Ondo, Placide

Kongossa politics: The passion for rumor in Libreville - 2009.


77

Rumors about people’s lives and politics are rife in Libreville. This article looks at favorable conditions for the development of rumor in the current political climate, which is dominated by the coming back of a single-party system and the end of a reign that is stirring up a war of succession. The article also looks at the effect of rumor on the political landscape as a symbolic battleground where rumoring has become a form of political participation that includes ordinary people. Rumor appropriates places of sociability and delegitimizes the articulation of politics, as performed by official sites. The encounter between the political elite and the people in these places mitigates the social gap that separates them. Exchanging rumors is thus a way of denying unequal power relationships.