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Zaire The Politico-Commercial Class
This class has ruled Zaire since independence. Two key
features
of this "national bourgeoisie," as Nzongola calls it, have
been its
dependence upon the state for its social status and its
use of
political power to amass economic power. By looking at the
shifting
popular terms of reference for the group over time, its
salient
features can be sketched.
The origins of this class lie in the colonial-era group
called
the évolués (sing.,
évolué--see
Glossary).
The
évolués were drawn from the ranks of colonial
clerks,
teachers, and nurses. They sought recognition as a group
set apart
from the African masses, one which embraced and emulated
European
patterns of culture and behavior. Whereas évolués
were
intermediaries between the Belgians and the Congolese
masses, not
all intermediaries were évolués. Clergy,
noncommissioned
officers (NCOs), and chiefs were intermediaries who did
not have
évolué status. Clergy in particular had a
distinctive
status, being the only Africans in colonial society who
were
considered on a plane of approximate social equality with
Europeans.
With the growth of nationalism in the late 1950s, the
term
évolué was gradually displaced and rejected in
favor of the
new status term, intellectuel (intellectual). An
intellectuel was generally someone who had some
secondary
education and a white-collar job. This class was well
positioned to
take advantage of the flight of Belgian civil servants and
army
officers following independence in 1960. Although there
was only a
modest difference between the income opportunities of
colonial-era
évolués and other Congolese, the opportunities
available to
the new elite were substantial. Clerks and NCOs moved up
into the
vacated positions above them, and Congolese who shot up
into the
senior executive ranks of the civil service or into
national and
provincial ministerial offices enjoyed huge increases in
income. In
the nation's first cabinet, nineteen of the twenty-three
ministers
were former clerks.
This new elite quickly invested in those commercial
sectors
where the state's regulatory position could be converted
into
competitive advantage, including the acquisition of urban
land
titles, supplying the state, constructing rental housing,
and
selling licenses for the right to import goods. In
addition,
corruption served as a source of capital for the new
politicocommercial class; by 1971 theft of state funds was
estimated by one
analyst at 60 percent of the national budget.
The new class profited spectacularly from the
government's 1973
Zairianization
(see Glossary) decree in which all
foreign-owned
plantations and many commercial firms were turned over to
nationals
(see Zairianization, Radicalization, and Retrocession
, ch. 1;
Zairianization
, ch. 3). The term used to describe a
politically
connected individual who was given ownership of a foreign
business
was acquéreur (literally, acquirer). First used as
an
administrative term, acquéreur rapidly became
transformed in
public usage to a synonym for a member of the ruling
circle; it
further degenerated into an epithet shouted out by
children
whenever a Mercedes drove by. In Young's words, "In the
metamorphosis from évolué to acquéreur,
social
respect was transformed into class conflict."
As few members of the politico-commercial class own
productive
resources unrelated to political influence or protection,
they
remain dependent and insecure. Turnover in the upper
echelon of the
regime is rapid, so economic security for its members has
been
precarious. This elite has consequently preferred either
to invest
in short-term, high-return enterprises like the
import-export
trade, urban property, or taxis or to stash its funds
abroad for
safekeeping.
Data as of December 1993
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