This article traces the evolving internal politics of Congolese associational life in Cape Town, South Africa. Membership in Amis BK Cape Town and Chinyabuguma Cape Town is rooted in transnational ties to South Kivu, a region in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This subregional focus allows us to identify and explain the translocal sociopolitical processes and cultural ties by which Congolese link their past in South Kivu with their present in Cape Town (Smith Reference Smith, Datta and Brickell1998). We argue that membership produces a paradox: it acts as a site of social and economic support even as membership can be restrictive in pressing for conformity to associational expectations. The leadership of both associations sets the expectations for membership in response to political junctures in the DRC and South Africa, which have increasingly precluded connections to South Africans, other foreign Africans and each other, since the mid-2000s. Through interviews and participant observation, we find that members’ connection to “home” (whether in South Kivu or Cape Town) is an ever-evolving form of translocal sociality that varies in degree and intensity based on the membership expectations set by the leadership of Amis BK and Chinyabuguma. We find Congolese associational life to be more than a dominant form of sociality, pressuring members to conform. Membership expectations are also intimately tied to ethno-regional ties based on presumed support for combattant groups within eastern DRC.
A translocal analysis allows us to identify how eastern Congolese associational life frames multiple social locations—of being from South Kivu but also of being in Cape Town. Their experiences are structured by language, class and gender as they navigate life in South Africa across a range of subject positions, with or without papers, possessing or lacking resources, tied to language or ethnicity, and so forth. As such, we understand Eastern Congolese associational life as a window to think about the social structural contexts in which individuals can act. To situate the nature and content of associational life among Congolese migrants in Cape Town, we invoke Granovetter’s theory of the strength of weak ties (Reference Granovetter1973). Weak ties offer community strength in allowing for a wide range of infrequent, arm’s-length relationships that allow individuals to access a range of novel and actionable information. Examples of useful information include news about job opportunities, avoiding police checks, or accessing documents to gain legal status in South Africa. Weak social networks provide for the diffusion of relevant information and connections needed to make decisions about one’s new life in greater Cape Town, as members of the South Kivu community and as residents of Cape Town. We pair Granovetter’s insights with F. Nyamnjoh’s concept of incompleteness as a vital form of conviviality, through which Nyamnjoh explains social life as requiring a balance of intimacy and distance (Reference Nyamnjoh2006, 12; Reference Nyamnjoh2015, 262–66). Together, their ideas provide a framework for understanding translocality for Congolese in Cape Town. Translocality illuminates the open-ended and nonlinear sociopolitical processes that produce a range of intimate and distant connections to South Kivu from Cape Town through a range of social ties set by association leaders (Peth Reference Peth2018). As such, our research contributes to scholarship on how “outsider” efforts to belong are variously construed, claimed, and contested among migrant communities in South Africa (F. Nyamnjoh Reference Nyamnjoh2006; Owen, Juries, and Mokoena Reference Owen, Juries and Mokoena2024). To avoid confusion, we understand the term “migrant” to include refugees, asylum-seekers, and economic migrants.
Whatever their category in Cape Town, the Congolese we consulted spoke of their individual and communal efforts to find a place in Cape Town while maintaining associational ties that pivot their attention to their home of origin in South Kivu. They also spoke of keeping to themselves, looking to associational life as a place of succour and support in the face of seemingly hostile black South African neighbors and colleagues, even as few Congolese we consulted have actually experienced physical violence at the hands of black South Africans. However, they all knew of instances of assault, looting, robbery, arson, intimidation, and threats against foreign Africans like them, including key episodes of xenophobic violence in major cities like Cape Town in May 2008 and August 2018 (Misago, Bule, and Mlilo Reference Misago, Bule and Mlilo2021, 16). When asked, almost everyone we consulted noted the extent to which South Africans either enabled or failed to restrict collective violence against foreign Africans, leading Congolese to turn to associational life for safety (cf. Misago Reference Misago and Landau2011; Reference Misago2017).
We develop our argument in two sections. The first introduces the broader Congolese community in South Africa to focus on their sociopolitical realities in Cape Town. This section then situates the expectations of membership in Amis BK and Chinyabuguma in response to political developments in eastern DRC. The second section introduces and explains Congolese social ties as a form of translocality, using Granovetter’s (Reference Granovetter1973) weak ties framework and Nyamnjoh’s (Reference Nyamnjoh2006; Reference Nyamnjoh2015) incompleteness as cultivated by individuals in their relationships with others. In this way, weak social ties are a form of convivial currency, as the state of being incomplete is a recognition of one’s reliance on others who are distant in the context of ever-present anxiety about the possibility of xenophobic attacks in Cape Town.
Before proceeding, we first present our collaborative method. Our evidence is rooted in the oral histories Vuninga conducted between 2015 and 2020 among members of Cape Town’s largest eastern Congolese associations—Amis BK and Chinyabuguma Cape Town (Vuninga Reference Vuninga2021a). A self-professed “inbetweener,” as a legal Congolese migrant with permanent residence in South Africa, Vuninga (Reference Vuninga, Ansoms, Bisoka and Thomson2021b) studied the sociopolitical networks of two Congolese associations of which, since 2010, they have been an ordinary member. In addition, from 2015 to 2018, she conducted weekly participant observation and semi-structured interviews with the founding leadership of Amis BK and Chinyabuguma (five men and two women). Through Vuninga’s status as an ordinary member of both groups, we were able to identify cleavages within the membership and trace the processes through which the founding leadership of Amis BK hived off to create a new association—Chinyabuguma. Vuninga conducted semi-structured interviews with twenty ordinary members of both associations to examine these processes, including four who quit Amis BK for Chinyabuguma and six Congolese who opted for membership in other regional associations. Lastly, in 2018 and 2019, Thomson interviewed nineteen Congolese living in Cape Town since the 1990s about their lives as migrants who fled war in the Kivus region of DRC. The latter was essential in reconstructing a historical background of Congolese social networks in Cape Town, especially in understanding shifts and changes in these networks as these individuals spoke of why they did not join, or quit, regional associations. Thomson’s 2016–2019 life history interviews and participant observation with Congolese seeking legal documentation from the Department of Home Affairs also informs the analysis; one function of Congolese associational life is to provide guidance on how to deal with South African authorities. All of the names we mention in our article are pseudonyms unless stated otherwise (some ranking members of the community asked that we mention them by name, and we agreed to honor their wish given their status in the eastern Congolese community).
Our collaborative research relationship began in July 2018, when Vuninga asked Thomson to act as her doctoral mentor. Since then, we have worked together to document the lives of Congolese migrants living in greater Cape Town. We learned from and taught each other the practice and ethics of collaborative research, most notably Thomson’s collaboration with other Congolese and our sustained reflection as differently positioned scholars.Footnote 1 In particular, we understand our research relationship to be more than mutual; it was also part of an iterative process of knowledge coproduction with our Congolese research participants as war-affected people (Thomson Reference Thomson2010). We understand research to be a continuous process rooted in a collaborative self-examination of our relationship with each other and also with research participants and the broader context in which our interviews and participant observation were conducted (Thomson Reference Thomson2021; Vuninga Reference Vuninga2022; cf. De Larrinaga and Doucet Reference De Larrinaga, Doucet, Salter and Mutlu2013). The result is a commitment to documenting the lives of Congolese migrants in Cape Town as knowers of their own lives to foreground the trust-based relationships that make our argument possible.
From Democratic Republic of Congo to Cape Town: Translocality in associational life
Congolese migrants have made their way to South Africa since the 1980s. These men and women came as part of the professional class of doctors, engineers, lawyers, and teachers who arrived from the western parts of the country, usually from the capital, Kinshasa (Owen, Juries, and Mokoena Reference Owen, Juries and Mokoena2024, 2158). By 2015, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) estimated at least 300,000 Congolese were living in South Africa, whether as migrants, refugees, or asylum-seekers (cited in Mpeiwa and Antara Reference Mpeiwa and Antara2018, 11). This figure is likely an underestimate given the politics of accurately counting migratory populations (Hamlin Reference Hamlin2021, 17). And it is difficult to accurately track where migrants come from, given South Africa’s policy of allowing them to settle anywhere in the country rather than in UNHCR-run camps, as is the norm in most African countries (Mpeiwa and Antara Reference Mpeiwa and Antara2018, 10).
Most Congolese choose to live in South Africa’s cities. Typically, they settle in urban areas where other Congolese already live, welcomed by settled compatriots (Brudvig Reference Brudvig2014; Owen, Juries, and Mokoena Reference Owen, Juries and Mokoena2024; Vuninga Reference Vuninga2022). Among those we consulted, all came to Cape Town after initially settling in either Johannesburg or Durban, as they came to believe Cape Town is easier to navigate. Given the challenges of gaining legal documentation, the Congolese we consulted said they felt unsupported and unwelcome in South Africa, pushing them to rely on social and economic networks made up mostly of other foreign Africans and fellow Congolese (see also Owen Reference Owen2015). Amity among Congolese in South Africa allows the newly arrived to find shelter, food, legal papers, and other resources needed to settle in Cape Town (cf. Lakika Reference Lakika2023; Vuninga Reference Vuninga2022). This safety net also allows for social induction into Congolese community norms and expectations, shaping the goals and expectations of Congolese associational life in Cape Town, as we detail later in this section. Those who do not opt for community membership often suffer economic and social precarity, as the informal sector can be unwelcoming to foreign Africans, women in particular (H. Nyamnjoh, Hall, and Cirolia Reference Nyamnjoh, Hall and Cirolia2022). As a result, the Congolese we consulted all spoke of associational life as a vital lifeline to settle (and remain) in Cape Town and as a way to find community care and comfort, notably as moments of disjuncture such as the 2006 and 2016 presidential elections in DRC, along with the recurrent threat of xenophobic attacks in Cape Town (Misago Reference Misago2017; Tawodzera and Crush Reference Tawodzera and Crush2023).
Our research participants identified accessing government services and a lack of employment opportunities as the primary challenges of living in Cape Town, something variously faced by migrants and South Africans alike in the context of anti-immigrant laws and policies (Lakika Reference Lakika2023, 202–203; Owen, Juries, and Mokoena Reference Owen, Juries and Mokoena2024, 2162–64). They also variously spoke of instances of police harassment and, on occasion, at the hands of other foreign Africans or black South Africans living in or near their environs. Not all interactions were negative, as the Congolese we consulted spoke of also finding camaraderie with those living or working nearby, particularly at language schools and churches (Schione Reference Schione and Werbner2008; Swart, Hankela, and H. Nyamnjoh Reference Swart, Hankela and Nyamnjoh2021). While our research participants knew of government-sponsored xenophobic slogans such as “South Africans First” (cf. Rousset, Maluleke, and Mendelsohn Reference Rousset, Maluleke and Mendelsohn2022) and felt a sense of personal insecurity as a result, they mostly reported instances of subtle xenophobia as shaping their day-to-day. These more subtle forms of exclusion result in a general awareness of the possibility of collective xenophobic violence. In turn, they often made individual and familial choices based on the belief that xenophobic violence could happen to them or their family members at any time. Such instances include derogatory remarks about speaking broken English, stealing jobs, school seats, or hospital beds from black South Africans, and generally feeling fearful as outsiders. Women also mentioned negative comments from other black Africans about their choice of clothing or hairstyles. In this broader setting of real or perceived xenophobia, the Congolese we consulted turned to associational life to seek succour and support from their fellow eastern Congolese (cf. Chekero Reference Chekero2023; Lekogo Reference Lekogo and Lekogo2011). These social networks sometimes include kin-like or friendship-like relationships with other foreign Africans and, indeed, other black South Africans, but such relationships are increasingly rare. Despite these individual impulses to build community across national or language lines, membership in South Kivu associational life since 2016 presumes a singular identity that actually narrows chances to connect across lines of difference.
Among the thirty-six Congolese we consulted, all lived in Cape Town when a new wave of eastern Congolese migrants fled in 2016. The exodus was driven by increased political violence and insecurity once President Joseph Kabila decided to seek a third term following his contested 2011 victory. In 2016, Kabila was at the end of his constitutionally mandated term of office. Yet, he sought to remain in power, resulting in a new wave of intense political violence in eastern DRC. A new round of violence occurred when the national electoral body postponed the vote until December 2018. Only in August 2018 did Kabila finally announce he would not stand for a third term. Yet, the damage had been done. Political violence in eastern DRC intensified, leading those who could to leave South Kivu. Fewer than 3 percent of the four million displaced persons in the eastern region fled; most are internally displaced in three provinces: Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu (UNHCR 2024).
The uncertainty at home in South Kivu further divided Cape Town’s Congolese community in two ways. First, within the Kivus subregion and then nationally from among those from western parts of the country (Inaka Reference Inaka2016, 10–11; Vuninga Reference Vuninga2022). The primary transnational divide is political, having emerged in the 1990s, between pro-combattants and anti-combattants (Garbin and Godin Reference Garbin and Marie2013; Mbu-Mputu and Trapido Reference Mbu-Mputu and Trapido2020, 727). Pro-combattants oppose Kabila and come primarily from the western regions of DRC, including Kinshasa. Anti-combattants hail from eastern DRC, including South Kivu, and generally favour Kabila’s rule, although the protests about Kabila’s third term introduced new subregional political divisions (Wolters Reference Wolters2015). Mother tongue is also a proxy for region—those from the western parts of DRC primarily speak Lingala, while those from the East typically speak Kiswahili.
The political violence of 2016 cast a deeper shadow over the Congolese community in Cape Town, narrowing once-expansive associational relations into narrower ones that introduced forms of distrust based on region of origin and/or language. These cleavages hardened sometimes tenuous community connections, as we demonstrate in the next section. The Congolese who arrived in Cape Town did so amid the fear and tumult of the 2006 national elections, and as postapartheid xenophobic violence reached its peak in 2008 (Landau and Misago Reference Landau and Misago2016; Misago, Bule, and Mlilo Reference Misago, Bule and Mlilo2021). For Congolese from South Kivu, the convergence of the 2006 election violence and the 2008 xenophobic violence in Cape Town felt personal and pointed. Their collective perception was one of being excluded—from national politics in the DRC as easterners and from South Africa as xenophobic violence sought to drive foreign Africans from local communities. Renewed election-related violence in South Kivu in 2016 sent a sense of insecurity through the Congolese community in Cape Town as a case of déjà vu (Carayannis Reference Carayannis2008, 1–2; Thomson fieldnotes, 2017–18). They perceived the electoral violence of 2016 as more of the same, with Kabila’s roots in eastern Congo raising suspicion and distrust among Congolese diaspora communities abroad, including in South Africa (Lakika Reference Lakika2023; Mbu-Mputu and Trapido Reference Mbu-Mputu and Trapido2020).
The pro-combattants and anti-combattants divide mapped onto existing South African assumptions about the Congolese community (Kanayo, Anjofui, and Steigler Reference Kanayo, Anjofui and Steigler2019). South Africans—ordinary folk and the authorities alike—generally understand those from the East to be fleeing war and violence, while those from the West are thought to be economic migrants (Inaka Reference Inaka2016; Thomson 2018–19 fieldnotes; Vuninga Reference Vuninga2022). Kabila’s controversial term as president (2001–19) marked a turn in Congolese associational life in Cape Town. The remainder of this section situates the membership requirements of Amis BK and Chinyabuguma Cape Town to compare and contrast their social ties and embeddedness in the translocal politics of South Kivu. To make our case, we describe the internal politics of both organizations before turning to consider how a loss of conviviality has resulted in tighter and more restrictive social bonds and kin-like ties among South Kivucians living in greater Cape Town.
Amis BK Cape Town
Four men founded Amis BK Cape Town—Assani Muhanuzi, Amani Namufakage, Freddy Munyololo Muganza and Jean Berchmans Musole. They each hail from Bukavu town in South Kivu province in eastern DRC. They identify as Bukavu boys (garçons BK), in reference to the province’s capital city. In 2017, Vuninga interviewed Amis BK’s president and founding member, Namufakage. He reported a membership of at least 200 members, of which about 100 were active. The first article of Amis BK’s Constitution explains that “here in South Africa, the organisation is merely a branch of the one registered in the DRC but functions independently from its mother and sister associations.”Footnote 2 Mother and sister associations simply refer to other associations in and outside the DRC sharing the same name and objectives, such as Amis BK branches in Pretoria and Durban in South Africa and Lubumbashi and Bukavu in DRC.
Amis BK’s Constitution clearly states its purpose. The association is “structured to serve its indigent members in South Africa, with special focus on refugee families…” (art. 5). A primary goal is to support fellow Congolese to integrate into South African society. Its constitution does not refer to domestic political activities or organizing in South Kivu. Instead, Amis BK claims to be a regional and apolitical association whose sole aim is mutual aid to fellow members. Amis BK’s official documentation, submitted in its registration as a nonprofit organization, does not reflect how Amis BK operates in practice. In addition to participating in political activities at home in South Kivu, the membership is encouraged to protest police violence and corruption in Cape Town (cf. Chekero Reference Chekero2023; Inaka Reference Inaka2016; Vuninga Reference Vuninga2021a).
Amis BK broadly follows the meetings and membership contribution expectations of the other Congolese associations in Cape Town (Vuninga Reference Vuninga2022). Since its establishment in 2007, Amis BK members meet on the last Sunday of every month, initially at the Baptist Church in Mowbray (2008–15) and then at the community hall in the Observatory suburb of Cape Town (2016 to present). The executive committee meets on the last Saturday of every month to discuss, debate, and decide on the subject of the general meeting. Since 2009, the monthly contribution for each member is set at ZAR 50 per month. Although contributions are given to the treasurer, members are encouraged to set debit orders to ensure consistency. Unlike Chinyabuguma, monthly contributions for Amis BK are more affordable for the general membership, and those who do not, or cannot, contribute do not feel pressured to do so. In times of celebration, outings, weddings, and funeral expenses, extraordinary financial contributions are set based on the cost of the planned activities.
Chinyabuguma Cape Town
Chinyabuguma means “unity” or “togetherness” in Mashi—the language of the Bashi, the majority ethnic group of the South Kivu region in eastern DRC. Like Amis BK, Chinyabuguma was founded in Maitland, a suburb of Cape Town, in 2006 by a group of male friends from Bukavu. Until 2015, when its founding members got into an argument over changing the membership policy of the association, Chinyabuguma was only for Bashi men. While new members—friends or relatives of the members—could attend when invited by influential members, women were not allowed to join. They could only enter to serve food or drop off drinks. Since 2015, many of its former leaders relocated to North America. We focus our analysis on this new Chinyabuguma association. A key change was to allow women to join while also providing a social space for Congolese families to gather in family-friendly ways, allowing for a welcoming space “in which interconnections, interrelationships, interdependence, collaboration, coproduction and compassion are emphasised” (F. Nyamnjoh Reference Nyamnjoh2015, 260).
Chinyabuguma Cape Town members must be born to a Mushi parent. Like Amis BK, membership is maintained through attending the meetings and paying monthly contributions. The members of the leadership committee are recognized in the community as bashamuka, or “wise men.” The most important members of the leadership are the president, who acts as chair; the secretary, who minutes the meetings; and the treasurer, who collects and manages the association’s funds.
Like Amis BK, Chinyabuguma Cape Town aims to protect cultural identities and roles while also providing a home for cultural expression. Chinyabuguma members often debate what being a good Mushi entails, resulting in a strong sense of ethnic identity among the members. In Vuninga’s observation, the discussion centers on gender norms and respect for elders. In this understanding, women and youngsters know their place in relation to men and elders. While Chinyabuguma members agree on these Bashi traditions, tension often arises from agreeing on how much “Bashiness” can be achieved in Cape Town. Yet, disputes remain as the membership often clashes with the leadership in deciding who and what is a “real” Mushi in ways that foreclose the possibility for identities to emerge or to contest institutionalized ideas and practices of Bashiness.
Speaking Mashi is a vital form of Bashi identity that Chinyabuguma Cape Town is committed to maintaining. Most of its monthly meetings encourage its members to speak Mashi among themselves and to their children. Vuninga observed that this effort was reinforced in 2017 as the bashamuka (the leadership) sought to make speaking Mashi a membership criterion. The promotion of Mashi as the language of the association failed as ordinary members soon realized the leadership team barely spoke Mashi. One young man said: “It [speaking Mashi as a function of leadership] was just a politics to discourage us from applying so they could keep themselves there” (Vuninga interview in 2016).
Like Amis BK, the Chinyabuguma membership is split between those who can afford monthly contributions and those who cannot. Those in need often speak privately to monied members to ask about the viability of requests they will make at the next associational meeting. Often, approval of financial requests is determined before the formal meeting, meaning that personal ties of language often guide the choices and leaders’ recommendations. The leadership often publicly reprimands those in need when they miss a meeting. This public humiliation is a double-bind for members who cannot afford to participate: they are humiliated if they need financial aid and chastized when they miss meetings because of their constant need for money.
Our discussion of Amis BK and Chinyabuguma Cape Town’s internal politics points to mutual aid and cultural ties as the primary purpose of membership while noting that those with financial resources seek to control members in need. Such financial tensions drive associational ones -- resentment sometimes flares as the membership morphs to meet more stringent participation rules. The expectations of being a good Chinyabuguma Mushi or a dues-paying member of Amis BK means that arm’s-length sociality among Congolese no longer exists, at least in formal associational spaces. We conceptualize this closing-of-ranks as a form of translocality that is a community-wide reaction to transnational politics at home—in a sense, the loss of South Kivu and the challenges of building belonging in Cape Town are made sharper through the loss of weak social ties.
On weak social ties and incompleteness in Cape Town: Translocality in practice
In developing a conceptual framework to understand the translocality of South Kivu associational life in Cape Town, Granovetter’s idea of the strength of weak ties and F. Nyamnjoh’s incompleteness are instructive. Weak ties are arm’s-length ties people have with a range of individuals they know across a range of social-economic and institutional interactions, such as places of work or worship, school, clubs, and more. Weak social ties promote social strength in personal and community networks because people can access a wide range of distant sociocultural and sociopolitical relationships rooted in infrequent meetings or interactions (Granovetter Reference Granovetter1973). Individuals with deep wells of informal, distant relationships can access more actionable information about their well-being and security. Such relations are not merely transactional. Rather, they illuminate how each social connection provides a different perspective (Granovetter) that allows individuals to overcome the constraints of limited resources, knowledge, and experiences (F. Nyamnjoh). Weak social ties in host communities thus provide strong networks for migrant individuals and communities, such as Congolese in Cape Town, and within other migrant communities, including foreign Africans in Cape Town (Schione Reference Schione and Werbner2008; Owen, Juries, and Mokoena Reference Owen, Juries and Mokoena2024).
What ties Nyamnjoh’s conviviality to Granovetter’s concept of weak social ties is the role of overlapping associational connections. In turn, these connections create and expand one’s social capital in pursuit of political or economic goods, such as legal documentation leading to permanent residence and other government services such as healthcare or social assistance. The people one knows most intimately are least useful in advancing a range of social goods, from ideas and job opportunities to broader social connections that reduce loneliness and foster a greater sense of belonging (F. Nyamnjoh Reference Nyamnjoh2006, 40). The leadership of Amis BK and Chinyabuguma Cape Town have diminished existing forms of conviviality in favor of increasingly stringent associational membership expectations in the name of community safety, the effect of which is greater isolation within the community. Since 2016, the social cost of membership has increased, as both groups provide fewer supports and less actionable information about jobs, school fees, and other items of mutual aid, simply because opportunities for such exchanges have narrowed since the Congolese we consulted arrived in South Africa in the early 2000s.
Our Congolese informants initially joined subregional associations like Amis BK and Chinyabuguma for community support and guidance in Cape Town. As the expectations and demands of membership narrowed over time, notably since 2015, they spoke in hushed tones about the expectations of continued membership. Most women in both groups felt they had no choice but to remain, as most followed the expectations of their husbands (Vuninga Reference Vuninga2022). The demands of associational membership have morphed over time in response to sociopolitical developments at home in South Kivu and partial concern for anti-foreigner sentiment in Cape Town. A perceived increase in xenophobic attacks and election-related violence directed against foreign Africans informs the individual decision-making process of Congolese in greater Cape Town, in which the choice was to “go home or die here” (Hassim, Kupe, and Worby Reference Hassim, Kupe and Worby2008, 1). South Africans and foreign Africans alike have witnessed, or heard about, the content of xenophobic violence: belongings looted, homes and bodies burned in response to South African perceptions of stealing their jobs and occupying their homes, and a rise in crime, among other social ills (Dodson Reference Dodson2010; Landau Reference Landau2011; Misago Reference Misago2017). The closing of associational ranks to favor Congolese nationals from the East was a response to the broader political climate of threat and individual insecurity in the absence of intentional South African government intervention to disrupt such violence. Transnational political events have become part of the everyday experience of exclusion from South Africa and permeate the decision-making of the Amis BK and Chinyabuguma leadership (Misago, Bule, and Mlilo Reference Misago, Bule and Mlilo2021, 22–26).
By 2008 or so, Congolese associations in Cape Town had three common characteristics: They welcomed Congolese from all walks of life and included a range of identities beyond merely being Congolese citizens (required since the late 2000s); they also welcomed foreign Africans beyond Congolese citizenship (which they rarely are since 2008). Third, Congolese associations were mostly informal and apolitical (which they have not been since 2008). The primary goal before 2006 was mutual aid and socioeconomic support in establishing themselves in Cape Town, following the flight from war and conflict in Congo’s eastern Kivu Region. The subregion and language politics that characterize associational life among Amis BK and Chinyabuguma members living in Cape Town since approximately 2008 had yet to take hold.
By the early 2000s, the South Kivu community in Cape Town was sizable, counting some 25,000 individuals (Amisi Reference Amisi2006). Importantly, the Congolese stood within other im/migrant communities. Associational life welcomed other foreign African im/migrants in Cape Town, notably other French-language speakers (Lekogo Reference Lekogo and Lekogo2011; Owen Reference Owen2016). The African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in Muizenberg, just south of Cape Town, opened in 2003–2004. Its first students were foreign Africans, partly united by the French language. Dr Pierre Abraham Mulamba, a Congolese man from South Kivu, in the first AIMS class, recalled:
We were welcomed at AIMS. The Faculty Manager told us that Muizenberg will be a nice place for us because it has Africans from all over the continent. Our driver and tour guide was Congolese and knew the place very well. He said he arrived in South Africa in 1995 with his family. He took us to some Nigerian houses where we could eat their food and practice our English. Many people from Cameroon, Congo-Brazzville, Rwanda, Burundi, Senegal and others spoke French. We heard of churches too where we could pray in French and the Francophone meetings. My colleagues and I, who spoke French, were often invited, but we never had time to go because we were too busy with studies. (Vuninga’s interview with Mulamba, February 2017)
Due to its geographical location in central Africa, the DRC shares sociocultural ties with its neighboring Anglophone, Francophone, and Lusophone countries. These ties have proven resilient to colonial borders as some have developed into forms of cross-border ethnic nationalism in the postcolonial era (Beauchemin and Safi Reference Beauchemin and Mirna2019). Unsurprisingly, newly arrived Congolese in Cape Town identified with other Africans by language and ethnocultural regions, in what Schione (Reference Schione and Werbner2008) calls “xenophilia.” Granovetter would refer to these friendship connections as preceding associational life, for “the personal experience of individuals is closely bound up with larger-scale aspects of social structure, well beyond the purview or control of particular individuals” (Reference Granovetter1973, 1377). Nyamnjoh’s (Reference Nyamnjoh2015, 253–57) thinking on incompleteness as conviviality complements Granovetter’s insight on the relationship between the individual and their social setting by extending it to the incompleteness of knowing everyone in your networks. The hinge here is the improvisation of finding common ground to live together by identifying new possibilities, perspectives, and ideas that broaden one’s worldview, making incompleteness the foundation of conviviality as Dr Mulamba did with French-speaking Africans he met through educational networks at AIMS. Incompleteness is grounded in weak social ties, producing the possibility of creating the convivial ties required to make sense of one’s new place. The strength of weak social ties lies in the constant challenge to be “open-minded and open-ended in our claims and articulations of identities, being and belonging” (F. Nyamnjoh Reference Nyamnjoh2015, 262).
In the 1990s and 2000s, Congolese benefitted from the weak ties of religious life, in churches and mosques, prior to the arrival of the Congolese charismatic churches in Cape Town (Amisi Reference Amisi2006: 16; Swart, Hankela, and H. Nyamnjoh Reference Swart, Hankela and Nyamnjoh2021). Places of worship are an important aspect of migrants’ integration in South Africa, in community with other foreign Africans (H. Nyamnjoh, Hall, and Cirolia Reference Nyamnjoh, Hall and Cirolia2022). From the early 2000s, Congolese began slowly leaving South African churches to establish their own, with services in the Lingala, Kiswahili, and French languages, and occasional English translation. By the mid-2000s, as Cape Town’s population of foreign nationals grew considerably, their networks began to adopt narrower criteria for membership. Nationality, home region, and ethnicity emerged as the most common bases of social network formations among migrant foreign Africans, including Congolese. By this time, the ease with which Congolese migrants made supportive social ties through associational membership began to harden the weak ties of friendship, networking, and sociality.
From the early to mid-2000s, newly arrived Congolese developed broad friendship networks to socialize with other migrant African nationals in various spaces, including markets, bars, and shebeens (informal bars) owned by migrants from Cameroon and Nigeria. The weak ties of arm’s-length friendship and community ties sometimes developed into business partnerships, job connections, and mutual aid like sharing meals, managing school enrolment requirements for children, and navigating the legal documentation process with South African authorities (Chekero Reference Chekero2023; Bazenguissa-Ganga and MacGaffey Reference Bazenguissa-Ganga and Janet1995). By 2019, when Thomson interviewed Congolese and other foreign Africans, those seeking legal documentation worked almost exclusively with Africans who spoke their mother tongue or came from their home region within their country of origin. In particular, consideration of whether one was anti- or pro-combattant began to matter, marking a key difference in once-open and accessible networks of weak social ties of conviviality among French-speaking foreign Africans.
South Kivu-only regional associations emerged in greater Cape Town in the early 2000s (Amisi Reference Amisi2006; Owen Reference Owen2015). Many of the South Kivucians we consulted reminisced about the loss of loose-knit associational ties. There were many to join upon arrival in Cape Town, as Jean-Bosco (not his real name) recounts:
In 2003, when I arrived, I was invited to join many associations. One was of my people from the Kasai region called Association de Grand Kasai. I also attended the Association de Bangala’s meetings. It was for all people from the Equateur region [of DRC]. I was invited by my [ethnic] Mongo friend, even though I am [an ethnic] Muluba. Any Congolese was welcome in their association. When a church brother invited me to the Conscience Congolaise meeting, my other [ethnic] Mukongo friend advised me not to go because it was an association of Balubakat and other Katangais [those from Katanga town]. Later we find out we were wrong. Those were [ethnic] Baluba and other ethnic groups from the two Kasai regions [East and West Kasai] who lived in Katanga and who fled to South Africa during la chasse aux Baluba [the hunt for ethnic Baluba] in 1993. (Vuninga’s interview with Jean-Bosco, September 2019)
This excerpt highlights the fluidity within Congolese associational life in the early 2000s and their flexibility in welcoming members of myriad ethnic groups. Congo is home to more than 250 official ethnic groups and approximately 700 language groups (Minority Rights Group 2022). Ties of home—of being Congolese—resulted in weak networks of mutual aid and community building that benefitted the membership. Weak ties of conviviality are indispensable to individual social and economic opportunities and their sense of belonging to a community. Being in the know in the early 2000s meant consulting with a range of individuals through a broad network of associations, whether Congolese in origin or not.
Paradoxically, the rich informal and formal networks of Congolese associational life began to collapse in the wake of state-sanctioned xenophobic attacks stemming from the 2008 South African presidential elections. The ruling African National Congress (ANC) framed the violence as the result of “naked criminal activity” rather than a product of anti-foreigner sentiment (Mbeki Reference Mbeki2008; see Neocosmos Reference Neocosmos2010; Misago Reference Misago2017 for analysis). The ANC’s response to the violence shifted blame for the attacks onto black foreign Africans, effectively ending serious consideration of its nature, causes, and future prevention (Thomson Reference Thomson2019). It also watered down public debate about the effects of xenophobia in South African society, something that continues to be discussed informally among foreign Africans when they gather outside of associational spaces in pursuit of formal documentation from the South African authorities (Thomson fieldnotes 2019; see also Misago Reference Misago2017; Owen Reference Owen2015).
Apartheid’s legacy of black exploitation and poverty persists today as the transition to democracy in 1994 included a series of political compromises to protect white wealth, jobs, and property. Affirmative action and black empowerment programs introduced since 1994 have benefited some black people with education and skills but did little to improve the lot of the undereducated and impoverished communities (Kanayo, Anjofui, and Steigler Reference Kanayo, Anjofui and Steigler2019; Misago, Bule, and Mlilo Reference Misago, Bule and Mlilo2021). Foreign Africans arrive in Cape Town, attracted by the relative calm of a predominately white city, both spatially and temporally, as black people live in underserviced townships, far from the city center and its relative economic opportunities. The racial hierarchies and economic disparities of the Apartheid era persist, despite Cape Town’s appearance as a peaceful, progressive, and racially integrated city (Chekero Reference Chekero2023). Many of the Congolese we consulted in the course of our research said they expected racism at the hands of white South Africans. It is rather the xenophobic sentiment of black South Africans which caught most of them by surprise. That violence against foreign Africans like them is often triggered by localized political and economic contests where competition for resources scapegoats non-South Africans is not part of their thinking, nor is it discussed among the Amis BK and Chinyabuguma membership (Misago and Landau Reference Misago and Landau2022; Thomson fieldnotes 2019).
The effect for South Kivu communities in greater Cape Town was—and is—a generalized feeling of being suspect. South African neighbors, friends, and colleagues became increasingly insular as fear of foreign African nationals took root (Lekogo Reference Lekogo and Lekogo2011). In this context, our interviews and participant observation find that Congolese associational life took different forms, either collapsing due to internal suspicion in reaction to South African xenophobia or enacting tight membership controls in response to electoral violence in South Kivu. This regional connectedness created a double bind among Amis BK and Chinyabuguma members. First is the perception that black South Africans are increasingly xenophobic, as Congolese have fewer interactions with them over time because of the tightening of membership expectations of what it means to participate in associational life. And, their social ties to South Kivu fracture in the face of perceived external threats in Cape Town and existential ones in South Kivu, diminishing the fantasy of returning “home” or eventually settling somewhere in the global North (cf. H. Nyamnjoh Reference Nyamnjoh2024, 7–10). The fear of being displaced within Cape Town as a result of xenophobic violence targeting foreign Africans working in the informal sector also reproduces the anxieties of having fled South Kivu (Thomson fieldnotes).
A subregional approach to understanding and explaining Congolese associational life provides insight into the drivers and intensity of the social and cultural ties to South Kivu. In creating boundaries between themselves and others, the Congolese we consulted are at once mobile (living in Cape Town) and displaced (from South Kivu). They have, since arriving in the early 2000s, distanced themselves from other Congolese, other foreign Africans, and black South Africans. This distance is often detrimental, as the loss of arm’s-length networks creates new boundaries of difference that foreclose opportunities for social inclusion and belonging (Owen Reference Owen2016; Schione Reference Schione and Werbner2008). Because of the predominance of the leadership in shaping the experience of belonging to a South Kivu association, we do not know the specific reasons why membership persists. Preliminary analysis suggests that language affinity is not the driving force; rather it is the need for financial support, particularly among women.
Conclusion
In studying Congolese associational life in greater Cape Town, we find that social ties have hardened over time in response to external events such as elections at home in the eastern DRC, and the threat of xenophobic violence in Cape Town. We documented the ways in which Congolese associational life in greater Cape Town was once more inclusive (1990s to mid-2000s). Since the mid-2000s, the response of the leadership of both Amis BK and Chinyabuguma Cape Town has been to double-down on translocal ties to South Kivu. The leadership of both associations presumes that inter-group trust can only be assured with others from their home region. To understand Congolese associational life in Cape Town as one site of translocality, linking South Kivu and Cape Town, and as a space to (re)construct a sense of belonging in South Africa, we drew on the work of Granovetter (Reference Granovetter1973) and F. Nyamnjoh (Reference Nyamnjoh2006; Reference Nyamnjoh2015) to explain how eastern Congolese social ties create translocal ones. A missing piece of the puzzle that could serve as a site of new research is the analysis of how the role of the male leadership of both associations is setting and maintaining the expectation of membership. The ethnic, language, class, and gender dynamics of associational life can also be assessed through a translocal social tie framework.
Our analysis demonstrates how the internal politics of Congolese associational life is informed by the expectations set by the leadership and how their choices affect the content of the personal relationships of the membership. Leaders of both associations invoke the harsh context of xenophobic South Africa, and the electoral politics of home, meaning in the Kivu region in particular and in DRC more generally. Yet, the leadership of both Amis BK and Chinyabuguma Cape Town works to create exclusionary ties in which certain men make themselves the arbiters of trust-based community relationships. As a result, these eastern Congolese associations seem unwilling to act in concert within their membership to provide public goods (home affairs papers, jobs, language, or financial support); instead, they invoke the comfort of a narrowly designed home mediated by xenophobic impulses that now excludes other Congolese along political lines, of being either anti- or pro-combattant (Adamson Reference Adamson and Checkel2013).
We find that the once-weak ties of foreign Africans produced better community outcomes in Cape Town. The weak ties of different African communities provided more durable bridging ties at the structural level to provide South African social goods to foreign Africans, from jobs to legal documentation and more. Our research points to new avenues of research and policy as the hardening of weak ties of two Congolese associations teaches us about more than the fragmentation of foreign African communities in Cape Town but also about the limits of belonging in South Africa. For those Congolese who need the financial and cultural support of their compatriots, the hardening of weak social ties suggests that their lives are—and will—remain precarious. Where can the general membership turn if not to fellow Congolese, notably those from their home region? A lack of convivial social connection is a hardship, not a help. And, against the logic of closing rank, the loss of weak social ties of conviviality that build community with South Africans and other foreign Africans may reproduce the xenophobia that Amis BK and Chinyabuguma Cape Town were founded to help ameliorate.
Acknowledgments
Thomson’s research was made possible by a Colgate University Research Council grant and an award from the Lampert Institute for Civic and Global Affairs at Colgate University. Both authors thank Pallen McArdle and Frances Munger, members of Colgate’s Class of 2027 for their incisive and invaluable assistance.
