The article provides insight into the current violent practices of urban youngsters in Kinshasa. At nightfall youth gangs transform the streets of Kinshasa's townships into arenas of the fight. Frequent regular clashes between these gangs create young violent leaders, who not only sow terror but also provide security for the inhabitants (young and old) of their territories. Although many of these boys and young men are trained in foreign fighting styles such as judo, jujitsu and karate, in the public clashes between the fighting groups, these boys and young men performmukumbusu. This fighting style, inspired and based on the gorilla, was invented during the last decade of colonialism, and is an original mixture of a traditional Mongo wrestling practice,libanda, and Asian and Western fighting practices. In the article, I scrutinize the practices of these young fighters through the diverse images of masculinity (kimobali) upon which they draw, such as the fighter and the soldier; and the models of masculinity that they contest, thesapeurand thestaffeur.

The article deals with the social significance of confessions among Kinshasa’s born-again Christians.1 Together with conversion narratives and former witches’ testimonies, confessions represent the main discursive rituals in the religious practices of newborn Christians. The analysis departs from the observation that among Kinshasa’s born-again Christians confessions are usually preceded or followed by deliverance rituals, and, that they are rarely acted out in an intimate and private encounter with the pastor. Rather, these narratives are usually expressed in public, preferably with the sinners’ victims as audience. The public nature of the confessions and their co-occurrence with spiritual cleansing as performed via deliverance rituals allow us to embark on an analysis that foregrounds the uncertainty of the Christian subject and the ways in which the subject can emerge but also be broken down.

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The article situates a new type of stand-up comedy, performed in Kinshasa's mourning spaces (matanga), within the city's social universe. This type of funerary joking, enacted by comedians unrelated to the bereaved, represents a clear departure from the customary funerary humour in which accepted jokers occupy particular social positions vis-à-vis the deceased. Following recent changes in the organization of mourning rituals within the circles of Kinshasa's wealthy, these rather intimate events are ever more open to ‘strangers’, who anticipate the spending capacities of the gathered crowd. Comedians constitute one among a wide range of outsider groups who approach the bereaved community as a space of opportunity. It is argued that this emergent cultural form is utterly urban, and could only appear within urban life worlds where conviviality with others, and in particular an understanding of people's need to make a living in precarious circumstances, transforms the mourning community into an audience that pays for a cultural performance. Humour is not only derived from a symbolic difference between the poor and the rich, but also through the performance of exaggerated flattery, producing the illusion of patronage and situating the comedian within a feigned patron–client relationship for the duration of that performance.

This article studies the dance poetics and politics of Christians in contemporary Kinshasa. For Kinois (inhabitants of Kinshasa), dance is one of the most important technologies to get in touch with an invisible Other, the divine or the occult. In sermons, and other modes of instruction, spiritual leaders inform their followers about the morality of songs and dances. These discourses reflect pentecostal thought, and trace back the purity of specific body movements to the choreography's source of inspiration. As the specific movements of so-called sacred dances borrow from a wide array of cultural worlds, ranging from traditional ritual dances and popular urban dance to biblical tales, the religious leaders state that not just the body movements, but also the space where people dance and the accompanying songs, define the Christian or pagan identity of the dancer. Therefore, both the reflections upon dance movements and the dance events within these churches will be discussed as moments in the construction of a Christian community.