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Zaire Patron-Client Relations
Patron is a term of address that means, crudely,
"boss"
or "patron." Patron-client relations are marked by unequal
status,
reciprocity, and personal contact, and their use is common
throughout Zaire. Individuals may circumvent the power of
state
officials by locating someone in the bureaucracy to whom
they are
related by ties of ethnicity, locality, kinship, religious
affiliation, or class. In appealing to such ties in order
to get a
permit issued, a court case resolved, or a child admitted
to
school, for example, bonds are forged that may be used by
the
patron or the client in future matters. Such bonds may
undercut or
reinforce other bonds of class, regional, or ethnic
solidarity,
depending on the situation.
Such bonds and the need for them subvert official
ideology as
well as official structures and procedures. Under the
state and
party ideology of authenticity, all citizens were equal
and the
appropriate term of address among all Zairians was
citoyen,
or citizen. The term was mandated for public use in order
to do
away with the perceived hierarchical distinctions of
monsieur and madame. Not only does use of
the term
patron undercut this aim by creating new
hierarchies, but
Zairians often reversed the egalitarian intent of the term
citoyen itself in their use of it. The term was
often
reserved for addressing members of new and old elites, the
politico-commercial class and the external estate; a
foreigner
might find himself or herself addressed as citoyen,
while a
Zairian worker or farmer might not.
Data as of December 1993
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