Talk:Kinshasa

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[edit] Dirtiest

I know it is referred to as Kin La poubelle (forgive my spelling, im not a cum dribbling cunt fucker) but is this something that should really be in the article unsourced? Lsjzl (talk) 06:00, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

No need to be French ;-) I replaced the unsourced statement with the cities’ nickname. --moyogo (talk) 10:01, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] History POV

The history section talks as if Kinshasa and the area was populated and became a trade center upon the foundation of the AIA station by H.M. Stanley. However there are strong evidences that the Southern area of the Pool Malebo was a major trade centre from the previous centuries. The Bateke moved from the Northern shore and traded with the Humbu. They alors heavily traded with the Loango and the Bakongo on the coast and with the Bobangi upstream on the river and its confluent. Even Stanley or Coquilhat mention this in their books. The village of Kinshasa, previous to Stanley, was already a big market. ---moyogo 01:08, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Current Events

Kinshasa is currently facing civil war. Rebel attacks are forcing people and children out of their homes. Most of these people die of lack of nutrition, disease, or rebel attacks. The Congo has been ranked as one of the top three worst places to be born. More children under age five die each year in the Congo than in China, a country with 23 times the population. As many as 30,000 children have been taken as slaves or soldiers. Only 1/2 of all primary-school-aged children go to school, and !/3 of the children under age 1 are vaccinated against measles. 31% of kids in the Congo are underweight.

I removed this paragraph [1] at a time the Congo is not in civil war anymore. Please add the info in an acurate manner. --moyogo 07:26, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Kinshasa city or province? Skyscrapers or highrises?

This article is confusing to me because I got to this page by clicking on the link to Kinshasa in the _provinces_ box. Is it about the city only or about the province or both?

En tout cas, I think it's time we had separate articles for the province and the city: Kinshasa Province and Kinshasa (Capital) or Kinshasa (City). Any concurrence? Any volunteers?

Also, I don't think the Hotel Memling and SOZACOM buildings are technically skyscrapers (although it sounds so much better:) but rather highrises. Does anyone know the height of either? That would be the deciding point, according to the articles on skyscrapers and highrises. --DBlomgren 02:21, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Kinshasa is both a city and a province, that is using "city" in the sense used in British English and in Europe, to include all the suburbs. Kahuzi 21:58, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I understand that. My question is if this article is about the city and province. It seems to focus mostly on the city; therefore, it's kind of inappropriate for links to the province to link here. --DBlomgren 23:03, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

The administrative Kinshasa is a city that has a status of a province. It has 2 rural municipalities. That's it. This article is about the city with both its urban and rural municipalities. --moyogo

I'm still confused, but in a good way:). I think I'm learning here. Are the city limits of Kinshasa (with its urban and rural municipalities) the same as the province limits? In other words, is it analogous to the city of Washington, D.C. filling the limits of the District of Columbia, so if you're talking about the city, you're also talking about the district (or in Kinshasa's case, the province)? If so, this article is not only about the city but also the province.

Or is Kinshasa province equal to the city of Kinshasa _plus_ two rural municipalities? Oh, I think I just found something: On this map of the communes in Kinshasa, the inset shows Nsele and Maluku. Are these the two rural municipalities you were talking about, Moyogo? And would you know if the light colored area in the inset represents the city, the province, or the city=province? --DBlomgren 02:35, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Here's how the constitution says it : "Kinshasa is the capital and the seat of all the national institutions. She has the status of a province" (Artcile 2). There is no "Kinshasa Province", there's only a city that has the legal status of a province. Kinshasa, with all its municipalities, rural or urban, is one city, and works as such. The only differences with other cities are: how big the city is, the mayor is a governor, the city has its own provincial assembly, etc. The maps of the municipalities only shows differents colors for style, they do not indicate a difference between Kinshasa city and Kinshasa province, since there is no province. Nsele and Maluku are almost totally rural. I'm not familiar with Washington, D.C. so I don't know how they compare except that Kinshasa has seats at both chambers of the parliement. ---moyogo 09:33, 31 January 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Second-largest French speaking city?

Few DRC Congolese speak French well, and virtually none speak it natively. Kinshasa is primarily Lingala-speaking. The Francophonie says about 4% of Congolese are francophones réels, meaning that they have a good command of the language and use it in everyday situations, and a further 9% are francophones occasionnels [2] [3] This is what this source says about the DRC:

  • Étant donné qu’environ 15 % des enfants accèdent au secondaire, le nombre des locuteurs fonctionnels du français demeure limité.

Compare this with metropolitan Montreal, where 91% speak French, including 69% who speak it natively. [4] By either measure this is likely more than Kinshasa. The sentence should be reformulated in a way that specifies the meaning of "French-speaking". Joeldl 23:56, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Sure. But one must considers that the percentage of french-speaking people in RDC is likely much higher in the cities, specially in kinshasa. I'm not an expert, but I think that the role of french as a neutral language must be more noteworthy there, as kinshasa is the capital of a country which has more than 200 languages. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.8.97.213 (talk) 13:31, August 27, 2007 (UTC)

Joeldl, your references are outdated. According to the last Francophonie Report (2006-2007), not available online unfortunately, a survey by the Department of French Litterature and Civilization at the University of Kinshasa revised the number of French speakers upwards. Now they estimate that 10% of people in the RDC are francophones réels, and 30% are francophones occasionnels. Also according to the Report, in the school year 2004-2005, 6,140,000 young boys and girls were enrolled in French-speaking primary schools in the RDC, 1,670,000 were enrolled in French-speaking middle and high schools, and 200,000 were enrolled in French-speaking universities.

Furthermore, as the anonymous IP above pointed out, in Kinshasa people are much more likely to speak French than in the provinces, so the number of French speakers in Kinshasa must probably be above 50%. Of course it doesn't mean they speak French all the time. The linguistic situation in Kinshasa is that of diglossy: people use several languages in their daily lives (a typical case: an African language with their family at home, Lingala with speakers from other African languages in the street, and French for official and business uses; oftentimes people speak a mix of Lingala and French; the more French you use, the more seriously people look at you from what I understand; I even heard garagists speaking with clients in French when they could obviously have used Lingala). Godefroy (talk) 23:30, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

First off, who's to say that the number of native speakers isn't the most appropriate measure? It's not obvious that we should be looking at other things.
But let's say we did. If reliable statistics can be found on Kinshasa itself, then it might turn out that there are more Kinois capable of speaking French at a reasonable level than Montrealers. If, say, half the people there speak French, that's a tiny bit more than in Montreal. But if those people spend most of their time speaking other languages, what does it mean that the city is French-speaking? Probably, the best thing to do is to rely on official status or something similar. All I'm saying is that it's fuzzy.
I would suggest this wording:
Kinshasa is often considered the world's second-largest French-speaking city after Paris, though much depends on the meaning of "French-speaking". Montreal retains this distinction at least in terms of the number of native speakers of French. Joeldl (talk) 12:16, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Kinshasa-Brazzaville conurbation?

Can one really speak of a 'Kinshasa-Brazzaville conurbation'? The River Congo that separates the two cities is very wide and is not bridged. Therefore I cannot imagine that the links and exchanges of people that are necessary for a conurbation are there. Booshank 20:25, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

The Kinshasa-Brazzaville conurbation is often mentioned in the urban studies litterature, so that's enough reason for us to mention it. It's not our job to say whether it's a true conurbation or not. I note nonetheless that although there are no bridges over the Congo River, there's a lot of river traffic between both sides of the river. Cédric Kalonji on his blog from Kinshasa reported that during the presidential election he spotted an electoral agent with his official jacket on the other side of the river in Brazzaville running little business to get more money instead of doing his electoral agent job in Kinshasa ([5]). So as you see there are links between both sides of the river. Godefroy (talk) 23:50, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Transportation

Something should be highlighted about the state of taxi-bus and other transportation. With such congested roads and huge unemployement cheap, plentiful transport is needed.. I waited for hours with friends at times for a ride.. the only thing that got them to slow down was seeing a Mundele waving for a ride.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.52.61.118 (talk) 05:38, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Penis snatching and Witchcraft

Like in Ghana, witchcraft is punished in this country: On April, 2008, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, West Africa's 'Police arrested 14 suspected victims (of penis snatching) and sorcerers accused of using black magic or witchcraft to steal (make disappear) or shrink men's penises to extort cash for cure, amid a wave of panic. Arrests were made in an effort to avoid bloodshed seen in Ghana a decade ago, when 12 penis snatchers were beaten to death by mobs.[1] --Florentino floro (talk) 06:02, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

This random news isn't really appropriate for this main article. Please add info to Penis snatching on that topic. Thanks --moyogo (talk) 08:38, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Even better Genital retraction syndrome --moyogo (talk) 08:49, 24 April 2008 (UTC)