PALIMPSETS IN PONTE CITY
Born on 22 September 1954, Barnabé Kikaya Bin Karubi was 35 years old at the time he received his residential permit to live in Ponte, a concession to the Group Areas Act No. 36 of 1966, one of the most notorious pieces of apartheid legislation that reinforced residential racial segregation. He signed and dated his application on 24 November 1989, requesting a one-year lease starting from 10 December 1989.
[Show letter] Radio RSA issued an employment letter on Bin Karubi’s behalf 10 days later, and all documents were received by both the town clerk and House of Assembly by 5 December 1989. The approval of Bin Karubi’s permit was issued in a record time of 24 days. [Show corresponding document] Unlike flat 3607’s residents, Jerome Matondo Kabangu and Promise Ilunga Kinkela, the apartheid government viewed Bin Karubi not as an unwelcome foreigner, but as a credentialed expatriate who could mediate foreign service announcements to Francophone African countries. After only a year of living in Ponte, he ended up purchasing a condominium from a white resident living on Hunter Street in the nearby neighbourhood of Yeoville. Bin Karubi, his wife and their four children were issued a group area permit that allowed them to move out of Berea, where Ponte is located, and into their new home by 1 December 1990.
When he applied to live in Ponte, Bin Karubi listed his occupation as journalist, and the accompanying employment letter stated that he was going to be working as an announcer and producer for the French service sector of “Radio RSA: The Voice of South Africa”. Bin Karubi worked for Radio RSA when the station was still considered ‘an external radio service, whose primary role was to function as the propaganda arm of the apartheid government’s foreign policy’. Radio RSA was run by the South African Broadcast Corporation (SABC) and had been under the control of the Department of Foreign Affairs since 1981. The station aired 208 hours per week in 11 languages, targeting areas of Africa, Latin America, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, France, the Middle East, the United Kingdom, Ireland and North America. Originally founded in 1966 as part of the Department of Information, which had been formed for ‘the manipulation of the press locally and internationally,’ the station ran until 1992 when it was disbanded and rebranded as “Channel Africa”.
Bin Karubi worked for Radio RSA for three years prior to its dismantling, and he went on to establish his own media company. President Laurent Kabila appointed him the official Congolese ambassador to Zimbabwe in 1997. Bin Karubi’s permit application happened to be the only one accepted in the 1989 Ponte application cohort. The other seven residents who applied in Bin Karubi’s year came from France, Great Britain, Lesotho and South Africa—some boasting professions such as research executive, consultant, and international fashion model—but all were rejected. Some were even told that their presence would make other white residents in the building feel ‘disturbed’ or ‘upset’. But in the eyes of the apartheid state, Bin Karubi was an exception because of his connections to state-controlled media. His subsequent career in foreign diplomacy explains his willingness to cooperate with the apartheid government during its most tumultuous years prior to democracy. Covertly inscribed in his paper trail is the privilege of a well-connected politician.
Barnabé Kikaya Bin Karubi’s lifetime spans the most crucial years in modern Congolese history. Until he was six, Bin Karubi grew up in the Belgian Congo. Though perhaps too young to remember the independence leader, Patrice Lumumba, Bin Karubi would have witnessed between age six and eleven what was posthumously called the “Congo Crisis” from 1960 to 1965. Shortly after independence in 1960, the Congolese army felt alienated from the newly liberated nation and staged a mutiny. Lumumba travelled to the United States and appealed to the United Nations for help, but both refused him. Against the advice of President Joseph Kasavubu and Chief of Staff Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, he turned instead to the Soviet Union, the U.S. and Belgium’s opponent during the Cold War. In response, Kasavubu and Mobutu agreed to coordinate Lumumba’s assassination in 1961. While Mobutu continued as military leader under Kasavubu’s rule, he later betrayed him by staging another military coup to overthrow him in 1965.
Presumably opposed to Mobutu’s dictatorship, Bin Karubi moved to South Africa in 1989. After Laurent-Désiré Kabila became president in 1997, Bin Karubi ‘entered politics in Congo, serving as ambassador to Zimbabwe and chief negotiator in international talks to end fighting’ in the DRC. Appointed first as minister of communications from 2001 to 2003 by Laurent Kabila’s son and successor, Joseph Kabila, Bin Karubi later became his chief diplomatic advisor. Bin Karubi was part of the decision-making bodies that determined the fate of thousands of Congolese lives, including that of the two cousins Jerome Matondo Kabangu and Promise Ilunga Kinkela who lived in flat 3607 during the first six years of President Joseph Kabila’s rule.
During one of the artists Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse’s visits to Ponte, one resident happened to be watching former Zaire President Mobutu Sese Seko on his television screen.
Mobutu’s leopard print represents what he referred to as retour à l’authenticité (“the return of authenticity”). As an African nationalist, Mobutu understood authenticity as a return to the tradition, heritage and custom of their African ancestors, but emphasised retaining only that which was easily adaptable to “modern life”. Mobutu’s “authenticity” meant the changing of old colonial names. Mobutu led by example, changing his own Christian name from Joseph-Désiré Mobutu to Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga. He also renamed major cities: Leopoldville became Kinshasa, Stanleyville became Kisangani and Elisabethville became Lubumbashi. The DRC was renamed Zaire in 1971 based upon the Kikongo word nzere or nzadi (“the river that swallows all rivers”).
Both Barnabé Kikaya Bin Karubi and the cousins living in flat 3607 still held passports bearing the Zaire name. Recognizable by his signature leopard cap and thick-framed glasses, Mobutu’s image is mediated both by the television and the photographer’s camera directed at the screen. Mediated forms of seeing and interpreting happen in almost Droste-like effect. The viewer is looking at what the artist sees another resident watching. What would it have been like for residents like Jerome Matondo Kabangu or Promise Ilunga Kinkela to watch Mobutu on TV, a leader whom Bin Karubi likely opposed, but whose downfall produced presidencies that drove Kabangu and Kinkela to flee to South Africa? This photograph functions as evidence of the unexpected ways Mobutu’s actions were entangled in the lives of Congolese residents like Kabangu, Kinkela and Bin Karubi several decades after his dictatorial rule.