Wyatt Macgaffey - Aesthetics and Politics of Violence in Central Africa

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Aesthetics and Politics of Violence in Central AfricaAuthor(s): Wyatt MacGaffeySource: Journal of African Cultural Studies, Vol. 13, No. 1, In Honour of Professor TerenceRanger (Jun., 2000), pp. 63-75Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1771856 .

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Journalof AfricanCulturalStudies,Volume13, Number1, June2000, pp. 63-75 CIS

Aestheticsandpolitics of violencein CentralAfricaWYATTMACGAFFEY(HaverfordCollege, Haverford,Pennsylvania)

ABSTRACT The BaKongo and other Central African peoples understand the place ofviolence in their lives in ways that resist translation into English because they seem to beboth 'real' and 'imaginary.' In the nineteenth century, imagined violence wasrepresented in the rituals of chiefs and in the complex forms of minkisi, fabricatedobjects which could be invoked to inflict retribution on others. The imaginativerepresentation of occult violence in these objects and in the insignia of chiefship hasearned many of them a place in the world's art museums. In recent years, vividlyimagined violence has been central to the popular understanding of national politics, inCongo/Zaire as in many other African countries; it can infact be regarded as a theory ofpolitical life, and compared as such with Western theories concerning the social orderingof violence.

A man I saw sitting in a village jail in Lower Congo in 1966 had been convicted ofmurderingsix people by witchcraftand sending their souls to Kinshasa in aeroplanesmadeof leaves. The local court hadimposedthe maximumsentencein its power,30 daysimprisonment.The village was shocked but not deeplydisturbedby the incident,as far asI could tell; to them,this kind of killing was almost banal.I foundtheirresponse to thisandmanysimilar incidentspuzzling,and have been tryingever since, with little success,to feel that I understood t. One strategy might be to recalibratemy sense of 'murder,'given that most deaths and indeed most misfortunes, including illness, are usuallyattributed by BaKongo to 'witchcraft,' kindoki; 'murder' is thus life's normalaccompaniment.It is also necessary to qualify an English-speaker'snormal sense of'witchcraft,' since kindoki, though mysterious and dangerous,is a power that almostanyone may have and which is necessary to society's leaders and defenders, such aselders,diviners andmagicians.If that is so, perhapsmy mentaladjustment houldgo sofar as to reclassify kindoki from the domainof belief and irrationality 'religion') andbeginto think of it as a theoryof power,a politicaltheory.In a papercalled 'Fromhumanism to the science of man: colonialism in Africa andthe understandingof alien societies' (1976), ProfessorRangertraceda historyof socialscientific misrepresentationsof Africa, in which the exoticism of the results seemed toconfirmthe pretensionsof the discipline.He told his story optimistically, ookingforwardto a humane comparative science which would not objectify those whom, in theinterveningdecades, it has however become regrettablyconventionalto call the Other.Ranger has always insisted that African thought must be taken seriously, even after(perhapsespeciallyafter)it has been invidiously glossed by such terms as 'witchcraft';nparticular,he has repeatedlyshown that conceptual boundaries between the religious

ISSN 1369-6815 print; 1469-9346 online/00/010063-13 ? 2000 Journal of African Cultural Studies


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64 WyattMacGaffey(irrational, traditional')and the political (rational, 'modem') must be transcended.Thisdichotomyhasby no meansdisappeared;Africanconceptsof powerare still dismissed ascharacteristiconly of 'traditional'ruralpopulationscircumscribedby ethnicboundaries,althougha growing literaturechallenges this assumptionby showing the role of suchconceptsin today'snationalpolitics (Lan 1985;Comaroffand Comaroff1997;Gru6nais1995;Meyer 1995;Schatzberg1997;Ciekawyand Geschiere1998;MacGaffey2000).Let us rescue the unfortunateprisoner from his jail and resituatehim in a broadercontext, the inventoryof politicallyrelevantpowers;in so doing, we relieve the incidentof at least some of its burden of idiosyncratic irrationality.In its unmarkedsense,kindoki is the power to cause harm for the personaland thereforeantisocial benefit ofthe witch. But those who defend society from witchcraft must themselves dispose ofsimilar powers, also kindoki, which togetherconstitute what Schatzberghas called amoral matrix of legitimate governance (Schatzberg 1993). Fromthe earliest recordedtimes, BaKongo have relied on both chiefs and minkisi (sing. nkisi) to seek out andpunish witches. Chiefs were humanbeings, usually but not always men, and minkisiwere (andare)objects,but their functions could be closely similarto those of chiefs, whooften relied on them to help maintainpublic order. Both chiefs and minkisi wereinvested with exceptional powers by the fact of having successfully undergonea ritualthattramsformedheirordinary,materialsubstance.The rituals,ngyadulu for chiefs andmpandulufor minkisi, were similar in form and purpose, the insignia of the chiefcorresponding o the 'medicines' of the nkisi. The chiefs themselves could be callednkisi. Political responsibilitieswere thereforein the hands, it would seem, of a figurethat was notonly 'religious'butperhapsanobjectrather han a humanbeing.An nkisi is a container, aking anyof manydifferent ormsfroman anthropomorphicfigureto a cloth bundle,empoweredby animatingmedicines. The principalclasses ofminkisi were those that healed and those, called 'blood nkisi' or nkondi (sing. and pl.;'hunter'), hathunteddown andpunishedwitches, thieves,adulterers,reaty-breakersndother wrongdoers.Minkisi of the nkondi class were sometimes carried in litters asthoughthey were chiefs, and chiefs could be appealedto in termsusually addressed tonkondi. Chiefs themselves were primarilycharacterizedby theirexceptional violence;like chiefs throughoutCentralAfrica,the Kongochief was 'a leopard'anda killer. Oneistold, 'if the candidatecould not kill his nephewwith the swordof powerwe would knowthathe was not fit to be chief.' The traditions ay, 'The chiefs killed manyof those theygoverned, and so they became famous.' Under Belgian rule, both invested killers andnkondi were suppressed.This paperdrawsupon indigenoustexts that describechiefshipand nkondi in the nineteenth century, before opening a discussion of the place ofviolence in modem Africanpoliticalthought.lNkondi took various forms, but they included impressive anthropomorphic tatuesstuck full of nails, many of them now well known as masterpieces of African art.Sometimes the pose of the figure, with upraised knife and thrustingjaw, is clearlyaggressive;othersdisplaya curiousserenity,contrastingwith the impliedviolence of thenails and otherhardwaredriveninto chest, belly, shoulders,even the neck andface. Thefiguresrepresentneitheran avenging spiritforcenor its victim (thewitchor thiefwhich itwas commanded o find andpunish),but the relationshipbetweenthe two. The nails were1 What ollowsis basedon an examinationf all the textsin K.E.Laman's orpusof 1915(writtenn KiKongo ynative peakers)hatdealwiththerituals f chiefship ndof nkondi.Citationsf theKiKongoextsgivethe author's ameand he numberf theCahierromwhichthetext s taken.A completeistof theauthors nd nformationbouthecorpus anbefoundnMacGaffey1991).The opicof thispapersexamined tgreaterengthnMacGaffey2000).


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Violence in CentralAfrica 65intended both to annoy the nkisi, arousing it to action, and to represent the pains that itwas called upon to inflict.

People seek out the nganga [operator;pl. banganga] of Nkondi to have him drive ironintohis nkisi. When he has driven in spikes on account of the bad dreams the sick person ishaving, he tells the ghost [thatanimates the nkisi ] about those who are pleased to carrytroubles to that house. If the witch does not desist from his hostility towards others atnight... he will see in his dreamhis house on fire and himself trapped n a palmwinetapper'sclimbing loop. Therewill be a raging storm,and people fighting.Thatwill make him thinkthe dreamshave come to set him on fire, his mouth will be dry: 'Nkondi Mukwangahaspursuedme here, surely I will die in the same fashion.' Not long afterwardshe will feel aburdenon his back, a painin the blood, blood will gush fromhis nose, andhe will die of thisaffliction.People will say, 'NkondiMukwangacame to takehim, becauseof conflicts in thenight,butnow it is over' (Kwamba149).It is difficult to exaggerate the violence of the images comprised in invocations tonkondi; presumably they expressed not only the violence of storms and birds of prey butthe anger and grief of clients who felt themselves to be under attack:

Have you not heard,Mwene Mutinu,that somethinghas gone missing here? it is a difficultmatter,we have asked everybody in the village. Their denial is, thatthey did not do it, thatwe should look for the culprit and punish him only. ThereforeMutinu,lick your mother!Strike,destroy, do you not see the village? Slash and sweep. Afflict them with boils, withsores that never heal; spreadskin diseases throughout he village, give them all headaches,twist theirarmsandlegs, LordMutinu. Infect all the childrenwith coughs and colds. Spreadconfusion and misery among them. Whenever they seem to get better, strike them downagain. Enfeeble them until they seek out the diviner who will identify you, Mwene Mutinu(Kavuna58).To me, the violence represented here is imaginary, although it corresponds to the kind ofafflictions to which Kongo villagers were in truth vulnerable a century ago, includingpainful or debilitating illnesses, destructive tropical storms, and the attacks of dangerousanimals. The afflicted, however, believed that their sufferings were induced by the realthough hidden actions of relatives and neighbours, either witches or the clients of somenkisi, which would then have to be appeased.Nkondi's function was political; it was used very generally to control relationsbetween localized clans. Even if the offender against which it was directed was anindividual, nkondi held his whole group responsible, punishing any of them untilrestitution had been made. A legend traces the origin of Nkondi za Mafula, 'nkondi ofthe entrances to the village,' to the need to put an end to the primordial war of all againstall:

The people were numerous n the country,andanyone who went to a village where he hadno affines nor members of his own clan would be attacked and put in stocks until ransomwas paid. Thus they made it known that this was a strong clan. But the elders said, if wecarryon like this what will happento us when we travelto otherregions?Ah, it is not goodto imprisonsomeone with no fault to his charge;therefore t would be a good thingto set upNkondi in the midstof the clans. But within the clan you may not invoke Nkondi (Kwamba139).This description accurately reflects conditions prevailing in most of Kongo during theperiod of the slave trade in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when large tractsbetween settlements were unpopulated and unregulated. Traders depended on culticassociations and treaties to guarantee them safe passage and a kindly reception; often itwas considered advisable to carry protective minkisi and to perform special ritualsbefore and after an expedition. Where no chief had arisen to control a given area, treatiesbetween clans, forbidding war and permitting marriage, were commonly sanctioned by


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66 WyattMacGaffeyNkondi;the partiesto the agreement nvited the nkisi to attackanyone who broke it.Accordingto anEnglishtrader Phillips1887: 161):These etishesplaya most mportantartnregulatinghe conduct f individualsr families- nay, ntertribaleudsare settledby thesamemeans,decisions nforced, isturbances.largenumber f caseswhich, n the absence f fetishes,wouldbe matterorgovernmentalrepression,re husdealtwith n a simple,private,nexpensivemanner,ever omingothecognizancef [theEuropeanovernment'sppointed]ative hiefsat all.Though minkisi continued in covert use, spectacularnkondi with public regulatoryfunctions had more or less disappeared by 1920 under the combined influence ofgovernmentand Christianmissions. Popularanxieties concerningwitchcraftcontinued,togetherwithsporadicmovements ntended o rid communitiesof its banefuleffects. Oneof these, Munkukusa,which swept Kongo villages between 1947 and the early 1950s,recapitulatedhe essential elementsof nkondi rituals,without the use of a central mage,in an explodedor deconstructed orm combined with Christianelements.Gravedirtwasbroughtat night from the cemetery to the village churchto be placed on the high table.When the ancestors of all the clans were representedby quantitiesof dirt, it was alldumpedin a cross-shapedtrenchin front of the door of the church,called 'the cross ofJesus.' Intoa second cross, of wood, each of the villagers in turnhammereda nail whileswearing, 'If I am a witch, if I have eaten my elders, then let my sign be death!'Immediatelyafterwardshe smeared mud from the cross of Jesus on his face; the nameMunkukusarefers to this rubbing, which has the same function as medicines fromnkondi appliedto the body to establish a connection between the nkisi and the oath-taker JanzenandMacGaffey1974:83).The nailing procedure,komanloko, 'to nail a curse,' also describedany of severalstandardizedways by which an individualcouldappealfor help by insultingor provokinga chief; the verb koma,besides meaning 'to nail,' also means 'to arouse, provoke.' Inretaliation,the chief would seize the plaintiff and only release him after the offendingparty had paid a large sum amounting to a fine (this mode of arbitration s knownthroughoutCentralAfrica). Nkondi, too, could be 'aroused' by insults referringforexample to the genitals of the nkisi's mother-in-law or suggesting that it was thelaughing-stockof the neighbourhood, ot an nkisi atall butmerelya piece of wood.The rituals for investing chiefs differed from district to district in Kongo, buteverywherethe chief was transformedby them into a 'leopard'anda killer. 'Whoever sto be invested brandishes he sword of powerandhavingbrandished t he kills a nephewand licks blood from the sword' (Lunungu 159). Laman says that many of thoseappointedas ntinu refused to commit the requiredmurder,but might submit to othertests of extraordinarycapacities (Laman 1957: 140). Usually a hunt or mock battlefollowed the investiture,demonstratingby its success that the investiture had worked,that thepowerto kill hadbeen induced.The investituresequenceexemplifiedthe sameprinciplesas did the compositionof annkisi. It began with the burial of the chief's predecessor, from whom the candidateacquiredpowerby contact:

Whensomeonehadacceptedthe office, the Children ook him andputhim in the housewiththecorpseof the deadchief.Theysethim downon thewrapped undleof thecorpseandlaidhimouton it. Whilehelayonthenyombo,heymarked imwithredandwhiteclayandsang hissong,'Hehasseentheleopard,heSpottedOne,thefrightfulreature.' hen heChildrenookhimandcarried imon theirbacks o hishouse Matunta13).The leopard, 'the spotted one,' was the mummy of his predecessor, coloured intransitional ed.Amongthe BaYanzi,east of the BaKongo,who alongwith otherpeoples


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Violencein CentralAfrica 67of the region share the same ritual values, the candidate could not be invested until anactual leopard, believed to incarnate his predecessor, had been killed, indicating ancestralacceptance of his candidacy. At his own death the chief's nails would be cut and his teethbroken to render him less dangerous in his leopard phase (De Plaen 1974). In some partsof Kongo, the candidate might be obliged to seek the approval of the dead by spendingthe night in a cave, a rite analogous to that of leaving an nkisi in the cemetery; if thenkisi were still there in the morning, or the candidate emerged alive and mysteriouslymarked with red and white spots, the approval of the dead was assured.Investiture included the composition of an nkisi nsi, a medication of the domain(nsi). In a hole in the earth were placed items which, like the medicines of an nkisi,suggested by their names or association the attributes of the chief's power. Examplesinclude a kinkanda monkey, known for its resistance to death; a double bell, used tomake official announcements; leopard's claws and teeth; creepers, which by theirramification suggested the ever-expanding power and perdurability of chiefship; lusaku-saku, a plant, that the chief's reign might be blessed, sakumunwa ; mungodila, forstrength, ngolo.

Whoever is the one being invested- or two of them,as it maybe - holds the swordof powerwhich is to be put in the ground.The first chief is the principalto hold the sword, or theremay be two principals. When they hold the sword that is to be put in the ground, theprincipalputshis handuppermost, he others afterhim, andtogetherthey brandish t, so thatthe power is 'raised.' Then they thrust t into the hole so that 'the power stands forth.'Thenother chiefs stick theirfingersin the hole. The hole signifies two things:the chief who stoodthe sword in the hole has the powerof execution,and those who held it afterhim andheld itin the hole have the power to bury alive prisoners,or anyone who has committed a crimesuch as murderor disregardinghe chief's law (Lutete232).The insignia prepared for the chief included some of the finest products of Kongo art,which were expected to combine aesthetic merit with messages of violence. 'The manwho carved the chief's staff and made it frightful received a slave as payment' (Lutete236); the candidate also received:

A cap with leopard claws, the whole thing sewn over with leopard claws; a necklace ofleopard'steethto go on his neck;andon his armsivory bracelets not those thatcome fromEurope, but in this country they cut pieces of ivory and make bracelets of them. Thebraceletswere on his arms fromthe wrist to the elbow; both arms were full of bracelets.Healso puttwo copperbracelets on his arms. The reason he wore ivory braceletsand leopard'sclaws and a necklace of leopard'steeth is this: thathe might be respectedas those animalsare. He would be seen as frightening ike the leopardandthe elephant.Whenhe put on thecap, the necklace andthe bracelets,all who saw him would feel fear andrespect.If they hada toothof a lion also, they wouldattach hat to the necklace(Kunzi 123).In the following account from Mayombe the arbitrary exactions of the chief are asevident as the fact that theatrically enacted violence celebrates his greatness and helps tokeep the people terrified.

The clan which ruled over all the clans that came from Ntandu was Ma Nsundi, whooppressedthemgreatly.He had a rulethatno one might step over the legs of the wife of theking, Ma Nsundi, nor step on her mat [bothactions implying sexual intercourse]. f peopledid not closely follow the commands of NtinuMa Nsundi they were madeprisoner, hatis,tied up; one who did not have 100 cloths with which to redeemhimself would be executedby theroyalsword.The king appointedone man to execute prisoners.The sword(mbele ya makenda)was madewith an ivory handle, well carved in the form of a woman, showing her hairstyleand herbreasts; it was very sharp. This knife could not be taken outside except on the day ofexecution(Babutidi13).


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68 WyattMacGaffeyThe missionaryethnographerL. Bittremieuxsaw sucha swordin Mayombe, probably nthe 1930s. It was 70 cm. long, kept in a raffiabundle along with other insignia of thechiefship,andhandledwith reverence.Originally, t had been one of four,two male andtwo female, of which one was damaged and two had been taken by Europeans.The'flawless' ivory carvingshowed a woman with her long hair dressed down her back andherhandscrossed behindher;the referenceof the image is to theexecution,in the sacredforest,of a womancaughtin adultery Bittremieux1940: 119-20).On theappointeday,all thepeopleof theregioncame o watch.Fromall directionsheybrought almwine fortheking.They aidtheprisoner n his [orher]backandpeggedhisarmsand egsto theground.Then heysang,'Eh, Makenda, hoexecutespeople!'Whilethey sang, ndungudrums, argembuma rums,ngongi bells and wooden mpwandarumpetssounded. Makenda,the man appointedto this work, danced with his sword in his hand.2When he raised it to strike, he sang, 'I will cut, eh, let it cut!' Uttering this threat,he

furiously attacked the prisoner, severing his head. The public applauded,'E wewe!' TheChildrenand Grandchildren f Ma Nsundi took up the head and soaked it in water until itrottedandthe skin andthe flesh fell away;thenthey hungthe skullon one of thepoles of theking's compoundso thatpassingstrangersmightsee it and know that this was the residenceof agreatkingwhoexecuted eople.The 'swordof power' (mbeele a lulendo) was also called kipaba, andin coastalregions(Ngoyo) in particulart mightbe made of wood; in thatform it was a sign rather han aweapon (but there is no record of a MuKongoever fightingwith a sword!). When thechief Makonde Mambutuwas to be enthroned,he would ordera sword from the smith(ngangula).The kipaba was used as follows. If a man was sentenced by others but did not submit,they would appeal to Mambutu who, when he came, would stick his sword in the groundto open the trial. When the recalcitrant saw the kipaba he would immediately agree topay his fine because the sword stuck in the public place of trial (mbazi a nkanu) signifiedthat the chief had 'arisen.' The meaning of the kipaba is that anyone who rejected thedecision of the chief would be arrested until his people ransomed him (Babutidi 18).Chiefly titles were both a rewardfor wealth and a means to increase it. Most of ourauthors emphasize the cost of titles; in Mayombe an important constituent of theinvestiture fee consisted of slaves. Lutete gives few figures, but Kinkela wrote that theinvestors would receive 'shackles of the day and of the night,' that is, ten slaves of eachkind; those 'of the night' were handed over by occult means (kindoki), meaning that thecorresponding number of individuals would be seen to die some time later. Doutrelouxwas told that these slaves were young women (Doutreloux 1967: 169-70). Besides theanimals consumed at the feast, Kinkela wrote, 'I have heard that one candidate wascharged 30 slaves, also goats, pigs, ducks, chickens and quantities of palm wine, notelling what the cost' (Kinkela 94; Doutreloux 1967: 169-70, 190).3 These paymentsamountedto physical announcementsof the kind of powers over productionthat theinvested chief was supposed to wield. Once invested, the chief could help himself toanything he fancied, including any woman; no one could object, because it was 'a rule ofthe title.' Moreover, his death would be an occasion for further levies, either throughspecial rules obtaining at that time or simply because social standards demanded theexpenditure of huge amounts of imported gunpowder and cloth, plus ritual fees and foodfor feasts. Invested chiefs were buried in the royal cemetery, minor chiefs at its edge;2 Kenda,to decapitate.3 The nightpeople became a source of occult power for those who received them, exactly as annkisi derived force froma victim imprisoned n it, anda witch accumulatedwitchcraftpowers(makundu).


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Violence in CentralAfrica 69commoners had their own cemetery,and the bodies of people of no importancemightbethrownaside. The lengthand cost of the funeralvariedaccordingly.The rituals of investiture identify the chief with the leopard, and some of themrequiredhim to performpublic acts of exceptionalviolence: to kill his nephew, to handover ten or moreslaves to the investors,to sponsordramaticpublicexecutions,andso on.How much of this violence in fact occurred?Why is it specifiedin some rituals but notall? All of it seems quite likely, except that the same text that speaks of slaves handedover 'by day' mentionsa like number by night,'by occult means. It is a commonplaceofthe texts that chiefs 'oppressandkill andmakewaruponotherclans.' How muchof thisviolence was partof the historyof the times rather han of the essence of chiefship?Whatis therelationbetweenmodel and 'fact'?The rituals of chiefly investiture were undeniably anchored in local politics andeconomics. They initiated wealthy men into what was effectively a title associationwhose membersreinforced heiroligarchiccontroloverpopulationsof slaves or potentialslaves, andwho profited rom the initiationfees requiredof new members.In 1816,a treestood outside the compoundof the king of Boma,hungwith the skulls of his enemies. Inthe vicinity of Mukimbungu, in the 1880s, local chiefs consecrated a trade pact byexecutinga slave whose body hung froma treeuntil it disintegrated. vory carvingsfromMayombeshow the chief, his munkwisa n his teeth,enthroneduponthe body of a slave,bound andgagged, and a soapstone figureshows a chief drivinga knife into the ear of aman upon whom he is sitting. 'When a chief [with the title] Kayi Ngoma firstbegan torule and took chargeof his market,he burieda man alive and then enteredthe market'(Kimbembe 80). In 1929, in the vicinity of Kisantu (eastern Kongo), an officialexecutioner admitted having killed six slaves at the funeral of the reigning chief'spredecessor (Swartenbroeckx 1966: 171). The victims did not have to be criminals,though one who, on anotheroccasion, had brokenmarket rules might be executed insimilarfashion.It is probably rrelevant o tryto distinguishbetween 'criminal' andnon-criminalvictims;bothestablishedthe chief s power.It is tempting,therefore,to suppose that the images of death in the ritualsexpressedthe actualviolence of nineteenthcenturychiefs, who achievedrenownby fightingwars,enslaving the weak, publicly executing wrongdoers,and sacrificingothers in politicalrituals. But the same rituals describe the chief's violence as 'imaginary,' a form ofwitchcraft, and suggest that chiefship was a depersonalized power whose principles,realized in the chief, were only 'contingently'(accidentellement)attachedto his person(Doutreloux 1967: 199). Often enough, a communitythatfelt it needed a chief for themystical benefits that were mediated by the office had to capture some unwillingindividual who would be no more than a living nkisi embodyingin mythologizedformthe contradictionsof Kongo society. Some traditionsrequired hatthe chief be castratedor impotent.His functionas a sort of animatenkisi-object is striking;usually,he andhisfollowers, like the nganga and associates of any majornkisi, were subjectto a numberof restrictions, ncluding some which emphasizedthatthoughthe chief was a leopardhewas also not a leopard,or should not be so to excess:

Thechiefmaynottearat meatwith his nails,forto do so is to summonheLordof theCountry Mfumu nsi, the leopard);he must cut it with a knife. He may not scratchwith hisnailsonthegroundorthesamereason;eopardswill attackivestocknthevillage.Hemustnoteatmeat hat s stillbloody,as leopards o.Hemaynoteatstanding p,andhemaynotsleepin thevillageof anotherhief. Hemaynotcarrypalmwine;hat s forhis slavesandtheChildrenodo.Hemaynotopen helukobe, thebox of medicineshat s kept nsidehishouse,estin a littlewhile he eopard ttack he ivestockMatunta14).


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70 WyattMacGaffeyAdditional rules show the extent to which the chief was a creatureof his clan's relativesby marriage, ts Childrenand Grandchildren.The power of the nkisi to cure leprosyprovidedthem with interestingmeans of disciplining the chief. He would contract thedisease if he returned o the investituresite on his own, or if he ate the meat of goat, theharnessed bush-buck, or the striped mbende field-rat, and would have to pay thebangangato cure himby reconsecratinghim. The Childrenkeptthe leopardskintself:If theChildrenufferaninjustice tthe handsof the chiefor theclanof theirFathers,ndaresadorangry n account f suchanattempt ytheirFathers,heyspeakasfollows: Arewe notyourChildren?fwe arenotyourChildren,howustheplaceofyour nvestiture.'fthechiefshouldarguewithhisChildren e wouldcontracteprosy.Untilhepaida fine, heChildren f the chiefwouldhidetheskin n theplacewhere heykept t.When heyput tsomewheren ordero control hechiefship f theirFathers,he Fatherswouldhavetopaythem hefineof apig,fortheyknew hat hechiefshipwas ntheskin Lunungu71).In effect, the restrictions could be no more than devices for controlling the chief andextracting wealth from his lineage. We are left, therefore, with a double ambiguity,insoluble on the evidence available: some of the powersof a given chief were no doubt'real,' others can only have been 'imaginary';some chiefs were apparentlydespots,butothers were no more thanpuppets.These ambiguities,however,areproductsnot so muchof the data themselves as of my readingof them,since the distinctions between real andimaginary,personandobjectareones thatI feel I have to make.A traditional nthropological omment on the violence of CentralAfricankings is thatkilling, like the incest sometimesrequiredof the ruler,symbolizesthe king's exceptionalstatus with respect to normalsociety. The BaKongo indeed think that killing indicatespowers thatordinarypeople do not have;one who could not kill as expectedlacked whatit takes to be chief, and one who could even kill a relative demonstrated hathe wouldgovern impartially.The concept of power is more complex than that, however; theobligatoryhorrendousdeed is thoughtof as a real test, not a symbolic change of status.The witchcraftpower (kindoki) that leaders and wealthy people must have takes theform of a sort of gland in the belly, called kundu which in former times could berevealed by means of the poison ordeal, nkasa. The activity of the witch (ndoki) is to'eat people' (dia bantu); the more victims one eats, the more makundu e accumulates.This expressionis not a metaphor;actualbones found aroundsomeone's house may beadducedin evidence againsthim. It is true that the meal is supposedto take place in anotherworld,visible only in dreamsor to diviners,who have four eyes, but it is none theless real. The chief, too, is supposed to 'eat' in the visible sense that he is expected toconsumeconspicuously,thathe should also cause his followers to eat well, and thatthecost of this benefitis a certainamountof occult 'eating'of nocturnalvictims handedoverby the chief to those from whom he obtains his power or with whom he is obliged tobargain or the good of his people. In Kongo thinking,an orderedsociety is one in which'eating,' both literal and metaphorical(but for whom is it a metaphor?)is properlydistributed.Identificationof authoritywith violence did not mean that in fact the chiefs alwaysruledby force. The EnglishsailorAndrew Battellreportedn the seventeenthcentury,'InCases Criminall they proceed but slenderly, for they doe very hardly and seldomecondemne any man to death.' From northernMayombe we learn that a chief may beinvestedwhen it is seen thathis deeds are remarkable,but only if he looks afterpeoplewell andprovidesfor strangers. Thoughhe looks like a chief, but does not do good, hecannotbe given chiefship' (Mvubu343). Kindoki, the idiom of power, is also, by itsambiguity, a medium of negotiation, providing sanctions against chiefs as well as in


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Violence in CentralAfrica 71supportof them. The point was made some time ago by KarenFields with respect toBritishrule in what is now Zambia.Where 'witchcraftpractices'were partof the moralfabricof the community,District Officers were forced to relyon them as an alternative oless subtle formsof violence, and came to recognizethat the official program o root out'superstition'and create a fully 'rational'political systemmade no sense (Fields 1982).Thoughit is impossible to estimatehow much violence occurred n Kongoduringthenineteenth century (before Europeans penetrated the interior), it was probably notextensive, and in any case it was limited by a specific sense of its meaning as anindication or test of magical potency. During the first World War, BaKongo wereappalledto hear of the continuing slaughter n Europe;their own wars,being essentiallydivinatoryordeals or trialsby combat,ended after the firstcasualties:As soon as one or twopeoplehaddied,theywouldhalt andsound hengongiso that hechiefscouldnegotiate, aying,'Putup your weapons!'Everyone eturnedo thevillage.When heywereready heybeat hegreatnkokodrum;he chiefssounded gongiatalltheentrances,nd hewarwasover.Thoseresponsibleorcausinghe deathspaid thousands'(mafunda,lothbundles r theequivalent)ndslaves; f two mendied, heypaid wopeopleand wothousand.n theirwars ew died Mato 80).Introducinga collection of papers on violence, David Riches remarksthat the act ofviolence is always one of contested legitimacy, thus a sign of the presence of politicalcompetition (Riches 1986: 9). The essential personnel in the act of violence are theperformer, he victim and 'the witness,' that is, the audience whose judgment is soughtwith regardto the legitimacy of the event. Violence, whether 'real,' as in stabbing,or'imaginary,' as by sorcery, is both highly visible and highly comprehensible; itsperformancerequires ittle morethanthe resourcesof the humanbody. The propertiesofviolence, uniquely among social acts, 'make it highly appropriateboth for practical(instrumental)and for symbolic (expressive) purposes: as a means of transforming hesocial environment instrumentalpurpose)and dramatizing he importanceof key socialideas (expressivepurpose),violence can be highly efficacious' (ibid: 11). The aestheticaspect is an importantelement of performancesof violence before an audience, evenwhen the violence is instrumentallyeal. The two functions of violence correspond o theactual use of violence, as in war andkidnapping,and to its dramatizationn chiefly mythand ritual;clearly, the two arenot independent,but neither does the one follow from theother.Moreover,the specific content,certainlyof ritualviolence, and to a considerableextent also of practical violence, is culturally embedded, that is, it conforms to aparticular,ocal tradition.In the absence of the necessary historical data, we may tentatively resolve theapparent ontradictionbetween the celebratedviolence of Kongochiefs and the apparentfact that at least some of them were mere figureheads,or were esteemed for the mildvirtues of wisdom and hospitality,by the classic device of distinguishing between theking and the kingship.4 The office, in the abstract,was definedby its violence and alsoby its guaranteeof continuityin the face of dangersnaturaland social. The incumbent,however, was the person most suitable at the time, 'suitability' being defined by hisabilities in relationto the currentpolitical situation. This distinction would not coincide,however, with that between 'imaginary'and 'real' powers, since for the BaKongo therealityof 'imaginary'kindoki explainsall exceptional,'real'effects.The 'West' or the 'modern' tends to be seen in the eyes of its native inhabitantsasquintessentiallycivilized in partbecause they representit as a domain of reasonable4 I owe thissuggestionoEdnaBay,whoencounteredsimilar roblemwithrespectothekingsof Dahomey.


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72 WyattMacGaffeydiscourse from which violence is excluded; war is waged in other partsof the world,murderers resent away tojails. Violence is thusexceptional,deviant,thefault of others,although n the 1990s it became moredifficult to sustainthis comforting mage. F. Barthmentions the peculiar disparity in our culture between ethical principles supportingjustice and security, and 'the known existence of crime, perversity, and war.' Thecodifiersof our Theoryof Man live on the polite side of this dichotomy,while personswho pass acrossit are 'subjectto elaboraterites of brutalization r rehabilitation,'njailor the electricchair. In othersocieties, thisprivilegedinnocence is notpossible.The NewGuineavillage Barth s writingaboutis 'a world where attackerand victim were knownto each other as social persons';guests at festivalswere knownindividuallyas the agentsof specificacts of violence (Barth 1975).Discussing the Piaroa of Venezuela,Overing reportsthatthey believe thatall deathsare murders ffected andalso avenged by sorcery,althoughPiaroa ife is free of physicalviolence and,froman observer'spointof view, very peaceful(Overing1986). BaKongo,too, thinkof themselvesas constantly subjectto violent attack,although in the twentiethcenturyat least) they have had a reputation or 'pacifism'andphysical violence amongthem is mostly the work of the police. I once asked a manwhathadhappened o his firstwife; with resignation,not anger, he replied, 'Oh, her parentsate her on our weddingnight.' Such 'eating,' provoked in this instance by the parents' quasi-legitimatedissatisfactionover the amountof marriagemoney they hadreceived,happens'atnight,'invisibly, but it is real, not metaphorical,in the minds of those who speak of it. Theoccult power that makes such violence possible is kindoki, which all elders have insome degree and which is also a necessary attribute of chiefs and banganga. Theambiguities of the capacity for violence - an evil in private hands, beneficial whenexercisedby the guardiansof public order;a terrifyingandever-presentrealitywhich isnevertheless invisible - complicate any attemptto interpret he models and realities ofchiefshipin the nineteenthcentury.5Given the wide distributionof the idea that 'the chief is a leopard,'we can say thatauthority tself, at whateverlevel, was and is understood n Central and West Africa asnecessarypublicviolence (MacGaffey1986;Vansina 1991). In Benin, 'therightto kill isthe definingcharacteristicof kingship' (Ben-Amos 1976:246). The violence of chiefs isculturallymuch morecomplexthan the familiar unctionalist dea that a sovereignshouldmonopolizethe powerof life anddeath,or that he is obliged to defendthe polity againstinvaders. That the chief at his investiturekills his nephew may stateby implicationthathe will rule impartially,or that he has ceased to be an ordinaryhumanbeing definedbysocial bonds,butit also implies a very particular iew of human ife and its availabilityasraw material or 'symbolism.'Amongthe easternLuba,every new chief was anointedonhis foreheadwith blood from a mansacrificedfor the purpose.The chief puthis foot onthe skull and drank he victim's blood mixed withbeer;unless he could do thishe was notrue chief (Lucas 1966: 90). The royal regalia, including beautifully carved femalefigures,were regularlyanointedwith the blood of sacrificial victims. The drumplayedonly at the funeralsandenthronements f chiefs was coveredwithskinfromthe scarifiedtorso of a woman sacrificed for the purpose. The Nyim of the Bushoong (Kuba) wasbelieved able to transform himself into a leopard and among the BaTetela theassimilation of the lineage chief to the leopard was so strong that he abstainedfrom

5 TheBaKongohavebeen noted n modernimes ortheabsenceof violenceamong hem.Bycontrast,n NorthernGhana,whereI havespentsometime,violence s never ar belowthesurface.


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Violence in CentralAfrica 73eating its flesh, for 'the leoparddoes not eat the leopard'(De Heusch 1985: 98). Such alineage chief was said 'to destroymen as the leoparddestroys goats.' The Kanongeshaofthe Ndembu in modem Zambiasat on lion andleopardskins and wore a braceletmadeofhuman genitalia which was soaked in sacrificial blood at each installation. He was asorcererwho could cause barrennessn both land andpeople should he touchhis braceletto theground(Turner1957:318-21).The relation of violence to other values is quite complex. The Kanongeshaof theNdembu, for example, was a ritual figure unable to control his nominal subordinates.Discussing the role of the Tetela lineage head,De Heusch notes thatalthoughthe ritualcharacterizeschiefship as violent, in fact the candidatechief must be generouswith hisgifts if he is to be allowed,once in his lifetime,to wearthe leopardskin;he circulationofgoods, linked to the circulation of women as wives and mothers, expresses theperpetuationof life itself. At the festival in which the chief became a leopard,his wivesas well as the members of his lineage were also allowed to wear the leopardskin(DeHeusch 1954:98). Among the Shona in Zimbabwe,where the chief is a 'lion,' David Lannotes that although, by their very nature, the spirits of dead chiefs are conquerors,warriors,and killers, 'it is throughtheir violence that the fertility of the earthis madeavailableto theirdescendants' Lan 1985: 152).The Tetela lineage head, like most Kongochiefs, achievedhis position by obligatorygenerosity, and De Heusch can only explain his identification with the leopard bydrawing upon psychoanalysis.Rene Girardhas included African examples of violencerelated to royalty in his Violence and the Sacred (Girard 1977). He ranges widely insearch of illustrative examples, which he believes generate a theory of the nature of'primitivereligion.' Necessaryelements of this theoryinclude the sacrifice of a surrogatevictim, and an oedipal association in royal ritualsbetween the king's obligatoryincestand his symbolic death. According to Girard,the king assures the well-being of hispeople by taking their sins upon himself. Examplesof this complex are said to exist ineasternAfrica, 'betweenEgypt and Swaziland,'but appearto be lacking in the west. Innone of the rituals of Kongo chiefship, for example, can the chief be regardedas ascapegoat;blood is notpoureduponhim, nor is royalincest practiced.In Bantu languages generally, 'to eat' is often used to denote access to power. Theelephantis a chief among animals because it eats more than others. 'These are imageswhich depictaccess to poweras ingestion/incorporationather hanoccupyinga positionor territory,or imposingorder.'Power is understoodas a personalproperty,butis 'tied toconcrete embodiments, person, and materialsymbols, ratherthan to abstractstructuressuch as offices, organizations,andterritories' Fabian1990:24). The metaphorof eatingdominatesthe politicalcultureof sub-SaharanAfrica in the late twentiethcentury,butthelinguisticassociation between 'wealth'and 'eating'is centuriesold. It is a premiseof 'thepolitics of the belly' that people admired for their success achieve it by eating thesubstanceof others,using meanswhich, in lesser men, would be criminal.Presidentsandpoliticiansare expectedto demonstratea capacityfor larceny, 'corruption'andviolence,as well as princely largesse towards their followers. At every political level, however,'eating'is polysemous:it meansnotonly to feed oneself, not at all easy in an economyofpoverty, wracked by 'structuraladjustment,'but also 'to accumulate,exploit, attack,conqueror kill by witchcraft'(Bayart1993:269).President Mobutu Sese Seko appealed to traditional values in 1965, when hedeliberately entrappedfour well-known politicians into a plot against him and thenpublicly executed them. After that, everybody knew that the easy-going politics andmusical-chairsgovemrnmentalhangesthat hadprevailed n what was thentheDemocratic


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74 WyattMacGaffeyRepublicof Congo were no more. In the face of world-wideprotests,Mobutuarguedatthe time that he was expectedto conduct himself with thedecisive violence characteristicof 'a Bantu chief.' Thereis no reason to think that Mobutuhadany trueunderstandingfthe chiefly tradition, but the tradition itself is pervasive. In 1980, popular opinionexplainedthe arrival of Ba'hai missionaries in northeasternZaire by the 'fact' that, inorderto pay for the expensivenew airportn Kisangani,the Presidenthad hadto admitanew groupof tradersn souls whose nocturnalactivities would bringin foreign exchange.On the otherhand,the execution did not earnthe Presidentwidespreadadmiration;myneighbours n 1965 were stunned:aesthetically imagined violence is easier to live withthan the real thing.The violence of chiefs, to earnpublic approval,mustbe a containedviolence.The chief as killer in defence of the public good readily slips into the mode of thechief as sorcererand cannibal. In popularopinion, the deathof prominentpoliticiansinZaire was never 'natural,'but always the result of some kind of sorcery. OppositiontoMobutu n the 1990s includedstories,widely circulated n thepressas well as by word ofmouth,which accused him of strengtheninghis personand his regime by witchcraftandby occulttechniquesobtained romall overthe world. It was believedthathe was obligedto handover the souls of citizens to pay for these secrets, as witches do and chiefs did.When the oppositionpartiesdenounced theharmful nfluence of the marabouts ndotheroccult,destructivepractices hatgovernus' theywere notemployingmetaphor.Social scientific recognitionof this complex has been inhibitedby the conventionaltreatment of 'religion' and 'politics' as separate substances, and by the'anthropologization' f indigenousbelief, treating t as thoughit were characteristic nlyof 'traditional,'ruralpopulationscircumscribedby ethnic boundaries Geschiere 1997).The liberal ethnocentrism of foreign commentatorsalso inclines them to pass by insilence beliefs which they cannot personally endorse. Faced with the incredulity ofstrangers,educatedAfricans, however, do not hesitate to invoke 'African realities notapparento the Cartesian ationalityof the North'(Gru6nais t al., 1995: 166).One shouldnotrecklesslygeneralizeabout'Africa,'certainlynot aboutthedistribution of violence in it. Even Mobutu, though he did not hesitate to orderexecutions, did not rule primarilyby violence, and the incidence of violence in Zaire,before the collapseof his regime in the bloody events of 1996-97, was not high. It is myimpression, after living in Kisangani and studying court records there, that amongordinarypeoplethere was a somewhathigherrateof violentcrimein the northeast han nthe southwestof the country.The BaKongo of the southwest were described to me bymagistratesas particularly reoccupiedwith witchcraft;t maybe thatimaginedviolence,now recordedonly in legends about great chiefs of the past and in the vitrines of artmuseumsaround heworld,substitutedor the realthing.WYATT ACGAFFEYan be contactedat 908 CherokeeRd., Louisville,KY40204, USA;email:wmacgaff@ averford.edu.


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Violence in CentralAfrica 75REFERENCESBarth,F. 1975. Ritual and Knowledge among the Baktamanof New Guinea. New Haven: Yale

UniversityPress.. 1987. Cosmologies n theMaking. New York:CambridgeUniversityPress.Bayart,Jean-Francois.1993. TheStateinAfrica:thePolitics of theBelly. London:Longman.Ben-Amos,P. 1976. Men andanimals n Benin art.Man 11:243-252.Bittremieux,L. 1940. NgandaTsundi:volk en vernomden.Kongo-Overzee6: 49-65, 113-134.Ciekawy, Diane and P. Geschiere. 1998. Containing witchcraft: conflicting scenarios inpostcolonialAfrica. AfricanStudies Review41 (3): 1-14.Comaroff,Jean L. and John Comaroff. 1997. Postcolonialpolitics and discourses of democracy nsouthern Africa: an anthropologicalreflection on African political modernities. Journal ofAnthropologicalResearch 53 (2): 123-146.De Heusch,Luc. 1954. Autorit6et prestigedans la societe tetela.Zaire 10: 1011-1027.. 1985. Sacrificein Africa: a StructuralistApproach. Tr. LindaO'Brien and Alice Morton.Bloomington,Indiana: ndianaUniversityPress.De Plaen,G. 1974. Lesstructuresd'autorite des Bayanzi. Paris:EditionsUniversitaires.Doutreloux,A. 1967. L'ombredesfitiches. Louvain:Nauwelaerts.Fabian,J. 1990. Powerand Performance. Madison:Universityof Wisconsin Press.Fields, K. 1982. Political contingencies of witchcraft n CentralAfrica: culture and the state inMarxisttheory. CanadianJournalof AfricanStudies 16 (3): 567-593.Geschiere, Peter. 1997. TheModernity of Witchcraft. Tr. Peter Geschiere and Janet Roitman.Charlottesville,Virginia:Universityof VirginiaPress.Girard,R. 1977. Violence and the Sacred. Tr. PatrickGregory. Baltimore, Maryland:JohnsHopkinsUniversityPress.Gruenais,M.E., Mounda Mbambi and J. Tonda. 1995. Messies, f6tiches et luttede pouvoirsentreles 'grandshommes'du Congodemocratique.Cahiersd'dtudesafricaines 137: 163-193.

Janzen,J.M. and W. MacGaffey. 1974. An Anthology of Kongo Religion. Lawrence, Kansas:Universityof KansasPress.Laman,K.E. 1957. TheKongo, vol. II. (StudiaEthnographicaUpsaliensia8.) Uppsala:AlmqvistandWiksells.Lan,D. 1985. Gunsand Rain. London:JamesCurrey.Lucas,S. A. 1966. L'6tat traditionneluba. Problemessociaux congolais 74: 83-97.MacGaffey, W. 1986. Religion and Society in CentralAfrica. Chicago: University of ChicagoPress.

(trans.anded.). 1991. Artand Healing of theBaKongo. Stockholm:Folkens Museet.-. 2000. KongoPolitical Culture. Bloomington,Indiana: ndianaUniversityPress.Meyer, Birgit. 1995. 'Delivered from the powers of darkness': confessions of Satanic riches inChristianGhana. Africa65 (2): 236-255.Overing,J. 1986. Imagesof cannibalism,death and domination n a 'non-violent' society. In TheAnthropologyof Violence,ed. by D. Riches,pp. 86-102. London:Basil Blackwell.Phillips, R.C. 1887. The social system of the Lower Congo. Journal of the ManchesterGeographicalSociety3: 154-169.Ranger, T.O. 1976. From humanism to the science of man: colonialism in Africa and theunderstanding f African societies. Transactionsof theRoyalHistoricalSociety(5th series) 26:115-141.Riches, D. 1986. The phenomenon of violence. In The Anthropology of Violence, ed. by D.Riches,pp. 1-27. London:Basil Blackwell.Schatzberg,M.G. 1993. Power, legitimacy and 'democratisation' n Africa. Africa 63 (4): 445-461.. 1997. Alternatecausalities and theories of politics: explaining political life in the Congo(Zaire). Unpublishedpaper.Swartenbroeckx,RP. 1966. L'esclavage chez les Yansi. Bulletin de la SocijtedRoyale Belged'Anthropologie t de Prdhistoire77: 145-204.Turner,V.W. 1957. Schism and Continuity.Manchester:ManchesterUniversityPress.Vansina, J. 1991. Paths in the Rainforests: toward a brief history of political tradition inequatorialAfrica. Madison:Universityof Wisconsin Press.

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Wyatt Macgaffey - Aesthetics and Politics of Violence in Central Africa