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MBONGI A NSI: A NEW POSSIBLE WAY OF ORGANIZING

POLITICS IN THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO.

By Ernest Wamba dia Wamba Bazunini.

Introduction

We are living in a world submerged by crises; in spite of the prodigious

scientific and technological achievements which (theoretically at least)

should resolve many of our problems, humanity seems headed for self-

destruction. This is due above all to the fact that our core beliefs, i.e. the

ones which determine our behavior, are more and more in an antagonistic

contradiction with the foundational premise of life as a

generating/maintaining process (LGMP). Instead of universalism becoming

more and more the self-consciousness of LGMP as such and as understood

in its multidimensional character, it is nothing today but the expression of

the Community of Capital (1), or of what Perlman calls Leviathan(2), which

is a destructive apparatus, built upon and serviced by the dying of

uncountable lives.

Life is the engine (brain and heart) of the world, it embodies universal

integrity and stands as the ultimate point of reference. The community of

Capital which has grown out of countless massacres of lives, and which

reproduces itself, systematically, on the one hand, by negating life to one

part of humanity and on the other by destroying the environment, to the

point of threatening today the very core of LGMP itself. Such a community

(of Capital) can no longer serve us as a point of reference to our deepest

beliefs. If we take LGMP as the unit and subject of analysis, we must then

question all our current core beliefs and rethink the fundamental sources of

truth (ALETHEA). Values which are unquestionably true must emerge

from, and have as, their anchor LGMP whose most complex mechanisms of

self-creation, self-presence and self-consciousness we must understand.

Despite its multiplicity and diversity, LGMP is one and does not tolerate

splitting. It is also open-ended to infinity and cannot be summed up. It is

important that the entire human community, which is a form of life, should

not organize itself in a way which is in contradiction with LGMP.

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The ever deepening rupture of human species from Nature, through the

artificial cultural organization (food, increasingly artificial and insatiable

needs, etc.), cannot but affect the physical body of human beings (e.g. as can

be seen with the weakening of the immune system, for example). Any form

of life which destroys its own environment, destroys itself. The values

which favor the re-connecting of human species with Nature, and which, at

the same time, prevent suicidal tendencies, must also anchor the

organizational structure of politics. That is, if the latter aims at promoting

harmony, and, therefore sustained peace.

The Mbongi, the house of life, could be described as a way of thinking and

putting in place the structures which are meant to promote the organization

of day to day life (whether at the communal, clan, village, luvila, etc.) as it

has emerged in African societies dominated by the African type of

community living. To put it differently: once a house is built, the question

emerges as to which kind of furniture and how the furniture will be put in

place so that people may feel encouraged to communicate with each other,

and at the same time feel very comfortable. Such a community has always

tended to conceive of itself as being one with Nature (muntu ya muti Man is but a tree) (4). Its most appropriate geometrical figure is the sphere rather

than the pyramid. Everything was shared: knowing, owning, exercising

power, speaking, dancing, singing, healing etc. It was the core of a

community held tight by radical solidarity and fraternity. Every person was

treated as a singular life to be respected. The Mbongi was both father and

mother to any orphan within the community. The visitor (stranger/foreigner)

from outside was welcome, provided he understood himself as such (dia,

nua, leka ye wenda; kadi bwatungulua vata kuzeyi bo koeat, drink sleep and leave; since (because) you do not know how this village has been

constructed.) We discussed and studied the importance of the traditional

Mbongi in one of our conferences. The Mbongi, the Palaver; yesterday,

today and tomorrow: A Point of view on cultural taking root and openness.

(October 18, 2003)

We do want politics in our country to be good, clean, responsive to the needs

and aspirations of people from all walks of life. Today, politics is closely

tied to a discriminatory state, which only cares for certain cliques and their

clients or their tribal kin. Such politics is neither good, nor clean, nor

responsible. Politics as such is organized by, and, through organized

mechanisms (dispositifs organiss organisant la politique) (apparatuses,

mechanisms, structures) which, at the same time, are organizing politics.

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The political party, the one party-state, the state, the elections, etc. are

examples of organized mechanisms which are at the same time organizing

politics. There must be appropriate (adequate) mechanisms (dispositifs) for

politics to be good. The singularity of a politics requires that we stop

thinking that only the state model of organization could be a genuine

dispositif organis organisant cette politique.

The originality of the 20th century has been to make possible politics based

on parties, which is to say to have made the political party the central

mechanism for organizing politics. The political parties, their process of

recruiting and seeking to rally all the strata and classes of the population,

operated as parties for the people as a whole. The social origin of the

members of the political parties no longer determined the class nature of

those parties; the class reference of those parties had become ideological and

programmatic.

With regard to the 20th century regimes: parliamentary multi-partyism,

Bolshevism, Stalinism, Nazism and Fascism turned the political party into

the backbone of their battle to seize and exercise power. The party form

(format, the state as the organizational model for the party), during the last

century was the cornerstone for organizing politics. Lenin claimed that

putting in place a new conception of the political party was the necessary

condition for a revolutionary strategy under the epoch of imperialism. Stalin

theorized the formation of the Soviet party-State. Mussolini organized the

Italian Fascist party, and Hitler the Nazi party.

The 20th century came to an end with the demise of the party. The latter

could only take the shape of the state Party, i.e. the acknowledged/accepted

subordination of, the appropriation of the state by a political party and by

party political line, the submission to party politics is the logical

consequence of representative politics. If the parties are the organization of

the people as a whole, then they are in the position to lead. The state

presents itself as the party-state. In Africa and in Mobutus Zare, in particular, it seems as if it is the entire society which has submitted itself to

the party-state, hence the autocratic character, if not terrorizing, of politics.

The parliamentary party-state offers itself as the representative of the people

as a whole, presenting itself as both its guarantor and expression. The so-

called right to rights is the form and movement by/and through which the party-state takes people into account and decides who really counts and who

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does not. Through it also it is decided who has rights and who does not have

them.

The crisis of this form of the party has manifested itself in many ways, as

shown by the following examples: the events of May-June 1968, in France

as a critique, among others, of the Communist Party in France; the Great

Cultural Revolution in the Peoples Republic of China, 1966-69, against the Chinese Communist Party; the Black Liberation Movement in the USA

(1970-78), against, among others, the Communist Party in the USA, the

Democratic and Republican Parties; the Black Consciousness Movement in

South Africa; the massive exit of Sudanese (in Southern Sudan) from the

Sudanese Communist Party, etc. The struggles against this form gave birth

to the prescription for the creation of a new type of party. Implementing this

prescription turned out to be impossible. Instead, one saw the emergence of

an anti-party politics (e.g. Solidarnosk in Poland) and at a distance from the

State-Party or from the party-state with empowerment of society against the

State-Party. In France, the Political Organization is claiming to work

toward an anti-political party politics, anti-parliamentarianism, anti-vote

(elections), and at a distance from the state. It is the only organization which

has been mobilizing against the abhorrent legislation (against the so-called

immigrants, i.e. workers from abroad, especially from Africa), and it also

defends the rights of workers to have their papers regularized without

condition. It is the only one, really, practicing democratic politics.

The so-called State based on the rule of law (the parliamentary party-state,

par excellence), the empire of rules without affirmed (attested) political

principles, has not been able to reconcile the defense of the rights of people,

with that of defending the social rights. The rules have been framed in such

a way as to become an accessory to the capitalist way of calculating,

founded on the premise of inequality and inequity. The rule of law

simulates the rules imposed by the Market. The focus is only on what is

legal, not on what is just. And, lest we forget, a state based on the rule of

law, like France, for example, has produced unjust laws and cannot,

therefore, be considered as being completely democratic.

Our century (starting at the end of the 20th) is characterized by the

emergence of a new political space. The idea of politics without party and

the birth of a mechanism of politics, The Political Organization (in France)

has come about, without any qualifying epithet, organizing politics and not

aiming for power or entering the state, but only focused on reinforcing the

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political capacity of people. The Zapatista revolution, in Chiapas (Mexico),

has shown that it is not interested in conquering state power. Nevertheless,

the Zapatistas prescriptions, on the Mexican state, have irrevocably forced it to modify some of the modalities of its day to day operation. One does

know today that the state does not get transformed from within nor does it

modify its operating modalities from within itself.

In spite of their numbers, they are now about 300 or more political parties,

the Congolese political parties cannot even be said to match the capacity of

the major parties of the past century. They are in crisis, from the moment

they are formed; they are mere tools for recruiting clients for the purpose of

filling state positions, a practice which is no different from the habit of

taking over the inherited colonial state and replacing its occupants with new

ones. In the hegemonic spirit (to win against the adversaries and accumulate

the highest number of state positions), the parties resort to all possible means

in order to better position themselves in sharing power and state responsibilities.

We are in a new situation of politics. In order to change the world, it is no

longer a question of either entering the state or destroying it, or organizing

its disappearance. The separating of politics from the state has made it

possible to think politics by itself without reference to elements which are

outside (or external to) of it (state, the economy, classes, etc.) Politics being

of the order of the subjectivity, deriving from forms of consciousness; it can

be thought of as thought. People do think, and thought is a relation of the

real. It is possible to do politics, which is to say, to practice the possibility

of breaking away from the present situation, without entering the state; but

to do so at a distance from the state, from the point of people from all walks

of life. Politics is to make the impossible possible. The possibility of the

impossible is the foundation of politics (Alain Badiou).

Two types of politics organize our current political space: 1) politics from

the point of state (politics thought through from the outside), i.e which lets

the state determine politics, which takes us back to the party-State, to the

party or to the elections; such politics is dominated by parliamentarianism;

2) politics from the point of people (politics thought from within, without

any reference to outside elements). The first kind of politics presupposes

that the people are incapable of thinking (have no political capacity) and

must therefore be represented by professionals of politics (politicians,

lobbyists, consultants, polling experts, journalists etc.) who operate from the

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point of state, parties and the media. The second kind of politics starts from

the acknowledged political capacity of people which it seeks to reinforce, in

order to transform it into their own political power (puissance politique.)

Thanks to such political power, the people find themselves in the position of

prescribing to the state, forcing it to modify the modalities of how it

operates, for the benefit of all and not just for the usual oligarchies: whether

clients, professional, regional or ethnic based.

Politics of emancipation (which is prescriptive) seeks to develop the political

power of the people so as to transform/destroy the oppressive relations of the

society and ensure that what prevails is just, and not simply conforming to

legality. In other words, it is clear that the organized mechanisms aimed at

organizing politics cannot model themselves on the state apparatuses or on

imitating the corporate models. Its apparatuses must, in and of themselves,

encourage people to think politics, each in their own name; to participate in

formulating principles, good for all, based on the generic equality of human

beings. Inspiring models can be found in human communities, such as those

based on the African community (whose fundamental vision emphasizes

interconnection between the dead, the living and those to be born), and not

on the artificial ones generated by Capital whose social links are based on

the presumption of inequality and inequity. The Haitian experience of the

revolutionary slaves (1791-1804) which, the first, under

burgeoning/maturing (?) capitalism, proclaimed the principle of all humans

as equal, must also help us, if we can reconstruct or rethink along the lines of

the organized dispositif which organized that experience. It ended up

proclaiming itself as a revolutionary state though. In the meantime, we are

seeking inspiration from the experience of the Mbongithe site of the communal palaver.

The Mbongi a Nsi as the organized dispositif organizing politics.

The objective is to organize the politics of reinforcing and transforming the

capacity of people to become a political force for the benefit of the people

from all walks of life. This would give the people the necessary capacity to

prescribe to the entire society and the state politics of maturity, responsibility, conscience based political choices, as opposed to imposed

political choices, submitted to (Malumba Nkosi Zi Kanda, 2006). Mbongi a Nsi shall be the site of this kind of new politics for the country. It must be

understood that country means all the people who live in it; it is the people from all walks of life who organize themselves through the Mbongi a Nsi.

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One could say that the Mbongi is like the evental site (site vnementiel)

where politics as thought is elaborated, dissected, taken apart, discussed,

examined. People come to the Mbongi to participate fully and freely to

prescribe to the state the changes to the ways in which it operates, toward

those who are best in line with the demands of the people. The Mongi is

open to anyone; each and everyone speaks in her/his name. Those who do

come to the Mbongi do so because they are expressing the will to be where

the people are; they are also committed to thinking for themselves. At the

risk of repeating the obvious: people do think and thinking is a relation of

the real. Every Mbongi brings out, through everyones participation, the kind of unity agreed by all and considered good for everyone. It is through

political battles the palaversthat the Mbongi organizes, face to face, politics against politics, that the political capacity of people and thus of everyoneincreases. In other words, it means that there can be no politics without political battles.

The objective of the Mbongi a Nsi is to make all of its members, militants of

politics as thinking, militants who act on the basis of what is just and not just

legal, militants who are committed to uncompromising fraternity. The

Mbongi could also be looked at as a sort of initiation school working toward

what is just, true, virtuous, honorable, friendly, magnanimous, big,

visionary. This becomes clear, especially when the Mbongi organizes itself

in a palaver. The site of politics aiming at the formation of peoples political power, is the assembly (or better: the rally); not the one which is at the heart

of parliamentarianism, the assembly of representatives, but the one where

everyone is welcome, and where everyone speaks in their name and

participates in the decisions. This is where people meet to figure out how to

put together the prescriptions aimed at modifying the modalities of how the

state operates.

Our Mbongi a Nsi (Baraza la Nchi) is a universal Mbongi: it is not limited

to the people of the same culture, language, origin, class, scholarly

discipline, or even of the same sex or race, etc. It is multifunctional: it is

capable of organizing itself, organizing, a conference, a workshop, say, on

an aspect of public consciousness, a think tank, a seminar, or a symposium, a

study group, a publishing house, an initiation school, a research center, a

festival (around arts, food, music, dance), popular committees, collectives,

etc

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Ultimately, the Mbongi aims at being open to the entire people. That is why

we say that it brings together the people from all walks of life. The open-

ended process which it organizes proposes a rupture with consensual

subjectivity in relation to the state by keeping it at bay (or at a distance). It

organizes, without referring to a subset in particular (eg workers, academics,

poor peasants, intellectual workers, etc.) nor to a particular site (eg. factory,

neighborhood, school, church, village, etc.); it aims at bringing out a

political independent subjectivity, free and which is regulated by its own

prescription.

Our Mbongi a Nsi can thus be looked at as a universal form of a peoples committee, which means that it does not have a singular site, and which

touches all the people, as they are, and as they relate to their relative

situations. What brings together these people from all walks of life is the

principle of political judgment. In relation to a situation, as manifested

through events or circumstances which, for a moment, brings to the surface,

at least for some, the fact that the consensus does not have an objective

foundation, which is not the subjective internalizing of a normal subjectivity

of the objectivity; in the face of such a situation, the Mbongi a Nsi brings

about a judgment, an assessment. Such a judgment is free in that it distances

itself from the consensus, which is the subjective form of submission to the

ONE AND ONLY(supposedly) of the State. The Mbongi is a process

through which, out of which, a political judgment on the situation can

emerge and declared.

What is the situation? For the Mbongi it is anything which helps break up

the dialectical relationship between the subjective and the objective, or, put

in another way, the idea that one has to think in a particular way, simply

because that is the way it is. For the Mbongi nothing is the way it is. The political subjectivity must not become the interiorization/internalization of

objective constraints. It is a relation of the reality regulated by/through a

prescription of a possible. In the Mbongi, we maintain that the possible has

ontological primacy over the actual in the situation; the same with the

absence (the void) has primacy over the presence.

A situation, for the Mbongi, exists every time a new development forces those who see nothing wrong in participating in the building of a consensual

state (e.g. the political parties, the journalists, the government, the courts,

parliament, etc.) to readjust their statements and actions in order to

reestablish the unity between their politics of using the state as their point of

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reference (as their guiding star). That is where a prescription can work, the

idea that another subjective possibility, another will (to change), and finally

another politics can emerge.

It comes down to extracting from the situation, which is always singular, the

possibility of another subjectivity. It is in that sense that, from situation to

situation, the Mbongi is always at work politics against politics.

It is the Mbongi which says whether there is a situation or not, and which

assesses, politically, that situation. There is a situation, for the Mbongi,

every time there is a chance that gaps are generated between what the people

think and the consensual norm maintained by (sought after) by the state.

There is a situation when, for the Mbongi, an opening occurs for a possible

intervention and investigation of that gap. Every capacity of subjective

break, political rupture, is of a universal value, even if it concerns only

one person. Such a rupture/break is of the same order of, and is as valuable

in politics as, the epistemological break in sciences.

One cannot reiterate too often that the Mbongi has no territorial or

professional basis. It can be at work anywhere for the purpose of

intervening and assessing situations. Its extension must only allow it to

intervene and assess collectively as quickly and efficaciously as possible.

The treatment/consideration/examination/investigation of a situation, by

the Mbongi, must be signaled by a political statement. Such a statement

distributed under the name of declarationis that from which, hence, the Mbongi may affirm its vision and its interventions on situations where the

statement will be on the table. This statement, which can be operational

within the situation, draws a line of demarcation between the consciences of

the people. Thus the political line of the Mbongi is made explicit through

such statements.

Thus one of the major tasks is the grasping of the forms of consciousness or

thoughts among the people from all walks of life. The people think and do

not only reflect or express the objective conditions. It is very important

to hear them speak, attentively listening to them especially with regard to the situationso as to detect any gap with the consensual norm. The political parties seek to implant among the people a consciousness coming

from somewhere else. The latter is no different from the problematic of

ensuring that revolutionary thinking penetrates the popular masses,

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otherwise known as Consciencism (Nkwame Nkrumah) which, in fact, is but

another manner of arriving at a form of consensual subjectivity.

About the structuring of the Mbongi

The structure of the Mbongi a Nsi must take into account the following

major requirement: infinite multiplicity of situations calls for a Mbongi

which is multifunctional. In principle, every situation calls for a Mbongi

which responds to it. The multifunctionality of the Mbongi can exist in the

form of several small Mbongi responding to different situations. The offices

of these small Mbongi together form the leading nucleus, in charge of the

political intellectuality of the Mbongi a Nsi, the nucleus which we call the

Secretariat of the Mbongi. It directs, coordinates or supervises the different

tasks called for by the political battles in which the Mbongi participates as

well as their preparation in terms of political intellectuality. It is understood

that the office of the Mbongi is its nucleus. The Secretariat is thus a nucleus

composed of the different nuclei of the Mbongi.

The person in charge of each crucial task is only the leader for implementing

that task in which all members of the Secretariat participate. The tasks cover

the following aspect: 1) the relations between the various Mbongi; 2)

coordinating the internal activities of each Mbongi and those of the

Secretariat; 3) the tasks related to the Mbongis resources; 4) activities related to researching politics (enqutes politiques), organizing and keeping

the archives of the Mbongi as well as, if any, publications; 5) organizing

public events, Mbongi conferences on all subjects and the salon

conversations; and finally the tasks related to the relationships between the

Mbongi and other political organizations.

The meeting of all those in charge of coordinating the activities of the

Mbongi draws the agenda for the meetings of the Mbongi/Secretariat/leading

nucleus. These meetings refer to the ontological research of situations, the

highlighting of the possible ways of getting out of situations, the production

of appropriate prescriptions and the declarations and political statements.

They also prepare the conditions for making possible the realization of other

tasks to be undertaken by the Mbongi a Nsi. The latter may, from time to

time, meet for a salon conversation required by the reinforcing of the

political intellectuality called for by a political battle.

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All the members of the Mbongi of a neighborhood, a city, a region or of the

entire country meet on the occasion of the Mbongi members conference. Political matters concerning the entire country are studied and debated, and

an evaluation is made of the degree of the political strength of the people.

The necessary prescriptions are established, and the political battles to be

waged are also identified. The recommendations are made to the Secretariat

so as to prepare and organize the conditions for the organization of the

participation of all Mbongi in their respective political battles. A document

shall organize the various relations between the Mbongi and the members of

the Mbongi.

Provided the material means to do so are available, each salon conversation

and each conference organized by the Mbongi will generate publications in

the form of brochures. These shall be the focus of study, discussion in each

Mbongi, and should also be distributed among the militants in the

population. The process is by now well known: study, organize and spread

the word!

Conclusion

We are hereby proposing to the members of the Mbongi that they reflect on

this presentation as an approach to the solution of the question related to the

crisis of the apparatuses organizing current politics. There is, to be sure,

moments when politics does not exist; in such a case, it is politics which has

to be invented, created and thought through. The appropriate organized

apparatus for organizing such a politics cannot but follow.

Ernest Wamba dia Wamba Bazunini

Kinshasa, September 15, 2006