Benjamin Rubbers uses an analytical framework conceived by Michel Foucault in order to explore the way this “totalitarian control regime” contributed to naturalizing paternalism as a regime of power that was taken for granted. “In a more direct way, it involved monitoring workers in the tiniest details of their daily lives, including family life, the status of the wife and the education of the children, in such a way that they succeed in reproducing in their own houses the authority upon which the power of the mining Union as an employer was based”.

In the context of his ethnographic research, Benjamin Rubbers has been able to analyse the extent to which the Industrial paternalism of the Union Minière – then the Gecamines, left its mark upon, or even “formatted” the worker population of Katanga. Independently of its stated objectives (stabilization of the labor force and legitimization of the values of the company), he explains, the paternalistic policy of the Union Minière profoundly reshaped the body of its recruits (their corpulence, their appearance, their health etc.) and the way they used their body (washing, sleeping, having sexual relations, etc.) Beyond this, disciplinary practices contributed not only to the subjugation of the workers, but also to identifying them as subjects. In other words, to organize a certain form of subjectivity, a relationship between the self and the self and the self to others.

Nostalgia

“The sensation I have each time I visit the premises of the Gecamines, which have been abandoned for more than 30 years, is that of discovering the ruins of a dead industrial civilization. Nothing seems to have been maintained in the housing complexes for managers and the workers’ camps: the roads are full of potholes, the houses are crumbling, and vegetation once again covers the communal areas”, recalls Professor Rubbers.

But how do the inhabitants of Panda perceive their day to day living space? Do they have feelings of nostalgia for the “good old days”? In his work, Benjamin Rubbers addresses these questions while deeply examining the carreer of the “old-guard” of the Gecamines: their married lives, their relationships with their parents and their children, but also their social relations within the community of “children of the Union Minière”, as they define themselves.

The researcher continues, “In a general way, their nostalgia stems from the social and material order established by the company at the start of their careers which was the basis of their material security and their pride as workers”. Before things went wrong, the organisation of the Gecamines represented a well-constructed and well-oiled machine in terms of the production line, the management of personnel and the care services for their families and social lives outside working hours. Their wages were paid, food rations were allocated to them, access to schools, hospitals and sports facilities were free. All of this disappeared at the beginning of the 1990s. The meritocratic system, inherited from the colonial days, broke down to give way to disorder (fujo). Factories, workshops and offices began to slow down for want of work or material, before being plundered or abandoned.

“The feeling that there is no longer any sense of the meaning of work or the discipline of former times is widely shared. All that remains, is the sentiment of belonging to the same community which had been fostered by the company”, explains Professor Rubbers. This is clearly visible in the opinions of former employees of the Gecamines, who are calling for political intervention in order to help them to return to a “real life”: having three meals a day, sending the children to school, having a television, being recognized as a whole person, etc.

The paternalistic tradition inherited from colonialism has therefore remained very strong in the collective memory of Katanga. This is the basis for the criticism of the new economic order imposed by the World Bank in Katanga and elsewhere for the last ten years. Such is the paradox which is at the heart of this brilliant work by Professor Benjamin Rubbers: Industrial paternalism as a means of control (by the employer) of the workforce became transformed into a defense weapon for the social rights of the proletariat during the 20^th century.