Introduction

3Findings draw from over sixteen months of qualitative fieldwork by the author in South and North Kivu since 2011 interviewing a range of actors involved in the production and trade of the plant from growers to sellers to consumers, as well as government officials and state actors, local NGO and international organization staff, including UN workers. Data was gathered from nearly twenty different villages and urban centers across the two eastern provinces and from conversations with civilians as well as army and armed group personnel and reflects a diversity of perspectives across gender, ethnicity and socio-economic status.

5The paper begins with a discussion of the various uses of the plant for individual and household consumption. Starting with a brief reference to its pre-colonial use and continuing up through the present, this section illuminates the multiple uses and meanings of the plant by local Congolese. The following section explains the rise of cannabis as an illegal substance and how its colonial era demarcation as a dangerous plant remains, albeit updated and dressed in a modern day framing. The remainder of the paper settles into an examination of the various ways in which engagement in the trade engenders new strategies for navigating risk and danger within Congo’s wider landscape of insecurity. In so doing, it seeks to confront how we understand we understand the very terms of risk and insecurity as played out in the day-to-day lives of those who navigate through the hidden economy of Congo’s cannabis trade.

Consuming Cannabis

8The drug presents a similar function within Congo’s landscape of continuing violence as well. Among Congolese soldiers, for example, the consumption of cannabis serves as a mechanism to cope with the daily hardships of the job, hunger, and to reduce fear in combat (Eriksson-Baas and Stern, 2010). Additionally, the drug is frequently given to fighters from either side of the battlefield in order to stimulate their desire to fight or make them unaware of danger, or, after a battle, ease the pain of injury or extreme tension caused by confrontation, particularly in the case of hand-to-hand combat. Furthermore, the drug’s relevance within the DRC’s current landscape of insecurity is not limited to those directly engaged in the region’s violence. For example, Babaembe cattle keepers of Fizi territory, where village raids by pillaging forces are common, testify to using the plant in order to protect their cattle through what is known locally as ijunguu – the disappearance – which reportedly makes cows invisible to potential looters. Thus, although early appreciations for the drug centered on its consumption and notably its “most voluptuous sensation” (Timbs, 1890, p. 231), its significance and use within modern Congolese society has since diversified and continues to be adapted in different ways to fit the changing context and realities of Congolese life, including its violent landscape.

The Making of a Dangerous Plant

12Community and civilian perspectives derive largely from one’s involvement or lack of involvement with the trade. For example, Rastafarian groups, well-known smokers (if not occasional traders and growers themselves) of the drug present a sharp contrast to the views extended along official and international lines. As one Rastafarian chief related, “On the contrary, hemp contributes to security in the city in the way that we Rasta men are the ones who take care of the main road when there is a broken place that can cause damage to [vehicle] passengers. You will never hear a Rasta man fighting in such a such area for they are well-bred/instructed”. Interestingly, this later claim refers to a series of free local trainings for Rastafarians conducted in his area “so that they might not misbehave towards others” – instituted in direct response to counter the “bad reputation and renown” that hemp smokers generally carry.

13Yet even those involved in the trade who suggest that there may indeed be a link between the physiological effects of the drug and violence in the region, suggest that additional facts likely play a much more significant role. As nicely summed up by one informant, “the heads of people differ”. “Rather”, another informant explained, “the insecurity in the area is related to someone’s interests. When someone wants to become a colonel in the army and he decides to go in the bush to start his own rebellion or militia, it is not the hemp which took him there, it is the interests he seeks in order to achieve his life goals”.

14More so, according to informants, it is alcohol that is more often associated with violence in the region than marijuana. Despite these assertions, involvement in the trade continues to carry a negative stigma – a mark that is both politically inscribed by actors at the national and international level as well as socially inscripted through local institutions.

15As many interviewees related, views of the drug and some people’s subsequent engagement in the trade, are shaped not only by observation and experience with drug-users but are additionally influenced by socio-cultural norms and beliefs. A grower relates how, “My wife does not help me in any work concerning [the growing or selling of cannabis]. From the growing season up to the time I sell it, I do all the work alone, as she considers this work as sinful for her Assemblies of God belief forbids her to get involved in illegal things”. Adherence to different branches of Christianity was often cited as a barrier for some accessing the trade. In surely an ironic twist, one grower reported taking up smoking, “in order to forget all what happened to me in the church,” following his excommunication – a direct result of the church authorities discovering his involvement in the trade. Given this broader socio-political milieu in which cannabis and its prohibition as a dangerous commodity is embedded, involvement in the trade is often seen as the result of “having no [other] choice” – a situation linked to the region’s wider landscape of food insecurity and lack of alternative livelihoods.

Working within a Landscape of (Food) Insecurity

16When asked about why individuals became involved in the trade, the majority of respondents set their answers against a backdrop of poverty, regional underdevelopment, and government neglect. Over the last 15 years, almost continual instability and a state of periodic violence have come to characterize the eastern region of the Congo, weakening the rural economy. Agricultural production, which serves as the primary economic activity for 80 % of rural households, has decreased in the past decade (Vlassenroot et al., 2003) contributing to a cycle of food and nutritional insecurity (Kandala et al., 2011), low food production and subsequent extreme poverty (Rossi et al., 2006) while parts of the region, notably the landlocked Moyens and Hauts Plateaux, have grown increasingly isolated (ICRC, 2010). Limited access to land and markets, as well as post-war government neglect of the region have aggravated these conditions (van Acker, 2005; Ulimwengu et al., 2009; see also Ragasa and Ulimwengu, 2011). Thus while continuing insecurity in the region prevents many farmers from regularly accessing their farms to tender higher maintenance crops such as the water thirsty leaves of amaranth greens, known locally as lenga-lenga, retarded state agricultural programs have done little to alleviate reports of spreading diseases in the region’s most important staple crops, cassava (cassava root rot) and bananas/plantains (banana wilt). As a result, more than 60 % of the current population is labelled as food insecure (Walangululu et al., 2011) and more than 70 % of farmers are categorized as poor (Dowiya et al., 2009). The continuing deprivation facing Congolese farmers and herders amidst these wider challenges, has led to, as Cox (2011, p. 247) argues, “diminishing returns of agrarian life”. At the same time, these trends towards increasing rural poverty and decreasing food production, have coincided with reported increases in the illicit crop production of the drug – a likely outcome and adaptive response to the region’s persistent insecurity and the reported growing numbers of the country’s food insecure.

17A study conducted in the late 1990s with support from the Kinshasan Association for the Prevention of Substance Abuse (LIPILDRO) noted even then an increase in local cannabis production. The average land area under cannabis cultivation reportedly increased from one to three hectares. In some areas, 60 % of farmers had introduced cannabis into their production system (Labrousse, 2014). Indeed, households often grow cannabis in addition to traditional food crops and empirical data from interviews suggest that crop diseases and insecurity have played the leading role in lowering food security in the region. Multiple sources have presented little variation in retelling local experiences of insecurity such that, “in the past fifteen years, there were no diseases affecting food crops, but nowadays they are too many that reduce plant productivity, particularly the disease known as Mosiac for cassava and bananas”, and “before when there were no plants diseases, we made money from those food crops but since the time the diseases came, we do not get money from those crops anymore and even to get food to eat has become a serious problem to us”, “whereas”, a third informant explains, “hemp has no disease”. While few households grow cannabis almost exclusively, many rely on cannabis as a supplementary crop during periods when other major food staples, such as cassava, which take ten to twelve months to mature, are not ready to be harvested or whose harvests have declined. Cannabis thus provides the very ‘cushion’ against food crisis at the household level (see Laniel, 2006).

18In addition to diminishing returns on agricultural and notably food crop production, many felt their engagement with the trade was further precipitated by the lack of alternative income-earning opportunities. Such statements parallel statistics gathered at the macro level, which show that the DRC is one of the most expensive countries in the world where to establish a business (Lamb, 2011). Significant structural and process barriers in the form of poor governance, multiple informal and formal levies, difficulties in securing loans, and widespread corruption translate into high start-up costs and a formidable bureaucracy that prevents the average DRC resident from establishing and maintaining not only a formal sector business but also from gaining entry into other low-level occupations. When asked why civilian traders and growers entered into the cannabis trade versus other profitable or domestic trades such as the mineral economy, the remote location of minerals featured as a major deterrent but equally important was the lack of start-up capital necessary to dig minerals. As one informant described, starting capital was not the only financial consideration. “It requires someone who knows minerals, much money to go with and another amount to leave to one’s wife so that when you spend three months without sending anything, she should not bother you”.

19Preference for engaging in cannabis production in particular, over a host of potential informal economies and namely markets of other agricultural commodities, depends upon the ecology of the plant as much as the socio-political context in which the trade operates. Cannabis, a robust plant that is easy to grow, requires little labor outside of harvesting and drying, can yield more than one harvest per year, and can be harvested as early as six months from sowing, thus providing farmers an ecologically efficient as well as an economically effective crop that “even in spite of law enforcement problems […]is a miracle solution for peasants” (Labrousse, 2014).

Congo’s Green Gold

20Depending on the level of engagement the range of profits that can be realized at an individual level are quite varied. Few growers, for example, gain much benefit from the trade beyond a household subsistence level earning roughly $200-$1000USD per year – expressed by informants as enough to meet the “elementary needs” of “feeding my children, buying clothes for them, paying for their studies” and the occasional purchase of livestock such as goats and cows, or having some cash “when your kid is sick you can buy medicine”. The greatest profits accrue to traders, particularly cross-border traders, those linked to wealthier or foreign buyers (including international NGO staff and UN affiliates who purchase the drug at a premium price), and higher ranked soldiers in the Congolese army. One military trader, in explaining why a fellow FARDC member was more successful than he, which allowed his friend to purchase two motorcycles and provided the capital to start a small shop in the city, noted, “as a captain commander…he has a higher ranking than me”. If one can manage the dangers of crossing into Burundi, selling directly to outside markets can bring in as much as three times more income, then it is no wonder that an active trans-border trade exists. As a recent UNODC report (2011, p. 42) notes, under such lucrative circumstances, “onward trafficking seems a rational choice”.

21The extent to which individuals are able to profit from the trade is further shaped by the region’s insecurity. As most cultivators of cannabis harvest their crop at the same climatic period, following the end of the wet seasons (between September and May), farmers unintentionally end up flooding the marijuana market with their product at the same time during the months of June, July and August. As a result, prices for marijuana are cheapest during this period and subsequently rise the further from the day of harvest until the next harvest period. At first glance this might appear to be the result of local enviro-climatic conditions. However, the key to understanding why farmers and traders sell their marijuana in the marketplace at the same time requires asking not when marijuana is largely produced (an enviro-climatic condition) but why cannabis is put on the market when it is (a socio-political condition). Because cannabis is not a perishable product, once dried, it can be stored up to six months with little reduction in potency. Farmers often acknowledged the benefit that selling during the dry season would provide but felt constrained by a number of factors preventing them from waiting to sell. Variations of the response, poverty, presented the major factor influencing farmers to sell quickly after harvest but also fear being caught with sacks of marijuana at home was also noted as an additional condition that prompted farmers to quickly sell. Thus concerns over illegal product seizure and arrest presented a key obstacle for gaining better profits as the need to get cash quickly forced farmers to harvest when the cannabis was not yet ripe (and thus would fetch a lower price on the market), to sell when the market already had a ready supply of the drug, and to sell cheaply to the initial buyer. As one trader explained, “I do not always sell my hemp for the same price due to the fact that the price varies depending on the quantity of hemp that is in the market and also on the security in the area. If there is a high level of security in the area, the hemp sale price goes down, for buyers are buying by not being sure of achieving it all during the retail sale”. Even for rural households where accumulation is limited, however, the impact of this illicit trade for individual and household welfare should not be underestimated.

22The implications of the trade for improving the material development of rural households is particularly evident during transactions that involve the exchange of material goods in lieu of cash payments for supplies of cannabis. In an environment of poor infrastructure, road networks that become impassable for months out of the year, and the general insecurity of travel in the region, these exchanges are one way that isolated communities get access to a range of subsistence goods, as well as manufactured and luxury items. Items exchanged range widely but common items mentioned include; raincoats, coats, phones, clothes, boots, beer, soft drinks, small fish, mboga (vegetables but also a general term for anything used to garnish the staple of cassava flour), radios, salt, soap, flashlights, plates, iron sheeting, and plastic sheeting. As one grower from Mubaka noted, “those who come from the city and come to buy [cannabis] sometimes bring other items [to exchange] besides money. So sometimes I make little money but I never miss [getting] trousers or food”. Some growers even stated a preference for receiving goods over cash payments while several informants noted making special requests to traders to bring specific goods on occasion. One informant, for example, related how he exchanged his sacks of cannabis for solar panels – which he uses to generate electricity and subsequently runs one of the few sources of television in the high plateau west of Bukavu.

23Far from serving solely as a compensation crop or a ‘cushion’ during periods of instability or due to a breakdown in wider structural factors, cannabis holds a much more substantial position even within a regulated rural economy. Notably, cannabis fuels the licit economy through invested surplus and through a barter system that brings a level of development to marginalised rural areas and provides the means to maintain social norms and order (including accessing the funds necessary to get married and build a home). The profits earned from the cannabis trade are invested in the future (school fees; dowry; small business start-up), asset creation (livestock; property; infrastructure), as well as present household needs (clothing; household goods; food). That the benefits of the trade serve a wide and diverse range of actors in the region further testifies to its far-reaching impact.

Women at Work

24While armed groups and FARDC members of various ranks – ranging from top end officials to the rank and file of the unranked soldiers – are involved in the trade, an equally if not more diverse range of civilian actors - representing differences in gender, ethnic group, socio-economic class, age, marriage status, origin, occupation, even physical capability – also trade. The inclusion of women is particularly noteworthy. As similarly noted in recent work (see for example Vogel and Musamba, 2017; Perks et al., 2018) examining women’s roles and male identification of female spaces in mining communities, women occupy positions and spaces in the production and trade of marijuana in various ways as transporters, traders, and less so as assistants in the planting and weeding stages of cultivation. Some male informants actually seek the assistance of their wives for transporting marijuana as women are seen as being less likely to be arrested, while one trader explains why he chooses to sell alongside his wife, because, “[security forces] cannot arrest both the husband and the wife at once”. Regardless of the veracity of that claim, women’s main occupation within the cannabis economy is as a trader. In neighboring Rwanda, for example, Emmanual Ngondo, director of Anti-Narcotics at Rwandan National Police, states that women make up the largest percentage of traders trafficking the drugs (Kaitesi, 2012). While women account for a large percentage of the sellers in South and North Kivu as well, many of these women are FARDC soldier’s wives (Anon., 2014), a fact that is also noted by the United Nations Group of Experts on the Congo (2011). Soldiers’ wives interviewed for this study cast their participation against a backdrop of the low monthly salaries that sometimes arrives each month but which more often does not (see also Eriksson-Baas and Stern, 2010). Thus, with their husband’s permission (and frequently also with their encouragement and assistance) wives enter the trade in order to supplement their husband’s meagre wages. While women not affiliated with the FARDC also trade, they make up a much smaller percentage as FARDC wives hold a competitive advantage over civilian women through their very association as FARDC wives. Yet while this affiliation presents a fair level of protection, it is certainly one that is not guaranteed (see for example Kimbale, 2013).

26The inclusion of FARDC wives as well as a broader category of civilian women demonstrates that far from the traffic being the purview of doped-up youth gangs, petty criminals, warlords, or corrupt officials, a substantial percentage of the trade is made up by everyday citizens, many of whom rely on the trade to meet basic requirements not being met at the household (through other means) or national level. In particular it provides an alternative source of income to social groups who otherwise are excluded from other traditional licit sources of income. In addition to widows and prostitutes (of soldiers or otherwise), the trade also provides opportunities to the physically handicapped whose abnormalities prevent them from entering into more traditional but physically demanding occupations such as artisanal mining, agriculture, and even legal market trading that nevertheless still requires mobility and strength. While some traders I met attributed their handicaps to the war, these were often demobilized FARDC fighters who had sustained incapacitating leg injuries. Much more common were men and women whose abnormalities were the result of congenital defects, childhood disease, or later adulthood infections that were never properly treated. One popular trader in Uvira territory, for example, revealed how her entry into the trade was partially the result of a severe rounded back protuberance typical of kyphosis that hindered her ability to access other opportunities including the security of marriage.

27Physical disabilities, not only serve as a factor shaping entry into the trade but as several informants noted, the same qualities that present a hindrance to participation in conventional trades, can prove to be a beneficial asset in the illegal trade. Asked about his entry into the trade, a trader points to his physical disability, “It’s been about eighteen years since I started trading [marijuana]…I had decided to start growing it when I lost all my fingers due to disease. There was no way for me to work anymore. Thus, I got involved in this trade”. Describing how he has managed to avoid arrest during his time as a trader, he again draws on his disability as an important factor, “When the soldiers come to realize that I am fingerless; they decided not to arrest me for this is the only way through which I can get money for my survival”.

Navigating Risk

28Just as the criminalization of the plant has shaped the demographics of those who choose to become involved in the trade, their ability to circumvent the dangers of doing business within this illicit economy depends partly on their ability to subscribe to a new set of growing and selling strategies. In particular, success in the trade relies on the ability of individual growers and sellers “hiding themselves” – a consideration that begins with the location of one’s marijuana field. If one were to map the regional location of cannabis farms, some patterns could easily be identified. In particular, most growing areas are geographically concentrated in the more isolated regions of South and North Kivu, such as the Moyens and Hauts Plateaux, those that are further from roads as well as urban centers. Other patterns might be harder to discern without additional information. Some growing areas, for example, benefit for being in close proximity to mining areas, yet still far from the provincial capitals, such as the areas around the mining center of Masisi Town. Even less obvious are the locations of individual marijuana plots even if specific villages, and even exact household locations have been determined precisely because individual hemp fields are often located far from grower’s households and separate from the agricultural fields used to grow other crops. Despite the plants ability to grow well with other crops, farmers often forego inter-cropping cannabis with other household crops. As one farmer explains, “I do not mix [cannabis with my food crops] because I often fear maybe the soldiers can identify my field and will uproot everything in the field”. Thus the separation of food crops from cannabis ensures that, even in the event of discovery, no subsistence plants go the way of seized cannabis harvests. Fear of having one’s marijuana plot discovered, however, is not limited to being discovered by security agents. As another farmer explains, “I do not mix [cannabis] with any other crop because many people will see that hemp if I mix it with food crops, which could compromise its production, for many people will come to know [that I am growing hemp], for they will see it because the food crop fields we usually cultivate are in open spaces where everybody passes. Whereas hemp, it is always cultivated in hidden places and that is the difference”. For the same reason, farms of cannabis plants are usually not weeded despite its benefit for increasing plant development and production, "since weeding clears the field, making it such that any one from far away can identify that it is hemp [that you are growing]”. Fields of hemp are however often intermixed with other [limited value] weedy plants. As noted by another grower, “when marijuana grows with other plants that we do not use in our lives, it will be difficult for most people to determine what is growing inside the field from far away”. The fear of being discovered shapes not only where cannabis farms are located and how the plant is cultivated within the local environment, it also shapes how labor in the production of cannabis is structured.

29Unlike the production of food crops that draws on multiple field hands in the various stages of planting, weeding, and harvesting, labor in the production of the cannabis plant is often done by a single individual – that of the cannabis owner himself. As one informant noted, “the land cultivation, the acquisition of seed, the harvest time and the sale period, no one from my family helps me do it”. Another farmer explains, “the harvest time does not involve other people as we usually do in other crops since [those laboring on your marijuana farm] may spread the news that you are a hemp grower and besides many will not agree to come to help you for they know that to do so is to expose themselves to danger”. Thus, cultivators often keep their farms secret even from other villagers and neighbors, whom several respondents noted might retaliate for past transgression or to settle an unresolved conflict. As articulated by one grower, “no one knows the place [where I grow marijuana] except myself… they do not know my field because I do not want them to know it…if they come to know the [location of the] field they might plot with security members to arrest me, for one cannot trust anyone in this world”. While the involvement of their wives in the production of marijuana was often linked to claims of their “fearfulness” or as previously noted, their religious devotion, for some growers, not involving their wives represented a similar strategy for remaining safe. “[Wives] they do not want to be arrested. But they are the first to ask for the money you have received [from the sale of marijuana]. And if you want to get arrested easily, please ask your wife to help you in that business for the day you quarrel with them, hemp is the only thing she will be claiming to be in your head that troubles you, and from there everybody will know that you are a hemp grower or smoker”.

30Strategies for staying safe also shape how and where people store their harvest, when and how transport of cannabis to the market is accomplished, and to whom and in what quantity cannabis is grown and sold. Most respondents, for example, cited some variation of “hiding” or “burying” their sacks of harvested cannabis prior to selling them – an activity that usually occurs in the fields rather than in the household and remains there until a destination for their hemp is determined. As a similar precaution, buyers are usually not permitted to arrive directly at growers’ fields but to an agreed upon meeting place for the exchange. During transportation, marijuana is often hidden through packaging that involves layering either clothing or charcoal that “[are] put on the bottom and [sic] others on the top of the sack so [the marijuana can]not to be easily identified”. Some traders also spray their sacks with perfume in order to mask the strong smell that marijuana typically emits. That the smell much more so than the plants visibility is repeatedly noted as a major factor within the narratives of those who have been caught, confirms the significance of this strategy.

Negotiating Danger

33Speaking on the role of the tobacco plant in Southern Lebanon, which exhibits similar ecologically and economically beneficial qualities, Khayatt (2012, p. 477) privileges the plant as a ‘war-i-time success’, a distinction that can similarly be applied to the role of cannabis in the DRC’s current landscape of ‘no war no peace’. Its ecology (a hardy plant; easy to grow; amenable to interplanting; and relatively fast growing) means that it is attuned to the spatio-temporal parameters of Congo’s warscape (both for victims as a compensation crop, as a source of food security when other crops such as the staple cassava take longer to cultivate, and also to armed groups who can easily grow it. At the same time, the same characteristics that factor into its success to suit the Congo’s warscape and in light of its illegality– its disparate and distant character (being diffuse, and being remote) in order to be hidden – it requires a complex set of social relations to get from grower to trader to consumer which in turn means that such relations consequently shape the very socio-temporal parameter of the trade and the landscape of violence itself. For example, the same qualities that promote the armed group FDLR’s ability to engage in production, notably geographic isolation, also stand as barriers to the group’s ability to participate in the commercialization end of the drug’s trade, necessitating that the group collaborate with members of the military and other armed groups against whom they are said to be fighting. For citizens involved in the trade, it is in “navigating the war terrain” (Vigh, 2016) that the greatest insecurity associated with the trade lies.

34The engagement in an illegal trade in an area of weak state oversight and control means that traders must navigate the physical crossing of a landscape of insecurity as well as a complex socio-political landscape of insecurity. When asked about the dangers associated with the trade, citizens unanimously cited that the greatest risk faced by growers and traders was often met ‘along the way’. These largely random and unpredictable encounters occur during the transport phase when traders and growers are moving sacks of marijuana from the area of cultivation to its first location of sale and are met by individual members of armed militias or FARDC soldiers literally ‘along the way’. While these meetings are commonly seen as being ‘random’ and occurring ‘by chance’, (as opposed to ‘legal’ checkpoints patrolled and enforced by the FARDC) many of the encounters with individual army members, in particular, occur where military checkpoints or bases have been established nearby. During such encounters, transporters may be arrested, have their goods seized, or be asked to pay a fine in lieu of an arrest. In some cases, multiple scenarios happen simultaneously, for example, when military members and individuals from armed group walk away with the sacks of marijuana along with any cash being carried on the individual’s person. Even in instances of arrest, however, after paying a settlement for their release, few traders were ever actually sent on further to the regional prison. While such episodes appear like nothing more than outright cases of banditry and pillage, most interactions do not end leaving transporters in absolute destitution for the very reason that such encounters are mirrors of social relations as much as they are influenced by the search for personal profit.

35The ability of each actor to secure access to and successfully compete in the cannabis trade, is rooted in their economic and political capacity to manipulate varying personal relations and networks. Familial, customary, friendly and ethnic relations were all cited as necessary precursors to entering potential areas to acquire tradable quantities of cannabis. Strong and extensive social networks are so valued in the trade that when participants were asked to list the qualities that define a successful trader, two of the six characteristics provided spoke directly to one’s social networks while an additional two were closely linked to strong social endowments. According to respondents, the success of a trader depends on (1) their recognition by others as a trader; (2) their fearlessness (3) their experience, intelligence, and knowledge of the trade; (4) the quantity of cannabis traded; (5) their connections to FARDC; and (6) their ability to move across national borders to access more profitable international markets. Thus to be a successful cannabis trader in the Congo requires more than attention to numerical accounts of goods sold or profits gained but rests on the possession of strong social capital to gain access to a wide clientele and to build the connections necessary to minimize the risks of engaging in an illicit trade. Ironically then, success in the business of one of Congo’s most notorious shadow economy requires for traders not to be hidden, but rather “to be known”.

37These connections are not only critical for civilians trading within a militarized landscape, but are crucial for army traders as well. As one FARDC informant noted, “our safety in the trade depends on how we are living or staying with our chiefs”. Success in the trade is consequently seen as being built from and reliant on a positive relational outcome, one that is determined as much by cultural linkages, such as through a common ethnicity, as through a social one. “If some soldiers are not involved or successful in the trade it is because of how they behave when they are trading…. [when] they are too troublesome and impolite towards the authorities,” one FARDC trader remarked, “In that way, you cannot be successful in its trade for every time you will have problems with your commanders for you are rude”. Being “courteous”, illustrating displays of “humility” and not being “haughty” or “impolite” were identified as important traits to show among both civilian and military traders. Behavioral attributes featured as consequential factors not only in determining whether one would be able to garner the support of a high ranking army official but also helped determine the extent to which one’s profits would be seized during a random arrest. “For instance, when you arrest someone who has a lot hemp but he humiliates himself to you and asks for forgiveness, you will reduce the cost of charging him from 80USD to 20USD… But if you arrest a trader or grower and he does not humiliate himself to you, you will ravish the whole quantity of hemp and in addition charge him some money according to the quantity of hemp”. Some FARDC respondents suggested such placates by civilian traders were more important than their drawing on other cultural ties. “Sometimes, you will come across [a civilian trader] saying that he is a family member to a certain chief or he begins speaking in Lingala to show you that you cannot intimidate him. For such people, we do not tolerate them. We ravish the hemp and ask him to call his chief he boasts for”.

Conclusion: Revisiting the Curse of the Congo

40As this article has demonstrated, the presence and significance of the herb to the lives of Congolese and of its economy for the livelihood of Congolese presents a critical alternative perspective. Rather, Congo’s cannabis economy is in fact loaded with cultural and economic significance. It reflects a powerful political history of Congolese resistance. It further serves as a key site for contemporary understanding of how local people navigate, survive, and subvert everyday forms of insecurity and violence in an enduring and fractured landscape of armed groups and gapping inequalities. Yet its importance to Congolese people and society has been overshadowed by outside narratives that continues to place the trade and consumption of cannabis alongside instances of corruption, crime, greed, abuse, and rape, rather than food security, livelihoods, reciprocity, and cost-effective (alternative) healthcare. As a result, most policies on the cannabis economy continue to focus on the criminal aspects of the drug, which almost inevitably reduces it to simply a vehicle for violence, underdevelopment and regional instability. In this way, discussions of the trade in marijuana, if and when they happen, do not look very different from when Melville William Hilton-Simpson, writing his travelogue entitled “Land and Peoples of the Kasai” in 1911, singled out hemp smoking as “the curse” of the Batetela (p. 256). Rather perhaps the real curse of Congo’s cannabis trade is that despite mounting evidence to the contrary regarding the causal role of marijuana and violence in the region, despite a growing recognition of marijuana’s role as a legitimate (if not legal) and significant livelihood strategy for rural households across the continent, despite evidence that the real dangers associated with the trade arguably result not in spite of its prohibition but precisely because of it, outside observers continue to reject empirical evidence in favor of dangerous stories (Autesserre, 2012) and toxic discourses (Laudati and Mertens, 2019). Returning to the photographed farmer that began this paper we can thus understand the curse of the cannabis trade another way. Perhaps the real ‘curse’, that the farmer likely already recognizes and subsequently sought to cure through the staging of the photograph as he did, was that we fail to see even when those hidden economies are exposed in plain sight.

Menkhaus.K., 2004. Vicious circles and the security development nexus in Somalia. Conflict, Security & Development, vol. 4, n° 2, p. 149-165.