“Tokowa po ya ekolo”: The Military Body Within the Congolese Army

Abstract

This article explores the conceptualization of the body among former Congolese soldiers living as refugees in Johannesburg. The article draws on extensive fieldwork in Johannesburg, South Africa and employs the concept of deterritorialization and reterritorialization to explain the bodies of those who have decided to join the Congolese Army. The article reveals the complex ways in which the army manipulates soldiers’ bodies to generate diverse lines of connection, coalition, and removal (or disconnection). We support that the soldiers’ bodies are not necessarily owned by the country, but that soldiers’ bodies become owned by military institutions, who employ nationalist rhetoric to justify their existence and actions. The act of joining the army could be considered a way of cutting ties with civilian life and joining a new world in which the individual is socialized into military culture. Through initiation, the soldier’s body is reterritorialized; it becomes a national asset. While this study focuses on former Congolese soldiers, it has broader relevance, giving insight into how soldiers perceive their body shifting from individual possession to be reterritorialized as the body of the nation.