Being Colonized: The Kuba Experience in Rural Congo, 1880–1960

4. Company Rule and Its Consequences

86 4 Company Rule and Its Consequences One day rumors suddenly appeared with the effect of an exploding bomb. The whole Kasai area with all its business posts, harbors , plantations etc. was to pass in the hands of the state; the private businesses were to be liquidated, their employees would be sent back to Europe, and they were to be replaced by state agents.1 This was how traders at Luebo learned in 1901 that Leopold II was pressuring the fourteen companies that operated in Kasai to merge into a single new concessionary company in a fifty/fifty partnership with the state. The king succeeded, and the Compagnie du Kasai was established by royal decree on the eve of Christmas 1901 with a monopoly over the trade in rubber, ivory, and other raw materials. With this action Kasai fell in line with the situation elsewhere in the colony. Indeed, the effects of the merger were almost immediate, even though much time was spent in 1902 disposing of the assets of the merged companies, setting up a single uniform business, and integrating those agents whom the company was willing to take over from its predecessors into a single corps. As part of that operation Belgian agents were now favored to the extent that fairly soon only a few nationals from other countries were 1. Paul Landbeck, Malu malu: Erlebnisse aus der Sturm und Drang periode des Kongo-staates (Berlin, 1930), 41. left, a general trend in Congo although before Belgium took over it was less evident in the hiring of state agents. In 1901 rubber was paid a rate of 2.70 Belgian francs maximum per kilogram, but by 1904 the price had plunged to only 0.24 francs maximum . Moreover, in order to achieve this result, the high-quality goods sold by the company, such as the Dutch cloths known as wax, were replaced by the cheapest and shoddiest merchandise available. That provoked an immediate boycott by buyers such as mother Pyeem. Hence exports from Kasai dropped dramatically from 1,650 tons of rubber in 1901 to only 365 tons in 1902. Nevertheless as the new trading system came into full operation, by 1903 exports from Kasai rose again to 721 tons but then fell to 716 and 674 tons in 1904 and 1905, respectively. They then picked up to reach 824 tons in 1906. After that, overall production declined again in 1907 and 1908, albeit quite slowly.2 Profits hit a peak of 5.99 francs per kilogram in 1906 before falling by 40 percent early in 1907. From 1908 onward they gradually rose again for a few years, although the price paid to the African producers continued to worsen during that period as well. As a result the directors of the company were able to pay over 5 million francs as dividends in 1905 and even managed to double this amount the following year. Such results could only derive in large part from the ruthless cost cutting for which the company was famous. Cost cutting indeed: most of these profits resulted from the threat or actual instances of violence. The Compagnie du Kasai had divided its territory into some fifteen “sectors.” The chief of each sector left the running of individual trading posts (factories) to European managers he appointed, and some of the latter had one or more European agents. All these people were responsible for monthly accounts and stock in their realm, and they were often inspected. The anthropologist Leo Frobenius observed in 1905, however, that there were shortfalls in most of the local accounts. Some of these were due to pilfering by local Africans, while some, such as part of a sack of salt, were due to spoilage during storage. Each manager or agent was held responsible and had to pay for such losses. But the most serious deficits apparently resulted from the unavoidable practice of allowing managers or agents to take small quantities of Company Rule and Its Consequences 87 2. Daisy S. Martens, “A History of European Penetration and African Reaction in the Kasai Region of Zaire, 1880–1908” (Ph.D. diss., Simon Fraser University, 1980), 285, table 2. merchandise from stock to pay for their living expenses, their personal servants, and sometimes even a palm wine tapper, the expenses of their mistresses, and gifts to local leaders, although theoretically only sector chiefs were allowed to hand out such gratuities. Of course...