The Gecamines workers constituted a kind of workers’ aristocracy who were envied by the rest of the population. After the VRS, only a small minority of them were able to reestablish themselves professionally. The rest have found it very hard to fend for themselves. With the help of two Congolese trade unions, they have formed a “collective of  ex-Gecamines employees” in order to denounce their abandonment by the Congolese state and to demand the full amount of wage arrears to which they are entitled, a request which has, up to now, been in vain.

With their incessant appeals to the World Bank, the “old-guard” of the Gecamines compare their plight to a “mass suicide that was imposed and planned” (Collective, 19 February 2009). The poverty they have been afflicted with has resulted in malnutrition, divorce, removal of children from school, delinquency among boys, and prostitution among girls, an increase in levels of morbidity and mortality… “It is difficult to assess the relevance of the figures that have been advanced given the absence of statistics before and after the VRS in question. Regardless of this fact, in the interviews I conducted with the former employees of the company, they often reiterate the difficulty they have in feeding themselves, caring for and educating their children, and consequently, securing the respect of their children. Everything they considered to be the very reason for their existence when they were working for the Union Minière and then Gecamines was taken away from them”, notes Professor Rubbers.

In the following chapters, Benjamin Rubbers examines the activity of this Collective and the difficulty its members are experiencing in their attempts to be reinstated. He takes an interest in the development of their social connections and intra-familial relations, but also in the upheaval they have had to endure in their daily lives.

Industrial Paternalism

For the experts of the World Bank, the majority of the “old-guard” of the Gecamines have succeeeded in finding a “survival activity”. If they are discontented, the World Bank claims that it is their advanced age that is at fault or the poor management exercised by the Congolese government in the past and the paternalistic policy of the company!

“With its neoliberal agenda, the World Bank and the multinationals it was instrumental in attracting to the Congo, are highly critical of the paternalism of the Gecamines company which they adjudge to be costly, counter-productive and responsible for the unrealistic expectations of the population”, points out Professor Rubbers.

The very notion of “industrial paternalism” - and its subjectification by the workers of the great mining and metallurgical company is the central theme of the present work.

This managerial policy, which appeared at the end of the 19th century in the coal-mining and steel-manufacturing areas of Wallonia, the North of France or the Ruhr valley, was also applied on a grand scale in the colonial context OR by the colonial capital. It was applied to the Union Minière of Haut Katanga, from 1926 onwards, to stabilize and control labor in the workplace, by taking charge of various aspects of the daily lives of the workers and their families:  from the construction of houses, schools, sports facilities… to the funding of company welfare services, including the establishment of healthcare services. It also involved educating the workers in the values of the company (work, hierarchy, etc.), to “moralize” them and in this way prevent any interruption to the work. The company held the worker’s hand to the extent that the interests of each party seemed to be intertwined.