Authority that is customary: Kitawala, customary chiefs, and the plurality of power in Congolese history

Abstract

This paper uses the history of the religious/healing movement Kitawala in the Democratic Republic of Congo as a lens to explore the relationship between forms of state-sanctioned “customary” authority and alternative nodes of “authority that is customary.” Focusing on three different case studies from different eras of the colonial and post-colonial history of Kitawala, the article explores the history of how the movement became part of the broad field of authority in Congo–at times cutting across, at times transforming, and at times subverting or fracturing the authority of customary chiefs. The article emphasizes not only how state-appointed customary authorities had to negotiate their position between emergent institutions like Kitawala and the colonial state, but also how Kitawalist communities themselves cultivated ideas and institutions of authority, legitimacy, and morality that were often explicitly critical of the state and its institutions and representatives (whether colonial or customary). The article argues that alternative nodes of authority like those cultivated by Kitawalist communities were and are, even in their innovations, rooted in the dynamic history of Central African ideas and institutions of power and must therefore be considered in histories of customary authority in the region.