Pauvreté et misere: Élements pour une économie politique des pillages

A detailed analysis of Congo-Kinshasa’s urban misery, presented in both quantitative and qualitative terms, leads the author to resituate in this context the extended looting that took place in the early 1990s, particularly in the capital city. In his understanding, this pillaging, brought on by the people’s generalized state of poverty, was seen by them as legitimate revenge on the national political bourgeoisie and for the suffering caused by Mobutu’s political system. Their feeling of having been repeatedly despoiled of their savings and possessions by the state and a class of politicians which thereby transformed itself into a bourgeoisie explains that they see the looting as delayed restitution of what had been taken from them by force or cunning.