The Leopard Men of the Eastern Congo (ca. 1890-1940): history and colonial representation

The research begins with a sculpture representing a “Leopard Man”, threatening to attack a sleeping victim, at the Royal Museum for Central Africa, Belgium. Recently this colonial icon was criticised for presenting a racist image. Leopard men killed on behalf of chiefs in the east of Congo (ca. 1890-1940). The emergence of a mythology of leopard men is analysed in relation to its suppression as an anti-colonial movement in the colony. This research highlights the distinctive potency of ethnographic objects as proof, shaping experiences of the colonised in the colonial museum, in relation to the text-focused study of the colonial discourse. The history of leopard men is reconstructed to break away from an exotic and de-historicised understanding. Two eastern Congolese varieties, anioto and vihokohoko, are studied, from which the RMCA display was derived. The micro-histories of conflict clusters are considered in the context of the Zanzibari slave trade and the Belgian colonisation as forms of empowerment. Anioto and vihokohoko are further studied in their cultural history. They are regarded as institutional developments in the context of political competition. Mythologisation in colonial sources is regarded as a process of structuration underlying all expressions of human experience. While rooted in reality, such expressions are also shaped by what people desire to believe. This occurs in line with a cultural logic and the rhetoric of rumour with the most potent elements being singled out to support the colonial discourse, leaping into fiction. Leopard men accounts are structured after culturally effective traditions of narration, presenting the civilising project as a moral victory of good over bad. Leopard men became an epistemological category, a morally inferior, animal-like opponent threatening the colonial order. The use of costumes and claws for the killings was falsely exaggerated, because their form objectifies the colonial logic

Anioto and nebeli : local power bases and the negotiation of customary chieftaincy in the Belgian Congo (ca. 1930-1950)

By means of two case studies, this paper demonstrates how customary chiefs in Northeast Congo crafted their power position under colonial indirect rule. The first case discusses chiefs' role in anioto or leopard-men killings to secure their authority over people, land and resources whilst circumventing colonial control. The second case concerns nebeli, a collective therapy characterised by the distribution of a medicine or charm used to protect, heal and harm in Northeast Congo and South Sudan. These case studies show that indirect rule designed customary chieftaincy too one-sidedly, based on patrilineal succession and land rights. It tried to cut chiefs off from spiritual and coercive power bases such as anioto and nebeli, which were part of local political culture. While colonial authorities framed institutions such as anioto and nebeli as subversive, and expected government-appointed chiefs to renounce them, they were clandestinely used by chiefs to retain their grip on local society whilst fulfilling their state-imposed duties. However, these institutions were not simply used to resist or by-pass colonial control, but also to support it. These historical cases help to gain insight in contemporary chiefs and militia leaders' continued use of similar coercive, spiritual and remedial means to boast their power

Revisiting colonial legacies in knowledge production on customary authority in Central and East Africa

Renewed attention on customary authority in both scholarship and development interventions renders it pertinent to revisit how contemporary engagement with this form of authority is still informed by colonial legacies. These legacies include: first, the penchant to see customary authority as solely invested in ‘chiefs’, rather than being relational and multifaceted; second, compartmentalized approaches that emphasize chiefs’ role as political authorities, while overlooking ritual, medicinal and spiritual aspects; third, misanalysing the role of female agency in the customary domain; and fourth, drawing on dichotomies that are often heavily inscribed in Western understandings, in particular, the modern versus traditional and state versus non-state divides. A growing body of work, however, has overcome these biases and developed more nuanced understandings of customary authority. Building on this work we propose to approach both the constitution of customary authority as well as knowledge production on this social institution in terms of ‘contested coproduction’. This concept helps focus on the socially constructed boundaries between different categories, and to see customary authority as a contextually shaped product of both structure and agency. It, therefore, advances the project of developing general conceptual tools that can capture the bewildering variety of expressions of customary authority while still enabling comparison

Leopard-men of the Congo in literature and popular imagination

The Anyoto leopard-men, a society from eastern Congo, operated between approximately 1890 and 1935. Until now the history of the leopard-men has inspired representations of Central Africa as a barbaric and disorderly place, and the idea that a secret association of men attacked innocent people and ate their limbs remains dominant in western culture. Since the early 20th century this image has been rather faithfully perpetuated in colonial ethnography and official reports and in popular representations of Africa. The Anyoto costumes in the collection of the Royal Museum for Central Africa have in particular inspired leopard-men iconography in western sources until today. There are certain striking similarities between western fictional literature on the Anyoto society and the factual sources, such as eyewitness reports from colonists and missionaries. Both share the historically rooted and culturally-specific representation of people from outside their own areas. In Europe there has been a long tradition of representing heathens and non-Europeans as being half man, half beast and behaving like animals, including eating their own species. Such cultural predispositions have stood in the way of understanding the real purposes of this society. Anyoto men’s activities were a way of maintaining local power relations, performing indigenous justice in secret and circumventing colonial government control

Jasmonate-induced defense mechanisms in the belowground antagonistic interaction between Pythium arrhenomanes and Meloidogyne graminicola in rice

Next to their essential roles in plant growth and development, phytohormones play a central role in plant immunity against pathogens. In this study we studied the previously reported antagonism between the plant-pathogenic oomycete Pythium arrhenomanes and the root-knot nematode Meloidogyne graminicola, two root pathogens that co-occur in aerobic rice fields. In this manuscript, we investigated if the antagonism is related to imbalances in plant hormone levels, which could be involved in activation of plant defense. Hormone measurements and gene expression analyses showed that the jasmonate (JA) pathway is induced early upon P. arrhenomanes infection. Exogenous application of methyl-jasmonate (MeJA) on the plant confirmed that JA is needed for basal defense against both P. arrhenomanes and M. graminicola in rice. Whereas M. graminicola suppresses root JA levels to increase host susceptibility, Pythium inoculation boosts JA in a manner that prohibits JA repression by the nematode in double-inoculated plants. Exogenous MeJA supply phenocopied the defense-inducing capacity of Pythium against the root-knot nematode, whereas the antagonism was weakened in JA-insensitive mutants. Transcriptome analysis confirmed upregulation of JA biosynthesis and signaling genes upon P. arrhenomanes infection, and additionally revealed induction of genes involved in biosynthesis of diterpenoid phytoalexins, consistent with strong activation of the gene encoding the JA-inducible transcriptional regulator DITERPENOID PHYTOALEXIN FACTOR. Altogether, the here-reported data indicate an important role for JA-induced defense mechanisms in this antagonistic interaction. Next to that, our results provide evidence for induced expression of genes encoding ERF83, and related PR proteins, as well as auxin depletion in P. arrhenomanes infected rice roots, which potentially further contribute to the reduced nematode susceptibility seen in double-infected plants

Ginger

https://digitalcommons.otterbein.edu/production_1999-2000/1004/thumbnail.jp

Target of rapamycin signaling orchestrates growth-defense trade-offs in plants

Plant defense to microbial pathogens is often accompanied by significant growth inhibition. How plants merge immune system function with normal growth and development is still poorly understood. Here, we investigated the role of target of rapamycin (TOR), an evolutionary conserved serine/threonine kinase, in the plant defense response. We used rice as a model system and applied a combination of chemical, genetic, genomic and cell-based analyses. We demonstrate that ectopic expression of TOR and Raptor (regulatory-associated protein of mTOR), a protein previously demonstrated to interact with TOR in Arabidopsis, positively regulates growth and development in rice. Transcriptome analysis of rice cells treated with the TOR-specific inhibitor rapamycin revealed that TOR not only dictates transcriptional reprogramming of extensive gene sets involved in central and secondary metabolism, cell cycle and transcription, but also suppresses many defense-related genes. TOR overexpression lines displayed increased susceptibility to both bacterial and fungal pathogens, whereas plants with reduced TOR signaling displayed enhanced resistance. Finally, we found that TOR antagonizes the action of the classic defense hormones salicylic acid and jasmonic acid. Together, these results indicate that TOR acts as a molecular switch for the activation of cell proliferation and plant growth at the expense of cellular immunity