Negotiating Public Services in the Congo by Tom De Herdt Kristof Titeca

Author:Tom De Herdt, Kristof Titeca [Tom De Herdt, Kristof Titeca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781786994004
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: 2019-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

6

Police at Work in Bukavu: Negotiating Revenue-generation in Urban Pirate Markets

Michel Thill

Introduction1

A few years ago, at a very busy road-intersection in front of Nyawera market in central Bukavu, capital of South Kivu province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the Congolese police established a police post. Initially, it was a white tent, then, after that was blown away by a heavy storm in late 2016, it was replaced by a windowless, blue-iron shipping container, which in turn was substituted with a larger, solar-panel powered container in late 2017. The police container houses around a dozen police officers. Their main duty is to keep in check the sprawling pirate markets where the mamans (market women) sell goods on the sides of the roads without formal permission. This is a task much easier said than done. Several times a day, the police move out of their post to chase away the mamans. The mamans tend to scatter in several directions, only to reclaim their place as soon as the police have withdrawn to their post. This back and forth may proceed calmly, almost like the performance of a ritual, or it can turn into an explosive spectacle, which leads to heated and occasionally violent confrontations that draw in dozens of bystanders and paralyse road traffic.2

* * *

Following De Herdt’s and Titeca’s call to “zoom in on the practical dilemmas faced by public servants” (this volume), this chapter explores the everyday work of the Police Nationale Congolaise (PNC, Congolese National Police) through their practices and encounters with the public in Bukavu’s markets, in order to explore what they can tell us about the functioning of public services in urban DRC.

I argue, first, that existing police practices aimed at generating revenue are a response to, and are shaped by, practical norms, which have emerged from, and thus reflect, the underlying and sometimes conflicting raisons d’être of the police institution. Second, while police officers have developed a diverse set of such revenue-generating practices, various state and non-state market animators fiercely negotiate and contest them on a daily basis. Their negotiated nature points towards their highly contextual and relational makeup, revealing the challenges of and limits to police work. Finally, an analysis of these encounters and negotiations also contributes to larger discussions on the production of statehood in post-conflict urban settings.

The chapter draws on a concept developed by Olivier de Sardan “that [is] likely to prove the most supple and empirically productive for approaching reality ‘as it is’” (2008, p. 4), namely practical norms. As De Herdt and Olivier de Sardan (2015) highlight, in practice the actions of many state officials, including the police, are not solely guided by the many official, social and professional laws, codes, rules and regulations in place, but also by so-called practical norms, which are born out of a complex interplay between these various repertoires and local contextual exigencies. This chapter’s analysis of police practices in and around market sites will draw on the exploratory concept of practical norms

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