish this wardrobe as their most precious belonging. Whenever some money is available, new clothing is purchased.

Furthermore, by adjusting their profiles, the youngsters crisscross their way through different strata in society as the momentary partner in crime might be a fellow shege, a politician, a street vendor, a policeman, NGO personnel, a whore-hopper, or an occasional anthropologist. In addition, through this continuous social bargaining, bashege transgress spatial scales as well. Through the local night watchman (sentinelle) they bribe to be allowed to sleep in a compound, or through the Western visitor they charm for profitable ends, a shege moves up and down a many-tiered and ever-growing social world.

TERRITORIALITY ABOUNDS

How does gang members’ (sense of) territoriality exteriorize itself once they have ‘colonized’ a terrain? Are there any visual or virtual limits to their terrain? What about accessibility? As they tend to fight over the seizure of a terrain, some of these must be more valuable than others. Why is that? And finally: how do they invest these territories with meaning and value? How do bashege manage to make a home in the streets? These and related issues will be discussed next.

Before digging into these topics, it is important to stress individual action in the process of making sense of a particular place. The agency of street youth surfaces in an irrefutable manner when we examine their lived experience in the streets. Along the way, they assertively respond to any (and even seemingly hopeless) circumstances they encounter. They actively defy the inconveniences of their surroundings, and there appears to be no end to creative interventions to suit their needs. In consequence, street youth are not to be considered as mere victims (Honwana and de Boeck Reference Biaya, Honwana and Boeck2005; Korbin Reference Korbin2003; Magazine Reference Magazine2003; Panter-Brick 2002). An analysis of what causes them to be in the streets, in the first place, makes this point clear. Whatever the reason might be (famine, witchcraft accusations, maltreatment at home or just fun seeking), taking to the streets is often a wilful decision. And even if it wasn't initially their choice to end up on the street, it is often their choice to stay there (Geenen Reference Geenen2006). The agency within street youth's behaviour should be reckoned with as they often assume (shared) responsibility for the way things run.

Throughout their use of public space a similar assertive attitude emerges. However desperate or unattractive a place appears to be, in their hands it turns into a malleable entity. Bashege get involved in ‘the social construction’ of the space they occupy, ‘the actual transformation of space – through people's social exchanges, memories, images, and daily use of the material setting – into scenes and actions that convey symbolic meaning’ (Low Reference Kuyu Mwissa1996: 862). Street gangs settle in a wide range of places. To begin with, there are those places that do not seem to have much intrinsic value, such as waste land, or a remote riverbank. In terms of built environment, these sites are often totally worthless. They are not planned, conceptualized, or thought over; they just are. At other locations, a reminder of a concrete shape might be present, such as a few gravestones on a cemetery in disuse, or some foundations on an abandoned construction site. The remaining elements will be integrated into the future dwelling. Finally, bashege occasionally settle right next to or inside an existing building, altering its function in the process. Las Vegas, for example, converted the entrance of the Inspection de Travail building into their home after working hours.

Besides its presence as a material base, the location of a site can add to its value, as the first part of the article showed. A territory that lies close to a highly frequented bar or market is obviously worth more than a remote one. The crowd at hand opens up opportunities for selling drugs and sex. Gombe, for example, the administrative and commercial centre where luxury and poverty meet, fulfils both criteria. It offers the conveniences created by crowds and chaos, and also the facilities of verandas and overhangs that are abandoned at night and accessible through bribable night watchmen. Numerous bashege settle down in these ‘spaces of transit’ (Devisch Reference Devisch1995: 611) or ‘interstitial spaces’ (Moyer Reference Moyer2004: 119) where they find money, excitement and dreams, but also disappointment and frustration.

Yet whatever a site’s initial condition, from the plain emptiness of some remote waste land to the sheltered closeness of a foreign embassy's veranda, it is definitely not (yet) a home. It still needs a few material and – more importantly – mental adjustments in order to acquire that qualification. To invest a place with meaning and value, bashege proceed in various ways.

After a street gang has ‘colonized’ a place, in either a peaceful or a belligerent way, the new occupants will make it clear who is in charge from that stage on. Bashege often impose a physical spatial marker to dominate a terrain and to show the surroundings that a new era has dawned. This procedure is common in geopolitical spheres as well. Erecting constructions on colonized territory is tightly embedded in the notion of power. Newly arrived rulers impose themselves through interventions in the urban environment. The colonial buildings in former Belgian Congo are but one example of this policy (Lagae Reference Lagae2004). On a micro level, the mark need not be of monumental size. A modest banner can satisfy a street gang's need for recognition.Footnote ¹⁹ Similarly, as long as four decades ago, members of Kinshasa's youth groups used to paint the name of their gang on the wall of their headquarters (La Fontaine Reference La Fontaine and Mayer1970: 203). The longer an occupation lasts, the more complicated and sophisticated the constructions become. Initially, a gang's presence on a secteur might be marked merely by a name carved in a tree, a tiny wooden bench, some cooking utensils lying about or a piece of canvas fixed to the ground with stones. After a while, a modest shelter might be built with reused plywood boards or flattened car leftovers. As years go by and the occupation persists, some annexes might be added to the basis. However, no matter what the appearance of the spatial marker is, the message remains the same: this terrain is taken. This is exactly why the city authorities are so eager to tear these constructions down. The purpose of Kin Propre or similar governmental actions is not only to clear out the city, but also to show the inhabitants who is in power.

A SPATIAL STATE OF MIND

To destroy material settings is easy enough. Mental building, however, is harder to uproot, as in the realm of imagination even a bulldozer is powerless. One of the virtual building stones, and a powerful tool in dominating a particular terrain, is language. Once again, this strategy is – by definition – a colonizing tool: the Belgian colonizer, Mobutu and Mzee Kabila successively deployed a toponymic strategy, at each stage erasing previous geographical denominations and thereby emphasizing that a change of power was in order. In the same manner, some decades ago, youngsters of Kinshasa, the Bills, used to alter the names of quarters they hung about (de Boeck and Plissart Reference de Boeck and Plissart2004: 39). Today, bashege proceed likewise. Rond Point Ngaba is now called Roma, Limete is Liban and Gombe is Dortsh. By linguistically occupying these spaces, they mentally control them. Tuan (Reference Tuan1991: 686), who examines the role of human speech in the creation of place, states that ‘it is their place – their world – through the casting of a linguistic net’. Renaming is part of the mental resignifying of places. Through these pratiques quotidiennes in the linguistic field, members of a gang invest the place they colonize with value and meaning.

Another procedure is to handle the terrain as an indoor space. While I was having a chat with Padjero of City Bagdad, we were sitting underneath the bridge where they sleep. A youngster wanted to speak to Padjero as well, and the latter ordered him to ‘wait outside’ (‘Boyebisa petit moko aza libanda akende te. Azela ngai. Wana libanda. Nazoya’, ‘Tell the boy who's outside to stay there. To wait for me. The one outside. I'm coming’, Padjero, 7 September 2005). The outdoor space had become an inside space to the gang's members. This entire procedure surfaces while observing their daily use of these places. To the unaccustomed eye, their terrain might be nothing but a fallow plot in the open air. However, by repeatedly referring to its parts as being a salle (a living room), for example, and by repeatedly doing on that spot what one is supposed to do in a salle (that is, leisure activities), the spot eventually becomes this salle. Each time I visited the gang Las Vegas, its leader Kanyinda would welcome me with the words ‘Let's go into the salle’ (‘Tokota salle’) after which we would sit on a small wooden bench under a tree. The salle is significant to the members, as it is a ‘social space’ (Lefebvre Reference Lefebvre2000) where they receive guests, hang around, smoke weed, and hold reunions. However, the salle is a floating entity that could be pinned down just anywhere. The location that hosts the salle becomes important and valuable, but these qualities will be attributed to it only as long as it continues to be a suitable receptacle of the salle. Indeed, when Las Vegas's members were flooded out of their terrain in April 2006 by heavy rainfall, they moved the salle to its present location: the covered entrance of the Inspection de Travail building. After the removal of the salle, the former location became meaningless. It was just a spot under a tree on a vacant plot adjacent to the boulevard; nothing more, nothing less. That is to say, on top of the valuation through naming, it is the human relations deployed on a particular spot that provide it with value. According to Corsín Jiménez (2003), this mode of making meaning is inherent to space: social relationships have the power to confer meaningfulness on a place despised by its inhabitants. Merely by acting as a stage where particular social activities unfold, the value of a place increases. Space is this ‘capacity’, as Corsín Jiménez puts it.

In addition to a salle, a terrain usually contains a bureau, an inner division with a business connotation, denoting the place where drugs are dealt, sex sold and money handled. There are also particularly defined spots to cook, to wash, or to sleep. Similar invisible demarcations confine the territory at its limits. Although the place may be located in the open, without any visible boundaries and thus seemingly approachable from all sides, its access is limited. This limitation not only sprouts from the territoriality of the (temporary) local power that bears the rule, turning average Kinois into trespassers as they enter this gang-laden social space, but also from daily practices. Time after time, members use the very same entrances to ‘enter’ the apparent openness of their terrain, as if passing imaginary thresholds, creating a space that is virtually indoors.

A SHACK OF ONE'S OWN

Appadurai (1996: 54) stresses the growing role of imagination in social life, putting it in the context of a globalized world: ‘Fantasy is now a social practice; it enters, in a host of ways, into the fabrication of social lives for many people in many societies.’ One fancies a different life through images from all over the world exhibiting a variety of openings. In Kinshasa, different sources offer the inspirational pictures used. Gombe's billboards and shop-windows display myriad possibilities, and media such as transnational TV channels provide numerous templates as well. In short, images of ‘how it could be’ slip into the capital's public sphere in abundance. They inspire one to create an identity by borrowing specific features and transferring them into a particular and personal assemblage. Pype (Reference Pype2007: 252) analyses this blending procedure amidst young Kinois men who fight in (semi-)public areas and the images of masculinity that inspire them. She also points out that these bato ya libanda additionally ‘impose themselves in the public spaces through shouts and bodily posture’. Kinshasa's streets are particularly inviting to this kind of identity-constructing exercise (Biaya Reference Biaya, Honwana and Boeck2005). As Jewsiewicki (Reference Jewsiewicki and Mantuba-Ngoma2004) has shown, public space is a productive environment for identity building, as the outcome is shown and one is seen. Musicians and sapeurs Footnote ²⁰ confirm their identity by showing off publicly. He also speaks of an ‘espace démocratique’ (2004: 263), referring to the streets and other public meeting places. The outside is the natural habitat of members of street gangs, enabling them to develop a mode of territorial control and mental mastering of public places and thereby adding to their identity construction.

Yet some bashege strive to lead a more ‘normal’ life as they grow weary of sleeping in the streets. This generally happens after bashege have reached an adult age or have become parents. These grown-up bashege stand in stark contrast to the younger ones, to whom street life has not lost its glamour (yet). In different ways, the adult bashege tend to mimic citizens living in their homes with their relatives, having regular (il)legal jobs and a correlative clear-cut division of time. Street youths usually live by a surprisingly tight schedule anyhow, with a marked distinction between work and leisure, and sometimes even the classic Sunday visits to relatives. As one leader (Kanyinda, 25 April 2005) put it: ‘Dimanche: repos!’ (‘Sunday: day off!’). As a consequence, bashege never just hang around, they hang around in a structured way. The division of time of street youths needs to be studied more closely.

So eventually some street youth go and look for a dwelling, settle the rent with the landlord and move in as a tenant. By doing so, they hope to shake off their marginalized social status, for a house means ‘a public facade, signboard, decorated wrapper, second skin’ (Holston Reference Holston1991: 457). Having a solid and paid-for roof above their heads gives the grown-up bashege the feeling that they conform. But although this upward shift on the social scale is definitely a trigger, other considerations might cause the desire to set up house as well. The constant police harassment in the streets, for instance, give some street youths a continuous unsafe feeling. A home is often considered a site of control, comfort and security. Bashege consider a house as a hide-out to withdraw to when policemen and other opponents are hot on their trail. In addition to protecting yourself, a house also protects your belongings. Having a place to lock and stock commodities enables one to own them. In their rented or self-constructed bicoques, street youths create what Appadurai (2000: 643) defines as ‘houseless domesticity’ by accumulating imported imitations of the real thing that can be purchased cheaply at Kinshasa's markets. All in all, the reasons that cause the urge for a non-moveable and concrete home are closely linked: the complementary rise in status, one's own safety, and the safety of one's belongings.

Consider how one gang leader realized the rental of a dwelling. Shiro is the leader of the gang Cinq Étoiles, that hung about in the proximity of Las Vegas's area, next to Boulevard Lumumba. He took the decision to rent a shack (toddi or bicoque) in June 2004 after his wife Rita had been raped by two Tunisian MONUC soldiers, thereby answering to the second consideration that incites to rent: one's own security.Footnote ²¹ Shiro and Rita now live with their two children in a small rented shack in a tunnel near Boulevard Lumumba.Footnote ²² The tunnel consists of an elongated stretch between two rows of walled-in compounds in quartier Limete Industriel. A train to the industrial plants used to run between these parcelles. The railway is no longer in use, and the void thus created is now packed with shelters and shacks of all kinds. Residents integrated the crossbeams of the former railway into their ramshackle constructions. Recently, even a Pentecostal church – a religious movement that has spread rapidly throughout Kinshasa – has found its way to the tunnel. Some denizens do not rent, as Shiro does, but construct after permission has been granted by the ‘provider’ of the place in question. Former Cinq Étoiles members, most of the girls of Las Vegas and some of its male members all set up a tiny bricolage with trash and leftovers, attached to anything that doesn't move. These dwellings usually consist of nothing more than a shelter. Appadurai refers to this as ‘spectral housing’, a wide spectrum of dwelling possibilities for the needy that relies on dreams, images and make-believe. Such spectral housing is laid out here in all its appearances. Let's go back to Shiro and his concrete dwelling. It soon became clear that personal security was not the only reason why Shiro and Rita decided to rent. Indeed, Shiro initially told me that the reason he rented had been the rape of his wife (Shiro, 13 August 2005). But when I later asked him in what way his life had changed since he began renting, he enumerated material merits only, claiming that his quality of life had improved because he can now ‘own a small mattress to sleep on, a carpet to put into the house, and eventually even an electric fan’ (Shiro, 3 September 2005). His belongings are of the greatest importance to him. All these arguments are closely connected to a third consideration: the extra glow of improved social status realized by living inside a house. While in the case of the tunnel residents, one can hardly speak of sophisticated houses, and while bashege keep on living their streetwise lives, they still consider moving in as a step forward. To some more grown-up street youth, the street has often become ‘le faux côté’ (Fabrice, 22 August 2005), the wrong place.

SOME CONCLUDING REMARKS

Analysing the use of space brings power structures to the surface. This essay questions not so much who is in power in Kinshasa's public spaces, but how this power is exercised and brought to life. Inhabitants progressively control more and more spaces and they do so through daily practice only and without formulating out loud any claim. However, before they proceed to any minimal intervention in the urban environment – putting up a tiny stall, a modest shack or simply a banner – they need to negotiate with the person who considers himself or herself to be the legitimate owner of the site in question. So throughout their gradual appropriation of public space, Kinois encounter various actors with whom they need to close deals. If need be, they use political space to maximize their gains: bribing civil servants in order to put up a vending stall or construct a dwelling. Their occupation of urban space involves a surreptitious cooperation with the city authorities which produces a wide range of ‘hybrid social activities’. Negotiations over use of space have become part and parcel of daily life in Kinshasa. They indicate dialogical relationships between all actors in public space, each one in turn trying to enlarge his or her sphere of influence and power. The social fabric of the Congolese capital consists of this all-embracing intertwinement, as is clearly visible in the way streets are occupied.

Kinshasa's numerous street youth expediently join this interactive motion; they conquer a site to settle down; are chased off by city authorities or competing gangs; and subsequently reconquer the very same spot. They also develop a proper mode of evaluating their urban surroundings. They dominate the spaces where they hang out – by subjecting them linguistically, for example, or by controlling their accessibility. In addition, value might be added to a territory by means of a concrete object, a mark that announces their presence. The city authorities are eager to tear these ramshackle constructions down. Wiping out bashege’s signs means wiping out their presence. However, the most powerful strategy the bashege develop is to subdue their territories mentally. For example, in their frame of mind the outdoors becomes an indoor site. They turn a territory into their home through daily thoughts and practices alone. How can this colonization from below be ousted if the mental building overpowers the material one?