ISSN: 1570-0178 Volume 16 (5 May 2017)           Churches proliferating – where will it end? A play by Mufwankolo and two members of his troupe. transcribed, translated, and commented by Johannes Fabian University of Amsterdam e-mail: johfabian  [at]  t-online.de     Transcript and Translation An Ethnographic Commentary

Transcript and Translation

On June 24, 1985, I recorded in Lubumbashi three plays with Mufwankolo and two members of his troupe at the residence of Joseph and Colette Dassas. The first one, presented here, was titled Hesabu ya makanisa itafika wapi?, lit. 'Where will the count of churches arrive?' [recording available for download in .mp3 file format, file size: 10 MB] Mufwankolo Lyembe Kaswili (M) played the founder of a new church, Sakina Nshima Kitumbika (S) was his wife and collaborator, Kalwasha Mawej'a Kabwiz' (K), eventually called Sumisi, acted as visiting Pastor of a similar church from Mbuji-Mayi in the Kasai.

An Ethnographic Commentary

A brief story of work with popular theater in Lubumbashi

Since the early seventies, ethnography of and with a troupe of popular actors and actresses lead by, and named after, Mufwankolo has been part of my efforts to document, conceptualize, and present expressions and practices of what I called popular culture. I first saw baMufwankolo, Mufwankolo's people, perform their improvised sketches on a weekly television show called Zaire ya kesho, The Zaire of Tomorrow. I still remember lines from the show's signature tune: "Since I was child, I haven't been back home to the village. Back home in Kapanga, the country is beautiful…" Now I regret that I did not ask at the time why and by whom this deeply nostalgic song was selected to set the mood for a show ostensibly concerned with the future of the country. While the association of title and tune had become emblematic it could hardly have been meant to be programmatic. But then, perhaps it was. It would have been typical of the troupe's approach to comedy to subvert the politically correct message of the show's title with a popular song that made a joke of it, a political joke every one understood and no one could be blamed for. At any rate, Mufwankolo's weekly sketches, which were broadcast every Wednesday on TV and, as I found out later, every Saturday on local radio to an audience of several hundred thousand,[1] were neither about the future nor about the past but about the present of urban daily life, about the joys and troubles, the problems and feats, in short, about the struggle for survival in Katanga under Mobutu's regime.

On January 2, 1973 I met Mufwankolo and his actors for the first time in a large room at the Radio Collège[2] where they rehearsed and performed Zaire ya kesho. According to my field notes, jotted down on the following day, I must have been accompanied and probably introduced by some one but I don't remember who this was. At any rate, after the show and after a stop at a bar called "Tam Tam du Shaba," we wound up in the buvette, the semi-public drinking place which one of the actresses, Balimuacha by her stage name, kept in the living room of her house in Katuba township. There the party went on until three o'clock in the morning.[3] This is how I summarized the meeting in my notes: "After an initial reaction of polite disinterest, the entire group changed and became almost overwhelming in their willingness to help me in my work."

Little did I know then how important the baMufwankolo would become for me more than a decade later.[4]

In the summers of 1985 and 1986 I returned to Katanga to follow up on earlier projects of research on popular language, religion, painting, historiography, and theater. To call what I did follow up research would be misleading if evoked images of the ethnographer as a lone investigator trying to find "informants," people who have answers to questions he formulated before he left for the field. What I experienced was immersion in a familiar world, enjoying reunions and long conversations in local Swahili. Both summers felt like harvest time: short, incredibly strenuous and productive (I took copious field notes, made more than 30 recordings, worked in the local archives of the mining company and the Salesian mission, and collected many documents).[5] Re-reading my notes I discovered that, more than once, the image of a harvest had occurred to me already in the field. On June 13, 1985 I wrote:

On May 12, 1985, a week after had I arrived in Lubumbashi, Mufwankolo was waiting for me at the house of a Belgian friend with whom I had gone out for lunch (at the Casa degli Italiani, locally known as "Chez Aldo"). In my diary I noted:

Popular theater was aware of what was happening in popular religion, so was Baba Sebastien Nkondo, one of my interlocutors in the Jamaa movement since the 1960s. I had visited him a few hours after my arrival in May 1985 and then had several meetings with him and his wife, Mama Thérèse, once or twice also with members of his group. On June 22, two days before the Mufwankolo play that will be the object of this commentary was recorded, I made this entry in my field notes:

When Baba Seba's spoke of "proliferation of religions" – which could be translated as hesabu ya makanisa – and mentioned the case of a church founder enriching himself he uncannily anticipated the plot of Mufwankolo's play.

Before I turn to the document of that performance I should briefly tell the story[7] of my work with Mufwankolo and his troupe during the summer of 1985 – as a report on a text's context and as a lesson in the vagaries and rewards of ethnographic inquiry. During our first meeting on May 12, we must have set a date for getting to together with his actors at the Cercle Makutano. But when I went there in the evening of May 16 it turned out that the rehearsal was taking place elsewhere. For ten days there was no contact but I kept thinking about possible topics to suggest. On May 23, I put "record sketches on language" on my agenda and three days later I noted "Had the idea to ask Mufwankolo to make a trilogy with the one on "work:"[8] [with pieces on] 'Language' and 'Power'." He showed up in the afternoon of May 26. Here are some excerpts from my fieldnotes:

The story continues with this entry on May 30:

Ten days later, after a trip to Kolwezi to revisit the Jamaa, the movement I had worked with in the sixties, my next attempt to meet the troupe during rehearsal failed because, once again, I was not informed about a change in venue. On June 14, I noted:

We finally got down to some productive work on June 19 when Mufwankolo came with Sakina and Kalwasha to the place where I stayed and we recorded the play on language I had asked them to prepare for. As its title they chose a popular saying, Swahili ni nyama ya tembo, Swahili is like elephant meat.

We came together again on June 24. The three of them performed and I recorded  four sketches. Hesabu ya makanisa came first, followed by three shorter pieces, all of them playing on foreign accents in Swahili. In the first one, Kalwasha did an American minister preaching to a Congolese congregation. In the second, he and Mufwankolo enacted a linguistic joke, a misunderstanding between a white (Flemish) boss and his employee, caused by the homonymy of Dutch koffie and Swahili kofi, a slap in the face. The third scene was a dialog between Sukaro, a Japanese miner,[10] and his Congolese "boy" whom he asks to procure him a woman. All sketches were done with little or no preparation (even on the main piece Mufwankolo was still trying to get the conducteur, outline, together when they arrived.

When we had finished with the recording we got into a farewell mood. "After work," I wrote in my diary, "we sit down for some beer and whisky and Mufwankolo gets solemn with thanks and good wishes. As always, there is an intense interest in my personal life. They have one request: that I send them a theatrical make-up kit." A last entry, made on June 28, says:  "Last night a good-bye drink with groupe Mufwankolo at the Cercle Makutano (this time with Mayeke…, Shebele, Kachelewa).  They go through difficult times because they no longer have a regular TV show… we break our meeting around 7pm."

 So far the story of my contacts and exchanges with the baMufwankolo up to 1985.[11]

The play as a communicative and performative event

As a first step of moving from experiences in the past to the task I am about to undertake in the present I shall describe the event that was recorded and made into the text to be commented on. As I have done many times before, I'll follow, loosely, Dell Hymes's seminal proposal to report and analyze ethnographic communication in terms of components that make up a speech event.[12] In the case at hand, this procedure will be complicated by the fact that we face an event within an event. When it was recorded, Mufwankolo and his actors performed Hesabu ya makanisa as an example of their work upon request by the ethnographer.

Settings
Hesabu (as shall call the play from now on) was performed and recorded in the afternoon of June 24, a Monday, at the house of Belgian friends where I was staying at the time. In the dining room, the actors and I sat around a table in the middle of which I had placed a cassette recorder. While this was certainly not the usual setting in which I conducted research, for Mufwankolo and his actors it resembled the countless situations when they performed their weekly radio plays.

Within the play, most of the scenes take place in the living room of Mufwankolo's and his wife's home, imagined as a middle class house on a fenced lot; others are set on a street in Lubumbashi and in a church or a room large enough to hold a congregation.

Participants
Four persons took part in the event: Mufwankolo,[13] Sakina, and Kalwasha as speakers/listeners; myself as listener[14] and operator of the recorder. To identify the speakers on the transcript and translation of the recording I used their stage names. Their full names and alternate stage names were: Mufwankolo wa Lesa Mwana wa Zambe, Kyembe Kaswili Odilon; Sakina, Nshima Kitumbika; Kalwasha (also Sumisi or  Sondashi), Mawej'a Kabwiz. It could be said that the ethnographer substituted for an audience but there are no indications in the document that this affected the actors' performance. From their plays being recorded for broadcast on the radio or television they were used to performing for an absent, imagined audience.

Ends and topics
Generally speaking, the purpose of our meeting was "ethnographic" As such, it was one of many of many occasions on which Mufwankolo and his actors worked with me in what I described in Power and Performance as moving inquiry from ethnography of, to ethnography with popular theater (Fabian 1990b: 5).

Hesabu was performed, like all the plays of troupe, to entertain, educate, and as a way to express social and political criticism. The title -- Hesabu ya makanisa itafika wapi? What will the proliferation of churches come to? – was more than an impartial query; it was a lament. The only documentation of this phrase I have is an entry in my field notes where I describe the recording session of June 24. I have no recollection of Mufwankolo mentioning a title during an earlier conversation. Hesabu etc. was not caught on the recording, possibly because I pushed the start button after Mufwankolo pronounced the phrase. More likely, he did on this occasion not follow his habit of starting a play with a brief preface and a title. 

Code and key
Like in almost all of my ethnographic work, Katanga Swahili was the language in which we communicated before and after we recorded Hesabu and the three sketches that followed. In its spoken parts, Hesabu was performed in Katanga Swahili with occasional terms or short phrases in French, Luba, and Lingala. Among the religious songs or hymns that were part if the play, one was in Kiluba (par. 3), two in Tshiluba (par. 5, 7), and one in Swahili (par. 6).

Throughout the piece, Kalwasha, called Sumisi starting in par. 2, spoke a broken Swahili, phonologically (with a Kasaian accent), grammatically, and lexically. Also throughout the play, the actors made use of different keys or manners of speaking (formal/informal, talking/reciting, private/public, ordinary/solemn). At one point (par. 3, in the middle of a song), Kalwasha makes exclamations typical of a person in a trance or, as Charismatics would call it, full of the Holy Spirit.

Act sequence
In the transcript and translation, numbered paragraphs correspond to the eleven scenes in which the play may be divided, following changes of setting, speaker(s), and topic.

Genre
Even though a Swahili term, m(u)chezo, a play but also a dance, was readily available, the English loan word "sketch" was the most widely used generic term for short plays put on by the Mufwankolo troupe.[15]

While play or sketch may be adequate as generic labels, our document shows that Hesabu was enacted as a composite of numerous genres of speech, among them dialogues (conversations, business talk, table talk), prayers, instructions, sermons, charismatic testimony, and  religious hymns.

Recording
When Dell Hymes proposed to describe speech events in terms of components he had in mind "ethnography of communication" as it occurs. As far as I recall, he did not take into account that, or how, such events are shaped by recording them. Of course. for Mufwankolo and his troupe this was a matter of routine as well as of concern. In our case, this shows up when the recording was stopped/interrupted three times: at the end of par. 4, the end of par. 6, and after beginning of a prayer in par. 11. The reasons will be discussed in my commentary.

Synopsis and Commentary

After much thought about, and some experiments with, the form and content of a  commentary on Hesabu, I decided to follow roughly the same procedure for each part of the text. I begin by recapitulating what happens in a scene. Then – and sometimes while I do this -- I comment on features that merit special attention

1. Planning a church at Mufwankolo's and Sakina's home
Mufwankolo begins with a sort of theological-moral preamble (delivered in a more formal register than the "practical" exchanges with Sakina). This is followed by a question: How can obeying God's commandments become a way of making a living? The terms used are kuishi/ maisha, to live/ the life of a person, with the connoted meaning of earning enough to support themselves and their family. They signal a social and economic context in which a way of life is experienced as a way of survival, a characteristic I have been exploring as an aspect of "popular culture" (Fabian 1998).

The plan they have is to found a church (kanisa). In the beginning it will operate in their home, later in a building to be financed with donations from their followers. In current parlance, they envisage their church as a start-up enterprise with crowd-funding. In that vein, "branding" will be important. They choose Malemba (in Lingala), a name that is bound to get everyone's attention. Then they will have a church bell at their door and place a cardboard poster with the name of the church at the gate to their property.

In the first scene, Mufwankolo and Sakina appear as a petit-bourgeois married couple; they have children and own a house on a fenced lot in a populous, upscale part of Lubumbashi. What is it they offer and intend to sell? Not goods but services which they know to be in demand. In other words, they count on profiting from an ongoing process, the commodification of popular religion.

2. The visitor from Kasai
The scene begins with Kalwasha's talking to himself while he walks through town,  searching for a church. When he sees the sign Mufwankolo has put up he stops and asks to enter. He is greeted by Sakina, introduces himself as a Pasteur (minister) and asks for the Pasteur of this church. Mufwankolo is away on an errand. Meanwhile he produces mikanda, documents, showing that he comes from Mbuji Mayi in the Kasai. Sakina offers her visitor some tea.

When Mufwankolo returns, Sakina introduces Kalwasha to him. Before he talks to the visitor, he and his wife have a quick whispered exchange: Should they tell him the truth (about their plans)? Sakina's answer is, you are going to tell the truth. Mufwankolo and Kalwasha exchange the typical Charismatic greetings (Alleluya/Amen) and confirm that they are Pasteurs of the same church, Malemba, known in the Kasai as Lumu Mwimpe  Once again, the visitor shows his traveling papers. Arrangements are made for him to meet Pasteurs from other townships in the afternoon and to participate in the service next day. In Lubumbashi, his name will be Sumisi. Agreeing to meet tomorrow, they part with expressions of thanks and Charismatic greetings.

What is the visitor's role? By his accented speech and signs of limited competence in local Swahili (a specialty of Kalwasha's in many plays of the troupe) he establishes himself as mugeni, the Swahili term for both, a guest and a stranger, an ambiguous status which immigrants from the Kasai region and their descendents have had from colonial times to the present. For his hosts, prospective founders of a church, to welcome this stranger is more than to show hospitality. Another semantic space is opened when Kalwasha takes care to show them his mikanda, legitimation papers. For the audience of the play this is bound to conjure up memories going back to colonial times when any kind of travel and mobility was controlled by means of official permits and identity documents. Within the play, the visitor's mikanda, together with his repeated assertion that he belongs to the same kind of church, give legitimacy to Mufwankolo's and Sakina's enterprise, locally among other leaders of congregations and nationally in a network of similar churches.

Throughout the scene, there are indications (and clues for the audience) that reveal the duplicity of their undertaking. There is that brief, secret exchange about telling the truth; not all the truth but mambo ya kweli, matters that a true. When Mufwankolo asks Kalwasha whether his name in Lubumbashi will be Sumisi this is another tip-off. In Katanga Swahili, Sumisi, sometimes shemisi, from French chemise, a shirt, has been a comical epithet for persons whose attire marks them as a (fraudulent) showoff. 

"Truth" comes up again when hosts and visitor declare that they can trust each other because they share knowledge of the Bible. Still, Mufwankolo and Sakina, who want to claim their guest as their own in upcoming meetings, make him talk about contacts he has had with other local churches before he found theirs. Mufwankolo, to hide their motives, quickly offers Kalwasha to help him with the contacts and to take him to a Pasteur Ilunga in Kenya township. After this the dialog falters and ends with an exchange of Charismatic calls and responses.

3. Rehearsing and preparing for next day's service.
The third scene begins with Mufwankolo and Sakina rejoicing in the imminent success of their plans: their church will get government approval and he'll continue to be the leader, milele na milele, in eternity. Then, as if to dampen their enthusiasm, they remind each other that their success will come with the help of God, provided they do not stray from His ways, for instance, by kuiba, stealing.

Next, they return to practical matters. They must be prepared for tomorrow's service and begin by deciding on hymns that should be sung to demonstrate the fervor of their church. To help them with selecting a song they consult their Bible. (On the recording, notice the realistic touch: the sounds of steps, of crossing the room to fetch the book, and of Mufwankolo turning pages.) Together they try to find a hymn Kalwasha is likely to know from his church. Mufwankolo begins humming a melody which they reject. Sakina takes over with other suggestions until they agree on a song. Together they put on a performance of  Charismatic chanting, drumming, and shouting. At one point, Kalwasha (who should not be there; he left the house at the end of the preceding scene) joins them with sounds and exclamations of a person in trance. The song begins in "kiLuba," (probably meaning Tshiluba, their visitor's language) then switches to Swahili and back. On the recording, this takes two minutes and a half, noted in the fragmented transcript I was able to make. After it ends, the three of them exchange the usual Charismatic calls. Kalwasha is now fully present and approves of their choice: This song will make them feel the presence of the "Spirit." After this rehearsal Kalwasha disappears; Mufwankolo and Sakina place the chairs on which they and the visiting Pasteurs will sit during tomorrow's service.

4. Setting the scene before the big service
Outside their house, Mufwankolo and Sakina, who keeps ringing the church bell, they see people coming in great numbers. Mufwankolo exchanges greetings with Kalwasha and asks him to come inside, expressing relief about the crowd of arrivals. Then Mufwankolo addresses the congregation. At length, he explains the occasion for this gathering. He recalls the growth of membership and the history of building their church. Taking a leap into the future, he gives them a global perspective: "You know, we have a church that was present only here in Lubumbashi and from there it began to spread everywhere, all over the world, katika: dunia nzima." After that he introduces Pasteur Sumisi, their visitor from Mbuji Mayi.

The recording was stopped after the presentation of the guest. Why? I can only speculate about the reasons. Mufwankolo may have realized that, in his introductory speech, he had jumped ahead and, to put the play back on its track, they needed time out to consult the brief outline (called conducteur) he had brought along to our meeting or to confer with Sakina and Kalwasha about how to continue.

5. The visitor's sermon
Kalwasha/ Sumisi takes the floor and addresses the congregation, apologizing for his poor Swahili. To do the work of God we must have love, mutual understanding, and move forward together. When he left his home he was sent by God on a mission to meet his brethren and to spread the "good news." Interspersed with Charismatic greetings, ululations, and expressions of approval from Mufwankolo and Sakina performing the assembly, his sermon reminds them that to spread the Gospel means kuyenga, to build, the country, the church, and the family. Their church is one, as shown by the women all wearing white garbs. Once again he recalls how he found Mufwankolo's church and announces another visit. As regards his mission, he refers to and later cites Saint Paul's letter to Timothy. With more apologies for his poor Swahili, he reminds them that, although they may be sinners, as God's messengers they must be united. He ends with singing a verse from a hymn, joined by Mufwankolo and Sakina. After that Mufwankolo addresses the congregation and briefly recapitulates the important points of the visitor's sermon.

Here are two observations on Kalwasha's/ Sumisi's sermon. First, when he performs his Kasaian accent and poor command of Swahili he sometimes becomes incomprehensible. He also comes up with phrases and statements which are meaningless. At least some of them may be intended to mock Charismatic speech (glossolalia) while he performs it. Second, there is the passage where he cites Scripture by chapter and verse: 1 Timothy 1,5-20. Again, this could  just be to imitate and parody preachers. But citing Paul's first Letter to Timothy is quite a feat. How did Kalwasha, who acted without a script, know that it would be appropriate to invoke a letter addressed to matters of organizing young Christian communities? Did Sumisi compare his journey to Katanga to the travels of Paul visiting Christian churches?

The speeches Kalwasha/Sumisi and Mufwankolo had to sound authentic to their two audiences, the imagined congregation within Hesabu and the people for whom they would perform the play. They had to be familiar with the religious discourse that was typical of the new churches in Lubumbashi. Our text also confirms what I found out about the influence of the Jamaa teachings on popular religious discourse (Fabian 2004). For instance, Kalwasha says "…when we do God's work, we must have love. We must have mutual understanding and move forward together" this echoes the typical triads of Jamaa doctrine (Fabian 1971:138; see also the texts in http://www.lpca.socsci.uva.nl/aps/vol5/jamaaofman1.html). In his recapitulation of Kalwasha's sermon, Mufwankolo states "when love begins at home, between wife and husband and their children [pauses] it moves forward into the churches and to all of us." This also has a Jamaa "sound" even if he uses nyumba, household, rather than jamaa, family, to designate the source of mutual love.

Finally, a small but significant detail: When Kalwasha apologizes for his poor Swahili he says that this will be noticed by his listeners and tena mu magneto, also on the tape recorder. In the mid-eighties, recording sermons and service was a wide spread practice in new churches.

6. Sakina's homily
To show their visitor how important women are in this congregation Mufwankolo presents Sakina and asks her to comment on today's service. She addresses the assembly with a brief homily: Pasteur Sumisi was sent by God and his visit should strengthen their mutual love. After that she intones a hymn in Swahili, joined by Mufwankolo (in falsetto) in which she invites the audience to "come inside" to the feast they are celebrating in the "house of God." Sakina ends with Charismatic greetings and thanks the visitor once again. After a pause the recording was stopped, this time possibly because the cassette had to be turned.

Sakina's speech and the concluding song can be said to convey a twofold message: Kalwasha's/ Sumisi's visit confirms the legitimacy of their church and demonstrates that it is held together by mutual love.

7. Collecting money
Mufwankolo addresses the congregation: Because this is a special day the usual offering of 10 Zaire will be doubled, with no upper limit for those who can afford it. God wants us to move forward. We have to look into the future and the growing congregation – think of your children -- needs a large church here in Lubumbashi. Then he asks for a hymn to be sung while people wait in line to bring their offering. Mufwankolo announces the end the service and invites their guest and the other Pasteurs to his house for talk about the next service which will be école, (devoted to) teaching.

When Mufwankolo and his actors made of collecting money a scene of they play they undoubtedly wanted to remind their audience that making a living, reaping profit, and plain greed were among the social and economic motives that drove the founders of new churches. In this scene (and earlier in Scene 5) Kalwasha and Mufwankolo repeatedly speak of kujenga (or kuyenga), to build, both in the narrow sense of to constructing (a church) and of developing, making progress (kuendelea). While earlier messianic and millenarian movements promised events yet to come, founding and following new Charismatic churches create a future that opens up in the present with tasks to undertake and rewards to be reaped.

8. Interlude: Service and collection are a success
On the recording, noises of some motion signal that Mufwankolo and Sakina take a brief time out to exchange compliments about the event. They gloat over the amount of money that was collected and the interlude ends on a note of "take the money and run."

9. End of the service
Speaking once again as if the service were taking place in a church building, Mufwankolo informs the congregation that future events will be discussed at his home. Then he turns to Kalwasha and gives him the floor. He may already tell the audience what he has in mind. Kalwasha/ Sumisi, after parading again his need for help with Swahili and at one point switching briefly to Tshiluba, admonishes sinners to "overcome" evil and then concentrates on the topic of seeking help (more about this later). He ends this by citing (the Epistle of) James which will be talked about "during the next service."

 Mufwankolo responds, elaborating on Kalwasha's call for financial "help." With the promise that they'll meet again in the near future he dismisses the congregation and invites Kalwasha to his home where Sakina has prepared everything for a meal.

As he did before (in paragraph 5), Kalwasha/ Sumisi supports his exhortations by citing Scripture in a manner which borders on parody "James 5, chapter 40 to 60" (confusing chapter and verses). But once again the reference turns out to be pertinent, for instance, with its warning to rich oppressors in 5, 1-6. (see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistle_of_James).

"Help" as a theme comes up repeatedly in Hesabu. In par. 1 it is introduced when Mufwankolo and Sakina count on God helping them (atatusaidia) with their project to found a church. In par. 9 Kalwasha/ Sumisi encourages Mufwankolo: He should not hesitate (kusita) to seek help (mus(h)ada in his peculiar Swahili) in the form of offerings from his followers. You should do this relying on you own ingenuity (mayele yako) rather than seeking help from the elders (musada ya bazee). When Mufwankolo responds he makes sure that the congregation understood the "meaning" (maana yake) of help: it is about the funds needed if the church is to be built. In other words, the semantic trajectory of "help" has moved from trust in divine assistance to concrete personal efforts and initiatives that no longer rely on traditional ways, down, as it were, to dollars and scents. At the end of the play the circle closes when Mufwankolo asks "What is God's concern?" and answers "It is to help each other."

10. Celebrating success and splitting the proceeds.
Back at their home, Mufwankolo and Sakina receive their guest. Their offer of a drink – beer at first but in the end they share a bottle of whiskey --  is accepted with great enthusiasm. They exchange cheers and Charismatic greetings, all the while calming their conscience: Although drinking alcohol is forbidden to "Christians" and they themselves should not be seen in a bar, there is no harm in enjoying it now and then privately "in your home."

Then they get down to business. Of the total of more than then thousand Zaire collected three thousand five hundred go to Kalwasha/ Sumisi to help him with his church back in Mbuji Mayi. To forestall suspicion, the congregation will be informed of this. They can be sure that all the money will be dedicated to kiKristu, Christianity. At the same time, these declarations of public of honesty and magnanimity are subverted by asides that justify private use of Church funds. Occasionally this showed up in earlier scenes, now (and in the final scene) it comes out in the open when Kalwasha/ Sumisi tells his hosts: "If you keep getting that much day after day, how can you do wrong when you buy some nice shoes for the Pasteur, an nice wrap for mama, or something else?"

11. Sharing a meal and making plans
Mufwankolo begins a prayer before the meal but gets stuck. After a long pause the recording is interrupted. Then he continues, thanking God for the meal and asking Him to "give us strength and give us good ideas how to make our church move forward." Amidst noises of dishes and glasses being set down, Mufwankolo begins with the table talk. Kalwasha/ Sumisi praises his fellow Pasteur. With his thoughts he is already back in Mbuji Mayi, looking forward to building his house. Mufwankolo tells him that he is going to buy a "Toyota" to set up a business transporting fish from Lake Kilwa and then  move into his new residence in the Quartier Golf (a house like the one in which we were recording Hesabu). All this demonstrates "God's strength" and so does, Sakina reminds him, the "boutique for ladies" she set up with money Mufwankolo gave her. Echoing the preamble to the first scene, the play ends, somewhat abruptly, with a brief exchange praising mutual help and condemning theft, followed by Amen/ Halleluya.

Afterthoughts

As I did in earlier experiments with commentary as ethnographic writing from a virtual archive I now face the problem of coming to an end. Arguments may have conclusions (something we expect of theses or dissertations); analysis may reveal structures and relations; a monograph may fill the rubrics of what a discipline prescribes as adequate description; a history covers a subject or a period. A commentary on an ethnographic text  is open-ended. But if it is to be presented as a contribution to anthropological knowledge it cannot be end-less, neither infinite nor without a purpose.

What made me decide to present and comment on Hesabu ya makanisa itafika wapi? For a start, I realized that it would make and interesting counterpart to the conversation with Mama Régine, the leader of a Charismatic prayer group in Lubumbashi.[16] She gives us an inside view of popular Christianity; Mufwankolo and his actors show us how much of it may be perceived from the outside. As always, they want to entertain and to "educate" the vast audience of their plays which may sound (and be) moralizing but are at he same time expressing social and political criticism.[17]

In our document we find remarkable examples for such critical awareness. Some time ago I argued that the spread of Charismatic practices must be understood as an interplay and often as a conflict between globalization and "local survival" (Fabian 2004). In Hesabu, founding a local church is seen in a world-wide perspective (see scene 4) but it is made clear that it serves local, even personal, interests.

Hesabu presents practices and discourse of "churches" in what could be called a Charismatic idiom: sermons or instructions and prayers, exalted speech, ululations, traces of trance, frequent exchanges of Halleluya/Amen, singing that is said to show the "presence of the (Holy) Spirit" (scene 3). Complete as this list may seem at a first glance, it is marked by a remarkable absence. Healing and protection against magic or sorcery, central concerns of Catholic groupes de prière, never appear in the play. It is possible that  Mufwankolo and his actors simply forgot to include them in their improvised and a bit makeshift performance. More likely they chose not to target them as an object of ridicule and critique. At the time when Hesabu was recorded relations between the local diocese and Charismatic prayer groups were tense, to put it mildly, leaders and members remained loyal Roman Catholics.

Notes

References

Fabian, Johannes. 1971. Jamaa: A Charismatic Movement in Katanga. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

-- 1990a. History from Below: The 'Vocabulary of Elisabethville' by André Yav. Texts, Translation and Interpretive Essay. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishers.

-- 1990b. Power and Performance. Ethnographic Explorations through Proverbial Wisdom and Theater in Shaba (Zaire). Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press.

-- 1998. Moments of Freedom: Anthropology and Popular Culture. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.

-- 2004. Charisma: Global Movement and Local Survival. In Peter Probst and Gerd Spittler (eds.), Between Resistance and Expansion. Explorations of Local Vitality in Africa. Münster: LIT. pp. 359-87.

-- 2008. Ethnography as Commentary. Writing from the Virtual Archive. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

-- 2015. Talk about Prayer. An Ethnographic Commentary. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

La Lay, Maeline. 2014. "La parole construit le pays." Théâtre, langues et didactisme au Katanga (République Démocratique du Congo). Paris: Honoré Champion.

Schicho, Walter and Mbayabo Ndala. 1981. Le Groupe Mufwankolo. Vienna: AfroPub.

[Transcript and Translation]

[An Ethnographic Commentary]